THE MICHIGAN DAISY Wednesday, March 31, 1971 IIIIIIIIII IIIIMarchI 31-April 3 The Carnal Kitchen: Deserving a break By BERT STRATTON The Carnal Kitchen are so good, ya, they're so good they deserve a break, a big break. Something good should happen to the Carnal Kitchen, something like what happened to me when I went and heard them play at Canterbury House and it was for free yet! It could have been some lousy music for $3.50 or some even worse stuff for $5 a head-but it was free. It could have been 1949 among other things, but it was 1971, the price was pre-inflationary, wvhich was because the Kitchen can't work for bread. Nobody wants to pay to hear them, which is as mad a thing as staying in to watch Ed Sullivan when it's still light out. The fact the Carnal Kitchen aren't better received is a kind of giant, intergalactic madness, which is something Einstein could probably speak more knowledgibly on than I,r but -he's dead-we aren't in 1949 anymore, but if we were, I'd run over and catch Bird Parker and Dizzy Gillespie for a $1, and then go over and dig the Carnal Kitchen, liking both just the same. We're in the Ann Arbor of the Overbearing Now, and what we have are some good bands who al- ways wind up hitting the road, realizing that the world is bigger than the Union Ballroom-but the Carnal Kitchen have been here for two years now and they're still in one piece (more or less) and they're blowing enormously vital, compelling music--some- thing big let's say. I know I'm carrying on, and 1 know at least one person who is going to tell me that I've got it wrong and that the Carnal Kitch- en just honk and blow weird in- consistencies. But that person has not heard the Kitchen- play for a whole night. He has prob- ably walked out on them after their first jam. The group did all kinds of freaky jazz, straight jazz, Latin jazz, rock 'n' roll, blues, goof- music, and just Music. It was sounds - coming from the band plus a million and one half walk- on performers who always turn up when the Kitchen are playing. Now for the star of the show, call him what you will, there's Steve Mackay on saxophones-- most importantly on tenor sax, where he comes out sounding like a blend of King Curtis and jazz- man Sonny Rollins. It is the rawest sound, and the most mix- ed-up, unpolished tone alive. He. just doesn't know what he's do- ing! Ya, but he blows and it comes out right. The other members of the Kitchen are David Kupelian (guitar/violin), Marc Lampert (drums), Buz Threlkeld (trum- pet), Rick Manderville (bass), and Larry Manderville (organ). Marh -Apil3 Trueblood Theater Noel Coward's Presented by Ann Arbor Civic Theatre 8:00 P.M. t, p. BOX OFFICE OPEN 10 A.M. 'TIL CURTAIN TICKETS-$2, $2.50 "at Stanger's or call 764-5387 ENDS TODAY! art OPEN 12:45 SHOWS AT 1:15-3:10- r 70 D r~AA LITT FAUSS AWD916HALSY Segal By LARRY ADELSON Centicore Gallery, 336 May- nard, is currently showing mul- tiple sculptures and serigraphs by the American sculptor George Segal; and aquatints by the con- temporaryEnglish artist Pat- rick Procktor'. Segal is known for his scen- arios of white, plaster figures, formed by laying plaster-soaked cloth over human models, gen- erally arrayed around some mundane object such as a bed, or a television. Of course, Se- gal's reputation is based on more than his ability to convince his subjects to hold still and be en- cased alive, he has an acute and subtle sense of the natural and an ability to seize an appropri- ate and expressive moment. His direct and quick method of sculpting is well suited for cap- turing this kind of subject. His major multiple, "Girl on a Chair" is an assemblege of a white plaster cast of the left hihs Lenticore Db St half of a female torso placed on the seat of a red, legless chair and enclosed in a black, open- faced box. The other multiple, "Sleeping Girl" (see photo), is simply a fragment: a face, an arm, some bedding, all curled nicely together. I find this piece to be rather successful. It cap- tures a peaceful moment and it works well as a piece of sculp- ture. The looseness of the edge keeps it from becoming a bas- relief and also allows it to ex- tend in space towards where the rest of the figure would be, giv- ing it a sense of belonging in space. "Girl on a Chair" I am somewhat less moved by. The blank back excludes the viewer and the box is too confining. . Segal's six serigraphs taken, apparently from pastels (Segal was, at one time, a pastelist), rest between boldness and crude- ness. My feeling is that o n e would have to live with them for a period of time in order to de- cide which trend was dominant. I found the draughtsmanship to be variable and felt that the textures of the pastels at times conflicted w i t h the areas of flat color which he also uses. I also find his use of "framing" to be rather excessive. Framing is the technique, taken f r o m photography, of cutting objects off with the edge of the picture. Artists like Degas have used this in a natural and unobtrusive way, but, as I think back on Se- gal's prints, I find it hard to re- call a single complete object be- ing represented. I have found this kind of 'composition by ex- clusion' to be rather contrived and 'arty' in photography and don't appreciate it in graphics either. In Segal's sculpture (al- though not especially those at Centicore), he has also used on- ly a small part of the possible contents of the scene, but one feels that he has chosen what he feels will convey what he wants to convey. In the graphics, the choice seems to have been controlled by what could be fit into a square. The rest of the show is devot- ed to the aquatints of Patrick Procktor's "India, Mother" and "Invitation to the Voyage" ser- ies. The former are postcard- like landscapes and the latter are livingroom scenes. The style of representation is recognizable but not realistic, characterized by a spareness and by a distor- tion which is somewhat humor- ous, somewhat grotesque. I hap- pen to enjoy Procktor's w o r k very much. His w o r k, mostly watercolors to my knowledge, translates well into the medium of aquatint and I find his style to be rather charming. The only qualm that I have about the prints is the somewhat insub- stantial quality of the colors. The show, located in the new Centicore Bookstore, will be up until the end of the semester. AL 662-6264 ate & Liberty "A RAKDIKCTINUS TIIUI!, THE '79: FlIST RIE IG!" -Stefan Knfer, Time Magazine Academy Award Nominee* <- Snyder: Study' in environment against structural academics 1 $1.501 I r By BERT STRATTON Writing about Gary Snyder's poetry reading last night is about as intriguing as doing an 8 page English paper. In other words a drag, which is not to say that Gary Snyder's reading was a drag. I don't remember any lines he said, what I primarily recall is a 4 B.C. caveman standing on the stage of Rackham trying to ex- plain the freak accident that placed him here in the twentieth century. For a caveman, Gary Snyder knew an awful lot, as much as a professor, though I guess most professors don't think all that much of him, at least there didn't seem to be many professors in the audience. Sour-grapes is a good name for the above paragraph. A kind of bitter riff on the academic scene, the one in which an English stu- dent wouldn't even know Gary Snyder, Tom Clark, and Ted Berrigan exist if he didn't drag himself away from those stupid "papers" he's supposed to write. The other night Gary was talk- ing on the subject of the obsoles- cence of colleges, and the ab- surdity of being forced to vrite 4 page or 4% page or 5 page "pa- pers" on subjects which you are guided toward (like a horse to- ward the water) and where you are not asked, "OK do you wsrt a drink?" but instead are grab-j bed from behind the neck and forcibly drowned until you die or admit, "I really do love T.S. Eliot." Meanwhile there's this poetry reading going on in a lot of peo- ple's minds. It is the after-effect of Gary's reading. People are hearing voices telling them to dig the land, the animals, and the flow of streams instead of the flow of stainless-steel, formica- crusted water. I mean do you go a day on this campus without meeting a friend who's dropping out? What Gary is talking about is what's in the air, it's right in front of our eyes, it's those tiny spirit-molecules floating around in the morass of pollution, it's what keeps our hopes up. For anybody who didn't go to the reading last night and wants me to to tell them how good Gary is, and how he gets his messn ge across, I'll say this: Gary i3 very good, and his own body is the message of his poetry. Buy his books. Now dig this, Gary gets some- thing like $1,000 to spend a week bullshitting with us students. Is it too much to ask that he bring his voice with him? What is James Brown came out in a wheelchair, or if Jimmy Durante came out without a nose? Gary is suffer- ing from larengitis, and lie had to whisper into the microphone last night, it sounded eerie, but was as projective as his normally resonant voice, so no harm was done. Tomorrow night Gary has a discussion scheduled at Markley Hall for 8 pm. The topic is not specified, but you can noet that ecology, American Indians, and Zen will get into the talk. Gary Snyder is a taut bundle of all kinds of knowledge, feeling, in- sight, and flesh. Who knows what'll come out of him next? i i( NOMINATED FOR0 BEST PICTURE BEST DIRECTOR BEST ACTRESS GP BEST ACTOR BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BEST ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE r I t I rr U. Utah Phillips the Golden Voice of the Great. Southwest "a walking anthology of Western humor." PAAON PICURES PRSETS All Mad~raw "Ryan O'Neal A HOWARD G.MINSKY-ARTHUR HtLER Producton John Marley & Ray Milland ~ ~ §j 603 E. Liberty DIAL 5-6290 Doors Open 12:45 Shows at 1,3, 5,7, 9 Free List Suspended -John Wilson N.Y. Times I SUNDAY April 4tH Buddies in the Saddle Wednesday, March 31 .0 I NEXT WEEK- Lou Killen TUMBLEWEEDS (USA, 1926-SILENT) I' IbrT-WEr1A*I I _. _.. ,._. .. ..... .... .... ¢{ ' fl