The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, April 12, 1978-Page 5 NI SE by mike taylor L OU REED AND PATTI SMITH have a lot in common. Reed's Velvet Underground forged a new brand of rock'n'roll in te sixties; by bringing anarchy to rock, the band matched the wild fervor of the fifties with an avant-garde vision of the seventies. Albums made by the Velvets ten years ago sound remarkably like new records by the likes of Television, the Clash, and the Stranglers. Patti Smith opened the New Wave in 1975 with her brilliant Horse. You might say Smith and Reed are the mom and pop of the New Wave. The Velvet Underground broke up in 1970, but Reed continued on, releasing a string of pleasant solo albums. Until 1976, nothing Reed had done equalled his work with the Underground. That year, he made Coney Island Baby, a melodic return to the mellow, tranquil side of the Velvets that produced classics like "Candy Says," "Sunday Morning," and "New Age." Now, with Street Hassle, Reed has brought the dark side of the Un- derground back into play. This is the most brutal LP Reed has ever made; at times it surpasses desperate Velvet tunes like "Heroin" and "Sister Ray." Not that it's easy to listen to-Reed and co-producer Richard Robinson's gritty, noisy sound quality is a bit off-putting, and Reed's fractured, melan- choly voice is nothing short of frightening. Street Hassle is filled with contrasts; in the dialectic tradition Reed takes opposing forces and synthesizes them into his art. Sometimes this takes the form of dialogues. At other times it is the clash between live and Streetfassee Easter Lou Reed Patti Smith Group Arista A8 4169 Arisa mA 47) studio recordings. This may be rock's first schizophrenic LP. The first dialogue comes right at the beginning of "Gimmie Some Good Times." The chords are from the Rock'n'Roll Animal version of "Sweet Jane;" the conversation a mix of that song's lyrics and a modern day, sar- donic Reed. Then the characters merge into one. The voice sounds like Reed has been eating razor blades; the lyrics are a painful plea for help. In "Dirt," the dialectic is between Reed's angry voice and the sparse guitar-bass-piano back-up. "I Wanna Be Black" contrasts Reed's apparent racism with the knowledge (hope?) that it's all a joke; 1 wanna be black,. Swonna be like Martin Luther King and get myself shot in the spring Lead a whole generation too, and fuck up the jew.e I wanna be black, I wanna be like Malcolm X and pass the hex over President Kenney's tomb. SAnd have a big prick too. I dan't want to bea tucked-up middle-class college student no more. "STREET HASSLE" is an eleven-minute opus made up of three epi- sodes connected by a simple cello theme. The core is an off-beat monologue I ' r4 n Lou Reed and Patti Smith bout two of Reed's favorite subjects-drugs and death: ~Bywthe ay~ that's really some bad shit you came to our place with But you ought to be a little more careful around'the little girls. It's always the best or the worst, and since I don't have to choose I guess I won't And I know this ain:t no way to treat a guest, but why don't you grab your old lady by the feet and lay her out in the darkest street, and by morning she's just another hit-and-run. You know some people got no choice, and they can never find a voice to talk with that they can even coll their own. So the first thing that they see that allows them tobe why they follow it. You know, it's called BAD LUCK. The scarlet tune is "Real Good Time Together," which first appeared on 1969 Velvet Underground Live. Reed has slowed it down to the tempo of a dirge, and backed it up with pulsating, Enoesque instrumentation. Though it comes as a shock, especially if you've heard Patti Smith's rave-up live ver- sion, this new arrangement suits the dark lyrics best. * * * , P ATTI SMITH'S MUSICAL history is a good deal shorter than Reed's. She first emerged as a poet in the early seventies. After a while, she added Lenny Kaye's guitar and Richard Sohl's piano to her poetry readings. With the addition of Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Ivan Kral (bass), the Patti Smith Group was complete. 1975's Horses is a rock'n'roll landmark; Smith mixed rock and poetry in- to a blend quite unlike anything else. Smith showed she could write rock'n'roll songs just as good as those by the Rolling Stones on 1976's Radio Ethiopia, but the avant-garde experimentation of Horse, save for "Radio Ethiopia-Abysinia," was gone. With Easter, Smith's transformation into a mainstream rock'n'roller is complete. It's a fine record, but in terms of innovation it doesn't hold a can- dle to Horses. Easter is the Patti Smith Group, 1978. Bruce Brody has replaced Richard Sohl on.keyboards, but everything else is pretty much the same, Though producer Jimmy Iovine lacks the creative powers John Cale lent to Horse, his sound is much warmer and more accessible than Jack Douhlas's Radio Ethiopia production. PATTI SMITH BELIEVES in the future. "In another decade rock and roll will be art," she says in hey new book, Babel. In Easter's "Babelogue," she says, "I don't fuck much with the past, but I fuck plenty with the future." These feelings of hope are the backbone of "Till Victory" and "Because the Night," two of the finest songs Smith has written. "Because the Night," co- written by Bruce Springsteen, combines Springsteen's romanticism with Smith's fine sense for rock'n'bll: Come on now try and understand, The way f feel under your command. Come take my hand as the sun descends, FAnd you con touch me now, Because the night belongs to lovers. "Babelogue," a live monologue, flows into "Rock'n-'Roll Nigger," Smith's most ferocious song to date. Her bitter, vicious voice is quite a sur- prise; the anger is real. "25th Floor," which contains much of he chaotic fury of "Rock'n'Roll Nigger," flows into "High on Rebellion," another monologue. "Ghost Dance" and "Easter"have rich, full arrangements, something new for Smith. "Ghost Dance" is a hypnotic remembrance of an ancient Native American tribal custom. "Easter" is a tribute to nonconformity; it closes with the ironic blend of church bells and bagpipes. My favorite is "We Three," written at the beginning of Smith's rock'n'roll career in 1974. Her melody is gorgeous, her lyrics are sincere, and Tom Verlaine's arrangement is simple, but highly effective. Smith reaf- firms the need for hope: "Baby please, don't take my hope away from me." Arts Notes- Film director and actor Dennis Hop- per will speak after a free showing of his film The Last Movie at 4:00 today at Auditorium A in Angell Hall, courtesy of the Ann Arbor Film Co-op. tJoseph Jarman and Leo Smith will Dancers green but enthusiastic By SUSAN BARRY THE U-M DANCE Company began their program last week at the Power Center with a slightly disorganized voice proclaiming from out of nowhere "I'm not going out there, you know," and continuing with some kind of bizarre explanation for that The University Dance Company Power Center Friday, April 7, 1978 I Ain't Putting My Hands in Your Boppers........choreographed by Susannah Payton-Norman Kammersinphonien .....choreographed by Gay Delanghe Oeuvre-A Galactic Fantasy............choreographed by Vera Embree or Children I Have Known..........choreographed by Joshua Jess cabot Yake.........choreographed by vera Embree determ'ination. "Well this is Ann Ar- bor," I thought to myself, recalling the afternoon before when I had sat in the movies for two' and a half hours, listening to some crank .shouting in- coherencies from the back row of the theatre. There is little that surprises me here in public places. But it soon became apparent that the voice had something to do with the oddly-dressed woman who wandered onto the stage, seated herself on an in- flatable yellow cushion and ate a piece of bread. The voice invited the dancers, who were seated in the audience, to come down to the stage, and they began a dance entitled "I Ain't Puttin' My Hands In Your Boppers." Boppers, in case it isn't immediately evident, were inflated, brightly-colored cubes that hung on ropes from the ceiling. The per- formers slipped them over their hands (or sometimes their feet) and executed an energetic and rather aggressive dance, choreographed by Susannah Payton-Newman. The Dance Company, made up of members of the Dance Department, were obviously amateur performers. Their poses were rather unsteady, their turns imperfectly executed, and their movements a little too audible. But they were definitely an enthusiastic group, and their repertoire was varied and in- novative. THE SECOND number, "Kammer- sinphoniem," choreographed by Gay Delanghe, included a duet by Paula Hunter and Robert Handler. The movements in this piece were more fluid and graceful. A cello solo in the background provided a mournful coun- terpoint to the romantic dance that concluded with the separation of the dancers. The third piece, entitled "Oeuvre-A Galactic Fantasy," was choreographed by Vera Embree. It included eight movements, each of which represented different elements in space. A clever use of props and costumes made the movements of the "Rays" and the "Asteroids" particularly amusing. The next piece was called "Of Children I have Known," and was choreographed by Joshua Jess Cabot. This one entailed the use of several medias integrated into a moving pic- turesque secenario. Seven dancers por- trayed young children with hesitant, in- secure motions. They were accom- panied by a taped collage of music and voices of children responding to adult commands. The children were grouped inside a protective square of spotlight, while occasionally one or two would break away for a solo presentation. The integration of various media in this singular performance created a pathos that was most affecting. The final number, "Yake," was also choreographed by Vera Embree. Fashioned as an African fertility dance it portrayed a young male choosing his bride and the symbolic ceremonial dance by the betrothed pair anid their. companions. The beat of the conga drums, played by four musicians on- stage, combined with the vigorous movements and the cheerful ex- pressions of the dancers Carolyn Webb and Ed West, made this dance an ab- solute celebration. " Join the .arts Staff Destroy All Monsters " 0 Ann Arbor's own punk band boasts multi-media stage show By ANNE SHARP DESTROY ALL Monsters is not your average New Wave band. Evolving from the artistic shenanigans of a few U-M undergrads, it picked up sometime ago professional rock and roll talent from Iggy Pop's Stooges and the MC5, and is swiftly becoming one of the most beloved - and fiercely despised - ensembles of the Detroit- Cleveland-Ann Arbor bar circuit today. One Daily reviewer, after seeing the Monsters last August at Detroit's Kramer Theatre, described them as "A psychedelic hard rock' outfit doing originals with a strong lyrical accent on drugs, decadence and death." Although identified as a punk band and often billed with such NeW Wave groups as the Mutants, the Ramones, and Pere Ubu, the Monsters' bizarre multimedia stage show defies classification. Most important, unlike most punk bands, DAM has sex appeal in the slight, necrotic form of Niagara, its lead singer. Niagara comes onstage wearing the cheap, motley clothes of a 1962 S-M whore; a typical outfit includes an elec- tric-blue mini-skirt, ankle-high boots and a leopard-print bra with sagging' shoulder straps. She is a beautiful, small, delicate girl who seems per- petually on the verge of a coma. Her half-closed lids are heavily made up, her brown hair, tousled and ratty, caught up at an odd angle with a barret- te. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she reaches for a can of Tab - one of her trademarks - kept stocked on the edge of the stage by a roadie. BEHIND HER, the band starts up. The music is pure hard-driving punk, the sort of flash-bang "noise" abhorred, by all middle-aged parents. On a screen above the band, a strange selection of films flash by: pictures of SSTs in flight, an anti-drug message, an ad for Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes featuring Tony the Tiger, an ancient animated cartoon version of "The Em- peror and 'the Nightingale". The bass pounds like an oncoming train, guitars wail as Niagara clings for dear life to. the microphone stand. In a monotone of desperate intensity, she "talks" the lyrics: Lookin out the window and a wich]flew by Whippin her broomstick She said 'You're gonna die' You're gonna die you' re gona die you're gonna die you're gonna die "I heard birth was really hard, but death is really pleasant," comments Niagara, talking about "You're Gonna Die": A favorite Monsters piece, "Die" is on the flip side of the group's new in- dependently-released single, "Bored" featuring the oft-repeated phrase, "When I woke up in the afternoon I was really bored"). She co-authored both songs with various band members. Her own solo compositions include "TH Queen" and "I Love You But You're Dead". She loves Tab and THC, and hates sunlight; as a result, she has the thin, consumptive look of a vampiress.- "You can't be healthy if you want to purvey any kindf art," she affirms. Lead guitarist Ron Asheton, formerly of the Stooges, "copped to" the Mon-' sters "because they have fresh, young ideas". A stocky young man with a brown-blond shag cut and aviator frames, Asheton, an avid collector of Nazi regalia, often sports an Iron Cross round his neck. German was one of his favorite subjectsrat Ann Arbor's Pioneer High, which he left in his senior year during the mid-sixties for a jaunt to Liverpool. Upon his return, he was persecuted by the other kids, who took offense at his then-effeminately long hair and snappy British clothes. Sof- tening his attack upon convention, he Francois Ford Copola's THE GODFATHER I MARION BRANDO, AL PACINO, JAMES CANN and DIANE KEATON in the 70's saga of an aging Don and his family caught up in a changing underworld. Possibly the last word in cinematic violence-that is, until Coppola's next epic camps out. In wide-screen color. Thurs: MR. HULOT'S HOLIDAY CINEMA GUILD OLD ARCH. AUD. TONIGHT at 7 & 10:00 $1.50 cut his hair at the choir director's request in order to sing at commen- cement exercises. MIKE DAVIS, a founding member of the MC5, is DAM's star bass player. An earnestly friendly smile frequently belies his tough, Alice Cooperish looks. Like Niagara, Davis is a former art student. He studied at Wayne in Detroit, practicing what he calls "macho realism", with an emphasis on surrealism and classicism. He proudly describes the murals he and another inmate created during his one-year stay at Lexington Penitentiary in Ken- tucky. His paintings from that period toured major American cities in a prison art show. When asked about Rob Tyner's new version of the MC5, he notes, "If he feels he has to live off his past, that's his problem." Ben and Larry Miller, fraternal twins, play saxophone and "space guitar," respectively, for the Monsters. With his moustache and straight, long blond hair, Larry Miller looks the prototype Ann Arbor hippie; he moonlights at Seva Longevity Cookery, a local natural foods restaurant. Rob King, who replaced an electronic per- cussion box as DAM's drummer, previously played with the Millers in Red Ants. The band's original members - Niagara, Cary Loren, Jimmy Shaw, and Mike Kelly - met as students at U- M's art school several years ago. Loren, among other things, a brilliant classical guitarist and a winner of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, led his frien- ds in a series of bizarre artistic en- deavors, culminating in a magazine distributed in Cleveland and at Ann Ar- bor's Art Fair, featuring Loren's photos as well as line drawings by Niagara,, The Monsters will appear tonight with Tuff Darts and the Stranglers at Second Chance. The Ann Arbor Film Cooperative presents at ANGELL HALL WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12 HEART OF GLASS (Werner Herzog, 1976) 7, 8:40, 10:20-AUD. A This latest entry by the world's best young filmmaker, Werner Herzog, is a bizarre tale which concerns a disaster at a glass factory. Says Herzog, "In my films I always try to find new images of things-as if you were to open your eyes and see a tree for the very first time." Such "new images" are realized in HEART OF GLASS, a beautiful film in which Herzog, among other things, hypnotized his entire cost. MIDWESTERN PREMIERE. In German, with subtitles. Tomorrow: Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT, 7 & 9 at Aud A. THE OFFICE OF MAJOR EVENTS presents JACKSON BROWN SPECIAL GUEST STAR 1.rat w T ]/1,1'r