Page 6-Saturday, July 21, 1979-The Michigan Daily Teenybopper idol bland, lifeless 't1 _7 ... . 4 . ... ...4 . " 1 r_ By ANNE SHARP Thursday night in the Michigan Theatre, surrounded by little Pioneer High girls with fluffy hair and designer jeans, I turned my eyes to the heavens. "Please," I begged silently, "let me like it. The Arts Page is already lousy with reviews panning everything from two-bit punk acts to Woody Allen's latest. Please, please, let me like Jay Ferguson tonight." By way of warmup, two dubious- looking characters-probably renegade Oberlin students on summer break-clambered out before the asbestos curtain and after making the usual jokes about sex and boogers, did a set of cute oldies, including "Smoky Joe's Cafe," "Love Potion Number Nine" and the theme song from The Patty Duke Show. One played flute, baritone saxophone, and clarinet nicely, and the other, a hefty man with a hat and long hair like Meat Loaf's, did patter between songs. Very ordinary. The Meat Loaf guy mentioned Twinkies-the audience giggled on cue. He made reference to disco and they booed dutifully. "The nerve!" I thought. A Jay Ferguson crowd acting superior to disco listeners! To my ears, all Ferguson is Middle of the Road, which to any bona fide devotee of dirty ass rock and roll is worse than disco. "Shakedown Cruise" and "Thunder Island" have a certain naive charm, but no muscle. They're pretty but bloodless. FERGUSON THE performer possesses a sound and persona as bland And squeaky clean as his music. At his grand piano, he turns sidewise to sing at the audience, playfully kicking out a leg now and then. His crisp healthy tenor voice comes across nicely over the overamplified backup. Obviously well-trained, his voice is strong, never strained. But there is no energy in it-he sounds as perky and relaxed as he does in the recording studio. So what if Ferguson isn't rock, you say? He does have his own laid-back West Coast sound, and he does it well. But if Ferguson persists in playing MOR, he really ought to stop masquerading as a rock star. As it is, he looks pretty silly using rock pyrotechnics to illustrate his mellow music. Highly out of place ear-searing synthesizer riffs straight out of ELO punctuate his mild sets. As if to liven up the proceedings, Ferguson at one point rips off his suit jacket (gasp), straps on a guitar, and bounces up to the mnike. "Does anyone want to get craaazy?" he asks, then starts crooning about a fool and his money who were soon parted. I thought of "Thunder Island," and the naughty-but-nice insinuations about the lady in the sun with her dress undone. Very clean, unadventurous. Must be typical Ferguson, I thought. Please, Lord, make me like it, I'm begging ... A BEERY YOUNG man in a black tour shirt and backstage pass perched on the seat next to me. "You from one of the papers;" he asked. "Only the Daily," I replied. Don't knock the promoter, he said. "It's a mediocre band, but the promoter did everything he could. The band reminds me of Mugsy. You know Mugsy?" "Yes," I shot back, loudly, in order to be heard. "I used to live next door to one of their groupies in South Quad. Who is the promoter?" "Prism. Prism Productions. We did the lights and sound." "I like the lights," I shouted. I really did. They were symetrical and color coordinated, making the band onstage look likea row of shiny lollipops in their brightly colored satin pants. "Please Lord . . . Filmmaker's project to be seen on WTVS The Ann Arbor Film Coopertfive Presents at MLB -$1.50 Saturday, July 21 SHAMPOO (Hal Ashby, 1975) 7T&9-MLB 3 WARREN BEATTY stars in this sex force as George, the very heterosexual hairdresser whose love for women will not allow him to say "no" to any of them. Funny, erotic, serious and artistic, this film is one of the few to tie together and make the connection between private (sexual) morals and public (political) ones. A tremendous screenplay by Beatty and ROBERT TOWN (CHINATOWN) incisively probes sixties morality in the light of the Nixon era. A brilliant and entertaining film. Music by Paul Simon. With WARREN BEATTY, JULIE CHRISTIE, GOLDIE HAWN, LEE GRANT. Tuesday and through July 28: Free Showings during the Art Fair We support Projectionists Local 395 A short film made by University graduate Scott Mann will air on Channel 56 tonight after the regular Film Festival feature, which begins at 11:30 p.m. Mann tells here of the production and subsequent attempts to have thefilm shown. By SCOTT MANN One day, in May of '77, I stumbled across a battered old briefcase bearing the initials M.K. in my parent's garage. I was a senior at the University of Michigan, studying film, and looking for a project to complete my B.G.S. degree. The briefcase happened to con- tain 10 or 15 cans of 16 mm color rever- sal film taken by my grandfather, Morris Kushner, on his vacations all over the world. That was the spark plug I needed, and my independent study came quickly into focus. I would use the best of Grandpa's footage, com- bined with footage of my own, to tell the Morris Kushner story. Grandpa was a Russian immigrant who became a pioneer of the automobile tool-and-die industry. But his main love was fishing. When he retired he used those skills to create some of the finest bamboo flyrods made anywhere. They were made with love, by hand, and with cutters and lathes personally redesigned in his home shop. TOGETHER, MY partner John Roman (from Oakland U.), and I began the task of deciding which 3/4 of his footage we should do without. The public will never see Morris in New York, at a bullfight in Mexico, or the race track at Buenos Aires. But they will see him catch sailfish in the Gulf of Mexico, coasters in Lake Nipigon, and brook trout in Montana. I wanted the story to be personal, and relevant to my family, so my viewpoint as grandson and filmmaker became the focal point of the film. Further, we wan- ted to interview two men who knew Morris better than I did. One was Robert Summers, a rod- maker from Traverse City, and an ex- cellent craftsman in his own right. Summers was the brain behind the rod building firm called the Paul H. Young Co. He was able to discuss with Morris all the intricacies of engineering, about anything from design and prototype, to rifles and rodmaking. They formed an instant friendship that lasted until Morris' death. AETS/ THE OTHER MAN was John Voelker, ex-Michigan Supreme Court justice from the Upper Peninsula, and noted author of Anatomy of a Murder, (under the pen name Robert Traver). Voelker included a touching piece on Morris in his latest non-fiction effort, Trout Magic. This poet fisherman, with his sparkling quick wit and Italian cigars, welcomed us to his posh home in Ish- peming, and quickly shuttled us to his real residence, an isolated fishing shack forty miles away. The one room cabin, on a river whose location he wan- ts kept secret, is a trout lover's paradise. Running past the glacial- rock-spotted lawn, the river surrenders trout on cue. Voelker is a serious U.P.-er and his only hesitation about the film was that somehow the location of his beloved refuge might be revealed. Satisfied we would give no clues, he freely reminisced not only about Morris, but also about being on the set with Otto See FILMMAKER, Page 7 TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT NO TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT NO PASSES PASSES His t HangupsA Are Hilarious! BU H - THE LA FILM IN PITCHES rCULT DuNC E T NEWS June 24 Terry Gillam's 1977 JABBERWOCKY The mythical boost from Lewis Carroll's famous nonsense poem-see for yourself if it really has "slithey toves." "The most marvelously demented comedy to come along since Monty Python and the Holy Grail."-Vincet Canby. With MICHAEL PALLIM, MAX WALL, TERRY JONES & JOHN LEMESURIER. Short: Ann Arbor Filmmakers-if You Unscrew an Ape it's a Man: if Man Screws Up He's an Ape-Paul Tossie (1979) Sun: Mary Pickford in SPARROWS (Free at 8:00) o wodleigh-mourice ltd production rech o rs from vornet' bros.