12 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, December 10, 1996 Material Girl makes news with kid, 'Evita' soundtrack Newsday Madonna won't allow her daughter, Lour'des, to watch TV when she's older. The child is "not going online!" Madonna insists. "No!" She will be raised Catholic, or so it seems. Mother and daughter, now living in Los Angeles, will probably settle some- where outside New York City, but "not the -amptons." The latest news on the Madonna front comes in an interview that appears in the January issue of Redbook, which goes on sale next week and shows the new mother on the cover in a hot pink lace coat, her shoulder-length blond hair streaked with brown. Although the piece is timed to help promote the release later this month of Madonna's new film, "Evita," her choice of the middlebrow Redbook to talk about motherhood and child-rearing suggests a striking departure from her vampish past, at least for now. Madonna says she has no plans to retire. She will record a new album next year, but is on maternity leave for now. On Lourdes' future education: "I don't want her to go to school with a bunch of rich kids. And I don't want her to go to an all-white school." On whom she turns to for motherly advice: her sister Melanie Henry, a musician's manager who has a 6-year- old son and was with her when Lourdes was born Oct. 14, and Rosie O'Donnell, who has an adopted son and knows about car seats and diapers. O'Donnell is "a nuts-and-bolts kind of a girl," Madonna said. "I like that." On religion: Lourdes will "certainly know about Catholicism. The Bible is an interesting book to read. I want my daughter to read it." On Carlos Leon, the unmarried father of Lourdes: "I don't think mar- riage is a guarantee of anything. I also don't think that it's my obligation to explain my relationship to people. It's not a conventional one, but I'm very happy with it." The no-TV rule comes from Madonna's father, Tony Ciccone. She says "to be plopped in front of a televi- sion instead of being read to or talked to ... is a huge mistake." The no-online rule is her own: "If she (Lourdes) wants to talk to people, she can invite them over. The people who like going online best are people who can't sustain a relationship for more than five minutes.' Stone Temple Pilots and Local H hit Detroit Wetland is back in action as the Stone Temple Pilots bring their "Tiny Music ... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop" tour to our own Palace at Auburn Hills with Local H. After a well-publicized drug problem and a critically acclaimed new album, critics say the tour isn't as successful due to the time the band has spent away from music-making. See for yourself at 7:30 p.m. at the Palace. Tickets are still available for $25 at (810) 645-6666. RECORDS Continued from Page 9 Various Artists Evita - The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack Warner Bros. The product of nearly 500 hours of recording, this two-disc soundtrack showcases the diversity and strength of the main characters' talents. Unfortunately, the interpretation of the music by the performers occasionally falls short. The main characters of the movie - Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathon Pryce - are the highlights of this work. Madonna shows all the facets of her voice, from her beautiful contra- alto recitative in "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" to her songbird-esque solo in "The Actress Hasn't Learned the Lines." The variety of her part as Eva Peron even requires her to sing with a poppy sound that is reminiscent of her earlier days as the "material girl" A problem that has plagued Madonna for her entire career creeps up on her a few times in this soundtrack: she occasionally falls slightly off key. But, all in all, her work is excellent. Most of her parts are in the upper range of her voice - an area she does not sing with often. Months of voice lessons successfully improved the power of her voice in that range. Antonio Banderas, in the role of Ch6, sings with great strength and beauty throughout the work - his accent con- tributing favorably to the flair of his role. "The Lady's Got Potential" - a rock'n'roll song that Banderas pulls off without a hitch - showcases the breadth of his voice well. Jonathon Pryce sings his role as Juan Peron in a very fatherly voice that fits the emotions of his role. His voice sounds rich and powerful when he sings in the baritone range but somewhat strained when forced higher, as in the song "A New Argentina"-- an unfortu- nate limitation to the versatility needed in his role. In some ways, this interpretation of L 1 I I Andrew Lloyd Webber's music is curi- ous. For instance, "Rainbow Tour" comes off sounding a little like a coun- try song and several of the songs simply lack the intensity that you would hope the musicians would have brought from the live performance. The chorus performs well most of the time but occasionally, the main charac- ters must come to their rescue. In "And the Money Kept Rolling In," the chorus performs without strength, sounding weak and tinny. Fortunately, Banderas' beautiful tenor sings high above them - preventing the collapse of the song. One of the best parts of the sound- track is the new single written for the movie. "You Must Love Me" follows "Your Little Body's Slowly Breaking Down" - it couldn't be in a better place. The compassion and emotion of the first song carry on well to the next,* providing one of the most beautiful transitions in the entire production. The most important part of the musi- cal, on stage or screen, is the convic- tion with which the charac- ters sing. The entire dia- logue is sung and ther artists do an excellent job of capturing Webber's genius. This soundtrack is a very faithful repro- duction of the live pro- duction and deserves a listening. - Jack Schillaci Loudon Wainwright 1ll Grown Man Virgin The fad in album covers these days seems to be to show a cute picture of the artist as a child. But guitarist Loudon Wainwright III has little else in common with Everclear, or even Matthew Sweet - he is an honest-to-goodness folk singer, part of the older generation of folk singers who came of age in the late '60s. Early on in his career, Wainwright gained considerable attention for his deliberately tasteless lyrics and humor, culminating in a 1973 Top 20 hit, "Dead Skunk," which has since become a Dr. Demento Show favorite. After a couple more rock-oriented albums in the late '70s, he has since maintained a lower profile and refocused on introspective folk and country. "Grown Man," his first release in three years, finds him treading a middle ground between his earlier nov- elty folk and his more recent sentimen- tality-laced country pop. Musically, Wainwright is at his best armed with just his voice and a guitar. He conjures up surreal, almost psyche- delic acoustic moods on upbeat tunes like "That Hospital," "Cobwebs" and "The End has Begun," and ballads like "A Year" and "Dreaming," the latter of which wouldn't sound out of place on a modern rock section with a grittier arrangement. But like so many other folk musicians, he feels the need to clutter it up sometimes, and that is what eventual- ly leads to this album's weak points. Nevertheless, the duds can be pro- grammed out, and "Grown Man" can thus become a landmark statement of a voice from an innocent past trying to find relevance and meaning in today's more complicated present. - Mark Feldman Alex Reece So Far Quango Records What does the term "drum-n-bass" mean to you? Well, it means releasing one of the, best electronic dance albums this year for Alex Reece (who is generally regarded as the drum-n-bass guru). Drum-n-bass fuses tech- no and dub that develops at very fast beats (140 bpm usually) including trancey keyboards and heavy bass. This premier DJ delivers his debut album "So Far," a fabulous collection of drum-n-bass tracks along with some intervals of jazz and techno. Singles on "So Far" have dazzled club-goers in Europe and now the United States gets a chance to dance along to these tracks. This 10-track album starts with Reece's biggest hit, "Feel the Sunshine (Original Mix)." This track includes vocals by Deborah Anderson, who sounds eerily reminiscent of Bjork, and the synthesized beats carry Anderson's vocals throughout the track. The next track, "Jazz Master (Original Mix)," is the prize track on this album. While this track may not be described as jazz due to its break-beat patterns, they combine with the synthesized horns to create a fantastic blend of up-tempo and laid- back grooves simultaneously. Another of Reece's big singles in Europe, "Candles," is the second track with vocals (this time by Carmen). This track heavily boosts up the bass and offers up a trip-hop feel in the same vein of something by Portishead. In an electronic music scene where acts such as Prodigy, = Chemical Brothers, Meat Beat Manifesto, Moby and Orbital have established their own distinctive sounds to produce fantastic dance tracks, Reece has easily placed himself amongst these acts with this album. With this debut album, the future looks promising So far, so good. Various Artists Safe and Sound Big Rig / Mercury It's sad that a compilation like "Safe and Sound" had to be made in the first place. When two receptionists at a women's health clinic in the Boston suburb of Brookline, Mass., were Lur- dered in December 1994, musician( from the local Boston scene too:it upon themselves to make sure tragedes- like that wouldn't happen again. LodaI rock heroes along with fledgling bads performed at several concerts in an event called "Safe and Sound" benefit ing nonprofit organizations that prkfe health care, education and safety to years later, the release of the "Safe ad Sound" benefit compilation acts as a natural extension of those concerts. Musically, the tracks on the compila tion range from acoustic pop to punk: and ska --a true testament to the diver- sity of the Boston music scene. Tracks by Lou Barlow's Deluxx Folk Implosion and the Mighty Miginy Bosstones can be seen next to the lItes of Tracy Bonham and Aimee Mann. The collection of songs and artistion "Safe and Sound" may seem random-at first, but the disc flows surprisingly well thanks to the careful ordering of songs on the compilation. While some of the tracks on "Safe and Sound" are direct responses to the murders, tracks like Belly's "Think About Your Troubles" Letters to Cle's "You Dirty Rat" and a live versiot oft Morphine's "Radar" gain new mea E.g in the context of the compilatian Tracks by Juliana Hatfield ("Waves") and Fuzzy ("Severe") highlight the more complex aspects of those normal- ly poppy artists and in a way, mirror the complexity of the subject matter behind "Safe and Sound" More sobering than depressing, most of the tracks on "Safe and Sound" would be worth a listen even if they weren't on the compilation. Only the cause behind "Safe and Sound" and a sense of a musical community binds them together on one disc: There really must be something in the New England water for that area to produce so man bands worthy of praise. - Victoria SalipaR& Wesley Willis Feel the Power American Buses. People. Bands. Whupping animals' asses. "Rock over London, rock over Chicago, (corporate endorse- ment)." The preceding has been the sum and substance of lyrics of Wesley Willis' album "Feel the Power." Well, the man is a schizophrenic, so his obsessive reiteration of the above themes is at least understandable. His: voice is an uncontrolled crackling thing: when it tries to be melodious, and is super-stereotypically spoken word in the spoken word portions of his songs. Both styles are strangely engaging. He has one song structure. He uses it over and over. Just like a real band. Hi structure involves a spoken word verse a chorus (the song's title four times), another spoken verse, the chorus, a long instrumental interlude, a final spoken verse, the chorus and "Rock over London, rock over Chicago" with a concluding advertising jingle. It's like for Alex Reece. - Philip Son Pryce and Madonna star in "Evita." I The RESPECT LapPak R7p new generation in laptop carrying cases. rooni for sa er' fi'r pe er 6 ce// phorne U m