Tuesday, October 30, 1973

THE MICHIGAN [DAILY

Page Five


Tuesday, October 30, 1973 THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Arlo:
By DIANE LEVICK
Arts Editor
Arlo Guthrie thinks "the dumb-
est songs always say the most."
It's the "dumb" kind of song-
like "The Motorcycle Song" and
"Ring Around the Rosy Rag" -
that he writes and performs the
best.
Both of those pieces contain
the absurdly imaginative spoken
narratives which Arlo has been
famous for since "Alice's Res-
taurant." Because individual
songs and the performance as a

Th ei
whole lacked dynamics Saturday
night, the "high points" at the
low-key Eastern Michigan Uni-
versity concert were definitely
Arlo's stories.
Although he stopped playing
"Alice's Restaurant" in concert
five years ago, he still does the
half-song, half-story "Motorcycle
Song":
I don't want a pickle, just
want to ride on my motorcycle,
And I don't want a tickle, just
want to ride on my motorcycle,
And I don't want to die, just want

nuster
to ride on my motorcy-
Cle
Asked backstage about the
"symbolism of the pickle," Arlo
laughs, "Ah, don't talk to me
about symbolism. I played a gig
in Buffalo and I was talkin' about
two-inch green buffaloes a cigar-
ette company used to mail out
for a quarter. The next day in
the newspaper there was three
pages explaining the symbolisei
of the green buffaloes. I like
leaving things open for interpreta-
tion." ,
One wonders, however, just

of
how "real" his song's stories
are. "They're even weirder and
truer," contends Arlo, widening
his brown eyes. In "Ring Around
a Rosy Rag," for instance, his
friends get busted for dancing
in a Philadelphia park. Having
devoured an enormous number of
hot funge sundaes, they trip
into the park "doin' the slow-puke
walk, just lookin' for bushes
and things."
He was distressed when he was
left out of the arrest. "I'd al-
ways been arrested with my
friends before," he complained,
referring to his arrest for dump-
ing garbage in the Alice's Res-
taurant episode.
Speaking about his movie
Alice's Restaurant, he says, "It
lent some credibility at t h a t
time to evading the draft," which
was his reason for embarking
on the film project. "But Arthur
Penn (the director) was interest-
ed in communes. I had to settle
for it .
I didn't know nothin' about
movies."
Arlo enjoyed, however, the sort
of "semi-revenge" he got when
he returned to his draft center

lamb'
on Whitehall St. to film t h e
real military and "ordering these
guys around," instead of vice-
versa. "The movie was fun to
make but it was terrible watchin'
it."
And what are all the real char-
acters doing now? "Alice opened
up another restaurant in Stock-
bridge," reports Arlo. "And it's
got real good food. Ray (h e r
former husband) is in Colorado
writing books for kids on how to
build things. Obie (the arresting
cop) just walks around now
directing traffic and signing auto-
graphs."
And at 26, Arlo has been liv-
ing in the Massachusetts Berk-
shires with a wife and kid, writ-
ing some very pointed political
tunes, one about Watergate and
Nixon to appear on -his next
album in December or January.
He cites Pete Seeger and Bob
Dylan as his major musical ,n-
fluences, not even mentioning
his father Woody since it's un-
derstood. Woody often t o ) k
traditional folk tunes to set :iis
new words to, and Arlo adm:s,
"I steal as much as he did."
Arlo is just as politically con-

songs
scious as his father in the sarme
non-intellectual, commonserise
way. "A lotta people intellectual-
ize things 'til they don't make
sense anymore," Arlo says.
Questioned by the press back-
stage, Arlo didn't seem to want
to take many questions seriously
or think too deeply about his an-
swers. Asked his mnan interest
other than music he respcnd3, "I
like being a bartender. I only
tended one bar for about 10
minutes. I rung up $>0 instead of
50 cents . . . ya know, I just saw
this button that said 50 . . .
Music he takes ser cusly. "I
like music where you got all dif-
ferent things (styles, genrms)
happening. I like tie idea of
everybody bein' wrio they are,"
he says, telling of his unplan-
ned gig at the Village Gaslight
with Mississippi John Hurt and
John Sebastian.
Though Arlo's appearance at
the 1967 Newport Folk Festival
catapulted him to fame, he says,
"I'd be doin' it (music) anyway.
I want to do it for a long tima
That's the difference between
me and Alice Cooner. I wanna
be doin' this forever."

Icr-_UhC-DkY5IAPES~nTS~


IN

"An adept troupe, a real ensemble;
An outrageous pinpricking of
All We Hold Dear. N Y. TIMES, 19
"Brilliantly entertaining theater
with a purpose. 7 VILLAGE VOICE, 1967

I

66

"Rowdy... Vulgar ... Excellent."
THE TIMES (London), 1967
"Get out of here!" JOE ALIOTO, 1968
ONE PERFORMANCE ONLY !
Wed., Nov. 14 Power Center
8:30
$2.50 RESERVED SEATS


SAN FRANCISCO
MIME TROUPE

50 Movie: "All Through the -
Night." Humphrey Bogart
plays tough New Yorker who The Academy Award Winner
battles Nazi saboteurs. You MUST See Again

/ . .:


K

i



rAM

r'.



NEW WORLD FILM COOP pre.ents

Daily Photo by TOM GOTTLIEB

Roberta Flac(k

Flack chacrms audience with

highlights
8 9 Special: Human Journey -
"Getting Around." A look at
not-so-rapid transit systems
in American cities.
56 Profile in Music. Mezzo-so-
prano Shirley Verrett per-
forms some of her favorite
arias.
8:30 7 Movie: "Ordeal." Injured rich
man abanidoned by avaricious
wife struggles for life in the
desert.
9:30 56 Sonny Terry and Brownie
McGhee. The famed harmon-
ica and guitar players play
blues favorites from the past
50 years.
11:30 2? Movie: "Tick . . . tick
tick" Jim Brown plays new
sheriff of a hostile Southern
county.
4 Johnny Carson. Guest Rich-
ard Harris.
wCbn

1:30 2 Movie: '"ide the
Nightclub owner
mysterious killer
partner.

Tiger."
pursues
of his

12 9 Movie: "Eye of the Cat."
'Thriller about deception and
murder in house full of fe-
lines.

This bizarre rendition of the Lewis Carroll classic, patterned after
the Tenniel drawings, features such intriguing costing os Gary
Cooper as The White Knight, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle,
Edward Everett Horton as the Mad Hatter, and Jack Qakie and
Rasco Karns as Tweedledum and 1'weedledee. W. C. Fields plays
Humpty-Dump'v, and delivers some, superb in-character readings
of author's nonsense verse.

ALICE

IN

rich, emotional vocals, but

. . .

By GLORIA JANE SMITH
Roberta Flack is (and was,
in concert Saturday night) ao-
solutely charming . . . there
ain't nobody seen such a fire
lady step on stage.
Actually, Roberta never quite
"steps", but "saunters" - the
rich folds of her gown catching
a sexy rhythm as they fall abou
her hips. The audience is en-
deared and they drown out tha
first few lines of her opener
"You Are the Sunshine of My
Life."
About one tenth of the remain-
ing words are deemed equal!, in-
audible by the singer herself as
she seems Ito swallow their es-
sence and fondle their ;sound be-
fore offering them to her listen-
ers. But no matter . . there'
enough emotion in her voice and
enough meaning in simple lyrics
that everybody's already h e a r d
enough to know by heart to carry
her through in grand ;ty lu.
And yes, Roberta Flack has a
grand style.
She's a born philosopher, this
tall black woman in her low-cut
soft navy dress and multicolored
smock with lots of bangles on
her wrists and lots of rings on her
fingers. Witness the philosophic
insight in1 her introdtuction; to
"Suzanne," Leonard Cohen ,
masterpiece:
"There's a place somewhere
between sanity and insanity . . .
midsanity . . . wtere most of us

stay . . . this song talks of death
and life, of love and beauty, £f
hate and despair . . . it sings of
a beautifill young girl who spends
all her time in front of a mirror
checking it out . . . no time
for other people . . . there's a
bit of "Suzanne" in all of us. ."
And she loves her audiences
and leads them in clappiny and
singing, even letter a few peo-
ple solo it on her nmicrophone.
"I want all the men in the aud-
ience . . ." she begins to say
and' is stopped in mid-sentence
by an auditorium full oi cat howls
and applause. "Oh, reahl!' ' A
coy smile from the Grand Lady
follows. All she meant to do was
encourage them to sing along.
On the real life side of things,
Roberta Flack is a former teach-
er who grew up in North Caro-
lina with her mother who played
church organ and ner father who
played piano in a style Roberta
likes to call "a very primitive
Art Tatum."
About family and racial influ-
ences upon her style, Roberta
voices very strong feelings. "I
want to be a singer," she has
said, "not a black singer. I grew
up in a lower-middle clas5 black
home. I think black is beauiful,
but tihere is 5o nucn gorgeous
music in the world that has noth-
ing to do with black."
Not quite the expe;ted sent;-
ments of a woman about to por-
tray Bessie Smith, that strong,

opulent black wo:na of 1950
blues, in the film Bessie to be
released under the direc'ion mA
Gordon Parks Sr. earlv nc- t
year.
But for the audience who clam-
oured to see her for -i few hours
in Hill Auditorium, Roberta
Flack was nothing less than
beautiful. She was the beauti-
ful woman exvrvbodv had come
to see, who was able to capture
in the strong vibrations of her
rich voice all the moods and
emotions everybody had come
to wallow in.

OPEN DAILY AT 12:45
SHOWS AT 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 P.M.
HELD OVER-3rd HIT WEEK
DON'T MISS IT!
Rated G
SUPERSIAR

PLUS: The picture you
should NEVER have missed

Tues., Oct. 30

flt. Science Aud.
7:30 & 9:30 p.m.

19
3
6
6:30
7:30
11

x9.5 FM
Morning Show
Rock
Progressive
Folk 'Rock/Progressive
News 'Sports
This Week in Sports
Jazz'Blues
Progressive

with GEORGE SEGAL
and RUTH GORDON
Try Daily Classifieds

- 1

wRCN
650 AM
Broadcasts by carrier current to
dorms only. Sixties oldies format.

h ;,
.


WR - MYSTERIES
OF THE ORGANISM®
Brilliantly original
with gleeful
irreverance. -NEWSWEEK
Satanically funny.
-TIME MAGAZINE
A picture of
blazing originality.
Must be seen.Y POST

A SPECIAL WEEKE ND with the

Leningrad Plulharmonic
and Ann Arbor's Festival Chorus
This coming Saturday and Sunday, November and 4, will give music lovers the opportunity to hear this magnifi-
cent Soviet orchestra in two different concerts. On Saturday evening, Gennady Rozhdestvensky conduct:; an all-
Prokofiev program: Symphony No. 5, Piano Concerto No. 2, with Mme. V. Postnikova as piano soloist, and the
Scythian Suite. Sunday afternoon's concert features Prokofiev's epic cantata, "Alexander Nevskv," sung in Russian
by our 100-voice Festival Chorus. Joy Davidson, brilliant young American mezzo-soprano, is the soloist, and Neeme
Jarvi conducts the program which also includes Rachmaninoff's Symphony No.
Both performances in Hill Auditorium, Saturday at 8:30. and
Sunday at 2:30; tickets from 3.50 to s8,50 available at:
Hill Atld/itorium box office open 1 hours b(fore concert limes
PI 1VVPP'JTV

Wed. & Thurs.
Oct. 31, Nov. 1

Mod. Long. Aud. 3
7:30 & 9:45 p.m.

w w ww w w wrrw aiwwnw wwwniw lr

VAN ESSA REDGRAVE in

Chekhov's THE SEAGULL

EU 'EUR ff