ARTS The Michigan Daily Monday, October 15, 1984 Page 5 'Boys' not blessed with the inside story By Paul Helgren Bless You Boys By Sparky Anderson Contemporary Books In the aftermath of the Tigers' World Series victory, you might be tempted to buy Sparky Anderson's book, Bless You Boys: Diary of the Detroit Tigers' 1984 Season. Word of warning before you do - it's eight bucks, the same price as a box seat. If you want to pay eight clams for 230 pages of overworked cliches, box scores and publicity photots, then go right ahead. Otherwise, do what I usually do. Spend about two hours in Liberty Newscenter and read the thing for free. Some of the book is at least worth that much effort. Much of it, unfortunately, is not. The problem is that Sparky has been hanging around sports writers for so long that he writes like them. That, as much as I hate to admit it, is not a compliment. Bless You Boys is a game-by-game retread of the 1984 season - sort of. Maybe I got a misprint buy my copy stopped at September 18, the division- clinching game. Wasn't there a World Series or something? 01' Spark may have jumped the gun on this one, don't you think? Look for a second, Series-updated edition to come out before too long. Cynacism aside, this book is not an unenjoyable reading experience. It helped me to better understand the real Sparky Anderson, the man he refers to as George Anderson (Sparky's real 'If you are really my friend, you will never call me Sparky.' -George "Sparky" Anderson The passage describing the funeral is especially heart-wrenching. "Mama whispered to Daddy, 'I'm going to miss you, Ole Pal,' and I knew what friendship was all about," he writes. "Daddy wore his ring and his Tiger shirt proudly. I only wish he had a tran- sistor radio because he loved listening to our games so much." This is Bless You Boys at its best. What is missing in Boys is the inside dope, the stuff that makes baseball books great, the stories that even the baseball writers don't get hold of. If you read the papers this summer you've probably heard most of the good stories in this book. Not that there are a whole lot of interesting baseball yarns here. Typical fare would be, "Danny (Petry) went seven strong innings for the win. Lance Parrish snapped a 2-2 tie with a two-run homer in the seventh. Willie Hernandez retired six straight batters for the save." Nothing like the inside scoop, eh Sparky? The book does a lot of rehasing in this style. I would have much rather read abut the players' personalities, what they say to each other, what they do in their off-time. Of course, as manager Sparky's in a delicate position. Maybe the new book coming out soon courtesy of the Detroit Free Press with a relatively puny $3.95 price tag) will give us more of this. Overall Bless You Boys is a readable and enjoyable book. If I was nine-years- old i probably would've loved it - nice big pictures, short paragraphs, easy words. But I'm looking for something else these days and Bless You Boys didn't really have it. That's okay, though, Spark. If ever a Tiger fan had reason to be forgiving, this istheyear. name). "If you are really my friend, you will never call my Sparky," he says. Okay then. Give George Anderson a .300 batting average for his effort. At one point in the book he reflects on the near-fatal accident his son had in 1983 when he fell off an 800-foot cliff in California. "I went home and looked down that canyon," he says on April 6, the anniversary of the accident. "I remember looking up and saying, 'God, I don't know why you spared him, but I tell You this has changed my life." Later he discusses his father's death. His father died on May 17, in the middle of the Tigers' celebrated hot streak. Anderson puts his father's illness and death in poignant perspective. "Here I am on top of the baseball mountain, but without this one man ... I would never be where I am," he says. Fashion tips for the Michigan By Dennis Harvey Tomorrow at the Michigan Theatre you can dare to defy fashion - or rather, you can wrap yourself in the fashions of yesteryear (1982, to be exact). A double bill of Britishers A Flock of Seagulls and New Yorkers the Qomateens will offer a stiff shot of plain --old frivolous synth-funk-pop for those :unconverted to the currently most- -recognized-as-cool sounds of R.E.M. iand other neo-roots/psychedelic pop bands not above flirting with acoustics, for god's sake. The whole synth things seems to have really got going in early '81, when the phrase "Punk is dead" was already a cliche and the logical alternative to 4'nihilism seemed a complete roll in hedonism and artifice. In Britain they called it Blitz, by the time it got ,,stateside (and was officially post- ,,mortem in the U.K., of course) it had Obeen dubbed the New Romantic ,novement. The look (which seemed a good deal more interesting than the accom- ,panying music, at least initially) was a -waver's costume ball, ranging from period (pirates courtesy of Adam and 'the Ants, Edwardian, '50's, et al) to the revisited Many Faces of David Bowie - glamour plushed to the brink of grotesquerie, anthing could go as long as it was too much. The sound was, fit- "tingly, not music to pogo by, or even work up much of a sweat to. The em- phasis was on cool synth-based dance -tracks not all that far removed from the standard ten-minute '70's disco slab, with just enough eccentricity around '4he edges and enough poppiness to lend }them a vague wave sensibility. Though the New Romantic movement ,did little in the U.S. beyond win a lot of skeptical magazine space and a fast ~,practical death, it signalled a gradual olub swing back toward the dance- and look-consciousness that punkers had :rejected from the disco era. And it created a lot of attention for --anew music stars, who either were ,produced by or benefited from the sud- ,,gden importance of dance hits and 12- --inchers to a previously disinterested #-audience - the Human League, the Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, et al. Some of the emergent personalities sank back in the depths of Soho lofts or wherever they came from, like Visage (fronted by Blitz mannequin Steve Strange), and many of the early efforts by bands who've survived sound pretty painful now. Still, the dance ethic is apparently here to stay, and a few bands will remain working essentially in the syn- thedancepop genre are capable, like Heaven 17 or The the, of creating some of the best music around. Whether A Flock of Seagulls can overcome their particular limitations seems no clearer now, with the release of their third album The Story of a Young Heart than it was in 1982 when "I Ran" and "Space Age Love Song" took them from nowhere to the top of the dance charts. An all-male quartet, the Flock came to America for what was intended to be a brief tour, promoting their self-titled debut LP, and they wound up staying the better part of a year. Overnight successes aren't always enviable; at some later point, you ac- tually have to live up to them. The Flock's 2nd LP, Listen, did not succeed in persuading many people to do just that, and the fact that their Michigan Theatre concert was rescheduled three times leads one to suspect that just maybe the whole world isn't dying to see this band just now. The new Story of a Young Heart is slickly produced in the extreme, but it shares the fault of too many fabricated synth band-albums in that its cathedral of sound houses only a dinky population of unthought-out melodies and insufficient hooks. Still, records are one thing and con- certs are another. And the word is that the Flock, on their previous U.S. ap- pearances, have had a lot more energy and punch as a live band than one would suspect. The New York trio Comateens have, on vinyl at least, a much fresher, funkier approach to synthpop, and their bottom-of-the-bill slot may well be wor- th the whole ticket. After an intriguing self-titled debut (featuring a version of the theme from "The Munsters") LP/ on the Cachalot label, they signed with Polygram and had a major dance floor hit with "Get Off My Case" from the Pictures on a String album. Pictures, Subscribe to The Daily Phone 764-0558 The Comateens promise to offer a fresher and funkier approach to pop than their counterparts, A Flock of Seagulls, at the Michigan Theater tomorrow night. like its current follow-up LP Deal With It, is unusually strong white funk, neatly balancing beat with a solid sense of pop melody. Comateens never get mired in excessive production glitz, nor that typical bane of unnecessary track length; they produce a solid four or five minutes of poppy but hard-edged funk at nearly every shot, with a fullness of sound unusual for a relatively unador- ned bass/lead/synth combo. On Deal With It, they get help from both a real live drummer and a mechanical one - we'll have to see which shows up tomorrow night). Though never silly, the Comateens are much too dance- happy to fit in very well with the various trends of the moment, but their set may be one of the year's better major opening acts. If nothing else, this is one night of music you definitely will be able to dance to. Tickets are $13.50 and can be purchased at the Union, various other CTC outlets, and at the Michigan door. Don't be late - these Michigan Theatre concerts have been starting bewilderingly on time. $ w ONJOSTENS Cow COLLEGE RINGS. A ~ -$- Why Settle for Less? Present your meal card and we'll give you $2.50 off any entree. No lines. No waiting. Make reservations and plan on treating yourself right. 763-4648. A candlelight dinner with superb food and professional table service. In the Terrace Room of the University Club, elegant dining from 5:00-9:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday evenings. The Dinner Club is a private facility for students, faculty, staff, alumni, and their guests. Only members may purchase alcohol. Cottage Inn Brings You Two Great Pizzas for One Low Price. Two 12" pizzas with cheese $6.97+Tax $1.25 per additional item Not Available at William St Two 14" pizzas with cheese $8.90+Tax $1.50 per additional item . r " . Restaurant or Cottage Inn Cafe. See your Jostens representative.