ARTS
Tuesday, November 23, 1982
The Michigan Daily
Page 7
Gabriel gets monkey off back
SEE THE clay man. Look at the little
man of clay. Dance little clay man,
dance. Sing scream wail, clay man.
See the criminal man. Look at the lit-
tle man of crime. Dance, little criminal
man, dance. Sing scream wail,
criminal man.
See the shaman man. Look at the lit-
tle man of magic. Dance little shaman,
dance. Sing scream wail, little shaman
man.
See the phallic man. Look at the little
man of phallus. Dance little phallus,
... And yet again
By C. E. Krell
dance. Sing scream wail, little phallic
man.
See the rock star. Look at the little
star of rock. Dance little star, dance.
Sing scream wail, little rock star man.
The opening band was called the
Electric Guitars. And we had fun fun
fun fun fun till Daddy took the Guitars
away. They dress funny. They dance
funny, too. Hey, though, they were fun
fun. Though they aren't going to spread
anew the fissure of modern music, and
have little apparent psychoexistential
supply side economic intrinsic
meaning, they made a smile. The
bass/drums made things go soft. And
the keyboard/guitar melted onto the
then soft. Soft; is all right.
But what about all that stuff at the
beginning of this piece which you see
didn't have anything at all to do with
the Electric Guitars but really was
talking about Peter Gabriel about
whom the rest of this review will be ex-
cept for one other being.
There exists a beingness who didn't
appear on stage. I've really got to know
who or what pulls those ropes for that
Gabriel fellow. It's sort of unnerving to
watch someone contort and eeeek in the
ever worn yet often macabre costume
of the Cracked Actor.
The convincing thing though was that
Gabriel was convincing in most of these
croissant thanks al parte del band. El
band joined Peter's Puppet Parade-
wait, make that the thing(?) yanking
him-with a commitment towards en-
tertainment and philosophical
deployment that made at least one song
from all them solo albums a very high
light indeed: "Solsbury Hill," "On the
Air," "Not One of Us," "Kiss of Life."
Shaking from utter fear of the next
utterance of the face-painted Cosmic
Channel through which the High Power
was channeling a strength of show,
worry beset me re: my future. Was I
too to be doomed to the fate of being
mastered?
And then though Peter Gabriel sud-
denly would let the plane pane of plastic
pain plain down and this healthy
looking Saturday night Bath-er would
smile, leap, and jump for Joy, Tony
Levin the Bassman, David Rhodes the
Guitarman or even the Audienceman.
It wasn't "dig me, I'm a rock star" it
was "I'm a rock star, and I've come to
'Shock the Monkey'-grip with it." I
mean who could look on the cover of
P.G. III and say "Well, shit Irv, this
guy's sort of genial and amusing."
So I thought that everything was
going to be okeydokey. But soft; what
manifestation through yon spotlight
breaks? It is the sign language, and it is
the mode of song introduction. I really
must meet god, because I assume that's
who is running this machine guy on
stage.
It would be ridiculous to assume that
everything that happened was just
ososoopermarvy. Owe this then to the
fact that there weren't enough
ingredients to construct the muchos
layered strawberry shortcake album
thickness. Translation: only five people
making aural stimulation designed and
created and produced and brought to
you by and developed by whole bunches
of peoples.
I really enjoyed the Peter Gabriel
concert with special guest the Electric
Guitars. I jumped around and said yay
a lot. Clay man changed man estranged
man stranged man rearranged man
deranged man Tappan Micro home on
the range man. It's not my fault that I
run out of things to say.
The End.
i
Daily Photo by DAVID FRANKEL
Peter Gabriel "Shocks the monkey" at his Saturday performance in Hill
Auditorium
Ragtime gig rattles those keys
By Knute Rife
AKE LIET knows how many peo-
ple, shoehorn them into a church,
bring on School of Music pianists Bill
Albright, Bill Bolcom, and Jim
Dapogny, saxophonist Don Sinta, and
soprano Joan Morris, stir in a large
~;dosage of the music American grew up
on, and what do you get? Fun.
Sunday evening had a jazz-ragtime
bash slated at the Unitarian Univer-
salist Church. There was jazz and there
-was ragtime, but the performers
wandered far and wide on the musical
map before coming back home. No, one
complained.
Albright introduced Bolcom and
Dapogny as his "compatriots in
ragtime crime." I get a bit nervous
when academics approach jazz. They
tend to do so in hushed tones and ivory-
tower styles. These guys have a sense
of humor. They didn't embalm and en-
shrine the music, they just played it as
it lay. They made quite a threesome:
Dapogny, the technician, Bolcom, the
performer, and Albright, the bridge
between the two.
Albright started the show with Scott
Joplin's "Euphonic Sounds," just to
make sure that we got to hear some
Joplin. Dapogny then boogie-woogied
his way through several pieces in-
cluding "The Fives." Dapogny often
accompanies Sippy Wallace. Wallace's
brothers wrote "The Fives," so
Dapogny gets to play it the way it was
intended rather than the way it was
written.
Bolcom came out and played "a bit of
genteel fluff." One piece, "The Gon-
doliers," was indeed genteel, spunding,
like a piano accompaniment to some
old silent film.
Albright returned for a set which in-
cluded "Peace and Plenty," dedicated
"to the success Reagonomics has had."
Morris and Sinta joined in for "That
Saxophone Rag" written in 1914 by a
pair of University students named Fix-
nel and Grosner. This paean to the
saxophone interspersed with corny
jokes and featured Sinta's sweet tones
and Morris' faculty for selling a song.
After intermission, Albright
reopened the program with James P.
Johnson's "Yamecraw: A Rhapsody."
Intended as a black answer to Gersh-
win's "Rhapsody in Blue," the piece
never achieved popularity. Sunday
night's performance may have been the
first in the past 40 years, except for
Albright's performance at a Unitarian
service a couple of months ago, that the
piece has been played in public.
Dapogny returned for a set which in-
cluded Johnson's "Snowy Morning
Blues" and Fats Waller's "Ain't
Misbehavin'." Bolcom and Morris
teamed up again for some crowd
pleasers like "Blue Skies" and "These
Foolish Things," then brought Sinta
back on to help them with The Coaster's
"Yakkity-Yak." Sinta had a little
trouble getting enough slop into his
style to match the mood of the piece.
Bolcom and Morris then went camp
country and western with their com-
position "Tears at the Happy Hour," a
hilarious satire of the genre.
The concert was indeed fun, with a lot
of "bop til you drop" pieces. This also
made it rather fun to watch the audien-
ce. There were a lot of upper-middle
class types in monogrammed sweaters
or herring-bone tweed trying to decide
whether or not to get down. Even the
more straight-laced in the audience
threw decorum to the winds when
Albright, Bolcom, and Dapogny all
returned to play "When the Saints Go
Marching In."
This Fats Waller arrangement of
"Saints" featured Bolcom and
Dapogny taking turns on piano with
Albright playing the theme on pipe
organ. Possibly the most incredible
keyboard duet of all time (with "in-
credible" used in its purest sense), it
wasn't smooth, but who cared?
The bash was not technically per-
fect; in fact, there were several train
wrecks. But such is the nature of the
beast. Bashes are meant to be cobbled
together on the spot and lose a lot if they
are too planned. This was Morton, not
Mozart; spontaneity the key, not struc-
ture. There had to be sympathy., verve,
humor, and a certain amount of pan-
ache. There was.
Daily Photo by ELIZABETH SCOTT
Borodin Trio
-free as the wind
Pop contortions1
Singer Michael Stipe (left) gyrates to the energetic pop of guitarist Peter
Buck and R.E.M. last Sunday night at Joe's Star Lounge. The concert also
featured a guest appearance by guitarist Peter Holsapple (not shown) of the
dB's.
By Lauris Kaldjian
LIKE THREE trees moved by one
wind was the Borodin Trio's
performance in Rackham Auditorium
last Saturday evening. Whether
swaying in a gentle breeze or raging in
a gale the three Were rooted in the same
rich soil that nourished their fresh, in-
vigorating music.
viRostislav Dubinsky, a believer in the
conservation of momentum, produced
dulcet tones from his violin that belied
his generally staid appearance. His
wife, pianist Luba Edlina, provided
sensitive accompaniment and convin-
cing solo lines. Cellist Yuli Turovsky,
the most physically expressive, poured
his whole being into each phase that he
offered to the audience.
Having not previously heard the
Borodin Trio, I was surprised to hear
with what assurance and understan-
ding they played. When their combined
histories are considered (prior to
becoming expatriots of Russia in 1976)
it is clear that there is an explanation
for their finely tuned ensemble. Their
experience in the western world is
comparatively short but they are
gaining a deservedly fine reputation.
The Trio executed each nuance with
practiced anticipation. But expected
anticipation runs the risk of growing
stale. The Borodin Trio eliminates this
risk by remaining spontaneous.
V1 kin o's copies
-u eox90
The first half of their program was
taken up by a work that covers the
gamut of emotional expression,
Tchaikovsky's Trio in A minor, Op. 50.
This work lies close to their roots in its
Russian passion; it is imbued with the
severe warmth and volatility of a
weighty character out of Dostoevsky.
The Tchaikovsky opens with a Pezzo
elegiac( replete with flowing dialogue
between the violin and cello who toss-
back and forth the lines of a beautiful
soaring melody.tThe piano pronounces
a second melody that resounds with
golden dignity. The second movement,
Terna con rariazioni, utilizes both the
possibilities of variations
(manipulation of theme until barely
recognizable) and the facilities of a
piano trio. The last movement,
Variazione finale e code, ends with
the strings drifting away and the
pulsating dominant-to-tonic bass of the
piano finally ceases leaving the listener
with a despondent, worn feeling.
The Trio's rendition of this expan-
sively Romantic work was powerful.
The diversity of the moods that were
created wrenched the heart from one
emotion to the next. Brisk pizzacati
created a playful atmosphere that of-
fered comic relief from the pervading
gloom. The Borodin Trio recreated this
music in living, visible color.
The remainder of the program con-
sisted of Schubert's Trio in E flat
major, Op. 100, another of his
remarkablydnumerous works con-
taining melodies that linger in the mind
as if to savor them the more. The
movements are marked Allegro,
Anantetor t l, Scherzo: allegro
inoderato, and Allegro mnoderato.
The work was performed with a
superb sense of rhythm in a controlled
Romantic setting. In both Allegros the
string spiccato passages were tightly
knit together. The piano could have
been firmer in solo lines to equal the
solo strings. The Scherzo was rendered
as a celebration of life-sincere, sim-
ple, and thankful.
By far the most memorable
movement of the Schubert was the An-
dante with its sublime, minor theme in-
troduced passionately by the cello. It is
a searching, lonely melody with
diminishing traces of hope that mar-
ches onward with grave determination.
This same theme cleverly returns in the
fourth movement to haunt us again. In-
terspaced throughout the Andante is a
second theme in a major mode that
uplifts the spirit and offers hope to the
despair of the first theme.
At concert's end the members of the
Borodin Trio looked jaded and yet ap-
preciative. This, no doubt, was the
result of giving so completely their gift
of music to the audience. Their
unanimous exhaustion testified to their
common spirit; one that combines each
into one while allowing each other the
freedom to move as the wind.
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