ARTS The Michigan Daily Tpc divIcFhriia~rv 9'7. loan - Page 5 ' ru-11 l 7 - _ I uI.5uay, IF LUU I 7 LtI zI.LF Walker celebrates finer things by Mark Webster JERRY Jeff Walker has celebrated bars, boisterousness and bullshit for much of his career. The former out- law country musician, whose best- known song, "Mr. Bojangles," was a hit in 1970 for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, is identified by fans with songs like "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mothers," and "Pissin' in the Wind." The bad-ass days are now over but Walker's voice still res- onates like the last drop of a half- gallon bottle of bourbon. He'll play solo at the Ark tonight. Leading off for Walker and travel- ing with him will be Chris Wall, a Montana country rocker and song- writer. Two of Wall's songs, "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight" and "Trashy Women," appear on Walker's most recent album (his 19th), Live at Gruene hall. Walker was scheduled to play here in December, but a back prob- lem postponed the show. He has just recovered from surgery to remove a cracked vertebra and damaged disk. Walker will arrive with a back-brace, an acoustic guitar and an outlook far removed from the days when he and his raucous bandmates, the famous Lost Gonzo Band, kicked ass Texas- style in the early '70s. In 1973 Walker's album Viva Terlingua went gold. Since then, his music has slowed but it's given him a chance to bring out a backlog of self-penned ballads. A prodigous composer, many of Walker's slower songs weren't played in the heyday of The Lost Gonzos, or later with The Bandito Band. "There are a lot of songs that I pull out that got left out before - that didn't always fit when you've got a band to play with and a crowd drinking and hollering," he said. In the last three years he's toured alone. "I started out playing solo, and wanted to rekindle that again," he ade Walker has tried to bring a beat into his newer songs, while not nec- essarily making them upbeat. "Bluegrass music," he said, "even if they're talking about eight kids drowning in a river, is still upbeat." Walker was born in upstate New York, where his grandparents played square dances and he formed his first band. Out of high school, he hit the road and headed south, avoiding New York City. Back then people warned him if he made big money too soon it would be selling out. "But then, Neil Diamond is as famous as Bob Dylan," he said, "so I guess it doesn't matter after all." His travels included time in New Orleans, where he came across Bill Bojangles, the dancer whose name- sake song has been recorded by other notables, like Nina Simone, Sammy Davis Jr. and David Bromberg. Bromberg and Walker toured as a duo in the '60s, and Bromberg helped out later on the acclaimed 1977 album, A Man Must Carry On, which combined studio and live tracks in the mythical setting of Luckenbach, Texas. Austin, Texas has been Walker's real home for nearly 20 years. "Music has a right to show lots of Jerry Jeff Walker has mellowed out in recent years but he still knows the meaning of a good ol' time. Courtney Pine The Vision's Tale Antilles Now here's a young saxophone player who can really make his horn talk; and what he has to say is well worth hearing. 25-year-old Courtney Pine is a London native who, even at his relatively young age, has played with several notable musi- cians including Art Blakey, George Russell and Elvin Jones. His latest album presents him teamed with Jeff Watts on bass, Delbert Felix on drums, and Ellis Marsalis on piano. The recording is as much a treat because of Marsalis as it is because of the young sax man; the whole CD gives the sensa- tion of a warm, relaxed, and informal nightclub atmosphere. After a brief discussion between the band mem- bers regarding the key in which they should play, they kick off things with Duke Ellington's "In a Mel- lotone." And the tone of the entire performance is certainly mellow. Pine plays his solo on tenor sax with a slow, breathy, terminal vi- brato that could bring warmth to even the coldest winter day. And what can be said of Marsalis' solo? It's as pretty as you please. On "C Jam Blues," Marsalis plays a swing- ing solo and Pine catches fire during his final improvised chorus, reach- ing a peak in a heatedly blown rise to a high pitched trilled note before returning to the melody to close out the performance. Also worth men- tioning are the first-rate treatments given to Hoagy Carmichael's pretty ballad "Skylark" (versatile Pine plays soprano sax on this one) and John Coltrane's "Giant Steps." Re- cently, in a television interview on the program "Sunday Morning," Wynton Marsalis spoke of an ac- quaintance of his who professed to be worried about sounding too much like Coltrane when he played. Wyn- ton assured him "you have nothing to worry about." Well, Pine is no Coltrane either, but his handling of the difficult chord changes in "Giant Steps" would have certainly im- pressed the the master tenor sax man. The only piece that doesn't work on the album is "I'm an Old Cowhand From the Rio Grand." Even the somewhat humorous treatment given to it by the excellent performers here cannot save the tune from its trite melody and uninterest- ing chord changes. But uninteresting moments are rare in this recording. Mr. Pine and company have collabo- rated to produce 70 minutes of spir- ited and soulful jazz. -Phillip Washington MaxQ Max Q Atlantic Records We've all seen some terrible side projects. Musicians with over-in- flated egos in overrated bands have a tendencyhto say that they want to express themselves outside the con- straints of their (usually extremily popular) band. And some of there- sults leave a person wondering .tow this objective was accomplished,,let alone even attempted (witness Mike and the Mechanics). Luckily, that's not the case with Max Q, the brain- child of INXS's Michael Hutchence and fellow Australian Ollie Olsen. Although the record has been suffer- ing from a promotional stalemate at Atlantic Records and consequently has been left standing at the gate, this is by no means a reflection of its quality. . Max Q is a radical departure from INXS, but it still has much of the smart pop sense that Hutchence is known for. However, as noted ,in Musician, Ollie Olsen is responsi- ble for the bulk of the work. Virtu- ally unknown in the U.S., Olsen is very active in the Australian music scene, both as a producer and a mu- sician. Largely influenced by acid hiouse and a lot of what falls under the un- brella term "world beat," the nusic will surprise most INXS fans. rxQm the overpoweringly funky "Ghost of the Year" to the industrial heavy metal of "Zero-2-0," this is Qqt at all the catchy-but-safe INXS style, which is just as well; this is. ex- tremely much more ambitious, and challenging music. Likewise, Hutchence's lyrics take on a more sophisticated and political tone. "Way of the World" deals with:the age-old class struggle between.:ex- ploiter and exploitee: "You -were born into this world/ looking down the barrel of a gun/ and those:who hold the gun/ want you to work fast and die young." However, MaxQ does have its share of more mundane topics: "the motion of my straw/ is stirring anti-clockwise in the glass." Overall, Max Q is an extremely worthwhile effort that may lendsnew meaning to the term "solo project." Olsen and Hutchence have created an original and accessable mix of house and rock that deserves much more at- tention that it has been getting. Now, if Atlantic records would just get off its ass... : -Mike Molitor sides, he said, and in Texas he found people with his style at heart. "In Texas, music and storytelling and all that lifestyle are intertwined," he said. "Bank presidents will go to their weekend cabins to eat chili, drink beer, sing songs, tell stories, and have a good time. People don't want a bunch of skip-dee-doo-da." JERRY JEFF WALKER and CHRIS WALL play two shows tonight at The Ark at 7:30 and 10 p.m. Tickets are $16. owdo' My Left Foot dir. Jim Sheridan By Nabeel Zuberi "Looks can be deceivin'. It's very sentimental," says Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) to purseMary Carr of his autobiographical novel My Left Foot. Of course, there's a A touch of self-deprecation in this comment, but it also happens to hold true for Jim Sheridan's movie. My Left Foot is a sentimental film - sentimental without sinking into a quagmire of sticky icky schmaltz like, for example, Rain Man. Here, sentimentality is a sensibility rather than an emotionally inert conser- vatism. The story of painter and writer Christy Brown provides all the ba- sics for one of those cloying TV wvn on Christy Brown movies that deal with "social prob- lems" - in this case, physical dis- ability. But in the hands of Jim Sh- eridan, the tale of a working class Dublin child born with cerebral palsy during the Depression is han- dled with a poetic but gritty neo-real- ism, as well as a charmingly bois- terous sense of humor. The movie is essentially a set of vignettes that are framed by Mary Carr (Ruth McCabe) reading the book. We see Christy as a child frus- trated with the limitations of his movement. This doesn't induce the gooey aahs from the audience we're used to with "handicap" movies, but makes us more engaged with a feisty lad who's pissed off with people for thinking he's a mental defective. Many of the scenes are shot from Christy's point of view, so we're made to feel intensely his difficulty in orienting himself in the confining space of hallways and rooms. We're as exhausted as Christy when he grabs a piece of chalk between his toes and writes out his first word for his family on the wooden floor. At the center of Christy's exis- tence is his mother. Brenda Fricker gives a beautifully subtle and under- stated performance as a woman with boundless love for her son. Realiz- ing that any artist worth his/her salt requires a room of one's own, she starts to build an extension in the backyard, in the hopes that this will urge Christy out of his slough of self-pity. Ma is constantly fighting the poverty of the family's situation. In many ways, My Left Foot does for working class Dublin what Ter- ence Davies' brilliant Distant Voices, Still Lives does for Liver- pool. There is a real sense of family and community in Christy's Dublin, though this is never romanticized. The late great Ray McAnally is su- perb as Christy's father; tough on the outside but mush on the inside, Da is brutal, yet sentimental and generous. None of the family mem- bers is painted one-dimensionally. Of course, Daniel Day-Lewis dominates the movie with a perfor- mance that should win him the Oscar that the similarly wheelchair- bound Tom Cruise will probably get. He captures Christy's gift of the gab, his sheer blarney, as well as his scabrous wit. He gets all the best lines. With a taste for "unparlia- mentary language" and a volatile temper, Christy is a pained soul, but also, sometimes, just a plain arse- hole. When he confesses his love for his doctor (after rapidly swigging down several whiskeys), and she misunderstands, he shouts out, "I've had it up to here with platonic love! Fuck Plato!" and proceeds to make a fool of himself. Christy is full of bullshit as well as fiery creativity. Day-Lewis' performance is a tour de force of physical exertion and emo- tional tautness that impresses as much as his earlier work in M y Beautiful Laundrette, A Room With A View and The Unbearable Light- ness of Being. My Left Foot is finally about the determination of Christy Brown, who, like Joyce, Behan and Beckett was a great Irish writer who liked a drop of the finer stuff (no wonder Shane MacGowan of the Pogues wrote a song about Christy Brown). And it's a testament to the power of the human spirit and the strength of family and community. MY LEFT FOOT is playing at Ann Arbor 1&2 and Showcase UM News in The Davy Write to us! (please) Daily Arts wants, make that needs feedback from readers. 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