ARTS Page 8 The Michigan Doily Monday, November 6, 1989 W' Happy Campers cross borders BY JIM PONIEWOZIK IT'S a hallmark of many great bands that their most inconsequential works end up being their most popu- lar. The Clash churned out album after landmark album only to score their biggest hit with the uneven Combat Rock, and in their pre-beer tour days, The Who got the most commercial attention for fluff pieces like "Squeeze Box" and "Magic Bus." So it's fitting, if sad, that Cam- pdr'Van Beethoven, one of the most mtisically brave bands of the '80s, is stil seen as a "joke" band and may score their biggest hit with a cover. Sure, "Where the Hell is Bill?" and "Take The Skinheads Bowling," the songs from 1985's Telephone Free Landslide Victory which broke the band to the college crowd, were great fun. And sure, the 15 minutes of MTV fame the band has won with their version of Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men" was long overdue. But if these songs are what draw listeners' attention to this Santa Cruz quintet, what will keeps it there is their serious, and seriously good, music. Camper Van emerged as a genre- smasher in music's most genre-con- scious era. They drew on folk, art rock and snot-punk, but added several twists to the forms, mixing instru- ments like cittern and balalaika with a two-guitar, bass, drums, and violin lineup, and employing enough rock and ethnic music influences to make them a sort of postmodern Ellis Is- land. About the only real link between the songs is the nasal Californian drawl of lead singer David Lowery. The LPs lurch beween instrumentals and vocals, ballads and thrashers, Zeppelinesque rock and pseudo-Rus- sian/Greek/Celtic folk, as well as the odd cover, the odd ska number, and, well, the odd, such as their tribute to Patty Hearst, "Tania," which fits into just about every above category and a few that haven't been invented yet. The band's newest LP, Key Lime Pie, is a darker, heavier-hearted effort than their more rocking 0 u r Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart of 1988, featuring more acoustic guitar and stronger lyrics than any of their previous albums. Whereas their earlier works were distancingly ab- surdist and even goofy, the 14 songs of Pie are sweet, often touching, and even poetic, like the sentimental "Sweet Hearts" and "All Her Fa- vorite Fruit." Although the band has main- tained its Dadaist sensibilities, it now uses its surrealism in a more di- rect way, as on "When I Win The Lottery," in which a marginalized loser fantasizes about buying the lo- cal American Legion Hall and paint- ing it in the colors of the Chinese flag, boasting that "I never killed Poets imagine, translate and grow BY JAY PINKA BUDDHIST tradition illustrates the human condition as one of continual transition. While here on earth, we are never perfected, never complete - but always either raging toward disaster or exploring and creating new realities. Once we decide that we have reached an "ideal," definitive state, we try to limit ourselves into static roles - "a doctor," "a socialist" - rather than seeking unsettling new experiences. Buddhists say this is futile, if not abortive to our creativity. Writers Edward Morin and Stephen Dunning show the reward of persistent evolution in one's thinking and creative practices. Dunning has grasped the identifying features of his poetry, translating it into the structure of fiction. His poems focus on "characters and persona" through the extensive use of dialogue. "Fiction...take(s) advantage of the strengths I have as a writer," says Dunning, who has taught at many universities and was an anthologist for Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle. In his story "Hunter's.Park" he "shows two boys on the edge of finding out about love and sex." "I'm a 14 year-old writer captured in a somewhat older body," says Dunning. Not retrieving a landscape from the past, Dunning recreates the present in the exhiliarating frame of personal viewpoint. "My remembering is less important than my imagining," said Dunning, who graduated from Florida State with a Ph.D. in the critical apparatus of young adult literature. Having "a couple hundred" of his poems published in various journals, Dunning recently retired to write. His poem, "You Might Say This Is The Story of My Life," will appear in the book, "Men and Women: Together and Alone." "I really like what I'm doing - trying to become a writer," While the dead leaves fall all around us, the co-translations of poet Edward Morin remind us that spring will return, bringing the world to life again. Lying between the real and the imagined/ You are a mountain flaming with red leaves/ A mixture of sadness and joy at dusk! ....You are translucent white sculpture/ Deep sleep illuminated by good fortune/ You are the mild fragrance of spring flowers! From the generosity of selfless Nature. This poem, called "Distance," by Cai Qi-jiao, characterizes the duality liberally expressed in the anthology The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry since the Cultural Revolution. Morin, Dennis Ding and Dai Fang cooperated to reproduce, in the English idiom, the literary voices of the Chinese suppressed by the government. "When poets have a bad time in life... it's like the pearl... coming out of the illness of the oyster." Morin has two books of his own poetry, The Dust of Our City (1978) and Dear Carnivores, which he is currently "reshaping." EDWARD MORIN and STEPHEN DUNNING will read tonight at 8:30 p.m. at Guild !louse, 802 Monroe Street. .: I' Camper Van Beethoven is cool. Here's some advice: if you're writing a paper on Patty Hearst for a psychclass, listen to their song "Tania" a few times and you'll get an A+. This has really happened. someone I don't know just 'cause someone told me to." The album continues Camper Van hallmarks, such as stylistic scavenging ("Opening Theme") and fascinating with pop culture anti- heroes ("Jack Ruby"), but it does so in a much more somber mood. Sweetheart closed with the state- ment "Life is Grand"; "Pie" ends q with "Come On Darkness." 'Nuff said. But this is still the band that did "Club Med Sucks." CVB is known for putting on a fun live show, given to extended spacey jams and obscure covers, and longtime fans may also be interested in catching the touring debut of violinist Mor- gan Fichter, the band's newest member. And yeah, who knows, maybe they will do "Take the Skinheads Bowling." Sigh. 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AWeyerhaeuser An equal opportunity employer CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN will perform at the Nectarine Ballroom tonight at 10 p.m. Tickets are $11.50 in advance. They'll play Schoolkids at 4 p.m. r. .x FREE TUTORING available in all lower-level Math, Science, and Engineering Courses 9 Room 307 East Lounge Dining Room Mezzanine UGLi M, T, W, Th BURSLEY M, W SOUTH QUAD M, W DOW BUILDING T, Th 7-11 pm 8-10 pm 8-10 pm 7-11 pm PASS IT. AROUND' Share the news, --V S. A service of the following Honor Societies: Tau Beta Pi Eta Kappa Nu Alpha Pi Mu Pi Tau Sigma Sponsored in part by MSA, UMEC, and LSA-SG :a Traverse the world O'Sullivan's style this week as our travelling leprechaun experiences the mystery of the Gulf Coast, Norway, Germany, England, China, and old Chicago. HAPPY HOUR and into the night. 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