Find Out!

Billed as a product of the Stanley Clarke Band, Find Out! is a fairly desultory exercise in techno rock/funk, undermined mostly by routine song material. Consisting of Clarke, Rayford Griffin (drums), Robert Brookins and Sunnie Paxson (keyboards), plus a handful of sessionmen, the band wasn't one of Clarke's more inventive or hard-charging groups, and they do their machinelike best with what little they are given. When Clarke is reduced to rewriting his classic "School Days" on "My Life," you know that the well is running dry. The sole intriguing curiosity is a cover version of "Born In the U.S.A." that sounds like a black man's parody of white arena rock, with Springsteen's bitter lyric ground out rap-style by Clarke. Well, at least that was a bit ahead of its time.