POP MUSIC REVIEW : Time Machine at Folk Festival

Time Machine, the Soviet band that capped Saturday’s “American/Soviet Folk Festival”--a 4 1/2-hour bi-superpower talent extravaganza at the Starlight Amphitheatre--was repeatedly and riskily referred to as “the Russian Beatles.” In the warm glow of glasnost , doubts remained but hopes were high: Could Time Machine warm relations further yet by in fact being a red reincarnation of the Fab Four?

Well, maybe, if the Beatles played a slick, watered-down derivation of most of the pop music that had come from other lands before them, held no possibility of ever influencing their own culture (let alone anyone else’s), and sounded like the kind of non-rabble-rousing Pablum that could conceivably be sanctioned by a totalitarian state.

So much for the Russian Beatles. But could there be a Soviet Bob Dylan on view? Or a Gordon Lightfoot? One of the other visiting Soviet performers did leave a strong impression: Folk crooner Alexander Gradsky over-emoted, and yet given the language barrier, his histrionics let him move the spirit even without the translation necessary to touch the mind.

Otherwise, the lack of strong impressions from the foreign delegation left a listener to presume that the U.S.S.R.’s brighter lights may be more underground. Which, actually, could also be said of the U.S.--the difference being that the American bloc was represented at the marathon concert (a benefit for the ongoing Soviet/American Peace Walk) by at least a few artists who will likely always remain governmentally unsponsorable, among them poet Wanda Coleman and rascally neo-folk scoundrels the Knitters.

The latter--consisting mostly of X members past and present playing acoustic instruments--brought out the new guard of L.A.’s liberal-rock-consciousness set, the kind of post-punks who will wear Jesse Jackson buttons a la singer Exene Cervenka, cheer John Doe’s anti-Reagan quips, and rush the stage to rock along to Phil Ochs oldies.

The old guard was even better represented by the slightly more staid peacenik majority up in the seats. For this more traditional contingent there was the enduring Jesse Colin Young (one of whose two songs was his hippie classic “Get Together”), soft-rock group Collective Vision, and numerous James Taylor sound-alike folkies.

Luckily for the patient audience of about 1,500, the wide selection of American performers went well beyond the usual purveyors of “oneness” and warm-fuzziness--and even beyond the alternative folk of the Knitters--to even more eclectic choices, ranging from jazz singer Barbara Dane to juggling/magic troupe the Mums, who heartily endorsed the politics of joy.