4 Page 8 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, April 10, 1987 Records Various Artists The New Bluebloods Alligator Otis Rush Right Place, Wrong Time Hightone Both Alligator and Hightone have played important roles in the recent blues resurgency. Hightone, through the signing and continued production of Robert Cray; Alligator via their 17 years of consistently fine releases by many of Chicago's finest. Alligator built its reputation through high production values and a stable of long time Chicago blues greats, including Son Seals, KoKo Taylor, and James Cotton. Now the label is spreading the wealth around. The New Bluebloods features ten of Chicago's best unrecorded and underecorded blues artists, many album serves to illustrate the several directions in which the blues have branched from their country delta and electric Chicago origins. Tracks range from Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials rollicking bar- room stomp "Young Thing" to the Professor's Blues Review with Gloria Hardiman's .gospel tinged "Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On" to the rockish, evi - dently Hendrix inspired Melvin Taylor and the Slack Band's "Depression Blues." Virtually any three songs could have been picked for contrast. All are played with originality, skill, and feeling. Each also receives excellant production. The New Bluebloods is an exciting reminder that the blues are alive, well and progressing just scant years after The New York Times declared them to be dead. It is no secret to blues fans that Otis Rush is one of the genre's top guitarist/vocalist/bandleaders. Unfortunately however, bad luck, bad deals, and bad production have made it virtually impossible to obtain a decent Rush recording. Until now. Y Hightone has seen to the rerelease and wide distribution of this fabulous album, originally recorded, though never released, for Capitol in 1971. Rush had to 4 bargain with the company to buy back the tapes .and Right Place, Wrong Time was finally released by Bullfrog Records in 1976 and quickly went out of circulation. With an excellant big band, featuring a tight horn section and production assistance from ex Electric Flag vocalist Nick Graventines, Rush sparkles and displays the intensity for which both his playing and singing are known. Rush proves the blues maxim, "It's not how many notes you play, q = it's how you play them." Just, check out the conviction with' which he sings "Three Times a Fool" or the force of his guitar solo: on "Natural Ball." There's not a:: wasted note on this album. Right Place, Wrong Time is a fine recording of a giant talent at the height of his musical prowess.. A must-own for any serious blues fan. Death of Smamantha will be music. By Mike Rubin Value Village shoppers beware. Homestead recording artists and tacky dressers Death of Samantha will attempt to set fire to the Halfway Inn tomorrow night in their first Michigan appearance; so those of you with incendiary 17acron leisure suits, pea green 4crylic grandfather sweaters, and naugahyde mptorcycle jackets better trade your flammables in for some flame retardants before Cleveland's liiggest export since the Michael Stanley Band hit the stage at 9 p.m.. The Ohio four-piece has taken great strides (in Gene Simmons platforms, of course) since their, inauspicious debut at a Parma, Ohio, Ground Round restaurant where lead wailer/ guitarist John Petkovic worked three years ago. (The hastily arranged anarchic gig lasted all of 15 minutes, and left a supper crowd of middle-aged breadwinners tossing their cookies, popcorn, and peanut shells on the meals in front of them. Petkovic was fired the next day.) Since then, the band has released a greasy- handful of singles around the Cleveland area, the 1985 Homestead LP Strung Out On Jargon, and the e at the Halfway Inn tomorrow night with trashy clothes and trashy 1 Th rash, outstanding 1986 EP Laughing In the Face of a Dead Man . The garagey group, heirs-by- default to the underground legacy of Cleveland legends like Pere Ubu and the Pagans, derived their macabre moniker from the embryonic extravaganza as well. "Our drummer Steve-,O came up with the most obnoxious but cool thing to put up on that Ground Round marquee," says Petkovic. "We kept it to appease him, considering he has no other fune - tion in the band besides playing drums. Drummers usually need something else to keep them going, anyway." The portly skins-beater, whose age "lies anywhere between 14-38" joked Petkovic, is the object of much, (dubious) affection in Cleveland, where a "Steve-O Fan Club" of over 150 members was organized. "He's kind of a pathetic hero to a lot of people," said Petkovic,"so the club almost got bigger than Steve-O was. He had to go on one of his eating binges to surpass the club's size, and it's been downhill for membership ever since." On stage in front of the dinosaur-sized drummer, D.O.S.' cacaphonous chaos rages like a pre- trash Red Adair forest fire. Petkovic's voice whines like a shrill wind whipping through ancient awnings, sarcasm dripping from his yawning mouth like castor oil on a too-big wooden spoon with splinters. Glam-rock guitarist Doug Gillard and Ron Howard-clone bassist Doug James punch holes in the audience's armor with their axe- jousting: feverish fret notes bending like pipe cleaners around their straight-ahead song structures, causing melodies to pour off and bead like pearly-dew-drops drops. These rock 'n' roll Lancelots in shiny polyester have yet to grace this side of Lake Erie's shores because, "We've been asleep," said Petkovic. Their next album, Where the Women Wear the Glory and the Men Wear the Pants, will be released later this year and should make them "humungous, bigger than Blue Oyster Cult," predicted Petkovic. The group is looking forward to their local debut, as Ann Arbor brings to their minds, "images of Bo Schembechler and the Stooges". The wash-and-wear warriors will do battle tomorrow night at East Quad's Halfway Inn at 9 p.m., with Chicago crunge-rockers Bloodsport opening up. Admission is $5; absolutely no bottles or alcohol allowed. STUDENTS" do you need r ' SUMMERRSTORAGE OR 127th Annual Spring Concert Tomorrow night at Hill Auditorium, the University Men's Glee Club will perform various works ranging from opera to sea chanties to classical, and, of course, Michigan songs. Performance time is scheduled for 8 p.m. 1 ', 061, I r -. 2 Be hip! Be cool! Be groovy! l g2 gV HAIR1 YOUR BAC K ITEMS SHIPPED HOME call DESIGNERS. FACIAL SALON . NAIL SERVICES COSMETICS. WAXING. PEDICURES division of NIOVJNG & STORAGE CO. f 704- .t4Icc Join the Summer Daily Arts staff. Be part of the happening crowd! The Michigan Daily Arts page. It's more than a job. It's Art. Look for announcements for our upcoming mass meeting. 747-8787 Mon - Fri: 9:30 - 7:00 Sat: 9:30 - 4:00 1220 S. UNIVERSITY ANN ARBOR, MI 48104 ,' ONNOMM ENSIN 1987 YEARBOOK PICK-UP Starting Tuesday, April 14 They may be picked up at Student Publications Building, Aprl Power and the Abstract IT IS YOUR KARMA TO BE READING THIS NOW. When you woke up this morning you didn't begin your day as though it was the first ; day of your life. No. Everything you met with today was the result, directly or indirectly, of something you did yesterday, or some other day earlier. This is precisely how the- concept of karma and reincarnation is to be understood. We do not enter this earth life as though it was our first life on this planet. Rather, we are born into definite families, at a definite place and time, with definite talents and predispositions. In fact, according to the concept of karma and reincarnation all ; the events and people that come to meet us in this earth life are the results of our g activities in previous earth lives.4 And just as what we do today will affect what we do tomorrow, so too will this affect our next incarnation. If this is true, try to imagine the consequences. You will find a completely new and Western approach to the concept of Karma * Reincarnation in two of Rudolf Steiner's basic books, Occult Science, An Outline and Theosophy. "Read Theosophy," said Saul Bellow in a Newsweek interview, "it will make your hair stand on end." Available from the Anthroposophic Press (use coupon). Borders Bookstore 303 S. State, or the Rudolf Steiner Library at 1923 Geddes Ave. (662-9355) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- z Yes, send me: Theosophy at $6.95 + $1.75 p & h (total $8.70) 0 Occult Science, An Outline at $9.95 + $1.75 p & h (total $11.70) 0 (Please check box with quantity desired.) 10 Friday 7:30 pm The Abstract as Anxious Will to Power Donald Kuspit, Depts. of Art History and Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook 8:30 pm Response Thomas Crow, Dept. of the History of Art Open discussion 11 Saturday 9:00 am The Abstraction of a Lady Mary Anne Doane, Semiotics Pro- gram, Brown University (See April 6 & 8 for showings of 'LA Signora di Tutti.') 10:00 pm Praxis Interruptus: Feminism and Postmodernism Laura Kipnis, Video Artist, Michigan Society of Fellows