Page 8 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, November 8, 1985
UNIVERSITY OFMICHIGAN
SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Concert Postponement
Faculty recital with Camilla Wicks,
violin, and Martin Katz, piano, sched-
uled for Sunday, November 10, has
been postponed and will take place on
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1986
8:00 P.M., RACKHAM AUDITORIUM
B b bbbad to the Bone
By John Logie
If You've Ever Been
Arrested for Scalping Low Numbers At A Deli, Worked As A Narrator For
Bad Mimes, Experienced Amnesia And Deja Vu Simultaneously, Proof-
read For A skywriting Company, Noticed The Expiration Date On Your
Birth Certificate, Glimpsed A Subliminal Advertising Executive, Has A
Speed Reading Accident, Called Information To Find Your Socks, Vapor-
ized A Dog With Spot Remover, Or Seen Norman Rockwell Beat Up A Child,
Then You Need To See An Evening Of Comedy With Steven Wright.
WINB
WELCOMES
STEVEN
WRIGHT
Friday
Nov. 22 '
7:30 at the 4
POWER CENTER
Tickets available at the Michigan Union Ticket Office
and all Ticket World outlets.
CHARGE-TICKETS-BY-PHONE Call 763-TKTS
A MAJOR EVENTS PRESENTATION
n S
.~
j -_
/ s
R 6
a
:M -eia M S ~ c qs
An offEvvs'/C. reo wh4i e\°
UAA
O I
~CAae heiiA Sl c nq s6L11q ho Cri7 oc
UNIVERSIT
S CANT SECONDS before he
hurled himself into a knot of com-
pressed, skanking fans, Fishbone
keyboardist Chris Dowd intoned the
lyrics, "Look at us, we came to have a
good time." Rick's doesn't really
allow true stage diving. The stage is
about a foot off the floor. The dance
floor is woefully thin and cramped,
and anyone who attempts a stage dive
is running the risk of piling into a
hard, wooden, fence-like structure
that surrounds the bar.
But that didn't stop Dowd. What's
more, the over-enthusiastic tossing-
about he received from the crowd
didn't keep him from scrabbling back
onto the stage to resume his portion of
the song without missing a beat.
During Wednesday night's show,
Fishbone was constantly butting up
against the outer limits. They swung
and whipped their instruments
around at their own physical peril.
They drove the cramped dance-crowd
to fervent frenzy, throwing to the
winds any sense of respect for their
equipment - which was subjected to
quite a beating. But while things were
at times intense, depraved, and
violent, Fishbone always made their
music the first priority.
Visually the show was chaotic. A
deaf man would never assign musical
consistency and quality to the sights
of Wednesday night's show. Sax
player Angelo "The Missing Link"
Moore was constantly in motion, with
split leg leaps and drops; and this
from a man whose hairstyle more
closely resembles that of a cartoon
character than that of a real human.
Trumpet player and screamer Dirty
Walt towered over the crowd, and
slashed his trumpet to the mike for in-
termittent blasts. The band constan-
tly throbbed, barely remaining within
the confines'of the too-small stage.
But throughout the entire hour-and-
Records
(Continued from Page 7)
It's fueled by terrificly mad lyrics
about taking revenge on an old
girlfriend: from a candlelight din-
ner to the city burning down, I'll
listen to the firemen while I toast
your town.
Swamp Thing gets even wackier
when they talk romance and
revolution as "Beautiful Com-
Daily Photo by JAE KIM
Fishbone members (left to right: Chris Dowd, Angelo Moore, Dirty Wat, and Norwood Fisher)
caught in (for them) a rare and introspective moment.
a-half that Fishbone played, they
didn't once miss a note because they
were so busy having a good time. It's
astonishing that a band as young and
explosive as Fishbone is can still
maintain a sense of respect for their
music.
This is important for them, because
their music warrants respect. The
band has pumped new life into the ska
and pre-rap-70s-hard-funk genres, but
their songs never fall easily into those
or any other genre; as the band has a
knack for layering and mixmastering
musical styles.
Bizarre juxtapositions abound.
"Alcoholic" opened with mournful,
drunken harmonizing, before
careening into hopped-up ska-thrash.
"Bonin'," a heavy, George Clinton-
ish groove monster song, features an
a capella break. "Voyage to the Land
of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts,"
featured Dowd exhorting guitarist
Special K to inject a heavy metal solo,
and the resulting diddles prompted
mass genuflection.
Dowd does deserve special
recognition for his antics. While he
plays trombone and keyboards, two
instruments that limit mobility
severely, he proved to be the wildest
member of the band. At the keyboard
he pulsed and throbbed, ricocheting
off the back wall. At one point he
hunkered beneath the synthesizer
while he played, resembling a
chained prisoner. His trombone was a
swooping weapon.
When Dowd was encumbered only
by a microphone, he was
irrepressible. He defused a fight in
the crowd by urging the participants
to, "be mellow dudes, good
vibrations, y'know?" Dowd later
resorted to the old microphone
masturbation routine, but in the con-
text of his alternatively impish (yes,
impish!) and obscene behavior it was
quite entertaining. Dowd is like a bad
actor who shamelessly steals scenes,
but does so with enough wit and
cleverness to ultimately be more en-
tertaining than his part as written.
The big Fishbone juxtaposition is
the pairing of serious political and
social messages with dance music.
The band managed to balance the
party atmosphere 'with these
messages, without ever becoming
overbearing, and that, perhaps, was
their greatest success.
munists," and then turn ultra-
capitalist on the hilariously sarcastic
"Island Song."
On Side Two, the title track lets you
(and the bongos) thrash to your heart's
content, while the somewhat funky
"Little Noises in the Night" is there to
remind you of your childhood horrors
And leave it to Swamp Thing to be the
ones reminding us it's a long way
from the tenth floor to the gound
in "Slightly Broken"-a song which sounds
like Hall and Oates gone insane while
campaigning against suicide.
The side ends with the cannibalistic
throw-away, "I Love Children." The
playing is fast and crooked. The
musicianship is sometimes slightly
blurred around the harsh angles, but
they hold up really well under the
rhythmic pressure. They sound
tighter on the side's other ripping
number "21 lbs in a 10 lb Box" -
probably the album's best track,
musically.
Swamp Thing seems to offer ra
uniquely humorous approach to their
music (which carries on in the same
tradition as our own now-defunct
Civilian Fun Group), but they sound
somewhat restrained, or constrained,
ratter, by being on record. L1d
imagine they'd be a great time live 4-
and they have received enthusiastic
press for their home-town as well as
recent East Coast performances.
HANDEL
ORATORIO
JUDAS MACCABEUS
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1985
4 P.M.
CHANCEL CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA
SOLOISTS
Daniel Vines, tenor
Julia Broxholm, soprano
Nada Radokovich, soprano
Jo Anne Desmond, soprano
Sally Carpenter, contralto
Stephen Bryant, bass-baritone
Marilyn van der Velde, organist
Carol Leybourn Janssen, harpsichordist
Donald Bryant, conductor
First Presbyterian Church
1432 Wash tenaw Ave., Ann Arbor
I N CO0 NT C E R T
MICHAEL W SMITH
. -Beth Fertig
Carlos Montoya
guitarist
"... a master performer,
a unique, exciting star."
- New York Herald-Tribune
Saturday,
November 9,
TICKET STUBS
WORTH MONEY?
You bet, at Domino's Pizza
your U of M football ticket stu
is worth $1.00 on any pizza
order with one or more items
OFFER GOOD ON HOME GAMES ONLY.
Not good with any other offer or special.
Ticket stubs expire the first Thursday
after the game (i.e. Purdue vs. Michigan
ticket stub good until November 14, 1985) _ r
b
'Al
4o~ViA
)J"a 3M
" ' 1 111L1 LtiJ 1 i iL 1 V V 1l 1 i 1L l 1L LLL 1
+.
A.