8A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, November 30, 1998 Franklin sings into the divine p By Garth Hotel Daily Arts Writer People go to church on holidays such as Christmas and Easter, but I never realized that some went on Thanksgiving as well. Church is, after all, a large group of well-dressed people in a beau- tiful building who convene to sing praises and to worship. That's precisely what went down last weekend at Detroit's Orchestra Hall, where a packed audience recognized and worshiped the magnifi- cence of the closest thing we have to a goddess here on Earth: Aretha Franklin. In, case you have been away for a long time, Franklin was and remains perhaps the most outstanding vocalist around, and she once again proved what she no longer needs to keep proving: She has a voice that can fill an auditorium with such beauty and power Aretha Franklin Orchestra Hall nov. 27, 1998 ents. The group, that it can justly be called "divine." And the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was there, too. Although Franklin has previously appeared with the Boston Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the National Symphony, this marked her first appearance with the DSO, and, hence, the first time singing with a symphony orchestra in her hometown of Detroit. The DSO isn't a group that's used to being relegated to mere background music, but when Aretha takes the stage that's all that it could hope to contribute. Fortunately for the DSO, Franklin did not appear until after an intermission, giving them time to showcase its own formidable tal- led by Resident Conductor Leslie B. Dunner, a smashing collection of horns to keep up. The DSA All-Stars earned a standing ovation, not simply because the group is com- posed entirely of graduating students and alumni of the school, but rather because they were a group of incredibly talented musicians who proved that no matter how old you are, you can still kick ass. Following the Aretha-free first act, the crowd was ready for the Queen to take the stage. And took the stage she did, with enough flair to put czars to shame. The woman knows how to make an entrance..While photographs of her were projected on a screen, the orchestra, which now included members of her own entourage, blasted Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra," followed up by an excerpt from "Chariots of Fire" and an arrangement of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Granted, there's no subtlety here. But this is Aretha. After this trilogy of deification, Franklin was ready to appear. The entire literature of praise and expectation that accompanied this woman was generously supported. Her exquisite ability to make anything that comes out of her, speech or song, sound bril- liantly musical, the very resonance of her voice and the power and beauty that she gives to everything she does with it, all carried through as she performed "Rock Steady" and "Angel," joined by a troupe of her own dancers. Another key term in the praises of Franklin is versatility, and she embodied that description as she segued into the energetic "Think," where more than a handful of her fans echoed her on the chorus of "Freedoms." One of her most treasured and enjoyable songs, "Respect," fol- lowed. Maybe all she's asking for is respect, but she sure deserves a hell of a lot more than that. She deserves idolization. Midway through the number, she exited the stage and let the deserving band shine. You could give Aretha a K-mart karaoke machine and she would blow the roof off the arena, so it's truly remarkable to see her with a band as unstoppably groovy as the one she has. Featuring her son Teddy on guitar, her band managed to musically obliterate the DSO and almost came close to matching the power that Franklin herself brought to the stage. One quickly gets a sense of why she is so loved and has been for so long. She possesses a huge vocal range, yet doesn't feel the need to exploit it unnecessarily (did somebody say Mariah Carey?). And she can take a song, no matter how sappy, and ensure that it won't turn into an annoyingly cheesy, empty-headed love ballad (did somebody say Celine Dion?) She proved that to us with a song from the film "Waiting to Exhale," which in many of her contemporaries' hands would have been nothing more that soulless make-out music, but Franklin made it divine, stopping the show at nearly every other verse. Courtesy o f rsta Aretha Franklin enchanted her Thanksgiving crowd at Orchestra Hail in Detroit this past Thursday. To remind us that the DSO was still there, Franklin again amazed the audience with her startling versatility by having the orchestra join her in performing Puccini's "Vissi d'arte" from "Tosca," in a repeat of her performance at the Grammy Awards where she filled in at a moment's notice for an ailing Luciano Pavarotti. Franklin oozes soul, and her voice captures that soul in everything from vac- uous '50s tunes to opera. Figuring that she had nothing left to conquer in the field of vocal performance, Franklin sat at the piano and accompanied herself in an almost unbearably emotional "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which featured a fantastically funky coda where she led her orches- tra to places neither Paul nor Art ever dreamed the song could go. Franklin ended regulation time with a rousing version of her "Freeway of Love," amalgamating itself into a rocking gospel cho- rus that again saw the crowd come to its feet. She left the stage for a gloriously huge ovation, milking it until returning to perform the title track from her latest album "A Rose is Still a Rose." She closed the breathtaking show with a sweet and uncharacter- istically subtle performance of the Sinatra hit "I'll Be Seeing You." After graciously thanking the DSO (for listening to her, I suppose), Franklin exited for the final time, having left a mark on the music fans in the audience that will not be forgotten. As we dined on turkey and potatoes with our families this holi- day weekend and reminded ourselves what we are thankful for, hopefully that list included our being in the presence of a truly timeless institution like the divine Aretha Franklin. opened the wholly American program with a American piece, Leonard Bernstein's overture to "Candide." That, along with a movement from William Grant Still's "Afro-American Symphony," were the only proper orchestral works. Following this were three pop orchestral arrangements of the works of Duke Ellington (a pre- view of next year's celebration of the 100th anniversary of the com- poser's birth). Ralph Hermann's "Ellington Fantasy" nicely includ- ed the standards "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and "Take the A Train." The first half of the show, which ought to have been the DSO's, was stolen away from the orchestra as a group of youngsters from the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts (DSA) gave a dynamically intense version of Dizzy Gillespie's proto- funky "Manteca," featuring an astonishing percussion section with I I Finally, a store to satisfy your pocket fetish. Announcing the opening of the Levi's* Online Store. I uide aids in dead bets Dead Pool: Stretch & Wilk's Official Annual Guide Mike "Stretch" Gelfand and Mike Wilkinson Formaldehyde Press People die every day, and according to death experts Gelfand and Wikinson, at a rate of more than a hundred per sec- ond. Nobody loses much sleep over it, unless you happen to personal- ly know the deceased. Unless the dead person in question is a celebrity - then people all over the world unite and mourn as one. Headlines lament (or trumpet - sometimes it's hard to tell which) the passing of the elite. Everybody sheds a tear over a Princess Diana or a Frank Sinatra. Everybody except the dead poolers. If Di or Old Blue Eyes himself is on a pooler's list, a cheer is more likely to be sounded than a keen. An underground craze for many years, dead pools are final- ly coming into their own as a pop culture pastime thanks to the Internet and a spiffy new hand- book written by a couple of death prognostication experts. "Dead Pool: Stretch & Wilk's Official Annual Guide 1999 Edition" offers up guidelines for dead pools, hot tips on who in the public eye is most likely to expire and a host of dead pool anecdotes - yes, dead pools can bring fam- ilies together and tear friendships apart, all over a famous corpse. Like your typical NCAA bas- ketball betting pool where you pick certain teams from the pool of 64, a dead pool involves choos- ing wisely. Obviously, there's a much larg- er element of chance at work in a dead pool: Who can reliably pre- dict when a stray blank will fell an up and coming actor (Brandon Lee) or a politician will ski into a tree (Sonny Bono)? That's what dead pools are all about: Morbid fate. Dead pools usually utilize a system much like a yearly sports draft, in which on a particular day, pool members draft various per- sonalities from the limelight and hope that they end up in quick- lime. Noticeably ailing celebs such as Bob Hope or aging hipsters such as Strom Thurmond tend to go in the first round, while long shots such as Dom DeLuise (as the guide says, "one word: fat") can go deep in the tenth round. Impending death indicators such as rehab stints or a penchant for motorcycles can land an oth- erwise outwardly healthy guy such as Gerard Depardieu much higher in the draft than he would have gone before his Harley wipeout last year. The 1999 guide, written by Mike "Stretch" Gelfand and Mike Wilkinson, is a slim text written in a personal, easy-to-read style. There's no great prose here, but there are plenty of great stories. It does get bogged down from time to time in dead pool jargon, rules and semantics, but as Stretch and Wilk attest, it's all there to you and your friends run your own dead pools fatally smooth. The two authors prove themselves as masters of the mor- bid, reeling off negative facts about the rich and famous in grand style, even if they do hap- pen to be hoping for a grand mal seizure. Picking dead people requires a lot of forethought and knowl- edge, almost as much as a life insurance agent. Health habits, marital situation, drug additions, vices, lifestyle - (01' Dirty Bastard, as a rapper with connec- tions to gangland and the whole East-West rivalry, is so high-risk that he makes Stretch's "drop dead" top ten picks) all factor in to the likelihood of a pick kick- ing the bucket during the dead pool. "Dead Pool" is, at the very least a fun, quick read. At most, it will 11 01 0 01 0 I