8 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 26, 1996

Bosstones ska-core Pontiac

By Jeffrey Dinsmore
For th Daily
At-the Mighty Mighty Bosstones' first Michigan appear-
ance at the Sanctum in Pontiac, lead vocalist Dicky Barrett
seemed pleasantly surprised by the reception. The all-ages
audience went into a skanking frenzy for the hardest-working
band in show business as they ripped through a brief but ener-
getic hour-long set of new material and
old favorites. RE
High point of the evening: Barrett
pulled a young fan from the audience
named Katie. "Do you guys know any
songs with 'Katie' in them?" he asked{
the band. They didn't. So the Bosstones
swung into an impromptu 'Katie' jam
while young Katie danced on the stage with Ben, the official
Bosstone. It's stunts like this that make Bosstones' audiences
some of the most loyal fans you'll ever meet.
In a recent telephone interview with The Michigan Daily,
Barrett talked about the emergence of bands like No Doubt
and Goldfinger, who are enjoying radio success by appropri-
adiing ska sounds.
"I don't think that they have anything to do with the audi-
ence we're seeing. I think that they made a couple of good
albums, and I think they're all right live bands. I don't think
they're ska bands, though," he said.
The Bosstones embarked on this tour with a couple of
agendas in mind. First, they're promoting a new compilation
cut on their Big Rig Records label titled "Safe and Sound: A
Benefit in Response to the Brookline Clinic Violence." The
disc features a variety of artists from the Boston area, includ-
ing Letters to Cleo, Aimee Mann and Juliana Hatfield.

O
ig
C

Profits from the album are going toward the National Clinic
Access Project, an organization which tries to make it safe for
women to enter health-care clinics without being harassed,
and to six battered women's shelters in the Boston area. The
idea for the benefit came about after two women were shot
recently at women's health-care clinics in Brookline, Mass.
Strange that one of the more high-testosterone bands in the
industry would get involved in a project
VIE W like this?.Not at all.
;hty Mighty "We want to use our success to aid
positive causes, and make sure that
Bosstones bullshit like these shootings doesn't
lutch Cargo's happen again," Barrett said.
Nov. 18, 1996 In addition, the Bosstones are com-
ing out with their fifth full-length
album in February. Judging from the tunes previewed at
Monday's show, the new album is bound to be classic
Bosstones ska-core madness.
The Bosstones are touring, mainly because that's what they
do. When asked if he ever gets sick of touring, Barrett said,
"No man, I love it. We tour as much as we can. Probably
about 300 days (a year)."
Since 1990, the band has been on the road constantly.
Fortunately, the energy never wears out. The Bosstones are
still one of the most consistently entertaining groups to see,
as they demonstrated at the Pontiac show. Even though the
sound was not as great as it could have been, and even
though some pumping moron threw a glass of ice in
Barrett's face (after which Barrett told the audience to "kick
that guy's ass out in the parking lot"), the Bosstones proved
that they're still the reigning champs of good-time concert
mayhem.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones gave up plaid for these fancy suits. What a poor fashion decision.

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Good acting makes Pinter a hit

By Emily Achenbaum
For the Daily
Top-notch acting made "No Man's
Land" a treat for audiences at the Arena
Theater this past weekend. The four-
person cast experimented with the pro-
duction by group-directing the piece, a
challenge they
proved to meet.,
The cast demon-
strated a full under-N
standing of the
script by Harold
Pinter, which has
little plot and is
heavily based on dialogue.
The play opened with Hirst (Rob
Sulewski), a wealthy, aging writer, sit-
ting in what appears to be a study in his
home.
Hirst is "entertaining" a poorer man
named Spooner (James Ingagiola), who
we are lead to believe is an old friend of
Hirst's invited in for a drink. However,
Ingagiola set up the relationship
between the two characters by trying to
entertain Sulewski, instead of vice
versa. He fidgeted around the room,
desperately trying to make cohesive
conversation, while Sulewski simply

stared straight ahead, eyes glazed over,
seemingly oblivious to the situation.
Sulewski was off in no man's land - a
place, as Pinter put it, that does not
change, does not grow old, remains for-
ever icy and silent.
As the aging, drunken Hirst, Sulewski

EVIEW
o Man's Land
Arena Theater
Nov. 21, 1996
tamed a physical

was occasional-
ly over dramat-
ic, but certainly
effective. As he
rose from a
chair or walked
into a room,
Sulewski main-
stature that defined

strong energy in what is a quiet, slow
script, Politziner was often a breath of
fresh air to a scene. Steiger shined
throughout. Even when not speaking, he
maintained a great pompous composure
that combined forced politeness and
inherent rudeness.
But the plot leaves the audience
unsure of exactly what is going on and
where the play is headed. When
Spooner tries to oust the servants to
take care of Hirst himself, the audience
wonders if they are about to embark on
a strange custody battle. Instead, they
are left unconvinced of Spooner's real
compassion for Hirst. Though Ingagiola
displayed wit and comprehension of his
role, the script left out development of-
Hirst and Spooner's relationship.
The discrepancies in the script are
disguised. but not hidden, by unique
blocking, a strong sense of a bond
between the four actors - no doubt
developed by their group-directing and
attention to detail.
Though the play has little plot and
does not always appear to have purpose,
the four actors are each enveloped in their
characters and the quality of the produc-
tion makes it worth the audience's while.

ARNOLD
Continued from Page 5
the movies. I can assure you that if a
kid watches 'Eraser' or '[2' or some-
thing like that, that will not contribu
to the inner-city violence."
Even though Schwarzenegger said
he doesn't believe his movies con-
tribute to street violence, he said some-
thing should still be done about con-
trolling the violence that is being emit-
ted through the media.
"If experts, for instance, say there are
programs out there that can cause that,
one has to go and do something
about that -- which means we have
reduce the amount that we show on tel-
vision and maybe reduce the amount of
violent movies that come out, he said.
"No matter how many violent
movies that you see or that I see, or that
my kids will see, it will not contribute
to them becoming violent,"
Schwarzenegger said. "(The violence)
comes from where they grow up, what
the family background is, what's going
on in the family, do they see people
with guns, people acting violent, t4
father's acting violent, do they split-up,
is there drugs, alcohol and the deterio-
ration of the Faniiy in general, so that
causes a lot of those problems.

,+JUST GOT EVEN
Bletter

Hirst; his joints looking so stiff they
might have cracked loud enough for the
audience to hear. On his hands and
knees, Hirst crawled offstage in the first
scene, leaving Spooner bewildered.
In the second scene the audience was
introduced to Hirst's two servants,
played by Mandy Politziner and Jeff
Steiger. The two servants are very devot-
ed to, Hirst and not pleased with
Spooner's presence. Politziner, who
played Hirst's son and servant, is spunky
and bright. She brought the attitude nec-
essary to her role. With consistently

1 -80 0-K AP -T E ST
www.kaplan.com

I I I I -j

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