.4 ARTS The Michigan Daily Friday, January 20, 1984 Page 7 Montage has good image By Barb Schiele H ERE IT IS; a weekend in Ann Arbor ... again. You're up for a little socializing, a few beers, and good dan- cing, but kind of sick of the same old thing. Well, you could go sweat on a 2'x4' dance floor a half a foot away from the band, or maybe go groove under the disco lights to the "Thriller" video one more time, but doing something a bit different sounds appealing. What about going to hear good, progressive music in an area spacious enough to dance to the tunes, or to just sit and talk without screaming to be heard? Finally, someone has done something to satisfy your desires; Howard Stern and Andy Sriro have taken this ideal atmosphere, put it in the rectangular space above the Heidelberg Restaurant on Main Street, and have called it Club Mon- tage. This new bar, offering alter- native entertainment to all of Ann Ar- bor, makes its grand opening this Saturday night. Montage is unconnected aspects of a film combined to create one complete scene. Club Montage? It's a com- bination of different music drawing dif- ferent people together for one reason. The bar will attract this variety because of the music it offers. "We play modern, progressive. dance music-Funk," Stern said. Because the area is "acoustically perfect," any average bar-goer can listen and dance to the "high-tech" music at one end of the bar, or go sit and talk at the other end. "We wanted to be different-we're a dance club, with a bar," Sriro said. There will be a disc jockey this weekend, but Stern and Sriro look forward to developing a club that will feature special events, in- cluding live bands. Ann Arbor, being the culture repository of the Midwest, needed something a little different. Club Mon- tage, Stern and Sriro hope, will :fe totally different from anything local. "There's just so much entertainment offered around here," Stern believes, and "dancing is the best type of social activity." They've combined dancing with a type of music not yet available here in town in order to "spread tIhe musical culture." This "alternative entertainment choice (which is) primarily for studep- ts" was planned before winter break. However, the big effort came within the past few weeks. Despite the recent, ex- cessive amount of pressure coming from all sides, Club Montage is now ready and waiting to be experienced by all of Ann Arbor. So do something a little different this weekend; experience the open at- mosphere that breaks the mold of the typical bar scene and come dance to the funky tunes at Club Montage. There, is a $2 cover charge and the doors open at 9 p.m. on Saturday night. Philip Baker Hall as Nixon expiates his guilt in Secret Honor: The Last Testament of Richard M. Nixon at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre this weekend. Nixon tells h issecret By Susan Makuch I T'S DIFFICULT to find anything honorable in the character of Richard Nixon, especially during the much-chronicled Watergate years. But authors Donald Freed and Arnold Stone sought to uncover the secret honor that every human possesses-whether it be self-justification or exposure of the truth. Even Nixon, the questionable charac- ter that he is, must be human enough to need a sense of honor. Secret Honor: The Last Testament of Richard M. Nixon, appearing through tomorrow night at the Mendelssohn Theater, concentrates on one man-the man-and his struggle with his past. Phillip Baker Hall, fresh from a critically-acclaimed Off-Broadway run in the same role, portrays Nixon in a manic-depressive hysteria that seems typical of the former president. The one-man play begins with a pen- sive Nixon contemplating his life in a very presidential-looking study. After fumbling with the ever-present tape recorder, Nixon-the lawyer-begins the defense of his client-Nixon, the ex- president. "Your Honor, my client has had to suffer life-long punishment," he pleads to an unresponsive tape recorder. Others have lied and cheated, he professes, but these people haven't been caught. Watergate was "nothing more than a convenient hook on which to hang my client," he yells. Here we have a crazed, suffering man just letting loose in the privacy of his own home. Hall is superb in his por- trayal of the dehumanized Nixon. He uses no cheap Rich Little imitation to draw the audience into his performan- ce. Hall's ability to hover on the edge of sanity creates a character that resem- bles Nixon but in fact, could be about any power-hungry maniac. Hall, a veteran of television and stage productions, gives a three-dimensional quality to a character many of us only know second-hand from books or newspapers. Whether Nixon was-or is-sane is not the question (Secret Honor is a fictionalized look at the for- mer president's life after politics), Hall portrays a man in desperate straights-any one of us might act in the same manner given the extraor- dinary circumstances. His unadulter- ated ramblings make it un- comfortable and difficult to watch Nixon justify his entire life. Secret Honor comes to Ann Arbor, courtesy of director-in-residence Robert Altman. He discovered the play at the Los Angeles Actor's Theater and loved it so much that he decided to in- vest some capital in the production and take it to Off-Broadway. It garnered much critical acclaim there before Altman made the decision to film the play. . Altman says he "just loved the play," and thought it would make an in- triguing motion picture. He plans to film the movie on location at Martha Cooke Dormitory next week. According to Altman, Secret Honor is "real theater" which fascinates audiences and critics alike. Con- sidering the general fascination with Richard Nixon, it's no wonder Secret Honor entices the public. Records Paul McCartney-'Pipes of Peace' (CBS/Columbia) The same young man who led the 1960s through a period of radical social change, who arranged and co-wrote the music for that yet-unbettered album Abbey Road, and who penned his name to more top singles in the 1970s than anybody else has recently released a new album of mushy, melodic songs as a follow-up to his 1982 masterpiece, Tug of War. One listening is all that is needed to ascertain that the new LP, Pipes of Peace, is definitely not another flawless work. In fact, most periodicals thus far (Rolling Stone, in particular) have panned the new release, calling it nonsensical drivel. But one. must remember that Paul McCartney's wor- st albums still rank with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in comparison with even the finest works of a Def Leppard or a Loverboy. Even though, as a product, the new LP may not be quite so formidable as others currently on the market and does not contain anything that might be labelled as "vintage McCarthy," it nonetheless presents its listeners with several catchy new tunes and fun coun- ter melodies characteristic of their creative composer. In general, the album is listenable and entertaining. It would be a minor tragedy if anybody, once intent on purchasing Pipes of Peace, was frightened off by the excessively harsh pen of Rolling Stone record critic Parke Puterbaugh. As usual, the lyrics are strongly deemphasized and serve as nothing but a vocal punch to his instrument-orien- ted talents. In this case, however, an album of "la-la-la's" might have been more worthwhile. For instance, in one silly love song, "The Other me," Mc- Carthy serenades his girlfriend with the following stanza: I know I was a crazy fool / For treating you the way I did / But something got a hold of me / And I acted like a dustbin lid. How a dustbin lid acts is apparently left up to the listener. The typical assembly of McCartney troops (Stanley Clarke, Ringo, Steve Gadd, and Michael Jackson) all lend a hand somewhere on the album and give it that "all-star" aura. Disregard the vocals and appreciate the craftsm4n- ship, the melodies, the genius of Paul McCartney; and the album becomes a worthwhile collection. -Andrew Porter EST 1973 CUSTOM LEATHERS 611 S. FOREST AVE. ANN ARBOR, MICH. 48104 (313) 665-5575 20% OFF. Sheepskin Hats and Selected Briefcases * "Gimme a D Gimme an A Gimme an " "".L" Y 4 >., Y4 Give the MICHIGAN DAILY that old college try. CALL 764-0558 to order your subscription Tragedy strikes living room The truth must be known. "Three's Company" may no longer bring erudition and intriguing character analysis into our living rooms. Yes, four co-stars, Joyce DeWitt, Priscilla Barnes, Richard Kline and Don Knotts, are leaving the ABC-TV series. Replacements have not been named. This admirable series will be sorely missed. It tried, with integrity, to por- tray, realistically, the trials and tribulations that occur when two women and one man live together. Fur- thermore, it successfully skirted the menage a trois issue and substituted tame and pleasant family dialogue. I know that the many friends that I have in similar living arrangements say that "Company" tells it like it is. Why is Don Knotts smiling? Maybe he has exciting plans for the future. Like former "Company" star Suzanne Sommers, Knotts may opt to join Ace Hardware or pose for an up-coming Playgirl feature. Whatever he does, he and his cronies will always hold a special place in our hearts. NEW YEAR'S ADDITIONS TO OUR ALREADY COMPLETE LINE .. . FOLLETT'S WE'VE GOT THE SHARP- EST "THIN MAN" WALLET-SIZE WITH 32 SCIENTIFIC FUNCTIONS Full-featured scientific calculator with built-in statistics functions. MODEL EL-509ABT ONE STEP ADVANCED A Scientific Calculator Incorporating Basic Command Keys for Easier Computing. 2.2K-byte RAM for memorizing 26 programs and 1400 steps. MODEL EL-5500 Knous ... still smiling .U! L ;7 l 1G I (~MI J L.. THE CALCULATOR WITH DIRECT FORMULA ENTRY THAT WRITES AN EQUATION AND REMEMBERS IT. Slim Programmable with 24-Digit Dot Matrix Alphanumeric Display/Direct Formula Entry. Playback > rs, t "a E " . MODEL EL-5100ST W^ ETTr't