Tim Buckley

It was only rock and roll in Ypsilanti on Sunday night, but they liked it. Tim Buckley and band opened the first show at Bimbo's with 'Nighthawkin', a rambling rocker from his Greetings from L.A. album. The dance floor was immediately jammed. Stayed that way, too, through three more songs from the same record. All were hailed with frenzied applause, specially 'Sweet Surrender,' which drew howls of appreciation with the first notes.

It was mainly Buckley's show: his band was tight and competent, but did little more than lay down the beat and throw some filler between Buckley's vocals, which ranged from plodding to stunning. He came on strongest in the first set - all the tunes from Greetings seemed perfect vehicles for his brand of soul; the lyrics are meaty and he smoldered though them with powerful conviction. His lush, emotive voice sent out warn fronts of sensuality, and by the time he slide through 'Dolphins.' as laid back and poignant as Fred Neil ever sang it, a good number of folks were ready to give it up and surrender. Several white flag wavers wondered aloud how he could be 'so skinny and so sensual.' Like the first honkies to discover that Charlie Pride was black. But there he writhed, and they seemed pleasantly amazed that he's not your basic playgirl foldout.

So how did this wistful poet of alienation from plastic America (remember Goodbye Hello?) get so low down? He tells it all in 'Devil Eyes' - 'I got so tired of meaningful looks, I got so tired of coming up tame.' So he cruised off into the forbidden territory of Sex, doing the taboo to get back the soul they robbed him of. But even with all the hardassed growls, languid moans and subtle screams, his between the sheets talk seems anything but raunchy. The romantic still lies beneath it all, longing not for orgasms as an end, but a threshold to some space where, just maybe, we really are All One.
If we could just surrender, he assures us, love would heal the messes we've made. Now that may seem too vague a solution for our more nightmarish twentieth century problems, but he's a poet, not a rhetoritician; laying down not a program, but the state of his personal odyssey. That personal quality seemed to be the strength of his performance.
In a brief halftime conversation, he pointed to the act of communication as his main concern - establishing rapport with his audience; playing in more intimate surroundings than concerts; trying to synthesize what he wants to play with what he feels we out here really want to hear. And when his voice, lyrics and melodies fused, the genuineness of it erased a lot of that space between audience and performer. Plus the kids could dance to it.

-- Ivy Ramo