The Michigan Daily-Sunday, December 3, 1978-Page 5 'Renaldo & Clara'- It ain 't much, Babe, Acoustic Cameron electrifying but it 's By MIKE TAYLOR Poor Bob Dylan. His career more ften than not resembles an economic oom and bust cycle. First recognized as a masterful folk singer in the early '60s, he was scorned when he went elec- ric a few years later, even though the legacy from that period-Imonde on plonde and Highway 61 Revisited-now z lwe gotI Cut to a deejay. He mutters some wor- ds, and is gone. Cut to a truckstop. A trucker is making a pick-up-the human kind. To me, this is the strongest scene so far, and Dylan seems to take it most seriously. The woman, dull and one-dimensional, as all the women are in this film, resists, and then gives in. IN. ANOTHER SCENE, Bobby Neuwirth beats up Ronee Blakley, who plays "Mrs. Dylan." Later in the movie, Joan Baez appears as a par- ticularly seductive woman in a room where all the women seem to have nothing better to do than sit around and look vacant. Baez gives a splendidly comic performance; with mole near lip, a "continental" accent, and frills around her neck, she makes a hokey queen. Baez later turns up as "The Woman in White." Clad from head to toe in white, she is a cold, unspeaking creature. Yet she is vying with Clara (Sara Dylan) for Renaldo.(Bob Dylan). Poor Joan. When she sits down on a bed with Clara and Renaldo, Renaldo mut- ters "I was just getting up" and leaves the room. In a crucial segment, Dylan and Baez meet in a stable. They reminisce about old times : * Baez: "What do you think it would be like if we'd gotten married ten years ago?" Dylan: "I don't know. I haven't changed that much-have you?" THE MEN in Renaldo & Clara come off as intelligent people who know what they want. Neuwirth is in control and on top, in the bar scene and the bathroom scene. Ronnie Hawkins is a force to be reckoned with as "Mr Dylan." Roger McGuinn is at ease as he moves through a moving version of "Chestnut Mare." Allen Ginsberg entrances crowds with his poetry and singing. Ginsberg=and Dylan stand at Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell, Mass. reading poetry to each other. Suddenly, they're comparing graves they've seen. Dylan says triumphantly, "I've been to Victor Hugo's grave." Ginsberg is silent. The concert sequences are filmed with great sensitivity and warmth. The camera zooms in on the emotions-Dylan's agonizing face during "Isis," Ronee Blakley's lithe frame during "Need a New Sun Rising," Dylan and Baez, huddled close during "Never Let Me Go," the movement and tension within the band, especially between Dylan and See DYLAN'S, Page 7 By ERIC ZORN Just the other day a national television network offered folksinget John Allan Cameron his own regular program, and the thirty-nine year old Canadian thinks, he'll accept the offer. Donny and Marie . don't have to worry just yet sin- ce Cameron will be working with the Canadian Broadcasting Company, where he is an old favorite, but one day this personable entertainer is going to make his mark on the American public. "I want to be an internationalist," he said during a break in his Friday night concert at the Ark. "I'll appear on Canadian television, but most of my concerts will be in this country." Cameron, who hails from Cape Breton island in the Maritime Provinces, loves the challenge of playing to "unconver- ted" American audiences, and has been building his reputation with each sub- sequent crossing of the border. ONLY ABOUT thirty curious folk fans turned out to hear John Allan when he played his first Ark concert in early April of this year; this time through Ann Arbor, the management reported, he more than doubled that record. Though Cameron is a major celebrity in Canada and has appeared in front of crowds as large as ten thousand, he says he loves the intimate surroundings of a coffeehouse: "We'll play for hours for any sized group as long as they'll listen." The ebullient troubador, wearing a Canadian hockey jersey, was a regular live-wire as he opened the concert. His high energy conversation and im- mediate attempts at sing-alongs threw most of the audience for a loss. Cameron admitted it's not easy to make the transition to a small crowd just in from the early December snows from the large, warmed up audiences back -home who know his material. For- tunately he checked his early excesses with a few down tempo instrumentals, and brought things along slowly after that. Director Dylan CAMERON SMOOTHLY combines old Scottish and Irish tunes, English folk songs, Canadian and American favorites, humorous ballads, and his own compositions, accompanying him- self on the twelve string guitar. Dave Maclssac from Halifax is touring with John this year, and flat picks lead guitar when he's not spinning out some jigs or reels on the fiddle. "Now we're going to do a more serious number," said Cameron to in- troduce a hauntingly beautiful tribute to Nova Scotia. "Did you ever notice how singers like to speak in the first person plural in an attempt to identify themselves with the pope? Well, people joke a lot about the pope-call him J-2 P-2 and so on-but I feel free since I'm Catholic." Cameron sang Eric Bogel's classic anti-war ballad "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" with a tear in his eye, but MacIssac's tasteless backup vamping on the guitar was distracting and irritating. There are songs in which one simply does not put on the Peter Frampton: Good judgment is as im- portant as technical skill in all types of music. THE LAST PART of the first set saw a medley of sing-alongs for the finally prepared audience, and a version of "The Wild Rover" in which the right half of the room punctuated the chorus with shouts of "Right up your kilt!" Cameron had everyone back up to his speed., "The Broadcaster," a Canadian publication, says "John Allan Cameron has the potential to be the next great Canadian superstar." "I've got a chan- ce in Canada because folk music is always on T.V.," he said. "It's not clear that an American- traditional musician could ever go very far since the media would not be behind him. People are mesmerized by television. It's a very powerful medium, and a great way to reach a lot of people with whatever message you've got. "There are an awful lot of people in Ameica who deserve more attention from the media," Cameron said. "Per- sonalities who do absolutely nothing for you are seen time after time; super- stars are built from nothing; success or failure of programs depends only on what folks watch in those big metropolitan areas." Cameron added, "The Gong, Show-sheer public humiliation-is on fifteen channels six- teen times a day. They took Martin Mull off the air because he made people think. What does that tell you?" CAMERON SAYS that the reason you° never find folk music on the American airwaves is because it has a rotten LING LEE Year End Sale Cookbooks, bowls, chopping knives, dry goods, canned goods. 2001 off with $10 or more purchase. 407 N. Fifth, Kerrytown Mall name. "Ask Mike Douglas about folk in - this country and he'll say, 'Oh, it used to be Bob Dylan, and, uh, let's see, now it's Eric Anderson.' Only through television can we convince people that traditional music does not mean horrible old people plunking on out of tune guitars." Along with extensive television work, Cameron has been aggressively touring all over the world. For the past five years he's been the opening act for Canadian recording star Anne "You Needed Me" Murray. "There's nothing like the blessed experience of the road," Cameron remarked, pointing out that the reason he doesn't tire of travelling is because he's "not a boozer." He has learned how to read an audience and play to them, drawing them into his show and charming new fans. CAMERON CHATS with the people sitting out in front of him, teasing them, trading jokes, fielding comments and inviting them to sing verses for him. The Michigan Quarterly Review "We're going to do a fiddle medley here, and if any of you feel like dancing . forget it!" he quipped. A few minutes later a young man in the second row sneezed and Cameron stop- ped the show: "God! Bless you! Sneezing is a form of sexual expression, I've heard. That's all you're going to get tonight." Once Cameron broke down the barrier between audience and perfor mer, back-chat flew thick and fast. Years of experience have given him an, aggressive charisma which elec- trifies his performances. He is un- pretentious and refuses to be spoiled by the attention heaped upon him back in Canada: "I realize really anyone in the states has asked of me," he says. "And that's okay for right now." Cameron said he hates the word "star," but it's going to be one of those things he'll have to get used to hearing, because they'll still be saying it about him when Donny and Marie are selling pencils door to door. ies in rock and roll's hall of fame. He was down again at the turn of the ecade, when he made the appalling elf Portrait, a numbing collection of ountry-muzak songs, but he fought his ay back, through New Morning, Pat arret & Billy The Kid, and Planet ayes, reaching the top again with lood On The Tracks. Two years later, he was still at his peak, enchanting East coast audiences with a rock and roll circus called the Rolling Thunder Revue. THIS YEAR, it began to fall apart- again. He released Renaldo & Clara, a four-hour cinematic souvenir from Rolling Thunder, to universal pans. "Diffuse . . . confusing . . . meaning- less . . . egotistical"-it seemed no one would say anything good about the film. So it quietly died. Then came Street- Legal, arguably Dylan's worst album since Self Portrait. Hopelessly shallow, pointlessly pretty, it had the energy of a snail. Dylan's third strike came with his fall tour, a garish parody of his own classics, all performed without a hint of sincerity or feeling. Thus, it is unfortunate that Renaldo & Clara has finally arrived in Ann Arbor. Though Dylan has cut the film to an hour and forty minutes, and though it seems that much of what the critics said about it is true, it remains the only record we have of Dylan's most recent moment of glory. The Rolling Thunder Revue was one of the most rambun- ctious undertakings in recent rock and roll history, bringing together the talen- ts of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mick Ron- son, Roger McGuinn, Bobby Neuwirth, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Ronee Blakley, Ronnie Hawkins, Joni Mit hell, Richie Havens, and Arlo Guthrie for evenings of memorable madness. It deserved to be preserved. SO, FOR ANY fan of contemporary music, Renaldo & Clara is meaty stuff. Dylan and his pals perform dozens of songs, sometimes on camera, sometimes simply to accompany other scenes. Ah . . these "other scenes." If Dylan ever intended Renaldo & Clara to tell a story,: then he has failed miserably. But I think he simply wan- ted to place his characters in a series of vignettes, some related, some not. A theme? Tension between the sexes, perhaps. You see, there are these male characters and these female charac- ters, and they don't always get along quite right. It has been said that Bob Dylan takes a dim view of women. Renaldo & Clara confirms it. The film opens with a series of frantic images, voices, and music-what an "Intro to Film" class might call a collage. First it's Dylan, hidden behind a transparent plastic mask, singing "When I Paint My Masterpiece" (is he trying to hint something?). Cut to a bar, where Bobby Neuwirth, hidden behind a black mask, is reading to a rowdy crowd. Cut to Dylan, strumming a pret- ty tune. The camera zooms in. Sud- denly, fingers are as big as zeppelins. Out to a highway. A truck is rolling by. ;, ,x %t i M1 -. j' c$k -S ', _ .. # _3# '... _.. f}. +{ 'f { 4, . p '=.a , " 'C ,. E. ..A, ti -.. ; a 5, _.. { '$ 4 'fig E >t:..: '3 +a t: Y Y 4# ,. .... t ' . ; THE CLASS QUARTERLY A Presentation from The University of Michiggn Subscription Rate 9 dollars a year 3032 Rackham, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Available in Ann Arbor Book Stores Give the gift of dance this Christmas. rI Swan Lake Act it and Act 1l1 Sunday January ~/ 2:30 pm, 7 pm Power Center tickets: $1.5((Chilren. $1 $OAduls I a(olon.s It xInfo Murphy's landing (BrarwxxB) Sylvia Studio of Dan'e (525 t iiberty) Willoughby's I ittlk Boot Shops IWashtenaw Ave & Stadium Blvd) ox Offk&e Prior to Performance' Ann Arbor Civic Ballet 11 bt71 flu FOR 3 DAYS ONLY-DEC. 4,5, 6 ALL REFERENCE BOOKS 10%OFF OUR REGULAR', LOW PRICE (SORRY, COURSE BOOKS & TRADE BOOKS ARE NOT INCLUDED') TECHNICAL REFERENCE AREAS Engineering & Physical Sciences Biological Sciences Social Science Mathematics Calculators GENERAL REFERENCE AREAS Dictionaries (English & Foreign Lang. ) Writing & Style Guides Job Hunting Exam Preparations PROFESSIONAL REFERENCE AREAS Bob Seger The Silver Ballet Band is Business Nursing Dental Law Medicine-excluding medical instruments CLASS AIDS Self-Teaching Guides Monarch and Cliff Notes Flash Cards Schaum's Outlines m . 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