When 38 Special's fourth album, 1981's Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, went platinum about three years after Southern rock had crested, it probably surprised even the group itself. The following year, this Jacksonville, Florida, band scored a Top Ten single with "Caught Up in You" (from their Special Forces LP): three perfect hooks, two guitarists and two drummers dead on the beat, plus one tuneful chorus and an instrumental stretch at the end that summarized the history of Southern rock for Eighties radio.

Their 1983 album, immodestly titled Tour de Force, had a single that lived up to the LP's name – "If I'd Been the One," which matched hard-bitten lyrics to grave-sounding guitars. Special Forces and Tour de Force also sold platinum. Yet despite these stupendous sales and a connection to one of the best Southern rock bands – frontman Donnie Van Zant's brother Ronnie Van Zant was the lead singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd – the band still had something of a 38 Who? aura.

Strength in Numbers is 38 Special's attempt to carve out an identity as more than a faceless singles band. The front of the record jacket flashes a big "38" logo, while the six faces of the members of 38 Special pop out from the back. Produced in Los Angeles by Keith Olsen (who produced Fleetwood Mac), much of the new album is summertime pop consummately crafted with rock & roll toughness–it's a record that should come with a convertible.

The example of ZZ Top's great 1983 breakthrough hovers over this record (Eliminator mapped out a successful strategy for making Southern rock for the 1980's marketplace). But what ZZ Top accomplished with CHR crunch and raunch, 38 Special attempts with Beatlesque melody and plain bite. The best side-one tracks are "Somebody Like You," which could be the successor to "If I'd Been the One" seems embarrassingly indiscriminate and their style pointless.

And, with a couple of exceptions, Joe Cocker doesn't get it on Cocker, his first LP since 1984's Civilized Man. The "Shelter Me" single, though nothing special, at least manages to hold its own against the power of Cocker's performance. Cocker's second single is Randy Newman's "You Can Leave Your Hat On," which was used as a soundtrack backdrop for a sizzling striptease in 9 1/2 Weeks. Though it showcases sassy background vocals by Maxine Green, Maxine Waters and Julia Waters Tillman, it's little more than a one-riff grind. And Cocker may as well be crooning the phone book when he takes on such slight stuff as "Heart of the Matter," the Terry Manning-penned "Heaven," "A to Z," "Don't You Love Me Anymore" and "Living Without Your Love." Of the album's ten tracks, only Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" forces Cocker to rise to its level.

Manning produced five of Cocker's tunes, and the relative sterility of his high-tech settings is ill-suited to Cocker's barrel-chested physicality and his war-torn rasp of a voice. Cocker's at his best when the players work and sweat as hard as he does, and the cool surfaces of Manning's switch-flipping electronics seem impervious to the singer's heat. Of the five other producers on the disk, former Chic man Bernard Edwards turns in the hippest and hottest job on a so-so song, "Don't Drink the Water" (featuring drummer Anton Fig and guitarist Eddie Martinez, along with Edwards on bass), and Richie Zito wrings all the sleazy charm he can out of "You Can Leave Your Hat On."

Because he doesn't write his own songs and produce, Cocker always needs a little help from his friends. By and large, those friends fail him on Cocker, and the shame is that now we have another inconsequential album by an artist capable of giving much more. (RS 476)

ANTHONY DECURTIS