*** Creative Source

CREATIVE SOURCE . . . AND MORE

(Polydor)

The West Coast vocal quintet Creative Source broke up a full 20 years ago. Yet the best of this 13-track selection from their four LPs sounds as up-to-date sleek as house music. Steve Flanagan, Don Wyatt, Celeste Rose, Barbara Lewis, and Barbara Berryman sang intensely but with polish, in a close-harmony style that fit steamy soft lullabies like "Pass the Feeling On," "You Can't Hide Love," and the extended-riff song "Who Is He and What Is He to You," an 11:40 hit from 1973 that became one of the first great disco anthems. But they were also on fire singing 1974's "Corazón" in a husky Spanish as fierce as the song's tribal-like beat. That this pulsating performance made no sense to the hit-radio taste of 23 years ago only whet the appetites of 1974's club kids, for whom the exotic and the senseless were lust's first principles.

-- Michael Freedberg