BOB PFEIFER After Words (Passport)

I was real hot for Human Switchboard when they released their scorching Who’s Landing In My Hangar? album five years ago, but when I got closer to the group, I wasn’t sure whether I really liked Bob Pfeifer’s totalitarian those-who-are-not-withme-are-against-me script for his coming anti-superstardom. Secretly I cheered for Myrna Marcarian and her ravishing Farfisa, always ready to claw & puncture Bob’s William Burroughsian disingenuousness when he started pumping it up. Pfeifer and Marcarian made up a confrontationallycreative duo as explosive as the fabled Alan Price vs. Eric Burdon, but the pop public didn’t wanna know. Now Bob Pfeifer’s back, bereft of most of Myrna’s presences, and damned if he hasn’t risen to the occasion with an album even more naked & unafraidof-being-uncool than I really expected from the guy. Plenty of that good old Switchboardian push-pulsation, but in a drier, popier tone that never fails to be true to a suite of songs dedicated to the loss of a beloved woman. No time for yearning after Lou Reed anymore; this is simply naked Bob Pfeifer, in all his unashamed & infinite nakedness. R.R.