ARTS
TheMichigan Daily
Frankie
Tuesday, April 12, 1988
Page 8
Paul
romances dancehall
style
By Todd Shanker
Get ready to throw down your
beach towel, curl your toes in the
hot Jamaican sand, and watch a
cranberry sunset melt into the ocean.
Tonight at the Blind Pig, the leg-
endary Frankie Paul's wave-splash-
ing reggae will transport you to the
Caribbean and refresh your imagina-
tion, as well as your dance-step, like
never before.
Blind since birth, Frankie Paul
has become internationally known as
a sixth-sense creator of good-feeling
Caribbean love songs. As a child
growing up in Kingston, Jamaica,
Paul began to perfect his snake-oil
smooth tunes at the bustling reggae
dancehalls that abound nearly every-
where in the Caribbean. At the age
of 12. Paul won the prestigious
"Kingston Reggae Dancehall Com-
petition" and beat many top
singers such as the famous Yellow-
man and Josey Wales. Through his
teen years, amazing reggae icon
Dennis Brown took Paul under his
wing and was completely fascinated
by his warm sincerity and joy-dipped
dancehall love songs.
In 1984, Paul rose through the
ranks of the Jamaican reggae charts
with his sensational first album Pass
the Tu-Sheng-Peng. By juxtaposing
tight clusters of exotic reggae
rhythm with finely sculpted, sun-
ripened vocals, Paul created an LP
which has come to be known as one
of the all-time great dancehall discs.
In 1985, Paul recorded the excep-
tional Tidal Wave LP - an album
loaded with sultry island sounds and
simple, yet bulls-eye songwriting.
Since Tidal Wave, Frankie Paul has
continually churned out melodic, top
ten reggae-dance hits.Warning,
Paul's latest LP, features his bounc-
ing, marshmallow-soft vocals ac-
cented with thrilling reggae scat-rap
flourishes.
Paul's lightning-charged live
shows have gained an international
reputation, as well. Resembling a
delicate transmutation of School
Daze film director Spike Lee with a
huggable FAO Schwartz Teddy Bear,
Paul's radiant energy is imbued with
jive blasts of movement, his emo-
tional fizz bubbling like seltzer wa-
ter through his highly carbonated
reggae-dance explosions. Audiences
go wild over his little-boy-with-a-
milk-moustache mischief and hyper-
active, ants-in-his-pants delivery.
No one can cajole a romantic
reggae rhythm like the illustrious
inamorato named Frankie Paul. His
magically soulful jams are the
epiphany of the tropical Caribbean
sound. So tonight, get ready to
skank with Frank, as the sorcerer
himself whips the crowd into a
sweltering reggae frenzy.
One mango daiquiri, please!
FRANKIE PAUL will be per-
forming at the Blind Pig tonight.
Doors open at 9 p.m. and tickets are
$8-
a
Records
Frankie Paul
Warning
RAS Records
Since stepping into the gluttonous, lewd-
lipped, slack-shack, DJ-rap ring in 1984,
Frankie Paul has consistently cranked a fireball
of sustenance into this overcrowded reggae
styling. Paul's unmistakable charm and petal-
kissing romanticism has razed the thrones of
such sex-grunge growlers as Yellowman and
Charlie Chaplin, among others. The key here is
sincerity, and Frankie Paul always sings his
Lovers-rock reggae with his innermost feelings
exposed without stooping to sloppy sex ribaldry.
Paul's Warning is another boomerang-beauty
of an LP that will singe Jamaican reggae charts,
snap-and-crackle through the cross-cultural boom
of many African countries, jack the beat in Eng-
land, be virtually ignored in the United States,
and then come flying back into the hands of Ja-
maican Rastafarians in Kingston.
Although it is likely U.S. listeners will con-
tinue to frisbee many hot reggae discs, Warning
deserves more attention as it should appeal to a
wider audience. Examples are "Hungry Belly".and
"Ragamuffin," both buoyant toe-tinglers that
will send droves of skank-tanks onto the dance
floor. On the title track, Paul shreds the dancehall
rhythm with his zipping montages that suggest
parents should try harder to "teach the youth
them right!"
Although Paul's lyrics are at times rhetori-
cally jejune, they are always sensitive, and better
yet, the rhythms are delightfully danceable.
Complete with ice-bong smooth melodies and
sheen gleam DJ-raps, Warning is an easily em-
braceable collection of warmhearted, tropical reg-
gae.
- Todd Shanker
0
Blind since birth, Frankie Paul has become internationally known as
a sixth-sense creator of good-feeling Caribbean love songs.
'Angel City
finale
salvages the show
By Avra Kouffman
The best thing about the University Players'
production of Angel City becomes immediately
apparent upon entering the Trueblood Theatre. Set
designer Robert Weller has created a black, white,
and chrome environment that serves the production's
needs perfectly. Angel City is about the overlap
between films and reality, and Heller's set reflects
this theme.
Heller has positioned a large video screen behind
the actors, and surrounded the screen with mirrors.
This equipment is functional as well as decorative.
The screen displays a variety of film footage, while
the mirrors allow the audience members to carefully
peruse both themselves and the actors.
The added dimension of incorporating film
footage with live theater lends interest to Angel
City. Unfortunately, the actors are often overshad-
owed by the commotion on the screen behind them.
This may have been an intentional choice on the
part of director Patricia Boyette, meant to underscore
the idea that film can be more overwhelming or dis-
tracting than real life or in this case, theatre.
Strangely enough, Angel City is most interest-
ing in its failures. Boyette seems to have planned
the production around the idea of remedying or
masking faults in the original script. When this
tactic isn't successful, one is left wondering where
to place the blame.
Certainly, Shepard's script is ridden with cliches,
but perhaps this is intentional. The play, after all,
centers around the notion that Hollywood is nothing
but a giant cliche-producing factory. One-dimen-
sional characters, however, make for tedious view-
ing; not only for film audiences, but for theatre au-
diences, as well.
Although the play drags at times, it is far from
being a total failure. Production values are generally
strong; the use of makeup, special effects and set
design are outstanding. In general, the cast makes
the most of somewhat limited roles, with Elizabeth
Richmond and Thomas Pasley turning in especially
effective performances.
Angel City may be worth seeing for the last 20
minutes alone. A well-choreographed dance sequence
crescendos into a powerful surprise ending. In this
finale, the production does manage to rise above the
problems of the script.
ANGEL CITY continues its run this Thursday,
Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Trueblood The-
atre in the Frieze Building. There is a matinee on
Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at the
Michigan League Ticket Office or at the Trueblood
one hour prior to performance. Admission is $4 for
students with I.D.
'Au Rev
succeeds
By Andrea Gacki
Tragic historical events generally
inspire great films. For example,
such movies as Richard Attenbor-
ough's Gandhi and Oliver Stone's
Platoon occupy themselves with the
good and the evil insthese events;
both of these films also happened to
be the personal obsessions of their
makers. The obsession of Louis
Malle resulted in his film A u
Revoir, Les Enfants, the story of
the seizure of his Jewish friend from
their boarding school in Nazi-occu-
pied France.
Nominated for Academy Awards
for Best Foreign Language Film and
for Best Screenplay, Au Revoir, Les
Enfants (Goodbye, Children ) was a
ten year cinematic undertaking for
writer, producer, and director Malle.
While the films Gandhi and Platoon
are clearly noble and inspiring en-
deavors that cause gut-wrenching
emotion, Malle's film is simpler,
more insidious, and more delicate -
but no less effective.
The film does not embark upon
an overt moral crusade to expose the
with
oir,
evils of the Germans, but the result
is as though Malle bludgeoned the
criminals that captured his friend.
The rendering of his boyhood
experience is empathetic to the emo-
tions of the boy yet objective in the
reality of the event, and thus A u
Revoir, Les Enfants is an
exquisitely powerful film.
The autobiographical character of
Malle, Julien Quentin (Gaspard
Manesse), is returning to his
Catholic boarding school, a safe
haven for wealthy boys in war-torn
France. He is a smart and seemingly
worldly boy, but he privately aches
to return to his mother in Paris. As
the best student in his class, Julien
meets true competition in the form
of Jean Bonnet (Raphael Pejto), the
strange new boy who stares in won-
der at the religious statues and is in-
capable of reciting a Hail Mary. In
the course of their rivalry, Julien
discovers that Jean's real surname is
Kippelstein and that he is being har-
bored from the Nazis. Jealousy
forces Julien to reveal his knowledge
to Jean, and it binds the two boys as
friends.
The strengths of the performances
of the two child actors propell En-
fants . Pejto as the plodding, fearful
Jean and Manesse as the incorrigible
Julien create a n'ost eloquent friend-
ship. This relationship is the core
and essence of Au Revoir, Les En=
fants, and Malle provokes skillful
characterizations.
An event which changes one's life
is usually, and quite understandably,
altered to exhibit the grandness of the
event. Malle reportedly took some
liberties with his life-changing
experience, such as strengthening the
relationship of the boys, but he does
not destroy the simplicity of it. De-
spite or perhaps because of this sim-
plicity, he deftly succeeds in
conveying the shock and the pathos
of the incident. Au Revoir, Les En-
fants is the embodiment of a great
director's obsession, and his obses-
sion is, in a word, sublime.
AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS
is being shown at the Ann Arbor
Theatre.
Le
s Enfants'
simplicity
0
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DISCOUNT FARE
FROM DETROIT
(WEEKDAY DEPARTURE)
The University of Michigan
School of Natural Resources
Distinguished Speaker Series
Wednesday Aprl 13
Dr. Kerry Walter
Scientist, Arnold Arboretum, Center for Plant
Conservation, Jamaica Plain, Mass.
"Prob'ems for Plant Pollination Caused by
Environmental Pollution"
7:30 p.m.
Matthaei BotanicalGardens
Co-sponsor: Ann Arbor Garden Club
All events free of charge
0
ALL NIPPON AIR
NORTHWEST
UNITED AIR
JAPAN AIR
$750.00
$735.00
$795.00
$850.00
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"We don't want to be the Biggest;
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Tues.
April 12
The University of Michigan
SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Early Music Ensemble
Edward Parmentier, director
Program includes motets by Bach, Schutz,
Gesualdo, others.
Works for wind and mixed ensembles.
Blanche Anderson Moore Hall, 8:00 p.m.
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