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The Poppies: Rock'n'

roll terrorists

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By Nabeel Zuberi
There's a venerable tradition of
vulgarity in the English language. In
Britain, humor of the lavatorial kind,
sexual double-entendre and swearing
in general, are much more prevalent
than in America."Smite me with
thine piss pot," wrote Chaucer back
in ye olden days, and that sense of
artful crudity has continued through
the "Carry On" series of movies to
the fabulous Viz magazine today.
Pop Will Eat Itself proudly take
their place beside Buster Gonad and
his unfeasibly large testicles, Sid the
Sexist, and Biffa Bacon. Pop Will
Eat Itself (the Poppies, to all their
mates) are sometimes"a musical fin-
ger stuck down the throat of the lis-
tening public, sometimes an anal
emission wafting up listeners' nos-
trils. Yep, simply put and figura-
tively speaking, the Poppies thrive
on getting up your noses.
Spewed forth in the West Mid-
lands - land of Robert Plant, Ozzy
Osbourne, the Moody Blues and
Slade - the Poppies began releasing
zippy Buzzcocks-style power pop,
despite looking like yet another
Birmingham heavy metal band. They
were at the forefront of Grebo rock, a
movement of unwashed, long haired
blokes with their fuzzboxes turned
up to the max. Fellow smelly (piss)
artists included Gaye Bykers On Acid
and Crazyhead.
Then the Poppies heard Public
Enemy and Eric B. & Rakim, and

speeches, movie themes and loads
and loads of samples of old records.
You can have great fun playing
"Name That Tune" with Pop Will
Eat Itself. The single "Can U Dig It"
namechecks all their heroes -
AC/DC, Dirty Harry, comic book
artist Alan Moore and countless
others - over music that can only
be described as Acid Metal House.
As rock 'n' roll terrorists, the
Poppies are more effective than the
conceptually similar Justified An-
cients Of MuMu because they
juxtapose samples more surrealisti-
cally and frenziedly. Their rapping
isn't quite as jarring either. "I'm a
boy without a soul/No hard love, no
worldly goal," chants vocalist Clint
during the nihilistic piss- take/leg
pull "Inject Me." The highlight of
the album is the 45, "Def Con 1"'
where the art of sampling is prac-
tised to perfection. The words "Big
Mac, fries to go/Gimme Big Mac,
fries to go" take on mantra-like im-
portance as bits of Lipps Inc.'s disco
classic "Funkytown," the guitar riff
from The Osmonds' "Crazy Horses,"
Rod Serling, and a Temptations
drum roll scatter everywhere. On the
incredibly safe "Not Now James
(We're Busy)" the Poppies make fun
of James Brown's predicament, re-
counting the car chase incident, as
well as commenting upon the hip
hoppers who seem to sample only
James (and James alone).
See Poppies, Page 9

Poniewozik
Continued from Page 8
"Dungeons and Dragons": contrary
to popular belief, D&D aficionados
do not, end up electrocuted while
chasing basilisks in subway tunnels.
Life is not so kind. Instead, they end
up unable to derive pleasure from
anything except watching "Dr. Who"
reruns and annoying the hell out of
people at Monty Python movies by
quoting every line in sync with the

film.
So what did I eventually buy,
you wonder? A dart gun target set. I
never got to play with it, and I'm
sure, soft rubber tips or not, she'll
find a way to lodge them in some-
body's eye socket. But they did meet
Jim's Third, and most important,
Cardinal Rule: It must be marked
down by at least $10.

House
Continued from Page 7
was so raw in the beginning, House
can only get more sophisticated,
more commercialized," Thomas said.
He mentions that Top 40 artists like
Jody Wately and El DeBarge are
commercializing "something that
was happening about 10 years ago."
In addition, Top 40/pop artists
like Paula Abdul and Madonna are
using more house music. Although

-W

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he predicts more house on the radio,
he said he doubts the average listener
will recognize the house elements in
the tunes. "I think when they hear
this, they're not going to realize that
this is really house music."
Thomas also notes that a lot of
big companies are releasing house
versions of records and that major
record companies like Jive, Virgin

a
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II


Shepard
Continued from Page 4

the play, Shepard stresses the need of
"musical 'themes' to open and close
the acts." "All I ask," he wrote, "is
that there be music and that the mu-
sic serve to suppport the emotional
values discovered by the actors in the
course of rehearsal." Local com-
poser/playwright/songwriter Jay
Stielstra will fill that obligation in
the AACT production, having writ-
ten an original piece called, "A Lie

of the Mind." Sally Horvath and
Kelly Schmidt will also provide
original, improvised music during
the show. U


A Lie Of The Mind runs tonight
and tomorrow night, and October 5,
6, 7; 12, 13, and 14. The Ann Arbor
Civic Theatre on MainStreet is lo-
cated on 1035 South Main Street.
Tickets are $6.00. Call 662-7282
for information.

3.

The word
McDc
Rest
0N4
offer 11
benefli

Pop Will Eat Itself will take its rude, crude and lewd
sounds to St. Andrews in Detroit tonight.

Poppies
Continued from Page 4

promptly bought a sampling ma-
chine. On their second album "This
Is The Day, This Is The Hour, This
Is This" (RCA) they create a hip hop
groove through which many a
grungy guitar riff bursts forth. The
Poppies funk it up with obnoxious

white rap that makes the Beastie
Boys seem about as threatening as
10,000 Maniacs muesli rock.
On their album, the Poppies
throw up an assortment of lumps
from the whole spectrum of popular
culture - TV ads, political

On stage, Pop Will Eat Itself are
Hawkwind meeting Public Enemy,
the earnestness replaced with pub
laughs. Something bassist Richard
Marsh told the NME sums up the
band's attitude quite succinctly. Re-
counting one of his favorite Carry
On movies, he said, "Kenneth
Williams goes into this bog for a
dump and when he comes out he
bumps into Jim Dale and he says,

'I'd give it a minute if I were you!'
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What
a porker!" And if you didn't find that
funny then the music of Pop Will
Eat Itself is lost on you.
Pop Will Eat Itself will be play-
ing at St. Andrews Hall in Detroit
tonight. Tickets are $10.50 each
and are available thru Ticketmas-
ter.


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DEAD POETS SOCIETY
735.10:05.1220

Shepard's
on family
By Mark Swartz
Emily Dickinson said the brain is
wider than the sky. It makes sense,
then, that a lie of the mind can reach
huge proportions. And Sam Shep-
ard's Lie of the Mind is no little
white one. It is a colossal miscar-
riage of memory, a betrayal of a past
that can not be ignored. It is a lie
that smothers and rescues at the
same time: The liar cherishes it,
when loving people seems dangerous
or impossible. Sam Shepard's award-
winning play may seem larger than
life, but the reason it succeeds is be-
cause it is, precisely, the size of our
own lives.
As usual, Shepard's gift for la-
conic dialogue is the unforgiving
vehicle for this trip into the psyche.
In a begining scene of the play,
Frankie tries to talk to his brother
Jake about his wife's untimely
death. The communication is de-
lightfully un-stilted:
Frankie: That's what you're
supposed to do when somebody dies.
You report it to the police.
Jake: Even when you kill 'em?

Frankie: Yeah! Even when you
kill them. Especially when you kill
them!
Jake: I never heard a' that.
Beth, it turns out, is alive, but
not well - she suffered brain dam-
age from the violent encounter with
Jake. Her curious state of mind, un-
decipherable at times, also provides
some of the plays most extraordinary
moments. She switches between
moments of frightful paranoia that
her brain has been stolen, and in-
sightful, almost allegorical, obser-
vations about life and love.
Over the course of unraveling the
non-murder, Beth's and Jake's re-
spective dark family lives become
exposed. Beth's stepfather Baylor, a
tragi-comic figure seemingly right
out of a Tennessee Williams play, is
obsessed with his own feet, but
takes enough time to look up and
announce, "We're all gonna get
clobbered when we least expect it."
Her brother Mike is a sadist, and a
sarcastic one at that.
What we get about Jake's past is
infinitely more disturbing. Critics

Lie casts light
a dark past


have made much
of the obvious
parallels to
Sophocles' Oedi-
pus Rex. As the
painful memories
are exhumed from
guilt's protective
burial, Jake's
character becomes
increasingly hu-
man, tragic,
doomed. Shep-
ard's artfulness in
transplanting the
Oedipus myth
into modern
times has earned
him the praise.of
Newsweek mag-

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2) Free food during shifts
3) Discount on food during off-l
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Campu
1) 3

Playwright Sam Shepard

azine theatre writer Jack Kroll:
"Shepard is a great poet of our the-
ater." Edith Oliver from The New
Yorker concurred, "Sam Shepard is
surely the only dramatist alive who
could tell a story as sad and
frightening as this one and make
such funny play of it without ever
skimping on its emotional depth.":

The Ann Arbor Civic Th eatre on
Main Street opens its season with
Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind,
starring Wendy Hiller as Beth and
Steve Angus as Jake. David Huns-
berger will direct.
In a section called "Music
Notes," from the original script to
See Shepard, Page 9

2) 1
APPLY I
Immediat
available
and start

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Page 4

Weekend/September 29,1989.

Weekend/September 29,1989