The Michigan Daily-Saturday, July 7, 1979-Page 7 A New wave Columbus By MARK COLEMAN astounding musicianship. Never a fectively at first listening. The cause "John Cale is coming to Second flashy soloist eager to display his was aided immeasurably by Mark Chance," a friend of mine beamed en- classical chops, his command of struc- Aarons, a lead guitarist who looked thusiastically last week. He was ture and the textural elements of a barely old enough to be in the bar. Cindi dismayed to learn, however, that this composition allow him to collaborate Black provided light melodic contrast was not the J. J. Cale of "Cocaine" with anyone, from avant garde com- to Cale's dark, brooding voice, fame, but a man who has been referred poser Terry Reilly to flashy guitarists especially during their shared vocal on to as the "Phil Spector of new wave Phil Manzanera and Chris Speeding. the punkish "Rape." rock." If the tradition of truly MONDAY NIGHT marked a rare Playing solely new material live can significant and influential artists performance from the reclusive Scot- be dangerous but the change in Cale's laboring in obscurity can be applied to sman. Billed as the Sabotage Tour, Cale approach and the youthful energy of the rock and roll, John Cale is the epitome brought an extremely young and talen- band make the music succeed. Cale ted band with him from New York City. does treat his stalwart cult following to Musically the evening was in the vein of Cates amore recent solo work; tight, studious rock and roll. Beginning with "Walking the Dog," the contradictions that supply the tension in Cale's music became readily apparent. Playing an of modern misunderstood genius. ostensibly silly song at about half A classically trained musician, John speed, Cale rocks with a seeming stif- Cale was the co-founder (with Lou fness that is actually utter intensity. Reed) of the Velvet Underground. This His demonic reading of the lyrics and notorious sixties band created the crazed bass solo pervert this old chest- prototype of the self-conscious nut into something more meaningful. primitivism and bold experimentation This tribute to his period of stylized that has been labeled "new wave" rock insanity dispensed with, he moves on to today. Cale further spurred new wave new material. Lyrically, these songs growth by producing such seminal ar- cover new ground, though still tem- tists as Patti Smith, the Stooges, and pered by the best piano playing in rock the Modern Lovers. His own recording and roll. Cale's writing tends to be ar- career spans ten years, seven albums, cane, but "Ready for War" and "What and a multitude of musical styles. The Are You Gonna Do" communicated common denominator of all his works is their socio-political messages quite ef- mA2 in A,2 with the house lights on. The song em- bodies underhanded interference with its subtly mechanical beat and Cale's desperate vocal, culminating in the destruction of the band's equipment and delirium in the audience, Walking home, I thought of someone hearing John Cale a hundred years from now in a musical history class. A passing car radio blaring out some faceless FM rock jolted me back to rock and roll reality, where John Cale still plays, produces, and performs with demonic fever. Sabotage, indeed. Join the Arts Page 5th Avenue at liberty SI. 761-9700 FomryFifth Forum Theater FINAL WEEK! "'AGATHA' is a good movie, very slick, very stylish enter- tainment." -Ann Arbor News Fright lovers flock to masterful 'Alien' grows desperate, our heroes grow progressively less cohesive, often snapping maliciously at each other like paranoid vipers. More important, Alien triumphantly negates the token helpless female so endemic to classic cinematic sci-fi; the ship's women remain on an absolute socio/sexual/technical par with their male comrades, and one of them (played by the remarkably talented Sigourney Weaver) eventually emerges as the dominant force on the crew, hun- ting the monster almost as coolly as it hunts her. The remaining protagonists are played to no-nonsense perfection by Ian Holm, John Hurt, Veronica Car- twright, Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton. The Nostromo itself seems almost a living organism, its oily-bronze interior fairly pulsating as though some grotesque ooze were going to slide through its walls any moment. Its labyrinthian corridors circle endlessly, almost apocalyptically, leading to no- exit destruction. ARTIST RON Cobb's extraterrestrial landscapes are masterworks of craggy eerieness - Howard Pyle or N. C. Wyeth transferred into the space age. The movie's alien (designed by the European artist H. R. Giger) is a sleek, darkly complex chameleon, ever- changing, adapting - sometimes im- mense in form, sometimes minute, able to maneuver anywhere, often casting a sinister strobe-light radiance. (Critic Denby has objected to the "unfairness" of the creature's changeling capabilities, as though horror cinema must conform to a strict, stated set of do and don't commandments). Alien's sound effects reverberate with octaphonic thunder, transforming the audience into side by side residents with the Nostromo's beleaguered ship- mates. Even the often-overwrought composer Jerry Goldsmith hits precisely the right musical mode here -'his lyric, almost fairytale score sets an appropriately ironic tone for the film's ghastly machinations. Alien occasionally misfires: A Watergatesque subplot (it seems the ship's parent company already knew about and wanted the creature, without informing the crew) is as hackneyed as, all the other monolithic corruption side themes so prevalent (after the fact) in recent movies. A decapitation sequence is a bit gratuitously gory; the ship's seemingly sinister pet cat proves a detective's red herring time after time. Yet these deficiencies fail to seriously dent the macabre spell which Scott and his company have weaved with a sor- cerer's finesse. Alien is not likely to leave you twisted and jaded - it is a good bet to leave you enthralled. This is the stuff of Lovecraft, not Spillane. JohnCale. "Guts," a truly compelling song with a dramatic piano break and intelligently outrageous lyrics. And to close the con- cert, "Fear is a Man's Best Friend," a lilting guitar and piano line that slowly develops into rant and rave dementia, provides the aural equivalent of an Alfred Hitchcock film. THE CONTROL and precision Cole exhibits even in his wilder moments sharply contrast with the barbaric on- slaught of his warm-up act, Ann Ar- bor's Destroy All Monsters-the aural equivalent of a cheap Japanese horror movie. Though guitarist Ron Asheton has expanded his style considerably since his days with Iggy Pop. it is for naught; long, distorted guitar trips make this potentially exciting band sound hopelessly dated. If D.A.M. cut the length of their songs in half and got a real lead singer, they could become a force to be reckoned with. As it is, the length of the Monsters' set cuts Cale's performance short. A clamorous crowd demands an encore of the featured artist despite the late hour. So Cale comes back to sing "Sabotage' Frank Capra's 1934 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT A sophisticated comedy about a runaway heiress and recently unemployed reporter-in other words, CLAUDETTE COLBERT and CLARK GABLE. Both of them had to be talked into doing the movie by Capra who wasn't even sure himself it would be any good. The film ended up sweeping all the major Oscars including best actor and actress-giving Gable the big career boost he needed and surprising Colbert to no end. It also established Columbia as a major studio and destroyed the undershirt industry since Clark didn't wear one. Matchless cinema. UNDERTOW (By Virginia Giritlian) Sun: Murnau's THE LAST LAUGH (Free at Bonly) The Ann Arbor Film Cooperative Presents at MLB Saturday, July 7 RETURN OF THE DRAGON (Bruce Lee, 1974) 7 & 10:20-MLB 3 BRUCE LEE, as a simple country youth, comes to live with friends in Rome and gets involved in intrigue and violence when the family, owners of a restaurant, become the victims of a gang specializing in the protection rocket. The film ends with a classic battle between Lee and a hired killer (many times Heavy- weight Karate Champion Chuck Norris) in the shadow of the Colosseum, which many afficionadi consider to be the best one-on-one fight scene ever filmed. CHINESE CONNECTION (Lo Wei, 1973) 8:40 ONLY--MLB3 Bruce Lee's second martial arts film, and a remarkable improvement over his first, FISTS OF FURY. In this outing, set at the turn of the century in Singa- pore, Lee returns to his home city for the funeral of his former master, who died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. The action centers on the racial and stylistic differences which provoke a bitter battle between Lee's small Chinese Kung-Fu School and a large Karate dojo in the predominantly Japanese city. TUESDAY: Free showing of UP THE RIVER CINEMA GUILD TONIGHTAT OLD ARCH. AUD.