If Loudon Wainwright III wanted to release his greatest hits, he could put out a single with "Dead Skunk" on one side and a live version of the same song on the other. Instead, the dauntless Wainwright's eighth album. A Live One, is a comprehensive (except for "Dead Skunk") and cracked compendium of one lunatic's refusal to deal with the world on any terms other than his own. Who else would say to his infant son, in a tune called "Lullaby," "Shut up and go to bed/... I'm sick and tired of all your sob stories"?

It's a good thing Wainwright doesn't believe that three strikes means you're out, because not only does this LP serve as an excellent and generous introduction to his ever-skewed philosophy of life (and death: "Do the monkey/Do the pony/Do the slop/Do the boogaloo, twist/Cut your throat/Cut your throat/Cut your wrist"), but it's also his most aesthetically accessible.

Recorded on a tour of the British Isles in late 1976 and at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Los Angeles in 1978. A Live One is Wainwright at his best: solo. Just his acoustic guitar backs his effective, sometimes pretty, often constricted singing (except when he plays the piano in, naturally, "Red Guitar" and does an a cappella version of "Hollywood Hopeful" that keeps threatening to stop dead in its hilarious tracks). The directness of this approach somehow allows the, uh, illogical certainty of each song to stand out more clearly than in the studio versions, which utilized a standard rock band.

Maybe Loudon Wainwright Ill will have another hit to add to his best-of 45. Along with the Roches (who are weirder than he is simply because there are three of them), he should have a lot more than a cult following. (RS 321)

JIM FELDMAN