0 0 0 )if Cf :..., ............................... ::. .. . . . . . . . . . .:....:....*::::.;:::". . . . . . . . . . ....... ........ . *.:..... .::.............. {.......... 3?i ::;i:>:55-:rrsa::;:a;:::','":'.Yt: "r: :::......:. :>r>' ::.........:.... ...........: :.: ...... sy.::+."::?": o-ss :":"s:":"::o::o:":::"::a> :":::" .......:":.:.......,"::::::..... -:::....".. ..:v... , . Show popsicle The Abominable Showmnen Nick Lowe Columbia Records By Jeffrey W. Manning L IGHTS. CAMERA. Action: "Intro- ducing the new album by one of the most fabulous progenitots of today's music scene, that ex-Rockpiler who brought you such smash discs as Nick the Knife, Pure Pop for Now People, and the million-selling "Cruel to be Ki.nd," Columbia is proud to present the new release by the abominable showman himself (enter a billion prepubescent screams) ... Nick Lowe! ! !" Hold it. Stop. Let's get this straight: We're all beyond the age of media manipulation and consumer control; we don't have rocks in our heads. This Nick Lowe fellow is a flagrant example of the most basic evil in the music in- dustry - the hyped pseudo-rockstar. He wears glitter jackets and sings mm- dless lyrics about women and relation- ships-on-ice, all in the traditional pop format backed with polished violins and layered back-up vocals. The guy even wrote a song titled "Music for Money." Shelve it with Huey Lewis and the rest... Now wait just another second. There's something very peculiar about the blatant admission of pop stardom by Nick Lowe. Something else clearly shines through the media hyped mish- mash. A sort of honesty, perhaps? Truth is: Nick Lowe has produced a fine record. Granted, The Abominable Showman is pure pop, but it's far from commercial garbage. Nearly every song on this record delivers a steady dancehappy beat with catchy tunes that I found myself unconsciously humming while sitting in the diag last week. That's what pop's all about. The influence of early R&B and rockabilly (the roots of contemporary pop) on Nick are clearly evident. Though Nick uses the same formulas in structuring each song, the album retains diversity, including a reggae number and a frat-rock song in the vein of The Swingin' Medallions. There are, however, two weak cuts on the record, conveniently placed at the end of each side you can hit the reject button without missing the album's redeeming elements. Stylistically, Nick is beginning to drift from his guitar-based pop by em- phasizing the organ on Showman. Smart decision on Nick's part, con- Meissner !1111 If IIIliii 111RA I I I. 1 il! I , lhi I Year of peril The Year of Living Dangerously Starring: Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver Directed by Peter Weir Playing at Fox-Village Theater By Larry Dean PETER WEIR, Australian film director who, at one point in his early career was coined "the nes Hit- chcock" for his cool and suspenseful direction of such films as Picnic At Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, has both embraced and abandoned that title with his new film, The Year of Living Dangerously, a tale of romance and ad- venture set in revolution-torn 1965 In- donesia. Weir tried to wiggle free of his Hitch- cock image with 1981's Gallipoli, a moving film starring Mel Gibson (American-born star of The Year of Living Dangerously, Mad Max, and the riveting, action-packed surprise of last summer, The Road Warrior) which stated, more or less, that "war is hell, war is a lie, and war is unfair"-not exactly one of the newest themes on the block. For all it's statement, visual beauty and precedent-setting (its syn- thesizer soundtrack was later adapted and full-blown into the award-winning schmaltzy score from Chariots of Fire, for example), Gallipoli seemed too hard a try by Weir to break free of the mold he had been cast into. In comparison, The Year of Living Dangerously has Weir's heart as well as his technical bravado behind it, and it shows. When Weir read fellow- -Australian C.J. Koch's novel of the same name in 1978, he was so moved by the author's gripping account of upheaval in Indonesia that he im- mediately sought, and was subsequen- tly awarded, film rights to the story. Af- ter that, he solicited the idea to American studio MGM, who agreed to back the film. It is the first film to be sponsored to a great extent by an American company throughout produc- tion (Gallipoli was picked up for distribution by movie-mogul Robert Stigwood after production was com- pleted). The Year of Living Dangerously follows the story of Guy Hamilton (Gib- son), an ambitious young radio jour- nalist who is assigned to Djarkata during Indonesia's rapidly-heating revolutionary throes. On first arrival, Hamilton is numb to the agony and pestilence around him: infants, half-starved, beg him for money while their parents hoarde small quantities of rice to feed their Gibson and Weaver: Revolution and romance Nick Lowe: Pop for showmen sidering keyboardist Paul Carrack plays on this album, possible in lieu of fellow Rockpiler Dave Edmunds who is conspicuously absent from Nick's lineup. So sometime in coming days when the weather warms up and you need some happy music to play on your porch while tossing a frisbee in the street, keep Mr. Lowe in mind. Sure he's pop, sure he's hyped, but who cares? He's fun! Storm warning Procession Weather Report Columbia By Jerry Brabenec T'S A LITTLE bit disconcerting to realize that Weather Report has been turning out albums for more than a decade, making them a sort of later day Modern Jazz Quartet: a jazz in- stitution. Of all the offshoots of Miles Davis' fusion school, only the volatile and short lived Mahavishnu Orchestra ever really excelled Weather Report in the area of electronic jazz. John McLaughlin wrote convoluted, vir- tuosic charts for the Orchestra, but Joe Zawinul made Weather Report's- trademark a loping offbeat kind of melody that frequently sounded like half the notes were missing. The under- stated, lyric, sax of Wayne Shorter, Zawinul's atmospheric electronics, and incredibly tight rhythm sections became the band's bread and butter. The Columbia Records PR machine that was so instrumental in raising Miles to godlike stature was unleashed again to hype Weather Report, and much was made of the band's Third World influences and devotion to collec- tive improvisation. The early albums were indeed marked by very imaginative percussion and electronic textures, and a live cut from Japan, on the second album, "I Sing the Body Electric" (Whitman by way of Ray Bradbury) may be the best thing the band has ever recorded. A furious up- tempo set closer, "Direction" jumped off like a sprinter from the blocks, with lots of percussion racket and the propulsive bass of Miroslav Vituous underlying a lightning interchange between Shorter's soprano sax and Zawinul's bombastic, distorted electric piano. This cut is a euphoric com- bination of tight interaction and total balls-out spontaneity, but as the years passed the band became more pop oriented and the music totally arranged and composed. The new album, Procession, debuts a new rhythm section: Omar Hakim on drums, Victor Bailey on bass, and Jose Rossy on percussion. This crew per- forms adequately without a lot of flash, which is a relief after excesses like former bassist Jaco Pastorius' solo renditions of "Purple Haze." Unfortunately, this is just another step in Joe Zawinul's complete domination of the band. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter is one of the most distin- ctive stylists in jazz history and a fine composer in his own right, but he's reduced to doubling keyboard lines in most of Zawinul's tightly arranged, composed material. To compound the problem, Zawinul has taken to writing a lot of slow moody numbers that never really go anywhere. Even on Night Passage, their best recent album, there are at least two Zawinul numbers that are definitely musts-to-avoid. The music still rises to a sort of intellectual grooviness often, but no new ground is being broken, and the collective im- provisation and ethnic influences the band was once known for have been overwhelmed in a flood of Zawinulisms. Most of the first side of the new album is pretty good movie music: visually evocative and moody. "Procession" establishes a simmer of synthesizers and a subtle walking tempo that is well suited to the long lined, cumulative power of the melody. Shorter's con- tribution, "Plaza Real," has a sort of sunny, Moorish surrealism, a mood of ominous mystery in a broad daylight of sunwashed adobe. "Two Lines" is the most successful number, an uptempo groove that alternates between rock and swing, in which Zawinul's vocoded synthesizer and Shorter's electric sax exchange and blend phrases together. "Where the Moon Goes" features the Manhattan Transfer on vocals, soun- ding cold and robotic as they sing a litany of exotic place names. Vocal lines like Life in Algeria I watched/ from the window of an airplane give an interesting perspective on how technology is a unifying and isolating influence in the global village. This is another long, slow paced tune, that would probably develop great power and effect in a live performance. Weather Report is still the state of the art as far as cooking rhythm sections and electronic sounds go, and their stretched out minimalist melody remains totally unique, but there are problems, because the Third World's role in popular music has changed in the last decade. Once Weather Report was quite progressive with their em- phasis on Central American, African and Middle Eastern harmonies and sonorities, but the increasing populrity of reggae and African artists like King Sunny Ade and Fela have acquainted the public with Third World music straight from the source, and there is less of an inclination to take Joe Zawinul-s slightly tired compositional style seriously. Wayne Shorter released an album entitled Native Dancer with Brazilian singer Milton Nascimento that is one of the masterpieces of jazz eclectism, but this talent is being wasted, the original aims of the band have been lost, and Weather Report seems to be stuck in a sort of over- produced limbo. Cr I m AnArbor Antiquarian Book Fair Saturday, March 19,10 a.m.-5 p.m. Michigan Union Ballroom 30 dealers with books from fve *C centuries. - rx*First editionsI *Americana T e _ "Fine printing *Old & rare Free Admission Sponsored by the Ann Arbor D Antiquarian Book Dealers Assoc. ________________ - . _ 1- ailing families; and everywhere-on walls, in posters, banners, and placar- ds, the face and name of Sukarno, the "God-King," self-proclaimed ruler who dictates over a starving populace while lavishing himself with girl friends and other luxuries light-years beyond his peoples' merest wishes. Hamilton has lucked into the job of covering the political atmosphere of Djakarta. Only he is young and unex- perienced; after his first broadcast, the home-office wires back that it was nice and well-spoken, but emotion and con- tentless-all talk and no feeling. It takes the interference of Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) to spark some sympathy into Hamilton's "it's-just- my-job" demeanor. Kwan is a Eurasian cameraman, born of In- donesian and Australian parents, who takes an instant liking to Hamilton. At first skeptical as to the talents of the pint-sized Kwan, Hamilton is soon tur- ned about-face when Billy arranges an exclusive interview with a member of the Communist faction for him. From that moment on, Hamilton's passion ignites, and, joining with Kwan in an exclusive partnership, the two befuddle and make envious their fellow jour- nalists. As Kwan, Linda Hunt has a terribly difficult role to undertake. A New York stage actress whose only previous film appearance was a bit part in Robert Altman's snooze-a-thon, Popeye, Hunt portrays Billy as a wraith-like presen- ce, omnipotent and selfless; it is her narration that binds the central characters' actions into one cohesive whole. In a voice that is both poetic and child-like with earnest wonder, she ruminates on Hamilton and Jill Bryant, (sigourney Weaver), a British at- tache-keeps photos of them and writ- ten "progress reports" in individual files, like journalistic diary entries. Hunt makes the male Billy Kwan role tangible while retaining an air of ghostliness that lends the film a quiet, religious quality. She is fascinating. The Year of Living Dangerously is more a romance than a place for political grandstanding. It's a fact that filming in the Phillippines was can- celled a week early due to rumors cir- culating that the film was anti-Muslim and real riots began to erupt during staged scenes; and both Weir and Gib- son were subject to an alarming num- ber of threatening phone calls during their stay in the country.r Howev violence portraya displays, Hamiltor film its magnetic they ca themes f seen wal Hamiltor pression she arriP the door braces h the other ty to see his car.a a check- their cai gunfire Unharm( love. Weir's tenets of borne o sion-are cock" ta films we sions. He rip-off ax apes the cockeyed Hitchcoc which is tension statemer is his fine Beside who all Michael journali screwing to make families Australi homosex is equall3 The YE term co refers I moveme forces i which, ir the dicta boiling p too muc Weir, his have be politicall has cra cinema tainment 12 Weekend/March 18, 1983