Easy on Cliff and Bruce!

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A WARM welcome to Socialist Organiser's new column on rock music and youth culture. We need a breath of fresh air.

Personally I'm getting a little pissed off going to Militant Discos where that funny old_DJ, what's his name? - Ted Grant keeps playing all these Guy Mitchell, Johnny Ray and Frankie Laine records, ano handing out the razor blades with the Fortisan.

However, such columns have their dangers. It was only this January that Jean McKenzie, writing in Socialist Challenge criticised the Clash for only including one song about Nicaragua on their last (and excellent) LP! "What could have been a celebration and popularisation of the Nicaraguan revolution is a missed opportunity", , moaned Jean.

Perhaps the Clash have got things a little more in perspective than Socialist Challenge over the Nicaraguan and indeed the Iranian "revolutions"

But Andrew had better watch his step, too.

The Cliff Richard LP is indeed a strange compilation, but among the dross lie a couple of jewels. 'When Two Worlds Fall Apart" is one of the best love songs of the 1970s, and Miss You Nights is not half bad.

It is rumoured by the way that Cliff is Ted Grant's ideal LPYS recruit - over 40, looks 18, and is Wired for Sound').

• More serious is Andrew's writing off of Bruce Springsteen's The River - one of last year's best LPs. Cuts like Hungry Heart and Sherry Darling and Cadillac Ranch make a fantastic noise in the best traditions of American rock and roll.

Over twenty tracks the record presents a sustained evocation of New York young working class life noW. Springsteen is no Dylan, point • way forward, it doesn't hint at more genuine ways of escape, and it certainly doesn't talk about Nicaragua or the 200 monopolies.

But it can tell us a lot about ourselves and our problems in the kind of society we live in. It does at least deserve some serious consideration.

CAROL HOBBS 2 position. I can hear them gritting their teeth and snarling What went wrong?, what went wrong?' It looked like a sewn up guaranteed suecess and should have gone straight in at number 1, no less, without a hitch where it would have dutifully stayed for week after charming week. whilst gullible fools spend their hard-earned pound notes on a record which is going to be played every 10 minutes on Radio One anyway.

I wouldn't have bothered writing about Adam and the Ants at all, he's just another up and coming multi-millioned musical bore, except that he is a punk charlatan par excellence.

One time art student turned new wave rebel he participated in the strange 1977 punk film Jubilee and producea a tew mildly interesting songs in his eariy days with a faintly novel tribal influence.

Now look at him; a tamed, limp, media-made puppet object. readers are told «Punk suddently seems too harsh and all that black leather and safety pins is boring. The pirate look is romantic...

But the romance doesn't come cheaply. It cost a staggering £45,000 to make a 3-minute video for Top of the Pops in which our super poser makes a series of super poses but no doubt a wise capital investment. choose for a play. It certainly made me wonder what to expect.

Can't Pay? Won't Pay! is the creation of satirist Dario Fo, one of the wittiest commentators on the contemporary Italian scene, who constantly attacks the absurdities of his country's government, Roman Catholic Church, and Communist Party.

The play, which is wildly funny and moves at splendid pace, is set in Italy in 1974. At that time the capitalist crisis had pushed up the price of basic foodstuffs by an incredible 50 per cent, and this culminated in 1 women raiding a Milan supermarket to protest against inflation -which is where the title comes in.

Maggie Steed (Antonia) and Karen Drury (Margherita) play two determined working-class housewives fighting the system

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still less a socialist, and this is not a great LP. It doesn't