The Michigan Daily - Thursday, February 5, 1987- Page 7
'Riders in the Sky' pulls into the Ark
By Wendy Kaplan
It was one of the modern world's
most ferocious and disturbing
rumors. The repercussions were
phenomenal; people from Chicago
to. Maine were in hysterics. The
perpetrator? One Fred LaBour, a
University of Michigan student
who simply got fed up with the
O glorification of pop music (as if it
deserved thoughtful analysis). The
rumor?
"Paul McCartney dead; new
evidence brought to light." So the
headline of the Michigan Daily read
on October 14, 1969.
LaBour, who gained infamy
through his satirical "Paul is dead"
article, has since traded in his
poison pen for an upright bass. His
Nashville-based band, Riders in the
Sky, will be playing at the Ark
Thursday night. LaBour ("Too
Slim" to his close friends) and his
two partners, "Ranger" Doug Green
and Woody Paul, have revived
country music's other half: western
cowboy music. Influenced by Gene
Autry and Roy Rogers, Riders in
the Sky breathes new life into tunes
like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and
"Back in the Saddle Again."
LaBour, in a southern drawl, states
the requirements needed to
appreciate the cowboy song.
"All you need," says Too Slim,"
is a 'B' western mentality."
'B' western is right. Besides
some good fiddling and guitar
picking, the group enters another
realm: comedy. With skits and
characterizations, Riders in the Sky
could give 'Saturday Night Live' a
good kick in the Nielsens.
According to Slim, the group is
more like vaudeville than a musical
act. Aside from renditions of Roy
Rogers and Gene Autry, the group
specializes in yodeling and rope
tricks, In addition, the trio performs
their own original versions of the
cowboy song.
Too Slim's favorite part of the
show, however, is the Varmint
Dancing segment. As a student of
wildlife management at the
University, Slim learned the ins and
out of creative animal expression.
His favorite varmint expres-sion is
the 'Armadillo Dance.'
"If you've ever seen an armadillo
go down on a Nagodoches, Texas
highway, you know what an
armadillo dance is," Slim says.
'A lot of crying women called the Daily and it sold
millions of records for the Beatles.'
Fred 'Too Slim' Labour
real Paul's death through hidden
messages in their music and album
covers.
The evidence on Magical
Mystery Tour was simply too
uncanny to ignore. Notice, Slim
pointed out, the last words in
"Strawberry Fields Forever": "I
buried Paul." Or the fact that
'walrus' in Greek means 'corpse.'
Or the pictures of Paul (really the
look-a-like) on pages 10 and 13 of
the enclosed booklet that show him
in black trousers and no shoes.
Dead men are buried in black
trousers. And they are buried
without shoes.
The article was so convincing
that an entire country mourned, or
at least seriously wondered about,
the death of Paul McCartney.
Fred "Too Slim" LaBour said
goodbye to the Daily with that
article. He has been credited with
fabricating the story in several
Beatles biographies. When asked
how he thinks Paul McCartney
feels about the hoax, Slim replies
simply, "I think I caused him big
headache."
Though his home is now in
Nashville, Slim is anxious to
return to Ann Arbor, the birthplace
of the infamous "Paul is dead"
rumor. Says Slim about the article,
"A lot of crying women called the
Daily and it sold millions of
records for the Beatles."
The article itself was the result
of a record review assignment. Slim
was about to write a review of
Abbey Road when he heard a
bizarre call on a Detroit radio show.
The caller mentioned some strange
lyrics on the Magical Mystery Tour
album, and some strange photos on
the cover of that album. He also
suggested the possibility of
messages hidden in those lyrics and
photos.
Slim saw the light. "There was
always a semi-mystical aura about
the Beatles. The foundation was
there," he says with a laugh. Now
all Slim had to do was write the
satirical article on hidden meaning
in pop lyrics and mass-produced
album covers. What an article it
turned out to be.
A complicated plot made the
article as credible as a death
certificate. According to one Fred
"Too Slim" LaBour, a writer for the
Michigan Daily, Paul McCartney
died in a car wreck in 1966. He was
found beneath his Aston-Martin,
the top of his head "sheared off."
The remaining Beatles constructed
an infallible plan: have a Paul look-
a-like contest in Scotland, mold the
winner into an exact replica of
Pndnrr tha ely ~l he
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STUDENT
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Pack: In praise of poetry
these to symbolize deeper the use of a recognizable setting,
By Lisa Magnino meanings. For instance, in "Prayer often areas of the Northeast, home
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MICHIGAN THEATER
presented by the Comic Opera Guild
"Writing poetry is a happy,
joyous activity for the poet, and,
therefore, reading poetry should
give lightness and pleasure to the
reader as well," says Robert Pack,
who will be coming to the
University as part of the English
Department's Visiting Writers
Series. He will read from his
upcoming collection, Clayfeld
Rejoices, Clayfeld Laments - A
Sequence of Poems. Pack describes
the collection as "a cycle of poems
from birth to death, with a
novelistic aspect."
Pack has taught for twenty years
at Middlebury College in Vermont
and now is the Abernethy Professor
of Literature. In addition, "he is the
director of the Bread Loaf Writer's
Conference, a nationally famous
summer program for professional
~writers. He is a prolific, diversified
writer, editor of several anthologies,
a translation, and two criticisms -
one of Wallace Stevens's work, and
his most recent effort, Affirming
Limits, a collection of essays. He
has also published three children's
books.
First and foremost, however,
Pack is a poet. The author of eight
collections, Pack explains, "I write
Ijjetry for some of the same reasons
that I played football. Obviously, I
have fun with both, but I also
enjoy getting in some tackles now
and then." He also believes in
writing "democratic poetry" which
appeals not only to English majors
but also to the general public.
In communicating with the
public, Pack follows the theory of
one of his influences, Wallace
Stevens, who said, "The ordinary is
what one makes of it." He writes
about everyday experiences but uses
for Prayer, for which he won an
award from The American Scholar,
the common event he describes is
chopping wood, yet this goes on to
refer to man's relationship with
God: "Thank Him for your routine:
feeding the birds in winter, pruning
apple trees in spring; thank Him for
splitting wood."
He also garners mass appeal
through his comic, often ironic
view of these events. Pack asserts,
"Most everything has a comic
element, and successful poetry uses
this comic aspect to bring good
news. His use of language that
"puns, skips, and dances,"
continues this idea.
Pack's poetry is also rooted in
to Pack and to another one of his
influences, Robert Frost. His last
collection, however, Faces in a
Single Tree, is set in Arizona. This
landscape transition is reflected in
"Trying to Separate" - "Not you,
Howard, it's not you I'm leaving,
it's Vermont, the starving deer, the
spring that never comes, the
gloomy ice and clay. I want to go
to Tucson, where stones are red, the
desert light feels red - a gradual,
slow, steady red."
Pack sums up the goal of his
poetry: "My poetry celebrates the
ordinary things which I take
pleasure in, a pleasure which I
hopefully convey to the reader." He
definitely reaches his goal.
U.
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Semi-Formal A ttire:
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Tickets Available in the
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and in the Fishbowl
Feb. 4, 5, & 6th (11-5 p.m.)
Sponsored by MSA, Office of the Vice President
and The Bursley Council.
LSA - Student Government consists of a 17 member executive
council elected by LSA Students every November. On your behalf,
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LSA STUDENT GOVERNMENT
Weekly Meetings Wednesday, 6:00 Michigan Union
Office Hours M-Th 10 - 3
4003 Michigan Union,m 763-4799
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