w w w w w. w w 3 7 -W -w- -1w ... .. ...:..:.. .::.:....:.:.... ............x .. ................e.t ur es .:...:. .. .... . . . ... .... r.:. . .....: : . . . . ...... .. . ... ... : return The Ark 1421 Hill Street By Joseph Kraus IF IT WERE lost you might raid it. If it were raining hard you might flock to it in twos. But the Ark, Ann Arbor's premiere folk music showplace, isn't lost, and you shouldn't wait for a rainy day to stop by and hear what it has to offer. From the outside the Ark looks very- much like any of the other houses on Hill Street. It would be easy to pass by without notice - but none of its neigh- bors have quite the entertainment that it does. The Ark has music. Mostly folk, but folk is such a broad category that no two shows are similar. Don't be sur- prised if one evening offers wild har- monica playing, the next guitar- accompanied protest songs and the night after that old-fashioned country fiddling. The oversee/selector of all of this music is Dave Siglin, the Ark's director for the past 15 years. Siglin stressed that there are a lot of talentend young folk musicians who lack nothing more than exposure on some of their seasoned counterparts. "Five years ago we started to make an effort to hire young bands," says Siglin. Case in point is last weekend's highly successful concert by Claudia Schmidt, a young singer and songwriter. The Ark was originally founded in 1965 at its 1421 Hill Street location, by a coalition of four churches. Its original purpose was to serve as a church cof- feehouse and showcase for local bands of any type. Two years later, Siglin and Simple Si mon Paul Simon Hearts and Bones Warner Brothers By Michael Baadke AIFTER THE INITIAL break-up of Simon and Garfunkel in 1970, Paul Simon's solo work continued with con- sistenly high quality. Although his first solo effort was a stylistic break away from the studio perfection of Simon and Garfunkel's last LP, Bridge Over Troubled Water, each successive release Simon further developed his sense of musical sophistication and remarkable originality. His progress hasn't sparked an over- whelming output - Hearts and Bones, Simon's latest release, is only his fifth album of new material in a dozen years - but it is a colleciton of breathtaking stature. Simon has again reached the peak he accomplished with Bridge (coincidentally S&G's fifth album), by achieving virtual perfection in both material and performance. A songwriter first and foremost, Simon constructs his images with laser- like precision. Emotion is caught in the framework of each song with every nuance intact, no matter what form that emotion assumes. His use of language borders on phenomenal, evoking an imagery which is both tightly compressed and stunning in its attention to the finest detail. Simon first announced his plans for this album two years ago, at the time of his reunion concert with Art Garfunkel in Central Park. As that one concert developed into a worldwide tour, Simon's LP, nearing completion, evolved into a Simon and Garfunkel album entitled Think Too Much. War- ner Bros. Records went so far as to issue pre-release information which stated, in part, "An album like his can get a lot of mileage out of historical momentum alone." Simon decided that the songs on this projected LP were of such a personal nature that he should perform them solo. As a result, Garfunkel's tracks were removed from the final version of the LP, now entitled Hearts and Bones. Subsequently, it is no surprise to fine that a theme of romance is woven through most of the compositions. Simon's courtship and recent marriage to Carrie Fisher inspired the album's title cut. One and one-half wan- dering Jews. . . .On the last leg of the journey/They started a long time ago. He describes their position in the relationship as the "arc of a love affair, "as they separate to think things through, but the realization strikes them that Their hearts and their bones. . . /They won't come undone.' There's a sense of completeness in "Hearts and Bones" which turns the song into an eloquent musical fable. In a very different vein, the two songs which share the title "Think Too Much" are deliberately unfinished, under- scoring the fact that for all his ruminations on the head and the heart, Simon's thoughts on the topic are still incomplete. The songs comprise the album's focal point, placing the emotional and the cerebral in conflict, and viewing the struggle first from the outside, and then from within. "Think Too Much (b)," which the listener encounters first, is a passive observation of the thoughts and feelings around him. When it is suggested to him that he gets some rest, Simon agrees: Yeah/Maybe I think too much. It only takes the space of one tune for him to realize he'd been taking the wrong aproach to the conflict. In "Song About The Moon" his aggressiveness is sparked: Wash your hands in dreams and light- ning/Cut off your hair/And Whatever else is frightening. This active approach punches a hard- edged power into "Think Too Much a 9 C c 0 v0 The Ark: Crisler Arena it is not his wife, Linda, took over the operation and ran it as a team until last year when she was forced to take on another job for financial reasons. The First Presby terian church still owns the building and up until last year the Ark was allowed to stay rent-free. Un- fortunately the church owners then decided to either sell or rent the building. Although paying rent weakens the existence of the Ark, it isn't moving just yet. Siglin said "We stayed here because we had been here 15 years ... what we have to find out is, 'is this place viable for the future.' If it isn't we won't buy it." Acording to Siglin, the decision on the purchase of the building won't be made until this spring. Financial crises are nothing new to the Ark. "The Ark always was a small business that was almost on the brink of disaster; unlike other small businesses it survived," says Siglin. Since separating itself from the church, the board of directors at the Ark has taken a more active role than it had previously, and the result has been a more solid financial base. According to Siglin, the Ark averaged 83 percent of capacity last year. "I was thrilled. That was very good and it was very steady." Each year the Ark has a handful of major fundraisers. The granddaddy is their Ann Arbor Folk Festival. Next year's festival is scheduled for February 4, headlined by Dave Brom- berg. Among the many other diverse artists appearing are: Nakaber Feidh, a jazz-fusion band that uses among other instruments, two highland bagpipes; Eclectricity, a two-man one- woman trio that plays a bit of everything; and Peter "Madcat" Ruth, harmonica virtuoso and one-man band. This year saw the birth of a new fun- draiser - the Ark Pub Sing. Featuring John Roberts and Tony Barrand, the Pub Sing was an enormous success bringing in over $3000. Siglin has plans for an even lar'ger'pub stint this year. November and December are par- ticularly big months for the Ark. The schedule is quite full, and the Ark will be open almost six days a week. Highlights include Tom Paxton on December 3, and Chris Williamson in an Ark-sponsored show at the Michigan Theater on November 19. Siglin doesn't foresee any major changes in the Ark's future. He thinks perhaps one day there will be a slightly broader range of entertainment with possibilities ranging from jazz and classical nights to poetry readings. For the most part Siglin seems happy with the way things are now. "I think if we can continue the way we are it will be great . . . If I had an ambition it would be to solidify the Ark so that it would remain for 30 more years." r Simon: Says it without Garfunkel (a)." Simon picks apart his own thought process and takes up the fight himself. There's no real resolution, as there never is between the head and the heart, but Simon suggests there can exist some degree of understanding. The music on this version is like a melodic jackhammer, stinging the senses and kicking life into that fool who thinks he thinks too much. Thoughout the album, Simon's own superb guitar performances are ac- companied by a large and varied cast of excellent musicians, including a sur- prisir featur Steve drum: elude guitar as alv space else c, Pau positic ship, easily year. ----- ----- Snap sti~cks The Jam Snap! Polydor Stew Art 14 By Ben Ticho The bitterest pill is mine to take/IfI sleep for a hundred years I couldn't feel any more pain. -"The Bitterest Pill" OMETHING goes snap - you swallow on Soo many, or one too few - and what is left you, but a broken stick: missing pieces, lost souls, meanings which stay hidden. Some essential part is gone forever and how to live without it? The Jam's last true single (we won't dwell on the empty epilogue of "Beat Surrender") is not so much a surrender as a statement of fact. The beat that began in the city, burrowed un- derground, -and surfaced inevitably in one or another strange towns, sounds beaten. Not beat-up, but beat-tender, as if Rick Buckler beat the bass one beat far enough. Is this a play or a ploy? Is it a syntax sell to sell all the singles in a double album, complete with sinful excerpts from "the authorized biography," wherein Paolo Hewitt sells us on the coolness of Paul Weller? Well, Weller is cool, where Hewitt is not. The Jam were hot cool stuff even before "Going Underground" became Britain's #1 majority dropout anthem. Weller, the hippest mod since '66 Town- shend, knows all the rod cons, but he won't beat you over the head with them. Not, at least, with a broken stick. The Jam beat the Beatles, not in mania but despite mania. The key to anthem in tandem is belief (Weller cries out on the '82 live cry Dig the New Breed: "Belief is all! "), not in anything, certainly not in the parade of little boy soldiers. Weller of the pop mop top still hasn't the naivete of Mc Cartney; he might wish he could be like David Watts, but he couldn't stomach it if he was. And the true believers, whoever they were, didn't ask him to be the head boy; just turn out an occasional track to the modern world suitable for grave head nodding, feet shuffling, and strange swooning. Maybe that was the gift of the Jam (hell, I don't know)-the chance to drive the crossroads of inarguable con- cordance and pithy vinegar acuteness into the pubs, pretense places, and par- ties, to burn the sky to the wasteland at the funeral pyre with all the punk people watching dumbfounded. It all sounds so good. There is a sense of ab- solute beginners knowing if not what to do, then at least how to play it, if only V 0 G IV The Jam: Snap, crackle, and pop "because love is in our hearts." The Jam; make even lobotomy-losers feel living. Then one day, you wake up and snap! you're out of it. A long hot summer passes but yo sel frc depar 1421 Hill: Just like grandma's 4 Weekend/November 1,1--1983 17