ARTS The Michigan Daily Thursday, October 11, 1990 Page 5 Pylon falls into right place by Annette Petrusso Some bands just have It. Pylon does. They tell great road stories like the one drummer Curtis Crowe re- lated. One time on tour with the W Gang of Four, he and Pylon vocalist Vanessa Briscoe Hay hung out with Gang member Hugo Burnham drink- ing after the show. They got so drunk that they wandered around the hotel until 4 a.m. because they couldn't remember where their, rooms were. Finally, they saw a door open with what looked like another Gang member, Jon King, lying face down on the floor. The two spirited Pylon members contemplated playing some sort of joke on him. But, better still, they saw that his bed was empty so they promptly passed out on it fully clothed. They were awakened at some early hour by an irate man in boxers who was not Jon King but was just some man wondering why these two people were in his bed. When they aren't drunken fools, the band's intense magnetic power baffles them. No one in the band seems to know why they have this gift and how they managed to retain it over their six-year vacation from recording and touring. Crowe claimed, "I just play the music." That's all they have to do. Pylon's stripped down, individu- alist sound incites intense dance movements. It is stark, basic rock made to agitate limbs into bouncing. All the instruments push into the mix - no one dominates and all are essential. Though there is no weak point, Michael Lachoski's bass thumping melodizes like no other and is one of the definitive noises Pylon makes. Chain, the first album of new material since the early '80s, dis- plays a number of things about Py- lon. Vinyl cannot capture their bang- up live performance. Chain points out how the elements work together but the band functions best in a club. On stage, they kick in for some very tight jams with a zeal that doesn't translate to recordings. Songs like "Sugarpop" show off the simplisitic words, the groovy guitar waves and infectious hook. Chain is intense but a little more rock than dance. Hailing from the now-legendary breeding ground for "college/alternative but fun" rock - Athens, Georgia - Pylon, like R.E.M. and the B-52's, don't have a definite Southern image like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Alabama do. Crowe himself cannot be objective about how much the South seeps into their musical identity . "I haven't the faintest idea because I live it," he said. Instead, Pylon doesn't worry about where they are from. More constructively, they content them- selves with playing amazing vivid contagious rock. PYLON plays at the Blind Pig tonight with the HANNIBALS. Tickets are available in advance from Schoolkid's for $8 and at all Ticketmaster outlets (plus evil ser- vice charge). Doors open at 9:30 and tickets at the door are $10. Please pass the Parmesan! Members of Pylon often hang out in kitchens and hotel rooms that aren't their's. But they are really just folks who happen to click as one of the premiere live rock bands on the scene today., August Snow drifts in October by Rebecca Novick Comedian Wayne Cotter's life is a joke by Ami Mehta The perfect joke. At least one time in our lives we have tried to create it, tell it and hear the peals of *'laughter afterwards - then we go back to our books and papers to re- sume our daily lives. But imagine .trying to come up with the perfect joke for a living. Wayne Cotter, stand-up comic, lives this fantasy and has been successful at it for about 15 years. Now a regular on Late Night with David Letterman and The Tonight Show, Cotter has been notorious for * ,making people laugh since the fourth grade. He claims to have al- * ways been a joke-cracking clown in his school days but he says he never Creally fit in with one clique. "I ran with a lot of different groups like the hippies and the eggheads. In a way I r oclicked with all of them," says Cot- 'ter. After high school, he received an electrical engineering scholarship to *-the University of Pennsylvania, which he attended for three years and then decided to pursue comedy, his real calling. Having had previous experience ,,emceeing talent shows and perform- ing in between acts at a coffeehouse, *"Cotter grabbed the opportunity to - make comedy a career when a club opened in Phildelphia called The Comedy Works. It was a guaranteed -- Living Colour Time's Up -Epic I remember sitting in a South Quad lounge a few years ago watching the video for Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" when someone remarked, "Gee, I never thought I'd see a black heavy metal band." Stupid as this statement may "seem, it reflected the views of a lot of people, especially radio program- mers, who were initially reluctant to play the song. Nonetheless, the band eventually won over the hearts of tons of people who went on to buy their first record, Vivid. Now Living Colour is back with a new album that is, unfortunately, only partially successful at avoiding the dreaded sophomore slump. Lyrically, the album burns with intense rage, as the band lashes out at the sorry state of affairs in job for Cotter because he was the only local stand-up comic around. Since then, the road to success has been smooth due to the exposure he got performing in the comedy clubs in and around Pennsylvania and New York. And being seen by audiences including showbiz bigwigs such as Jay Leno didn't hurt either. Cotter thinks of Leno as a great co- median and a profound influence on himself. "He thinks just like I do! I got some good advice from him and he got me on The Tonight Show," Cotter says. The difference between perform- ing live and on television is dramatic in Cotter's mind. "On TV you have five minutes to get in every joke tightly but when you're live you can get cozy with audiences and even improvise," he says. Unlike most comedians these days he has no real propaganda or gimmicks for his act, just pure humor. Things in life that people can relate to and that Cotter finds a spark of laughter in he uses in clever ways for his act. He con- trasts stand-up comedy to guitar playing - "There are over a million really good guitarists around because music has been around for so long. But stand-up has only been around for 30 years and the world is not overrun with outstanding comedi- ans." Being good at what he does is important to Cotter so he spends a couple of hours each day looking over his notes and coming up with new material for his act. "With stand-up comedy it's hard to fool people, either you're funny or you're not," he says. And that's no joke. WAYNE COTTER will appear at the Mainstreet Comedy Showcase Friday and Saturday. The Friday shows are at 8:30 pm and 11:00 pm, and the shows on Saturday are at 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm. Reserved seats for all shows are $13.00 and general admission is $11.00. TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED IN 19eJt giug" SU UV... X ads cost $2.10/line for the first day, $.70/line for each additional consecutive day X ads must be placed by 11:00 a.m. the morning before publication X ads must be prepaid with cash, an in town check, or a money order X ads may be removed from publication, but there will be no refunds N o matter how you idealize love, getting along in this world comes down to getting along with other people," says Richard Klautsch, summarizing the message of the play August Snow by Reynolds Price. Richard is the di- rector for the University Players' performance of the play this weekend and next in the Trueblood Theater. August Snow, the story of a young troubled marriage, is set in 1937 in a small North Carolina town. It is, says Richard, as simple andl as complex as "what brings people together and what keeps them together." The play will be performed in a Carolina dialect which the five-per- son cast has been practicing and ex- ploring, along with the complex character relationships, since the be- ginning of the term. Ann Klautsch, an instructor in the theater depart- ment and Richard's wife, is the vocal and dialect coach for the play. Richard says this hard work has paid off, both in the quality of the show and in each actor's individual growth. With such a small cast, the play did. not need much staging, so most of the rehearsal time was spent discovering and analyzing "just how complex the exploration of character relationships can be." Rather than relying on the traditional dramatic structures of motivation and objective, the actors have been able to work on finding the emotional tone which Price's lyrical writing demands. Originally a novelist, Price's style is distinctly different than many playwrights. This poetic and emotional work will play on a minimal set in the stark space of the Trueblood. In this atmosphere, the audience will have to confront the ambiguity in the play's personal conflicts and they will be encouraged to "evaluate [the characters'] participation in relation- ships," Richard says. For Richard, who directed Nikolai Gogol's Inspector General last year, this play has been refreshing because of its small scale and its avoidance of "issues." If Price had set the play in the '90s it wquld have become entangled with issues of class and gender, instead he sets it before the birth of contemporary feminism and avoids all reference to outside political events. This allows Price to focus on people, not the in- terest groups they represent. Nevertheless, he writes with what Richard calls "not a feminist, but a feminine viewpoint." There is no definite resolution of the central eon- flict, and the end the play is am- biguous enough that there are: no easy answers for either the audience or the actors. Richard points out that when the cast first rehearsed the etuling - the three women thought it was a happy ending, but the two men found the ending sad. By setting the play in See AUGUST, page 7 Every Thursday 6-9pm is STDENT lIIEPPY HOUR LIVE t III Center for Afroamerican and African Studies The University of Michigan presents Novelist and Cultural Critic George Lamming King/ChavezlParks Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence 11 AT THE [1K The Pig BAND!,, NOt COVER! $2 pitchers! modern-day America. The most memorable song is the long-overdue and oh-so-true "Elvis is Dead," which features Little Richard and a great sax line from Maceo Parker. "Elvis was a hero to most/ but that's beside the point/ A black man taught him how to sing/ and then he was crowned king!" vocalist Corey Glover yells with rage. Musically, the band expands its range and incorporates other styles into their sound, which makes Time's Up more interesting than Vivid in many respects. And, as usual, they are as tight as can be. Three of the members do short in- strumental pieces that highlight their creativity in realms other than hard rock. The best of these is Vernon Reid's "History Lesson," which fea- tures snippets of dialogue such as "...another thing used to control slaves' minds was religion." See RECORDS, page 7 Washington St. -a Liberty S. Univ. 208 S. FIRST 996-8555 19 and over please r r Unfinished Journeys: October 11, 1990 A Reading 7:00 p.m. Rackham Amphitheatre 11 The Writer as Teacher: Parallels in the Fiction of Africa, Afro-America and the Caribbean October 24, 1990 7:30 p.m. Rackham Amphitheatre Sponsors: Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, Office of the Vice-President for Research, Office of international Academic Affairs, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Office of Minority Affairs, King/Chavez/Parks Visiting Scholar Program -11 I -I APPEARING TONIGHT: Happy Hour-JUICE 9 pm-2 am-SPECIAL CONCERT: From Athens, GA Sky Records recording artist PYLON THE WAIT IS OVER! THETA XI IS RETURNING 'TO MICHIGAN! : I *it± IH U . ; t .. r y, t }.. i tA.. S2.z~fl /afki 11 COLLEGE B 0 W L TRIVIA TOURNAMENT Register 4-Person Teams now for the OctiNov. Open Tournament! Registration Deadline OCTOBER 12 Register at UAC, 2105 Michigan Union. For more info callI763-1107 11 Make reservations now and SAVE! BAHAMAS $419 JAMAICA $479 i from Detroit 8daysl7nights To find out how you can get involved in starting a new 1 1111111111 ' -, - _- HI1111111 I