GARY U.S. BONDS

Dedication

[EMI America 5017051]

Who could be mean-spirited enough to carp about this record's flaws? Gary U.S. Bonds, for those too young to remember, is the energetic, tough-voiced R & B singer whose early sixties' hits, "Quarter to Three" and "School is Out", were among the glories of AM radio in those days. His career languished with the rise of British rock, and while not a great record by any means, Dedication represents his very respectable, deserved, and welcome comeback.

Appropriately titled, Dedication also pays a debt owed to the older singer by Bruce Springsteen, for whom "Quarter to Three" has been a long-standing showstopper. When the Boss ran across Bonds playing bar gigs recently, he decided to take him into the studio, back him with the E-Street Band, get Chuck Jackson and Ben E. King to contribute background vocals, and do some singing and production himself.

The result is pleasant. While not up to the strength of Bonds' earlier triumphs of innocence, songs like "This Little Girl" (with Springsteen accompanying on vocals) and "Way Back When" work well in capturing the rollicking good cheer that made Bonds distinctive. As one would expect, Bonds' voice has lost some of its youthful excitement, but it has gained considerable finesse and subtlety. These newer virtues hold the singer in impressively good stead on the three major covers that constitute Dedication's unexpected successes. Bonds takes on Lennon and McCartney's "It's Only Love", Jackson Browne's "The Pretender", and Dylan's "From a Buick 6", acquitting himself well in each instance. Comeback albums do not often take such chances.

The album's production, handled primarily by Springsteen and E-Street Band guitarist Miami Steve Van Zandt, is quite clean and, in a way, that's a necessary shame. The great charm of Bonds' early hits is that they sounded as if they were recorded in an airplane hangar. They succeeded purely on the strength of raw talent, optimism, unrestrained enthusiasm, and the impossible wit of youth. Dedication's accomplished, careful production is oddly depressing in that it stands as an atmospheric emblem of an innocence inevitably lost, not only by a singer, but by his listeners and our time as well.

- Anthony DeCurtis