The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. - March 4, 1993 - Page 5 A by Marc Olen 'Jewel' of an author der The Mac is back! Prez Clinton brought Stevie Nicks and Company back in style. ie Fleetwood Mac's "Don't S top Thinkin' about Tomorrow" was the soundtrack to lastsuminer'sDemocratic National Convention and for the ensu- ing presidential campaign. I couldn't have been the only one who laughed openly (in the privacy of my own living room, to the annoyance ofmy party-line parents) when, after Clinton had fin- ished up his keynote, the Mac's poofy '70s hit flooded the airwaves. And it isn't just the unpurgeable memory of Hil andTipcuttin'arug in their compli- mentary primary colors that still makes me cringe, but the sheer cheesiness of the choice of songs. I think it was around 1984 when it suddenly became hip for politicians to co-opt pop and rock for their own pur- poses. Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, rescinded the administration's invitation to the Beach Boys to play at a 4th-of-July Gala, say- ing that they might draw, "the wrong element. " But faster than you can say, "sex, drugs and rock-and-roll," Reagan turned around and tried to convince us that "Born in the USA" was a patriotic sog. Four years later, George "hep- cat" Bush tried to give his campaign a boost by using adecent song from a bad movie: "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Alas, neither attempt at breaking through that iron curtain of hipness which separates each generation from the next was terribly successful. Bruce wondered aloud in concerts and inter- views if the President had actually lis- tened to his lyrics. Bobby McFerrin, whose goofy ditty was fun in context, but horrifyingly ironic when played at GOP rallies, demanded that his music TEAM EXPERTS FOR 17 YEARS Complete Outfitters for ALL Greek Team Sports plaques & trophies custom printed t-shirts, sweatshirts & jackets ACbon Spa=Va 7 419 E. Libarty. 2 _blks off State - 663-6771 not be usedas Bush's theme song. In the end, it didn't really matter. The people Reagan was trying to reach through Bruce voted to trade in rebellion for what they saw as stability, and McFerrin's target audience just didn't vote. So, in 1992, along came the first all- baby-boomer ticket, and itactually made sense that rock should play a part in the campaign. Things were gonnabe differ- ent. Instead of Old White Guys in Brooks Brothers' suits looking asif they wanted to yell at their kids to turn the stereo down, probably mumbling toeachother things like, "I don't know why people don't like Dino and Frank anymore," wegot Somewhat-Younger White Guys in pricey threads, doing the white-man's overbite andprobably mumbling to each other, "Man, they don't write 'em like this anymore." Okay, so the big differ- ence was, they not only had the ap- proval, but the blessing of the artists to use their material. Clinton wasn't wor- But, if our new prez really wanted to live up to his revolutionary roots, and convince us that Change is his middle name, you've got to ask yourself, why Fleetwood Mac instead of Bob Dylan or Neil Young? ried about "the wrong element" raining down on his parade; he and his friends were the wrong element in their day. Now, don't get me wrong. I like the song, and I was as excited as anyone who lived through the '70s could be to see the Mac reunited (if only for one night) at the Inaugural Gala. Having been born far too late to have seen them in their heyday (well, before the advent of MTV), it was kind of a thrill for me to see them all on the same stage. But, if our new prez really wanted to live up to his revolutionary roots, and convince us that Change is his middle name, you've got to ask yourself, why Fleetwood Mac instead of Bob Dylan or Neil Young? Why "Don't Stop" rather than 'The times, they are a-changin"'? Was it just Clinton's desire to play up the hope angle-give his generation something to feel good about? I don't think so. Rather, the song seemed to be the perfect, all-encompassing, all-in- clusive sound bite. Sure, some of the lyrics sound like they could have been penned by the Brady kids, but hey - it's rock and roll. Our Music. Whoever WE happen to be; and that's the point. It's not specific to anyone's politics, but ithas abeat, and you can dance to it. And you can bet it's not on the PMRC's hit list. But Bill was also covering his own ass. Borrow Dylan's material and re- mind people that, at one time, he was a foe of the "Establishment"? Invoke a Jackson Browne tune and let people think he might actually be a Liberal? Even suggest to the voters that he might share some of Joan Baez'views? Can't give the other side any more ammo than necessary, after all, and that music was (and, if there's any justice, still is) fight- ing music. Okay, boys and girls, here's today's listening assignment: go out and find a theme song for the new Administration, one that you think Bill & Al ought to arrange for their own band to play at White House receptions. Remember, they're going tobe around forfour more years, so it should be a timeless classic that won't lose its spark before Clinton fills all of his Cabinet posts. Send me your suggestions, I'll do some number crunching and get back to you before the term's over. Until then, keep your mind and ears open. Author Bret Lott does not want any- thing to come easily in either his life or his writing. "If every year, EdMcMahon showed up at my front door, it'd be kind of boring," Lott said. This attitude surfaces in his novels, in which Lott, who has worked his way from RC Cola salesman to professor, focuses on the everyday struggles of living, the very aspects that "keep life interesting." In his latest novel, "Jewel," Lott has created ahard-edgedheroine after whom the book is titled, based on his real-life grandmother. Jewel struggles to raise Brenda Kay, her Down's Syndrome- afflicted child, in the mid-twentieth cen- tury South. "Jewel, the character, is not my grand- mother," Lott said. "For the sake of the novel, I had to sacrifice what really happened for what would make a better story." Still, the lives of the two women run somewhat parallel. In a tradition dating from his first novel, "The Man Who Owned Vermont," Lott mixes personal history with a first-person narrator to give "Jewel" a sense of authenticity. "It was culling from what I'd been handed all my life, stories of my family's lives," Lott said. In preparation for the book, Lott spent time at his grandmother's Califor- nia home, attempting to wind her life into the thread of the novel. "I asked her a million questions. A lot of them were mundane, like 'What kind of food did you eat in the winter when nothing was growing?"' Lott said, "I thought, how- ever dull they'd be, they'd lend authen- ticity to the story." Running through her life so inti- mately, however, Lott was exposed to some oral history he was less than eager to hear. "She told me how one time, she and my grandfather went out and made love in a canoe on a marsh," Lott said. He later decided this intimate detail was not one he wanted to cast aside. "I kind of just filed that away, think- ing, 'Aagh, I don't want to know that,' but when I sat down to write the book, suddenly it made sense," Lott said, "My grandma is awoman, was married to the man she loved, and this was part of their lives." In "Jewel," Lott also focuses on sacrifice - what the narrator must give up to see that her daughter gets the special attention she needs. Lott said, "One of the questions of the novel is 'what is sacrificed in order to love?"' This idea of sacrifice comes from both Jewel's religious faith and Lott's own beliefs. "That (sacrifice) is the theme in all my work. I think we are tested in this world, and through that testing, we are either made better or we fall short," Lott said, "Jewel's daughter is never not going to be retarded. The fact is, the tests never disappear." Lott never before tackled a novel covering this many years, and perhaps as a result, the original manuscript of "Jewel" spanned over 600 pages. He tried to stick to a formula of dividing the timeline up neatly, but failed. "What I ended up doing is clearing my living room and spreading the manuscript all over and extracting every flashback from the book," Lott said. Lott put flashbacks where they fell thematically in "Jewel," and arranged them into an order in which he thought the title character would think. "Women think much more cyclically and in circles. They touch on many things at once as they're thinking," Lott said, "Consequently, it (the novel) sort of meanders through time a lot." He compares this to his earliernovel "The Man Who Owned Vermont," in which the male narrator had few flash- backs. "Men look at something andsay, 'OK, all we have to do is this and this and this and this' - 'Just do that.' Women think through things more and think more in terms of the whole," Lott said. "Jewel" is currently being made into a movie, with Sally Field as the title character and the producer of the film. "(As the book's author) I have the best of both worlds. If it's a great movie, I wrote the book, of course," Lott said, "If it's a lousy movie, well, the book is always better than the movie." Bret Lott will readfrom his work today at Rackham Amphitheatre at S p.m. and Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Border's on State Street. Admission is free. off on selected items of patagon.ia 803 N. Main * Ann Arbor 761-9200 Mon. - Sat. 10-6 U- LAYER OF TOPPING! c ~ LAYER OF CHEESE! 3 e LAYER OF TOPPING! LAYER OF CHEESE! ; jOPIZZASLJ LAYERS of TOPPINGS O1F TOURf CHOICE ( LAYERSof * ECHEESE r= = I AN Nis happy to welcome Television In concert at the Michigan Theater on March 11th Get their latest release (the first one from these punk pioneers in years) on sale at Schoolkids! While you're at it, use this entire ad as an entry form -- We will be drawing for 2 pair of FREE tickets for the show! Drawing to be held March 10th at 6 p.m. *@ A ..................... ' Television 1. f '~ t I [i. 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