Bridget Jones' Diary Last year's comedic hit star- ring Renee Zellweger comes to the Michigan League today, free, 8 p.m. michigandaily.com /arts 3icd#jjan §t RTS WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 20, 2002 Fold the band: Ben goes solo Sarcastic pimno man touring all by kis lonesome By Luke Smith Daily Arts Editor "I mean it's not fucking cool to be like Billy Joel," laughs Ben Folds. "I sing out of tune all the time, and I get shit wrong, and he doesn't." A man stands at a piano plays his heart out and everyone wants to say he's Billy Joel, except for him. The problem with being a guy in front of a piano in music now, a time when metal and rap/metal are barely alive and kick- ing yet somehow still dominating airwaves, are the inevitable comparisons to piano composers of yore. Folds narrates many of his songs in the third person, with lyrical styling sharing simi- larities with ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus. Folds formed and lead the ironically titular group in 1994, sans guitarist, near the height of over-commercialized guitar grunge. Ben Folds Five released a self-titled independent effort whose tin-pan alley indie-pop propagated a major label bidding war. It was the band's fol- low-up and Sony debut, Whatever and Ever Amen that broke the band: The bitter "Brick," about a pair of teens sneaking off to have an abortion, beamed out of top 40 and modern rock radio towers alike. Whatever was a left- field hit, selling over a million copies. The band released a B-sides and outtakes LP in 1998 before dropping their final album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. Reinhold portrayed a desperate band, beginning to grow apart. Widely regarded as the strongest of the Ben Folds Five catalog, the album was met with praise and lukewarm sales. Messner was a darker depiction and often a departure from the upbeat piano pop for which the band was known. Reinhold incorpo- rated stringed arrangements and even a quasi-experimental tune in "Most Valuable Pos- session" (the song was an answering machine recording of Folds' father, with tweaked musical back- grounds and a fatherly lecture on the importance of intellectual preserva- tion). The record was far more commercially inaccessible, especially to radio's fickle ears, than the Five's previous efforts, and sales slumped. November of 2000 brought the unexpected announcement of the Ben Folds Five's breakup. While the band was unraveling during the sup- port tour for Reinhold, anxiety, nervousness and tension were high inside the Five. Folds told the Michigan" Daily, "During the time when the band was breaking up, I had to go BEN out and feel like I did when I was At M playing a talent show in 12th Th grade." After the Five disbanded, March 1 Folds began work on his second $2 solo record (his first, an avant-pop Clear, album recorded under the moniker Fear of Pop, came out in 1998). Rockin 'the Suburbs hit shelves in September of 2001, and Ben Folds was back, minus the Five. The album most resembles the pop sensi- bility of Whatever and Ever Amen, but the recording is bigger, and the writing is better. Songs like "Zak and Sara," "Fred Jones Part 2" and "Carrying Cathy" continue the smarty- pants third-person narration that Folds cultivat- ed in the mid-'90s. Suburbs is undoubt- edly the slickest recording Ben Folds has released, '' either F zic :ea at 3 C by himself or with the Five. "The songs proba- bly relate a little stronger," Folds said, "and in a way, it's probably not as exciting because it is so highly produced." Part of Folds' reasoning for the resounding pop sensibilty on Rockin' the Suburbs was the lack of radio play the Five's final album received. "I really felt like I'd written songs before that should've been hits, and I don't know why they weren't. They weren't produced OLDS the right way, we took too many higan liberties with it, they weren't big ater enough recordings and for some 7:30 p.m. reason, they weren't really flying .50 at radio, and I thought they 'hannel should." When recording Rockin', Folds took careful heed of produc- er Ben Grosse's words: "I thought, OK I'm going to listen to the advice of my producer, and when something doesn't sound big or large enough or pop enough, I'm gonna make it that way,' because I don't want to take a great song and have it wasted." After a pair of successful tours last fall and winter, Folds is hitting the road again. "It's my first real solo tour; it's just going to be me, a van and a piano." Folds' solo tour will be the first time he's revisited the Five's material during his regular set-list since the band's break up. (Folds' encores during the two fall tours consisted of him at the piano playing audience requests.) He said, "With the encore sets, I don't need a set-list, because whatever someone wants to hear, I can play it." Listeners shouldn't expect to hear a set-list strictly of songs off Rockin '; rest assured, he'll be playing all kinds of songs. "Any- thing goes, unless its something I really don't feel like I'm inspired to play at that moment, or its something that really doesn't make sense at the piano," he said. And the all-too frequent Billy Joel comparisons? "I would like to be compared to Randy Newman or Todd Rund- gren. I dig what they do." Drugs are bad, mmkay? Wait, no, they're cool. My bad. Stripped down to this: M. Doughty and the small rock By Keith N. Dusenberry Daily Music Editor "The bulk of my friends are, you know, not rock stars," admits Mike Doughty. The former Soul Coughing frontman tends to cultivate a lower pro- file these days as he tours delivering his acoustic "small rock." But his shows are not just Soul Coughing Unplugged. There are the old-band favorites, but also, "new songs, all kinds of stuff" that Doughty has been perfecting since he recorded his solo-demo- the country MIKE Dc At The M Tomorrow $1 Clear C1 Touching 'Eleemosynary' comes to Arena By Marie Bernard Daily Arts Writer In a society so rich with language, where every word implies several meanings and every generation cre- ates its own tongue, a mysterious title like "Eleemosynary" seems to infer a work that will unravel layers upon layers of complexity. "You know what I sometimes think of Westbrook women?" says Echo, one of the play's three characters. "That no matter what we've done - no matter how we've done it - we're all three of us, in our way, eleemosynary. E-L-E-E-M-O-S-Y- N-A-R-Y: Charitable, the giving of alms." Beneath every definition is a sub- text and that perpetrates through the many levels of interaction in Lee Blessing's play, which opens tomor- row in the Arena Theatre. Blessing's work investigates the relationships between three generations of women. The youngest, ELEEM Echo, is a finalist in the At the A National Spelling Bee, explaining the infusion of interesting and unfa- Tomorrow miliar English lan-7 guage. Her mother, Base Artie, is a troubled Sociological theorists have been eternally debating the role of women in society and how subordi- nation has led to a [OSYNARY rena Theatre w and Friday at Sp.m. ment Arts perpetration and con- fusion of gender roles over the past several decades. This play looks at this issue across three genera- tions of intelligent and headstrong women. Through monologues and short characters he has created are bril- liant, complicated and interesting - and also very human. Their strug- gles are pertinent to the kind of identity-seeking and self-discovery that so many people seem to be striving for in college." Lee Blessing, a notable contem- porary poet, received the 1997 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award. He is best-known for "A Walk in the Woods" and "Cobb," each of which received critical acclaim. Rachel Chapman and Raquelle Stiefler, both BTA students, play Artie. Anika Solveig, BFA Perfor- mance freshman, portrays Echo. "My cast is brilliant and amazing," said Wright, herself a BA Theater Senior. "I've learned a lot from working with them." come-self-released-album Skittish back when Soul Coughing still existed. Like that record, his live show is a toned down affair. With Soul Cough- ing's -bulky beat emphasis removed, Doughty's songs take on a more reflec- tively rhythmic quality. They are the nuanced, jazzy free verse to Soul Coughing's bombastic iambic pen- tameter. But Doughty hasn't always been such a laid back cat. "I had a coke and sluts period ... definitely," Doughty professes. Like most fantasies about life as a "minor rock celebrity" though, Doughty's debauched drugs-and-groupies era was, "never quite as good as you think it's gonna be." And though he kicked heroin a while back, Doughty still has- n't given up on women. He has "no girlfriend, but I like 'em - still like the ladies." Lately, though, he's been busy with his music, "I've been pretty focused on the songwriting,"he says, "Get up every morning and do it." His current tour reflects this, as Doughty continues to embellish his solo setlist with new num- bers. Lately enlisting studio help from a bass player and "sort of old school '70s session drummers," Doughty plans to eventually, "make a record with a band (but still) tour acoustically." When not busy with these pursuits, Doughty maintains, and occasionally posts messages on, his website, super- specialquestions.com.. Not one wor- ried with how his electronically- enhanced accessibility might damage his rock star status, Doughty reasons that, "In terms of like, the big rock stars I know and hang out with, I don't think any of them give a fuck. And in terms of the big rock stars I don't hang out with, you know, none of them give a fuck in the first place. And in terms of the small-to- )UGHTY medium rock stars I agic Bag hang out with, I don't think any of them are at 8 p.m. aware." 2 Despite his lack of a hannel record deal, some of the music community is aware of Doughty's potential as a collaborator..Following successful partnerships with electronic beat- brewer BT and They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh, Doughty remains open to future fusions. And though he praises MTV news for covering, "all kinds of bands that do not have Fred Durst in them," Doughty says that if the red-hatted one calls, he'll "consider it." Such potential indiscretions aside, Doughty's forecast looks promising. Although when considering other possible co-conspirators in his future of small rock, Doughty laments, "I definitely can't bring people back from the dead ... that would be a good thing." Should he ever tire of the acoustic rock while on tour, Doughty could always bring back the big beats and bouncy bass - maybe he could even revive the coke and sluts for the ride. genius and her grandmother, Dorthea, is an eccentric and wise woman. Many years ago, Artie had left Dorthea to raise her daughter when Artie chose to flee to Europe. Now, Artie has returned in time for the Spelling Bee. scenes, this non-traditional piece of theater unravels the mysteries of womanhood, family and the human spirit. "Blessing is a very careful and cohesive writer," said Rebecca Wright, the show's director. "The SamulNori visits Power Center v. ....,.. . } S4. y .x...s- . . ... 4~. '~ By Janet Yang Daily Arts Writer Keep two things in mind when going to see SamulNori tomorrow at the Power Center: First of all, it will require com- plete concentration. Secondly, consider bringing some earplugs. Concentration is required because the melodies can be very intricate and you don't want to miss a beat, uF while the earplugs might come in handy for those SAMU of delicate hearing. At the Po SamulNori consists of Thursda' four musicians, each $16-30, , skilled with a different office at 7 Korean percussive instru- tic ment. Changgo, kkwaeng- University N gwari, puk and ching are the sounds that will make up the evening's fare, creating beautiful music, something often difficult with percus- sion instruments alone. The changgo is an hourglass shaped two-sided drum, while the kkwaenggwari is a smaller gong and the puk is a barrel shaped drum. The nonstop drumming and cym- V JL w all '64 k Mu: nized movements among the performers, as well as some verbal chants. A hat with a whirling streamer on the top, a traditional dancing accessory, is also used by the performers to make designs in the air with the flick of their heads. And through all of this, they are still playing their four instruments with the same skill and mastery as seen in the first half. The origin of this "farmer" music can be .NoRI traced back to ancient er Center times when Korean tribesmen settled down a U S ox and began farming. The 4-2538 for dance was believed to ets have been performed in isical Society May and October, in fes- tivals to honor the Gods to bring healthy crops. Later on, the music evolved into the Korean tradition of "namsadang," which involved folk troupes that traveled around the country to provide entertainment and spiritual ceremonies. Some of these old traditions can also be seen in the greetings and chants of SamulNori, which often con- SamulNori came together under the direction of Kim Duk Soo, the group's leader and master of the changgo. Kim's father was a master of the bukgunori drum and Kim inherited this skill from his father. Thought to be a child prodigy of the drums, Kim won several awards as a child and continued on to join many different artistic troupes. The group actually maintains up to 30 performers, but only three at a time may form a quartet with Kim during the tour. Each of the performers are selected and personally trained by Kim. The group may change many times, but it always features Kim at the helm. SamulNori has toured the U.S. a few times, mostly in New York, Los Ange- les, Hawaii, Chicago and Boston. Inter- nationally, the group has toured Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Greece, Japan, China and Australia. The group has also collaborated with highly acclaimed musicians from around the world with a variety of music styles and also played at festivals such as the Kool Jazz Festival, WOMAD festival and the Han River E * X C E L Two Main Sessions: May 22 to July 3 and July 8 to August 1.6 .tw 4v 44,.: nxw.4. .. $ 'M'rI -.x -w.....v.. bv n . ..+. . 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