ARTS The Michigan Daily Tuesday, November 12, 1991 Page 5 A s qw Danish proves fine wine and chloroform do mix b Scott Sterling The crowd at New York's hip-hop haven, the Building, is psyched. This special CMJ (College Music Journal) showcase features, among other rap acts, the first hometown performance by the Beastie Boys in years. The pit is huge, filled with moshing, sweaty bodies and pump- ing fists. However, there's one last band scheduled to play before the Beasties hit the stage. That band is one of LA's finest, Mary's Danish. "When we got there, it was like 'Oh, shit,' because it was a seriously rap crowd," relates Gretchen Seager, one of Mary's Danish's two vocal- ists. "I was thinking that we were going to get booed off the stage, be- cause it was rap bands all night long, except for Mary's Danish. We Shad a twenty-minute set, so we played six songs as fast and as furi- ously as we could. There were all these heavyweight rap people, like Ice-T, standing at the side of the stage during our set." Seager, talking to me on the phone from the club Graffitti in Pittsburgh, laughs as she recalls the scene. "I'm thinking, these guys are gonna laugh so hard, like, 'Who's this white chick?"' she says. "So, af- ter the show, I walk by and every single one of them gave me a high- five and they're going, 'Sister! Right On!' I was so stoked on the whole scene." This is a perfect example of how Mary's Danish has turned poten- tially disastrous situations into positive experiences. The band has weathered the sorts of events that would have ended many other bands. Instead, Mary's Danish survived, and emerged with a brilliant collec- tion of eclectic and catchy songs, Circa. The album contains a veritable melange of different influences. The songs range from X-influenced punk rave-ups like "Venus Loves Leonard" to funky, groove-laden jams such as "These Are The Shapes Nevada Could Have Been." Seager credits the band members' ex- tremely divergent musical tastes as the catalyst for their unique sound. "As people, we all get along great, but musically, for the most part, we couldn't be more further apart," she explains. "It sometimes can get drastic. I mean, David loves Crowded House, while I love Sonic Youth." Seager pauses, perhaps con- sidering these differences philo- sophically. "I think that it makes you stronger as a person, and it makes you a lot more tolerant," she continues. "You're not soe gotisti- cal... We'll go through many dif- ferent versions of a song, until we come out with the final one, which I feel is usually the best one." These songs are powerful compo- sitions, which reflect the decidedly feminine and personal points of view of Seager and Ritter, who pen the majority of the band's lyrics. The songs convey a sense of strength, and of overcoming the many obstacles that women face in life. The song "Cover Your Face" gets my 1991 Ian Curtis award for the saddest song of the year ("Cover your face girl/ Shoot some pool/ So what you had it coming/ You hoped for so much more/ You fail in every way/ Ask the ones you love"). "Julie wrote 'Cover Your Face', and I know for her it came at a low point in her life. We write about what goes on around us, and for us to write happy songs would be rather presumptuous, seeing as that's not how life always is," Seager says. The song "Yellow Creep Around" also features a brilliant lyric, opening with the line, "Fine wine and chloroform." "It came from a book called The Yellow Wallpaper, and it's from one of the first feminist texts, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman," Seager says. "It's about a woman who likes to write poetry, but her husband keeps her up Mary's Danish is: top row, I-r, David King, Chris "Wag" Wagner and Louis Gutierrez; front row, 1-r, James Bradley Jr., Julie Ritter and Gretchen Seager. in this little children's bedroom, because he thinks she's sick, that she shouldn't be writing. "Back then, women weren't en- couraged to write or express them- selves, and any form of expression, it was considered sick or manic de- pressive or something. The room had this hideous yellow wallpaper, and she slowly but surely went mad. The husband would steal her tabla- tures of writings and pads of poems, and tell her that all she needed was fine wines and rare meats. "In the story, the main character would wonder why she was being treated like this. In Charlotte Perkins Gillman's real life, she ended up committing suicide with chloroform." But among the 17 insightful and poetic songs on the record, it's "Axl Rose Is Love" that has given Mary's Danish the most attentidn. This scathing reaction to Guns N' Roses' racist/sexist/everything-ist "One In A Million" even landed the band a spot on the MTV News. In the song, Seager s voice csId peel paint as she growls, "Thqr,'s not enough room for this kind of ha- tred/ White against black/ Black See DANISH, Page 8 who what where when) Dern is, like, totally gnarly in steamy Rose Folk music icon Bob Dylan is performing tonight at Detroit's Fox Theater. No true Ann Arborite 4 should miss seeing a man who af- fected the anti-establishment movement of the '60s like Dylan did. So join him tonight on a cruise down Highway 61. Tickets are $27.75 at TicketMaster (p.e.s.c.). The Walkabouts are on Sub Pop, but the band sure as hell isn't your typical Sub Pop group. Although most of the 'bouts songs do have a driving electric guitar, they also have a lot of acoustic guitar and keyboards, as well as some more un- usual instruments. Also, the band has a female vocalist who sounds kinda like Natalie Merchant from 10,000 Maniacs (who, incidentally, makes a guest appearance on Scavenger, the Walkabouts' new album). In fact, Scavenger sounds a lot like a supercharged version of 10,000 Maniacs, only cooler. So what we're saying is, the band is cer- tainly much mellower than Mudhoney or Tad. Catch the Walkabouts tonight at the Blind Pig for a mere $5 at the door. Doors open at 9:30 p.m. You all remember the heavily- accented grunts from Rocky IV. And no, we're not referring to James Brown, but Dolph "I Must Break You" Lundgren, whose latest bone- snappin', spit-flyin' action-adven- ture movie is called Showdown in Little Tokyo. Lundgren and co-star Brandon Lee, son of The Bruce, play a pair of cops on the trail of the evil, ornately tattooed Yazuka gang, and, well, to quote the press release: "One's a warrior. One's a wise-ass. But together they've got what it takes to remove some tattoos from Little Tokyo." After an hour and a half of Dolph, you might wanna have a Mark Lester video marathon, who, besides Showdown, directed the splat classics C o m ma n do ("Let's pahhty") and Class of 1984 (which featured a nerdy Michael J. Fox being terrorized by a gang of punks). Showdown in Little Tokyo is a Fox Village exclusive. R ambling R ose dir. Martha Coolidge by Jen Bilik Rambling Rose opens in Glennville, Georgia, 1971, as an older Buddy (John Heard) drives wistfully home to visit his widower father in the Southern manor of his youth. Heard's narration, in soulful past tense, pre- pares us to regress to the summer of his 13th year, to meet, as he says, "the first person I ever loved outside my family" - the eponymous Rose (Laura Dern). The flashback nostalgia, the coming-of-puberty story set in summer, the coltish young woman with unleashed sexuality who teaches the younger boy about the facts of life while finding herself: we've seen it all before. But director Martha Coolidge, best known for her wonderful sleeper hit Valley Girl, invests her art in character. She creates a people film of endear- ing, vital and idiosyncratic characters who come in where originality of' situation leaves off. Rose, comes to the Hillier family as a charity case. She arrives from Birmingham where she'd almost succumbed to the "bad men," a risk that obsesses the young Buddy (Lukas Haas of Witness) to no end. The story, save for its mini-plots involving Rose's romantic exploits, consists entirely of family interaction. They embrace Rose not as a house- hold servant, a position which Mrs. Hillier (Diane Ladd) thinks to be irre- deemably evil, but as a member of the family. When Rose's spontaneity and spirit wreak sexual havoc, the Hilliers must determine whether Rose may stay on in their home. With its southern charm and undying benefit of the doubt, Rambling Rose never migrates to the malicious side of human nature; Rose has had a terrible childhood, but the movie deals largely with the love she will re- ceive from the Hilliers, a cure-all for the world's ills. Rambling Rose stands out as the only movie in recent memory that could unequivocally be called "kind," in which characters have strong, humanistic moral codes and live by them in order to benefit others. There are really two stories occurring simultaneously here: Buddy's initiation into sexuality and loss of innocence through his first love,,and Rose's attempts to find love and family with the Hilliers and sex. Rose is both original and clich6d, a woman fully in control of her sexual appetites and a naive woman who uses her coltish sex-appeal because it's the gnly thing she has. She is, in some respects, the whore with a heart of goldtut her similarities to Julia Roberts are salvaged by Dern's inspiring perfcr- mance, her relationship to the Hilliers, and her depiction through Buddy's eyes. We almost never see Rose unless Buddy is watching her, which often puts us in the perspective of a Peeping Tom (Buddy stands outside the adult affairs and Cavesdrops through keyholes). The Hilliers have enough idiosyncrasy to make them interesting but their relationships are genuinely strong and stand them apart from their cinematic counterparts. Particularly loving is the relationship between Mr. Hillier (Robert Duvall) and his wife. Played to perfection, Mr. Hillier is a charming southern gentleman whose commitment to family belongs to pre-Sensitive New Age Guy dpys. He speaks in epithets and hyperbole with his elegant Georgia drawl, imme- diately bringing Rose into the family with a nickname. "Rosebud," ho ex- claims, "you are as graceful as the capital letter S." Mrs. Hillier, physically alienated by a hearing problem, is sweet-and quirky. Her typical maternal instincts are mediated by an anachronisticex- pertise in "positive energy" and genteel feminism that she'd never describe as such. She stands up for Rose at all costs, justifying Rose's sexuality to her husband with an understanding that belies her cosmic spaciness. The elder Hilliers' compensate for each other's inadequacies in a true parmership of marriage, always behaving with love and respect. Flaws and all, they want the best for Rose and their family, so their dilemmas about Rose are deeply tinged with regret and concern. Even the two younger children, Dolly (Lisa Jakub) and Wilkie (Evan Lockwood), are fully fleshed characters, though their participation is rin- imal. They hold their own next to Buddy, whom Haas plays with heartfelt See ROSE, Page 8 Lundgren _______________________________________________________ J. U Er 6TH AVE.AT LIERTY 761-4700 $ D~llY SHOWS BEFORE 6 P $3 0 DIALLAY TUESDAY*P-.x.. ta BILLY BATHGATE Ii MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO IR, COUPON COMBO! Present this coupon when purchasing a large popcorn and receive one free large drink Ross University Will Be Conducting MEDICAL AND VETERINARY SCHOOL INTERVIEWS FOR WINTER SEMESTER Ms. Weiner, Assistant Admissions Director at Ross University will be meeting with students at the Graduate and Professional School Conference on Wednesday, November 13th in the Michigan Union Ballroom from 1 la.m.-4p.m. Stop by our booth and see our video. For further info., call 559 - 2123 L xpireS 11,2~191,1__________________________________ THE~.. DIINT S.C.HOO is:::": I ho d n general ::::.::.:.::: :::::::::::::sessions (2~ ~~a ktn ~~to~ ~trsertp~rrsiudn 'Mstr f h~~g~1Stdis itd ae fDvny D~d ~gse opic~is ~d ~ossr t~iulopp~tlmti" Wednesday, November 13, 1991 10:00 am - 4:00 pm Michigan Union Graduate School and MBA Day Meet with recruiters to investigate advanced degree options Compare costs and content of programs across the country Conference Highlights Graduate School: The Forms, The Funds, The Focus -, I' .