The Michigan Daily-Saturday, March 25, 1978-Page 5 'The Rutles': They ass the audition, By OWEN GLEIBERMAN W HAT WAS IT that made the Beatles such an incomparable group, a musical phenomenon whose success will most likely never even be ap- proached? The answer, even beyond the extraordinary number of immortal Beatle ballads, lies in the vast cultural mythology that the foursome carried with them through their career, a mythology integral to their legendary station in show business history. It is this folklore, the multitude of anec- dotes and images surrounding the Beatles, that forms the basis for The Rutles, a parody of the Beatle years consisting of an album of fourteen original Rutle songs and a television special aired last Wednesday night. The Rutles are the brainchild of Monty Python's Eric Idle. It was after hosting NBC's Saturday Night Live, in which he did a short parody of A Hard Day's Night, that Idle decided to create a whole show around the idea, and he was able to get it produced on American network television through the diligence of Saturday Night producer Lorne Michaels. Idle wrote and co- directed (with Gary Weis) the special, and Neil Innes, Monty Python's musical handyman and former member of the Bonzo Dog Band, wrote the .music and lyrics to the imitation Bea tle songs. Idle and Innes also played the McCartney and Lennon characters in the show, named here Dirk McQuickly and Ron Nasty (the other two Rutles are Stig O'Hara and Barry Wom). ALL IN ALL, THE show was a reasonably humorous account of the Rutles' journey from Liverpool obscurity to legendary fame, although Idle's absurdist Pythonish humor ("The Rutles . . . a legend that .will last a lun- chtime") often didn't mesh with a pointedly satirical version of the Beatles' story. The humor sprung essentially from slightly altered recreations of famous Beatle anecdotes - the Maharishi fiasco, the business with the self- indulgent Apple boutique - that already have their humorous sides. On the show, Rutle Ron Nasty hold his "bed-in" for peace in a running shower, Stig, the "quiet one," literally never speaks, and Barry's (a/k/a Ringo) lifelong Sinclair By MATTHEW KLETTER DUE TO THE Vietnam Teach-In that has been going on all week, it's not uncommon to turn on the radio and go through a little deja-vu, while listening to "Magic Carpet Ride" or "L.A. Woman". A person that comes to mind when I go back and think of those times is John Sinclair. Sinclair has been partly, if not totally responsible for many events and ac- tivities that have occurred here in Ann Arbor and the Detroit area over the past two decades. Looking back, we find him involved in the Artist Workshop of Detroit, selling books on Plum Street, publishing the Fifth Estate, Guerilla, The Ann Arbor Sun, The Detroit Sun, and other publications, as well as being involved with the Grande Ballroom, the MC-5, Mitch Ryder, The Rainbow Peoples Party, Rainbow Multi-Media, The Ann Arbor Jazz and Blues Festival, The Rainbow Room in the Shelby Hotel, Strata Productions, Allied Artist, and most recently, the Composers Concept Series being held in the Old Paradise Theatre Orchestra Hall in downtown Detroit. The Paradise Theatre was the showcase for jazz in Detroit from 1945 to 1952. In its hey-day the theatre brought in such acts as Earl Hines, Billy Eckstine, Lucky Milendor, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and, above all, the Bird, Charlie Parker. The Paradise was originally called the Orchestra Hall, home of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1919 to 1939. By 1942 its acoustic excellence had been recognized and it became the Paradise Theatre, a vaudeville hall similar to the Apollo Theatre in New York. Since 1952 the Hall has gone through several phases, first as a church for the Reverend Cotton and later as a home for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra recording sessions. Its recent resurrec- tion is due to Save Orchestra Hall Inc., a non-profit organizatin led by sym- phony musicians and concerned citizens of the Detroit area. j azzing A FEW WEEKS ago I went to see John Sinclair during his "Revisions" show on WCBN FM, featured every Saturday night from 11:00-3:00. Usually he has a thematic show prepared, and that week he was featuring the live recordings of Dizzy Gilespie and The Paradise Theatre Orchestra. We delved into his past in order to clarify his present whereabouts. When asked why it has taken him so long to put together a jazz series in Detroit, he replied, "We had a hard time trying to do anything (before) just because it was politically so offensive". Apparen- tly the Renaissance scene in Detroit has worked to Sinclair's advantage; he feels free to explain the evolution of city politics that has permitted the Com- posers Concept Series to come about: "Everyone remembers how terrible it used to be, how totally hard it was to do anything. Now the city is eager for things to happen culturally . . . the newspapers, even the TV stations are eager for something to happen ... you have a whole turnover from the red- neck, hard, industrialist, money grub- bing, caucasians power structure that you had 15 years ago to a power struc- ture led by somebody whose favorite artist is Dizzy Gilespie and Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, who's a brilliant politician, a strategist" (Coleman Young) it up in THE COMPOSERS Concept Series has attracted Dizzy Gilespie and Mc- Coy Tyner and this Easter Sunday will be featuring Donald Byrd and The Paradise Theatre Orchestra along with the Hasting Street Experience. One of the fundamental ideas of the Com- posers Concept Series has been to bring in a national act, preferably with roots in Detroit, along with the best local jazz talent. The February 19th McCoy Tyner per- formance began with the Paradise Theatre Orchestra, featuring Ron English and Lyman Woodard. English has played with such notables as the Four Tops, Nancy Wilson, Martha Reeves, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. He is the co-founder of the Allied Artist Association, Inc., a Michigan non-profit arts development and presentation organization founded in 1972. Along with English was pianist -Lyman Woodard, a long-time Detroit jazz musician who has also played and recorded with Martha and the Van- dellas and Dennis Coffey. Detroit THE HASTING Street Experience will be presenting vintage jazz from its original Detroit home. Sinclair defines the band: "That's a group that's orgnized to maintain the Hasting Street tradition (40's), to keep it alive.. .Has, ting Street isn't even there, it's now the Chrysler Freeway." Sinclair sees the Hasting Street days as a "dynamic era" for Detroit and sin- ce the destruction of Hasting Street, hle notes, "The black community has gone through hell." SO AS YOU can see, there is aW historical perspective taken in thl Composers Concept Series. The season will finish with Yusef Lateef on April: 16th. Sinclair reiterates: "We're trying to, integrate the past to what's happening now . . it's just the idea of having people conscious of their cultural heritage, because it enriches their ex- perience of today." It seems only appropriate to end with Sinclair's own words: "It just gets hip per all the time." GRADUATE STUDY IN URBAN PLANNING AND POLICY ANALYSIS GRADUATE STUDY IN URBAN PLANNING AND POLICY ANALYSIS The Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning at the University cf Iowa offers a Masters of Arts Degree to prepare students for positions on local, state, and federal government. For information about program and policy analysis, call (319) 353-5001. f 1 Van Halen powerful The Rutles dream is to open a hairdressing salon. All very enjoyable stuff, but not exac- tly the kind of biting parody that sticks with you. The songs, however, are another story, for most of the Innes com- positions have an elliptical style of satire that wasn't present amidst the show's'zany antics. The album The Rutles is one of the most sophisticated pieces of musical parody I've ever heard, as well as musically quite en- joyable in its own right. Initially, the songs seem to fall on the thin line bet- ween clever parody and outright imitation, but it's quickly obvious that In- nes is utterly (though subtly) tongue-in-cheek. The obliqueness of the satire (as well as the expert musicianship) is really what makes The Rutles such a fine piece of work., I was at first a bit disappointed by the words, because they aren't vicious parodies of Beatle lyrics that are juicy for satire, i.e., a take-off on "Penny Lane" with nothing but wretched childhood memories. Instead, Innes recap- tures the spirit in which the songs were conceived - in the Beatles' case, this is generally an appealing, clever innocence - then gives that spirit a twist so that you laugh at the excesses of flip jargon and gobbledygook imagery. When Ron Nasty (sung by Innes, who does a dynamite Lennon imitation) sings lyrics like Stars are in the sky above Naturally People rise andfall in love Natural ly Les he natural he pokes fun at the naivete of the conception, yet also creates a wistful elegy fora lost era's simple optimism. MUSICALLY, The Rutles consists primarily of parodies of individual songs, with several numbers devoted to encompassing whole categories of the Beatles' output. "Living in Hope," sung by Barry. clowns around with the image of Ringo as the downtrodden hick who happened to make it big, and is now just "Feelin' like a cowboy, And lookin' like a slob, but living in hope." "Hold My Hand," an ingenious musical composite of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," "All My Loving," and "Please Please Me," captures the early Beatles sound with remarkable accuracy, complete with driving rhythm guitar, crashing cymbals, and plenty of "ooh-ooh-oohs" in the background. "With a Girl Like You," essentially a carbon copy of "If I Fell," opens with the lines "Shoot me down in flames if I should tell a lie," just the kind of cheekiness that, though there isn't an exact analogue in any Beatles song, is so discreetly out of kilter with the musical setting that it creates an infec- tious, if irreverent, style of humor. By far the album's most outstanding cut is "Cheese and Onions," which has elements from "A Day in the Life," but primarily pokes fun at the John Lennon-"Imagine" genre. "Cheese and 'Onions"is a beautifully Len- nonesque number, with steady piano chords, rich, flowing orchestral background, and a set of lyrics so pretentiously meaningless that Lennon himself couldn't have gotten more pointedly obscure: Man and Machine Keep yourself clean Or be a has b)en Like the )inosaur Man and device for everything nice' Youd better think twxice At least once more Innes' Lennon imitation is so perfect, that just his Liverpudlian pronoun- ciation of "oh no" (something like uho-no) deserves some kind of award. The Rutles is such an appealing album because it was conceived with such obvious affection for its subject. It has the authenticity parody of this sort requires, but keeps a veritable distance from its target. In "Doubleback Alley," Rutle Dirk says he gets happy memories "if I flog my memory." If that's true, then it's obvious Innes gave his a good flogging. By TIM YAGLE W HEN I FIRST heard the rock group Van Halen's hard rock ver- sion of the Kinks' classic "You Really Got Me," I was astounded. How could a VanIi itlelt U rrnr i,,, r.l i~h : f- '70s band make an old tune sound so good? "You'Really Got Me" isn't the only tune on their debut album Van Halen (and what a debut album it is!) that sounds like this. Practically the en- tire album contains good, thunderous, bone-crushing rock. "Runnin' With The Devil'" begins this killer disc (sounds like a movie title) with slow but heavy rock and beautifully accentuated bass lines. The only thing that detracts from this tune's quality is bassist Michael Anthony's shriekingsand yelling. It adds nothing to the song. Fromghere, creative lead guitarist Edward Van Halen explodes into a wicked solo called "Eruption" that seems to stop right in the middle where you don't expect it to. But milliseconds later, he continues his ripping solo. The break doesn't benefit the solo at all. It interrupts its momentum. THEN, THE powerful and intense "You Really Got Me" comes along. It sounds best with the volume turned up - especially the beginning. This is the song that opened people's eyes to this surging band. The good thing is that there are more tunes similar to it in in- tensity on the LP. One of them is "Aint Talking' 'Bout Love," which begins with some nice guitar work and has a smooth, driving melody. "Jamie's Cryin' " begins the flip side and has a bouncy rhythm with dominant bass lines. It's really a cute little tune with heavy guitar work. One noticeable flaw is near the middle when drummer Alex Van Halen forgets what he's doing for a second but gets right back into it soon after. "Atomic Punk" is Van Halen's view of the punk movement. It talks about a "punk" who is the nocturnal ruler of the streets and, because nobody will listen to what his generation has to say, he resorts to the threat of violence. It 'begins with a grating guitar sound then launches into a typical fast punk rhythm. THE BASS dominates again in "Lit- tle Dreamer." This isn't the worst tune on the album but it isn't far from it. There isn't a lot to "Dreamer" except for Edward Van Halen's screeching solo in the middle and even that isn't up to par. The group takes to the folk guitar at the beginning of "Ice Cream Man" but goes right back to the hard stuff shortly after. The flashy lead guitar practically saves "Ice Cream Man" from being nothing. "On Fire" provides a great and fit- ting finale to this scorching LP with some scorching rock that gets the adrenalin flowing. They bring it all together for the last one. Side one and "On Fire" really tell the Van Halen story. This is one good heavy metal album from one good heavy metal band and they are deservedly receiving extensive FM airplay. I saw them in concert recently and they were simply devastating. As an FM 104 DJ predicted, "You'll be hearing a lot more from this band." RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR OUTDOORSMAN, CAMPER, BACKPACKER, FISHERMAN, offered to student free to travel starting in June on 8 to 10 week minimum trip in Pick,-up Camper to Seattle via Yellow- stone and Tetons. At Seattle we board ship with camper and travel inland Passage, with stop enroute, to Shagway and on to Fair- banks and down Alaskan Highway. Only clothing and person- al spending money required. All other expenses paid. Write, in brief, personal information including outdoor interests and camping experiences if any. Include phone num- ber. Will call for meeting and more detailed plans. Reply Box 13 Michigan Daily.' Price Shattering Sale W