Two degrees in Bebop, a Ph.D. in swing/He's a Master of Rhythm, he's a rock & roll king." Lowell George's résumé, when it appeared on 1974's Feats Don't Fail Me Now, seemed only a slight exaggeration. At the time, George, as leader of Little Feat, was dean of the cool school. His lyrics were witty but studiously inconsequential, and his music was beginning to suggest a whole new orientation for rock. George's trademark was the clean, spacious arrangement, while the band replaced frenetic, foursquare rock chops with a sullen, smooth elegance far more atmospheric and menacing. A maze of contrapuntal activity was created by just a few notes scattered with apparent casualness among guitars, keyboards and congas: eloquent funk with a Southern accent.

The effortless, fluid polyrhythms of that period (in songs like "Down the Road" and "Skin It Back") never really caught on. White rock has yet to discover such subtleties. But every time you hear a slow-sliding guitar or any bluesy, metallic rock & roll with an undercurrent of funk, it's all part of the long shadow cast by Lowell George. Of late, his influence on Little Feat's musicians has begun to evaporate as they cast around for more acceptable outlets for their virtuosity. As a result, only "Rocket in My Pocket," on their last studio record, has the classic George feel to it.

So, with the release of George's first solo LP, Thanks I'll Eat It Here, you'd expect some kind of summary of all that's peculiarly his own in the Little Feat gumbo. Instead, there's this strangely faceless collection of tunes. Half of Los Angeles was in the studio with him, and the result sounds like the product of a committee. Also, the familiarity of the hordes of participating players and singers leaves you with the unsettling feeling that not only could several other artists have made this album, but one or two already have.

Missing is the iron control needed to pull off such lazy non-chalance. George's uncharacteristically fuzzy production renders even Little Feat-style tracks like "Honest Man" and the reworked "Two Trains" undeniably leaden. The star limits his best shots to a couple of left-field gems that, despite their stylishness, are really no more than good jokes. "Cheek to Cheek" is a little mariachi-band throwaway whose appeal presupposes a certain nostalgia for weekends in Tijuana, while "Himmler's Ring," a Jimmy Webb song, is one of those perverse quickies that satirize a syrupy style with a sick lyric. This one is a Twenties smoocher. I love it. It sounds like they might have been playing it on the Hindenburg right before it popped.

For the rest, George's voice is the main event. It's still the perfect rock instrument—lyrical, expressive and assured—but it's almost wasted here. Though far from being a bad record, Thanks I'll Eat It Here is so featureless that the obvious conclusion is Little Feat is Lowell George's truest identity. Some bands were just meant to be together. (RS 294)

ALAN PLATT