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If a new Randy Newman album is always a cause for celebration, the release of his splendid new Harps and Angels is also a perfect excuse to look back on the halcyon days of 12 Songs and Sail Away. And where better to catch him than at LA's legendary Troubadour club, courtesy of Phonograph Record's Richard Cromelin. -- Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Director

THIS GUY GAVE me a ride once, back when I was going to UCLA. He was pretty laconic, but under my expert employment of hitchhiker's conversational gambits I did elicit the information that he was finishing up as a music student there and had written some songs, like "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," which Judy Collins and Eric Burdon and the Animals had recorded.

As we curved past Jayne Mansfield's pink mansion he told me that Eric Burdon considered himself a spade. And that was about it. When he dropped me off I ran into the Music Hall, pulled out [Eric Burdon and the Animals'] Winds of Change and laid eyes on my benefactor's name: R. Newman. (If you're into coincidences, you might like to know that a couple of years later Harry Nilsson, who had just recorded an album of Randy Newman songs, gave me a ride on Wilshire Boulevard.)

I mention this to clear up any conflict of interest and to assure you that his kindness to me has no influence on my critical objectivity when I submit that Randy Newman ranks among the most gifted, insightful, enjoyable, provocative, outrageous and valuable writers and performers in existence.

Now that's hardly big news to anyone who's been doing any listening lately, but seeing him at his recent Troubadour engagement confirms the belief that his virtues simply can't be overstated. It's hard to figure how a man who sits at the piano without moving one muscle more than necessary and whose songs sound exactly the same each time he performs them can remain such a compelling presence up there. I suppose it has something to do with his easy stage manner (which was a long time coming), his engaging, self-effacing image, the mantle of vulnerability that he wears, even the unique sexuality which he projects. Whatever, he makes many a so-called entertainer look like a stuttering kid at his first Christmas pageant.

During his first set on Thursday night, Newman neatly fended off a fellow who kept yelling "Percodan" from the foot of the stage; handled the deluge of requests like a Vaudeville Indian club juggler; dealt with a memory blank in "Yellow Man" like an old pro ("It even happens to Eddie Fisher"); and expressed prevailing sentiment by apologizing for the delay in the show and for the fact that the Troubadour was doing some of its inscrutable and maddening string-pulling by not honoring reservations: "If you're going to run a toilet, it shouldn't be a pay toilet." All with the deft skill of a consummate surgeon.

And of course there are his songs. A lot has been made of his lyrics, but a word should be inserted into the record about his remarkable music, whose spare, simple lines and progressions are constantly expanding magically in the air, always revealing new facets of themselves, ending up as something much greater than the sum of the notes. All the depth and richness of the American musical panorama is implied in his tunes, which evoke the presence of Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, the bluesmen, the jazzmen, soap opera classicism and (perhaps the most charming touch of all) '20s vamp music.

In the few new numbers he performed (it's reported that he did a lot more of them on opening night) he continued to display his ability to bring to life some of our more bizarre and secluded fantasies, creating characters and situations which in turn generate their own surreal and all-encompassing little worlds – the man who has the lady remove her dress (while leaving her hat on), then stand on a chair and raise her arms as he spouts at his enemies "You don't know what love is...I know what love is" is obviously the same fellow who called Suzanne from that phone booth (and for that matter she might even be Suzanne); "Political Science" is a more militant and absurd (when we drop the big one we'll spare Australia – "Don't want to hurt no kangaroo") extension of the jingoism that is expressed more benignly in "Yellow Man," and the slavery-recruitment ballad "Sail Away" seems to spring from the same sensibility that saw him place "Underneath the Harlem Moon" on 12 Songs.

Randy Newman is susceptible to endless discussion and analysis. Let's just say for now that he's getting better all the time, not because he can't get no worse, but because he's that thing which so many are called but few deserve. I know that I wouldn't like to be stuck on a desert island with nothing but a Randy Newman album and a phonograph; I'd be out of my mind in two days – and that's the mark of a real genius.

Hear an audio interview with Randy Newman, and read lots more articles about him, at www.rocksbackpages.com. Over 12,000 articles by the greatest writers from the finest rock publications of the last 40 years.