ARTS
The Michigan Daily
Wednesday, October 5, 1983
Page 7
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Evolutionary win for Rich
By Jim Boyd
HANK GOD there's no more rock
'n' roll. Sure, some of you cried
during the Who's final one, but most of
us cheered. The beast had died, Elvis is
King.
Rock's fatal flaw was that it didn't
adapt-something new and relevant'
had to replace it. It clung tenaciously to
power chords and lotsa brew; by
definition it was unable to evolve.
Jagger is the dinosaur, Costello the
mammal. A wave of music biologically
distinct from its predecessor sprang up.
The old empire crumbled under its own
drunken dissonance.
But jazz, now there's an evolutionary
master. Like the cockroach (an unfor-
tunate analogy), this idiom adapts and
flourishes. The structure of these
organisms is successful and the environ-
ment only forces it to adapt, it cannot
force its extinction-even nuclear war
would leave the roaches alive and
kicking. While Jazz probably wouldn't
survive a nuclear holocaust, it never-
theless enjoys the security of being a
successful organism that rides out the
most difficult of times.
The point of this is that Buddy Rich
and his Big Band represent one of the
latest and most promising hybrids in
the jazz genre: this one's going to sur-
vive. Buddy, 60ish, has got firm jazz
roots but he's adapting with a iot of new
growth.
Rich's Monday night concert
renewed the belief that jazz has an en-
joyably viable place to go. Buddy star-
ted off the show saying of the songs,
"you probably won't recognize any of
them." Well, we recognized a few, but a
refreshing number of them really Were
different.
Buddy's progressive attitudes are
reflected, not only in his music, but in
the people who are playing it. He
recruits barely post-pubescent college
kids from top music schools who might
not have much trench experience, but
who make up for it in youthful vitality.
He's the father figure to these trum-
pet, trombone, and sax players who
grew up listening to Pink Floyd and The
Who. When they bow and acknowledge
the appreciative audience, they've got
a furtive, embarassed look about them.
Ah, to be young again.
The kids started off the show really
fidgety. A trumpet player did a very
hesitant solo and everyone looked to see
what kind of a mood Daddy Buddy was
in. But then he hit a couple of fast, tight
tunes and father said, "I'm proud of
you kids." The rest of the set was fan-
tastic-when the kids gel, they can't be
beat.
A piano player showed us what
Casablanca would be like in '83, and the
bassist taught Jamaaladeen a few
tricks.
Other than Buddy, there is only one
other veteran in the band-saxophonist
Steve Marcus. He dazzled the audience
with his incredible solos, possessing
technical virtuosity as well as great
creativity.
Buddy himself was, of course, simply
amazing. He does things that make you
gape and giggle. One would think he's
the youngest guy in the band. Talk
about energy.
The music was punctuated, moody,
and very well mixed. At times each
section sounded like a single voice. At
the end of thedshow Buddy remarked,
"We hope we did some good tonight. If
not, so what." He had reason to be con-
fident, a lot of good was done.
FALL CYCLE CLOTHING AND
EQUIPMENT CLOSE-OUT
15% off
Buddy Rich and his Big Band mixed the old and the new at The Power Center
Monday night.
'ellowman shows his true colors
By C. E. Krell
THERE IS TOO much fat and it
is bad meat to start with. The color
is all wrong; but even if it was green it
wouldn't have to just sit there and swell
like so much water weight-gain. Over-
tone after overtone it just kind of
soaked you in stupid sticky floury
paste, like those impossibly colored
syrups they put on good dead fowl.
If you send an animal into a room
with a very sharp and low ceiling fan,
does that mean you have to stay around
for the death vocal? Chew, chew,
chew . .. No matter how much you bite
this stuff it just won't go away. Almost
cruelly it bulges up into your throat; all
bitter and black and bilious.
Look, I didn't expect the Spanish
Inquisition to take me to their
basement and tie me to a bench and
force a funnel in my throat and just
keep defecating this thing, this stupidly
sour mash. So after a while, it was over,
and somebody broke, and the air was
instantly washed.
After a long weight (wait, who
cares-here they are the same), like
some shapes started to bend them-
selves onto stage. Picture yourself with
aquarium eyes. Look at all the little
fishies. Funny how they just keep flap-
ping away; you see, if those little flaps
stop moving, that means the fish will
die. So its like everything started at a
rolling boil. Little round bubbles at the
bottom of a pot growing bigger and
rising to the surface.
You know, someone once said that the
reason that pioneering rocker Bo Did-
dly never became a star (besides the
race thing) was that all his songs had
}the theme of "I'm Bo Diddley." That is
all they were ever about.
So its like the lactic acids are building
up. Oxygen in the blood begins to
deplete as the star bends over, points a
yellow finger, .and makes some very
germane and appropriate point. The
zmusic stops. He says it, there is a
scream, and the ball starts to bounce
again, just dribbling until they wind it
I again, drop out, and another stirring
ixmaster statement is proposed and
cemented.
Point after the point, then the clutch
is pressed, neutral reigns, and a pop in-
to the rain. Pouring out, the music
boings and bams, little rubber people
stretch and snap, another wry aside.
This process continues and continues,
yet like a good salad it stays crisp,
without all that stupid buttermilk.
Remember those little plastic tops
you wound a string around, pulled on
the string, and off they went, spinning
into the plastic velodrome? The neat
thing was that the more tops in the
drome the more they knocked off each
other and shot off at crazy angles. So
the concert on Monday night was a real
gangfight in that they would group,
break off, regroup, solo, and then go onto
some Jerome Robbins choreographed
steps and struts and wriggle those but-
ts.
Meanwhile, some Third World
Howard Cosell is telling you exactly
what is going on. But unlike Cosell, this
running commentary never paused to
wax philosophical. Check that. Would
the man at the typewriter please
retract the following statement. O.K.
what the commentary was was a
distinctively Marxist (choose our own
first name) judgment of a class
struggle far removed from any
Hegelian dialect.
What he said was just as important as
how he said it. Like Mother Goose, he
seemed perfectly educational and
reflective enough to achieve a certain
muscular inflection known as frown
correction. That's right, not frown in-
jection but correction. He fixed it.
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-BELLWETHER
-ECLIPSE
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KANGAROO
B I UO UIRC
330 s. state, strcet
Daily Photo by DAN HABIB
Yellow fever at The Second Chance.
Damn it, a fixed fight. That's not fair,
having the outcome already deter-
mined before you go in. After a quick
investigation, the committee comes up
with a decision of not guilty. Old Mother
Goose is saved from a life dominated by
guilt complexes.
The art of reportage lives! Class
struggle exists on the stage, and
Yellowman is hailed as the Grimm
brother of the future!
Good direction for True West
By Larry Dean
ASSEMBLING previews from pro-
A motional materials-kind of like
playing an existential game of Scrabble
with Voltaire, Jean-Paul Sarte, and a
hoarde of other dead social
philosophers standing in line and
hoping to beat the champ. Not a pretty
picture, eh? Or at least not pretty to the
average soul. Well, then, you try it, and
see...
See . .. many things ... many
phenomena(s) . . . many sights ... and
sounds. Like Sacramento's True West,
here for the endurance test tonight at
Joe's, 109 N. Main.
r This, as Ronald Reagan would have
you know, is the '80s, not the '60s. But
bothers have taken it upon themselves to
undermine authority and-embracing
II. G. Wells-travel backward in time,
in spirit if not in molecule .. . Back-
ard, like a particularly stunning
Meorge Harrison guitar solo, reeling
and spinning in psychedelic spirals
right out of the club scenes in "Blow
Up.
The Stray Cats and their ilk ain't got
nuthin' substantial in their time-
tripping. If they did, then Slim(y) Jim
Phantom wouldn't be courting this cen-
tury and the next's favorite courtesan,
Britt Ecch!-land. No-they are merely
going through the motions, quite
Like all trends, this 'Psychedelia'
thing is due to die. But in its wake will
be the fittest, surviving. Certain inside
sources spread rumors saying the
Dream Syndicate are near a deal with
Geffen, and their enormous popularity
with live audiences has obviously won
them some good points. Time, our hero,
marches on.
TrueWest are on Bring Out Your
Dead Records, an unassuming Califor-
nia label. Their self-titled debut EP is
co-produced by Snydicate leading man
Steve Wynn, who once flounced around
with some of the Westerners in a group
called the Suspects.
Notorious for their independently-
released single version of "Lucifer
Sam," an old Pink Floyd tune penned
by acid casualty Syd Barrett, True
West contains not only that gem, but
four others: "Steps to the Door,"
"Hollywood Holiday," "It's About
Time," and "I'm Not Here." The attack
is basic-guitars of the four and six-
string type, and drums-a dislike of
synthesizers has been mentioned.
Queen, we fondly recall, made a bid
deal out of it almost ten years
ago ... But True West aren't Queen,
nor are they the Dream Syn-
dicate. . . they are merely.. . them-
selves.
To see is to believe. Non-Fiction
opens.
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