Page 8-The Michigan Daily - Thursday, October 24, 1991 Stuff that Monsters drool over Ann Arbor's 'Bait fights to survive in a tough town for local bands by Skot Beal It's hard to find cool bands in Ann Arbor these days. But the reason isn't because they aren't there; it's because there isn't anywhere for them to play. The Ann Arbor music scene is notorious for being hard to break into, and it's getting worse. However, a few cool bands do get through, and once in a while a really incredible band surfaces. That's what happened with Monster Bait. It's difficult to describe what Monster Bait sounds like, so I asked Richard Work, the guitarist, to do it for me. "I don't know particularly what to call it," explains Work. "I'm not really satisfied with it, but the clos- est attempt that I would put on la- belling us is drawing on some of the reckless abandon of the punk thing, but doing it in a way that's accessi- ble to a lot more people." Monster Bait's sound is ex- tremely lively and energetic, and at the same time very creative. Each member of the band makes an im- portant contribution to the overall sound. Work's guitar playing com- bines well with Debbie Fairburn's bass work, while Rollo Woodring's drumming is unusual and techni- cally astounding. And Amy Hen- derson's vocals are full of guts and character. "One of the interesting things about this band," says Work, "is that there's almost a generation gap between the women and the men. I think that has an interesting effect on it, because Rollo and I came up in a different set of music than Debbie and Amy. It makes a good juxtapo- sition. They keep us real and honest and make sure we've got some guts to our stuff." Lyrics are also an important part of Monster Bait's overall effect. They're written almost entirely by Henderson, although Fairburn and Work contribute sometimes. Work says that he has been studying and writing poetry for 10 or 15 years, and yet he is astounded by and jeal- ous of the things that Henderson comes up with, because they suggest further meanings beyond the words themselves. The band likes to let the that we are all hopeless and merely waiting to be devoured, that we are, in fact, "fodder for the machine," as Work puts it. However, he also jokingly provides an alternative explanation of the band's name: "Monster Bait is something that monsters drool over." One of the most impressive There's all these bands playing pop cover shit that are getting the shows and there's these talented and cre- ative people frustrated in their liv- ing rooms. "One thing about Monster Bait is that we never have wanted to really play Ann Arbor that much. I like Ann Arbor, I love living here, The Color Purple dir. Steven Spielberg Steven Spielberg wanted to make a film for grown-ups. In 1985, he shocked the film industry with his version of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Color Purple, by feminist writer Alice Walker. Spielberg cast the film with a bunch of then-unknown actors like Whoopi Goldberg and , Oprah Winfrey. Could the director of movies like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. make a film about a black woman's fight for survival in the Deep South of the 1920s? The Color Purple .tells the story of Celie, played by Goldberg in a deeply felt performance. Celie has only known hardship in her life: her ; father raped her and took away her two children and then gave her away b marriage to the cruel, abusive Mister (played ferociously by Danny Glover). Life with Mister is no picnic. He orders Celie around like a slave, beat" ing her, raping her and continually abusing her emotionally. Walker portrays the uncompromisingly brutal and bleak world of Celie in her novel; Spielberg sugarcoats this vision somewhat. He shows us- Mister's brutality, but undercuts it by poking fun at Mister's ignorance or by exaggerating his addled states. Spielberg's beautifully photographed , version of the South, filled with lush fields of purple flowers and,',;, brilliant sunlight, contrasts sharply with the world of evil seen in the-4; novel. Though the explicit sexual and violent details of the book are gone,, Spielberg's movie does have emotion and vigor to spare. It exists in the moving image of Celie, leaning against the gate of her farm, asking Mister, who has just brought in the mail, if there are any letters for her from her sister. It is seen in Winfrey's performance as Sofia, a role that loses none of its raw power, despite Winfrey's overexposure on her TV talk show. It iS""' present in the reunion at the movie's end, in a scene that still brings tears today. The Color Purple is playing at Hill Street Cinema on Thursday at 8 p.m. -Aaron Hamburgei Monster Bait's Club Heidelberg concert will be one of the alterna-venue's last shows. Yep, it's closing real soon, limiting the Ann Arbor music scene even more, so check out the classic club while you still can. lyrics create their own images in the listeners' heads. One song, "Red," hints at the significance of the name "Monster Bait." The song talks about how ev- erything that happens is leading to destruction, but no one really notices because it's such a slow, gradual process. It suggests the fact things about the members of Mon- ster Bait is how much they really care about music and bands. They not only work to help themselves, but they also do what they can to help the bands that they play with. "There's quite a few bands in Ann Arbor that don't play anywhere," says Henderson. "It's amazing. but I don't really want to play Ann Arbor because there's just so many bands that never leave Ann Arbor' and it would just rip my heart out." MONSTER BAIT plays tomorrow at the soon-to-close Club Heidelberg' with KIA and Jaks. Cover is $4, and doors open at 9:30 p.m. STEW Continued from page 5 try not to clutter it up." This attention to detail has gar- nered the Detroit-based band many rave reviews in the Midwest. For Woods and the rest of the Stews, na- tional recognition may not be too far off, either. "We've been able to talk to a couple of A&R people, and they want to hear more," he says. "So we're making it through the rungs we have to get through to be heard by the right people." With an appealing pop music approach, the members of the band only hope that HOPE Continued from page 5 istic lighting are much more notice- able than the electric illuminations we take for granted every night. To create a squalidly pedestrian mood, Richardson films many of the movie's nighttime scenes as if they took place under the unearthly or- ange and blue glows of a low-class false, Gooberesque shtick. Stripped down to a power trio after the de,, parture of its lead guitarist, the, band has tightened up and become: even better, which must mean thei guys are about as good as the Beatles (though they'd never admit it). Catch both bands tonight for .aq' paltry $3 at the door, which opens~ at 9:30 p.m. these "right" people start taking"' more notice of them. MISSIONARY STEW opens for : CROSSED WIRE tonight at the Blind* Pig. Wire, a consistently satisfying and honest rock 'n' roll unit, pre-;: sents honest, fun music with no bar room. In other instances, it looks as if he were shooting by flu, orescent light. If Richardso#*1. equates real life with drab ugliness he might be missing the point: as it is rendered in City of Hope, real life is much too engaging to ever look bland. CITY OF HOPE opens tomorrow at. the Ann Arbor I & 2. I,t Y ,t piet, Shape-Shifter Pauline Melville Pantheon Books/ Hardcover Among the 12 stories in Shape- Shifter, Pauline Melville's first collection, the reader's reaction will run the gamut, from "Ho-hum. Next, please," to "Wow! Let's read that one again!" The majority of the stories trace the lives of destitute characters in Guyana, to whom noth- ing good, or for that matter, inter- esting, ever occurs. But luckily for us, Melville also writes about folks in London, who are also awfully susceptible to the affliction of poverty, but fortunately not dull- ness. The most confusing thing about this book is that all the best stories are placed at the back, providing a weak first impression. Those readers who persevere (or skip the first half of the book) will be rewarded in the endwith "MacGregor's Journey," "You Left the Door Open" and "The Girl with the Celestial Limb," the three best stories in the collection. "MacGregor's Journey" fol- lows a scaffolding-builder, Mac- Gregor, on his day-off drinking binge. While wandering from pub to pub, he finds personifications of the apathy, the suspicion and the de- spondency of modern London. Finally, he does meet a smiling face, but his helplessness to combat the negative ruins the encounter and, in the end, forces him to respond in the only way he knows how. "You Left the Door Open" is the haunting tale of a woman and how she deals with an attack in her home. She is awakened in the middle of the night by a strange man who claims to want only money, food and a bath. But, of course, he also has a knife. The story details every give and take in what becomes a barter between her safety and his demands. And as if that weren't enough to make a suspenseful story, the narra- tor, Carole, implies that her at- tacker was possessed by a demon she had unwittingly let loose. "The Girl with the Celestial Limb" is an amusing gallop through the history of mathematical theory. I know it sounds dull, but it concen- trates on one woman's leg (the ce- lestial limb), and its metamorpho- sis into a mathematical object, "made up of a web of delicately in- terconnecting geometric forms, tes- sellations, cub-octahedrons, star- pentagons, rhombic faces (which re- volved), cones, triangles and the cu- bic lattices of crystallography." The leg changes and distorts (dare I say that its shape shifts?) through the stages of classical and irrational math, up to modern quantum me- chanics. Various men, representing mathematical theories, attempt to fix her leg, but, unfortunately, the woman ends up living the paradox of a Schrodinger's cat. The moral of this story seems to be: "Don't try this at home. Math is dangerous." The rest of the stories aren't bad; they just aren't as striking as these three. Melville's strong point is combining a good tale with inter- esting characters, but in a few sto- ries she unfortunately falls into the trap of writing merely for the sake of an interesting idea. Don't get me wrong, the ideas themselves are good, but a truly successful story shouldn't have the reader wondering why he or she should bother to care about the people in it. -AJ. Hogg INTERESTED IN RUNNING FOR LSA- STUDENT GOVERNMENT? Pick up applications at 4003 Michigan Union Deadline is November 1st President, Vice-President, and 15 Council Seats Available FICTION ISSUE DEADLINE All submissions for Weekend's Fiction Issue must be in by Wednesday, October 30 at 5:00 p.m. Stories should be 8000-13000 characters in length, with shorter pieces having a better chance of running. Weekend does not return stories, though we don't keep them, either. Authors will be notified by Nov. 2 that their story has been chosen. Questions should be directed at Gil or Jesse at 764-0552. 1991 Autumn Las Vegas Night Saturday, Oct. 26th from WRITE FOR THE DAILY 5 pm to 12 midnight I City of Hope is a fictional city, but John Sayles has been careful to transfer the cultural stereotypes we've grown to love in the real urban jungle. Here, Nick and Angela (Vincent Spano, Barbara Williams) do the nasty. FEMMES Continued from page 5 sponds, "Of course, we love American music. We love blues, country, jazz, free jazz, rock and roll, rockabilly, psychedelic, every- thing there is in America. Even Charles Ives and other kinds of so- WIN UP TO $500 - Admission $2 per person " Refreshments from our kitchen (for more info call 231-1811 after 2 pm) 5TH AVE. AT UBERTY 761.9700 .0 0 DAILY SHOWS BEFORE 8 PM 3 . L ALL DAY TUESDAY' -usta STUDENT WITH I.D.$350 BARTON FINK (R) MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO R Combo Coupon. A A Buy a large popcorn and receive a free large drink with this coupon Expires 10/31191 called classical composers, we like that too. So basically, as Virgil ' Thompson said, 'All it takes to make American music is to be American and make music.' So that's our opinion. We like all the differ- ent styles. I guess we don't like some of the syrupy pop music. But even some of that's okay, in small doses." The gem on the album, though,1l' the Femmes' cover of Cultut Club's "Do You Really Want C6' Hurt Me?" Gano rewrote parts dif the lyrics, making them even moht absurd. His insincere, pseudo-deep' vocals, and the use of trademark gu' tar sounds, give the reinterpretatidif a sarcastic edge that Boy Georg* could never quite manage. It'sthe Femmes' specialty, conscious oru; conscious. But is it American musik?' As Ritchie says, "Well, now it's American, 'cause we made it." Catch the VIOLENT FEMMES tonight at 8 p.m. at the Michig Theater. Local band GOOBER AND THE PEAS opens. Tickets arF $18.50 at TicketMaster (p.e.s.c.). '' 7 A A SEMESTER & SPRING BREAK SPECIALS "BAHAMA VACATION" $359.00 per person d1 Al Includes: " 5 days, 4 nights " Stay at either: -Bahama Princess Hotel & Casino " I E;' I