Consumer Guide Album

Bob Weir: Ace [Warner Bros., 1972]
Weir can be preachy and screechy, but Robert Hunter's homiletics ("Playing in the Band") make up for John Barlow's post-hippie know-nothingisms ("Walk in the Sunshine"), and "One More Saturday Night" isn't any less a rockabilly epiphany because it strains Bobby's vocal chords--that just adds a note of authenticity. With Barlow redeeming himself on the elegiac pre-hippie fable "Cassidy" and Keith Godchaux sounding like a cross between Chick Corea and Little Richard, this is the third in a series that began with Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. A-