The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. - Thursday, March 9, 1995 - 3 Better Nate Than Never Laughing Hyenas struggle against the hard-time blues By Matt Carison Daily Arts Writer The Laughing Hyenas embark on their U.S. tour in a month and will not be playing any local shows until after they arrive back home in Ann Arbor a few months from now - that's good; it gives you and I a little time to prepare. To say that a Hyenas show is a dark experience would be an under- statement. To say that a Hyenas show is a dark, drug and booze hazy cloud of all-encompassing gloom would be an understatement. After all, at the band's perfor- mance last fall at Rick's, as the four- piece ensemble trudged through their overwhelmingly murky and glori- ously harmonic power chord rants of self-induced chill vibes, as the faith- ful swayed to the possessed, guttural screams of vocalist John Brannon - a woman decided NOW would be a grand fine time to take a little nod-off nap and sleep peacefully on the floor at my feet. Yeah, that veers into the melodra- matic a bit (and actually the pay-off wasn't that great), but it sets the mood in an unpretentious matter-of-fact tone. The Laughing Hyenas sink into your flesh with a melodramatic, yet unpretentious, mode of formality -- it's awkward music performed by awkward musicians for awkward people. You can feel the sinking de- spair that the band emits, eventually feeling fairly low yourself. "I like to separate it,". Brannon said of his stage persona. "When I'm on stage, I'm putting a lot into that. But when I come off stage, it's a different person. You can't live like that. We try to reserve those feelings for a show." Playing about 50 shows in two months across the nation, the Hyenas are touting their latest and best album Price check on aisle 101 After hours of studying deriva- tives hedging formulas or economic order quantity problems, I sometimes find myself wondering: "When would I ever use this stuff?" I'm sure this recurring question is not specific to business students, but those of all disciplines, except per- haps communication majors. Though it may be hard to pull practical, everyday applications out of abstract theories and concepts, it's surprising how often material from exam questions shows up on the great exam of life. For example: I was in the grocery store last week, stocking up on bagels, pepperoni, cheese and pizza sauce -pizza bagel work-in-progress inventory. When I saw two liters of diet Coke qn sale for $1.09, I quickly recog- nized this as a promotion -one of the four P's of marketing (product, price, promotion and place). My astute ob-. servation did not, however, alter the price of the diet Coke (which, inci- dentally, marketing students prefer less than Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice Diet Cola at an everyday low price, or EDLP, of 72 cents per two-liter). A I had to keep this insightful com- inentary to myself during the grocery excursion as I was shopping solo. My friends, citing time constraints caused by my need to traverse each aisle thrice and spend several minutes de- liberating over fish stick brands, have stopped participating in this ritual. Good accounting skills beget good financing by withdrawing the right amount of liquid assets from the auto- h'iated teller machine, orClam-o-Matic. Bad accounting skills beget overdraft notices, which are undesirable. Many shoppers use the unscien- tific method of buying food they like to eat without taking into account more important economic variables. I have figured in marginal costs per unit, aggregate supply curves and regression analysis to come up with optimum consumption bundle of macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles. Confused? Stay with me. After filling my cart to an equilib- rium grocery level based upon my consumer preferences, I headed to the checkout to complete my transaction with the store. I had an informative conversation with the sales representative - we'll call her Madge-who optically input #y groceries' universal product code symbols into the central inventory- management mainframe. "Paper or plastic?" Madge asked. "What is the marginal cost of each?" "They don't cost anything." "Well, then what is the marginal societal benefit?" "Plastic it is. Do you have any u"pons?" "Of course. What fool wouldn't work to expand his production fron- tier?" "Hey, waita minute. You have 11 items and you're in the express lane." Hmmm - a conflict. It was the perfect opportunity to put my organi- zational behavior skills to work: Don't deck 'em, REC 'em (Restate, Empa- I hize, Confirm). Irestated Madge's concern. "What you're saying is that I have 11 items and you're only supposed to allow 10 into the express aisle." Then I empathized. "I understand how it can make you upset that I'm buying one extra item." I did not, nec- essarily, agree with Madge's position. Finally, I moved to confirm. "So is it correct that my bringing an extra Rem into your lane has upset you?" I asked. Madge confirmed this. But, to my surprise, Madge launched a counter-attack using the "When-I-Because-Because" method of lodging a complaint. to date, "Hard Times," which is sure to garner further misconceptions about the band's sound and feel. See here, it's like this: Any band from the De- troit area that manages to provide damn good music for more than 20 ,people is slapped with "The Next Stooges" blue ribbon. "The Stooges and MC5 compari- sons are lame," said guitarist Larissa Strickland. "I think that's a ridiculous yoke around my neck. It has abso- lutely nothing to do with us." The Stooges, MC5 and the Laugh- ing Hyenas may all contain that seed of empowerment, that precious abil- ity to stir their audience to riot or take naps, depending on what kick the listener is on at that particular mo- ment. True, the sounds aren't compa- rable. Excluding the MC5's blues- metal stampede, the Laughing Hy- enas power-chord dirges of the psy- choses that life presents to us all re- main extremely disjointed from Ron Asheton's psychedelic twists and Iggy's self-nihilism in the Stooges. Brannon's lyrics may be just as nihil- istic, but the direction of anger is usually pointed in a different direc- tion -sometimes women, sometimes intoxicants, but often some unseen f e wrecking his life in new and un- usual ways. "Hard Times" unveils a fully-re- alized Laughing Hyenas. The music and lyrics may sound and feel like the blues (aided by a cover of Johnny Cash's "Home of the Blues"), but the methods through which the feeling is sustained is accomplished by feeling, not technical prowess. The passion and despair that blues embeds into your soul, then remains untainted by the pressure to do everything right. "No one ever told me what to do," Strickland said of the advantages of being a self-taught guitarist. "I've never had a teacher come in and say, 'No, that's not what you do.' I look at (the music) as what I hear in my head and what I think sounds good to me. So, I look at it in a totally naive way, and I think that helps the songwriting." Recovering from the band's pub- licized drug troubles, which have stirred rumors of break-ups, the group is ready to put their past behind them and go on the road. (In fact, on "Hard Times," we get a shinier, happierJohn Brannon as he sings "Well you just can't wait to get things straight, you gotta give more than you take / Yeah I've had enough down in the dumps, gotta dig out of your slump," on "Slump.") "We're trying to put everything that's happened behind us," Brannon said, "and hopefully (gain) a better attitude towards things. We just want to get out there and play, with nothing standing between us. We do 50 shows in two months. I'm sure it'll kill us, but we've done it before. Larissa's not dead, and we're all ready to go." . r Q I 0 -GROWING GUIDES -NATURAL HIGH WEAR -ROCK T-SHIRTS -ROCK POSTERS -ROCK TAPESTRIES -ROCK BALL-CAPS -HEMP WEAR 995-DEA D 215 S. State St. Ann Arbor Next to State Theatre Upstairs Open 7 Days A Week .. Here's a chipper pack of Laughing Hyenas. Just like the Smurfs. March 11, 1995 6:30 pm. Michigan Union Ballroom The University of Michigan Tickets at door Experiencing: Unique Thai Cuisine Video Presentation Exotic Handcraft Exhibition Thai Classical Dances and Musi Thai Classical Music Workshop Panya Roongruang, visiting professor from Kent State University, and 16 Thai ensemble members discuss Thai classical music and give opportunity for participants to try their own hand at playing the instruments. Workshop takes place at: Wolverine Room, Michigan Union c Sunday, March 12th, 1995 9:00 -11:00 AM F$CUS I NC O R P 0 R AT E D Careers in Software Engineering Decision Focus Inc. (DFI) has openings for hands-on software engineers in our Mountain View, CA office to join our growing management consulting practice. Responsibilities include design and development of custom application Presented by UM s EMU Thai Student Association software using a variety of hardware and software development environments to model and solve strategic business decisions. All positions require a graduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Applied Mathematics or equivalent. Other requirements include excellent verbal and written communication skills, and a desire to make a positive impact on client organizations. Experience in C, C++, UNIX, OS/2, DOS, MVS, GUI development, and RDBMS is also desired. Knowledge of and experience with operations research techniques and mathematical modelling are a plus. DFI's expanding roster of domestic and international clients includes leading companies in the communications, energy, transportation, hospitality, and other industries, as well as government authorities and other policy-making bodies. DFI at offers a highly professional and stimulating work environment, a competitive salary and benefits package with , employee stock ownership, and significant opportunities to expand your skill base. m I