THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, February 22, 1970 Sunay Febuay 2,97 arts festival Exploding 'Cannon'? music Inconsistencies mar Janes By BERT STRATTON I expected that after the Can- nonball Adderley concert last night, I would have been suffi- ciently inspired to get out my saxophone and wake up all my neighbors. Luckily for my neighbors,. Cannonball didn't come on strong enough for me. The problem was I was too psyched up for the concert. Having, played along to his re- cord The Best of Cannonball Adderley yesterday afternoon, I went to last night's concert ex- pecting to see him at his best. He wasn't, though; Cannonball was far from bad, but he was equal- ly far from. great. Yet the most disappointing :factor was the mixed-up pro- gramming. The show began with Adderley's Quintet playing in front of an abbreviated Univer- sity orchestra, conducted by William Fischer. TIe's the man I knew did ,those pretty lousy arrangements on Herbie Mann's latest record. However, it's clear that he's a lot. more talented than I had thought. At the present, he's very involved in composing Third Stream music - that's what "they' call the various at- tempts at combining European classical music and American jazz. I suppose there's s o m e - body somewhere who would call Fischer a "genius", as for me,~ the best I can work up is "un- appreciated." The. orchestra seemed to get in the way of the Jamming, and when the orches- tra took the lead, 'the Quintet looked embarrassingly unoccu- pied. I thought everything would get in gear. when the orchestra and Fischer finished, leaving Adderley's.group alone on stage. They jumped into a funky Joe Zawinul tune, "Walk Tall," and things looked good. Joe's elec- tric piano was coupled with Cannonball and Nat Adderley's duets. About then, Cannonball infor- ed the audience that the group had already reached their peak In the experimental Fischer number. At least he could have been more subtle about it! Hell, I thought they were just getting wa;med up. Keeping in line with the fest- ival nature of the concert, an- other . celebrity, Alvin Batiste, was introduced. Nobody had ever heard.of him_ but Cannon- :' ball -told us that he is one of music's best clarinetists. Batiste had never played with Cannon- ball's group before, so instead of stumbling through an ar- rangment, the musicians decided to alternate improvised solos. It was the most interesting part of the night, Batiste ran t h'or u gh soie remarkable changes- proving to the doubt- ers that the clarinet is more than a shrilly marching band instrument. Nat Adderley on cornet (he's Cannonball's broth- er), did his "thing," which is bending notes as he slides up and down the blues scales. Noth- ing fantastic, just plain old good. The rhythm section led by Zawinul and reinforced by Wal- ter Booker on bass, and Roy McCurdy on drums, was respon- sible for tying the loose ends together, of which there were plenty, caused by the impromptu quality of the song. Cannonball ran his best solos in the spontaneous jam as well. His alto solos were flat, but he put in a few outstanding licks on soprano sax-an instrument which is a monster to play be- cause it is inherently tune. out of Yes, they played "Mercy, Mery, Mercy," it's so simple and clean that it had to be good. After the song Cannonball said it was quitting time, but he did a couple pre-packaged encores to appease the crowd. All bitching aside, this week- end's jazz festival proved some- thing important. Namely, that this campus will support good talent. No more of those crap rock bands (like the Up and Head Over Heels) on concert bills, dig? -Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Roland Kirk, and Pharoah Sanders would all give their right arms to play a college gig. Let's see them. By GARY BALDWIN Loring J a n e s' performance Friday night at the Ark was enjoyable, but still very disap- pointing. The evening was enjoyable because Janes was friendly, and had an interesting (though sometimes c o r n y) sense of humor. Musically one kept ex- pecting him to break loose, to come up with one incredible riff or perfectly done song. The dis- appointment was that that song never cane. Janes is a Detroit folk singer and guitarist, who taught guitar to popular local performers Andy Cohen and Christopher, De Loach, formerly of Christo- pher and Sara. Janes began the evening with a version of "Cocaine," and fol- lowed with a couple of light, humorous songs, one of which he called "a melodrama audi- ence participation song." His personality fit his songs well, and the audience reacted fav- orably. The first serious song that Janes did was "Land of the Buf- falo," a traditional song about the buffalo=skinners in the American West. In contrast to the fast rhythms of the first songs, Janes slowed down to a creep, 'his voice rather shallow, lacking the fullness necessary to' project the tone of the lyrics. Things picked up again near the end of the set when Janes did a talking blues song, written by John Koerner's brother, Pet- er. Loring closed the set by do- ing a dulcimer song (on his gui- tar), and a song by David Rea called "Play On Your Harp Lit- tle David." All three of these were well performed and seem- Hetero and homosexual living plus free parking and no food contracts ed consistent with both Janes' voice and his guitar style. At the end of the first set I was left with a fairly good im- pression of what the rest of the evening turned out to be: Janes was likeable, had a nasal, very plain voice, and was quite a good guitarist. The disappoint- ,ment came when the perform- ance seemed to degenerate as the night went on. I was at first quite impressed with Janes' guitar work. He used his right hand particularly well, doing some very clean finger picking. But later in the eve- ning he became sloppy. He be- gan to make more mistakes, and quite noticeably squeak h 1 s strings, while making c h o r d changes. It does seem only fair to say, however, that part of his. problems were a result of recent repair work done on his 40 year old Gibson J-45. Despite the general looseness of the second and third sets, Janes performed some good ma- terial, "Gonna Getcha With Yer Britches Down" came off v e r y well, as did a more serious Jean Ritchie song. He also did a pass- able version of "We Need a Lot More Jesus and a Lot Less Rock and Roll." An instrumental marred the middle of the second set, as Janes' squeaking during chord changes became obvious. He al- so made several mistakes in suc- cession that nearly broke the continuity of the song. Again the contrast that marked much of the guitar work was there, for the rest of the difficult Grand Ole Opry song was well performed. Janes' greatest strength was his ability to do humorous talk- ing blues. His version of "Dun- can and Brady" was probably the best song of the evening. After spending a year or so playing with a rock band. Janes has spent a good portion of the last year readjusting to the folk medium. Perhaps many of the problems Janes incurred were part of making the adjustment to performing alone in a quiet atmosphere, rather than blast- ing electrical music with a band. At times, Friday'night, Janes exhibited the abilities of a fine musician. At other times, care- less mistakes detracted from his performance. If only Janes had been able to confine his relaxed attitude to his humor, and not to his music, the evening would have. been a total success. CINM A GUILDB Feb. 21, 22-Saturday, Sunday RULES O*F THE G'AME, dir. 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