Wilco This band finally caught up to itself, putting on a great show at Hill Auditorium in October 2004. PAGE SD * Fall 2005 cJbr 3kbigan &zij ARTS NEW' STUDENT EDITION Top Model America's Top Model: Cycle One came out on DVD and earned four and a half stars for the show. PAGE CIN SECTIOND No. 1trait o successful people: rock music o you're here. The parents have vanished, your roommate's stuff is lying on his bed, the sun is baking the room in an August heat and you've got hours till you have to do anything important. At this point you should probably just throw on a record and watch everyone scurry around trying to move in before sundown. You're a freshman and among other things that will happen during the next four years: you're going to go to a football game, you're going to sit in a gigantic lecture and question your role in the universe, you're going to eat in a dining hall and you're going to meet someone with whom you've got nothing in common. This person will also live next to you for your first academic year. My point is that all of these experiences - no matter all the universality - will be, in a very profound way, awesomely personal. The weather, the people around you, your feelings, your feelings for the people around you - all of these color our emotions and drench them in permanence. Please, please pick a good soundtrack. Though you're going to hear different things from people (and I'm one of them), personal- izing your music taste is probably one of the more important things you're going to do in the next few years. Along with learning a foreign language you have never heard of, thanking your lucky stars you're an American college student and not a premature child born in a developing country, and showing up for an exam, developing and expanding your music taste is simply something you have to do in the next few semesters. If we're being taught to cultivate our precious, precious individuality (a hard enough task at a huge uni- versity where everyone wears the same thing on Saturdays), why eat the same spoon-fed musical slop you listened to three months ago? Don't take this as the "college is so amazingly different" argument - you'll hear that enough from sleazy upperclassmen trying to hit on you. Just open your eyes and come to your senses: you've got a clean fucking slate. The twangy-historical textures of The Band, unfettered, aggressive rap monologues from Rakim, the formative thrash and napalm of The Stooges. Each a flavor separate, and someone, even someone on this campus, thinks one of these three artists is the single greatest achieve- ment in American pop music history. If you can't recognize one of those names, it's cool. Chances are you'll meet someone who does, and chances are they'd play you the record if you asked. You don't need to know these groups yet, but find bands like these, bands of ungodly talent who perfectly execute their music, and make them necessary to your life. Start your life again. Whether we like to admit it or not, art satu- rates our lives, from what we say, to how we talk about our lives; art controls the flow of human- ity. You're going to explore museums, the very roots of literature, and discuss everything in drab rooms early on Wednesday mornings. This is called learning. The other stuff: our boundless energy, our constant rebellion, our furious sculpt- ing into adulthood, becomes the language of rap and rock. You're young; your parents have been feeding you a steady dose of the music they like since your days in a bib and blanket. Choose your music; choose something dangerous, out of what you know. That's all music worshipers want, to know that everyone explores, everyone finds their lives connected to something previously unknown. To find that someone's artistic life has turned the corner thanks to a band like the Pix- ies, Public Enemy or Spoon. I firmly believe that at the end of life, the final conclusion won't be who you knew, what you owned or where you lived; the art you ignored becomes the barometer of your life. You're spoiled with time and resources as a college kid, you've got no excuse not to get your hands on as much music as possible. No matter how old - Chopin or Marvin Gaye - music never dies. Like Tinkerbell smashed into a flat, black and circular shape, each time a listener believes, an audible universe is recreated. Lord knows that sticking to the same 20 albums for the whole of your adult life is probably worse than eating the same 20 meals and seeing the same 20 people every damn day. Decades of music history are staring you in your face. Ann Arbor and the whole Detroit area is filled with musical rule breakers - Iggy Pop, Madonna, Berry Gordy, Jack White, the list ctretche can. Tally Hall LOCAL BAND EARNS NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT ALEXAINDER DZIADOSZL/Daily Tally Hall became semifinalists in mtvU's "Best Music on Campus Contest." By Aaron Kaczander APRIL 7, 2005 Daily Staff Writer The five men of Tally Hall sit in a half circle in the dark, musty attic bedroom of guitarist Joe Hawley. Their topic of discussion: proper necktie procedure. According to Hawley's 1985 copy of Dick Clark's Easygoing Guide to Good Grooming, completing the half-Windsor is far harder than it appears. And as Dick Clark has realized the trials of necktie-tying, Tally Hall knows the difficulties of songwriting. "Joe is a perfectionist, he's very meticulous, he envisions songs months before he's completed them," gushed guitarist and vocalist Rob Cantor said. Now, seeing how integral neckwear is to the multi- colored performance of the self-proclaimed "wonky" Ann Arbor pop-rock outfit, it's pretty important that they each understand the vital stylistic procedure of tying their ties. No, these aren't the skinny-tied, scorning rock snobs most associated with the clothing accessory. Rather, they are the scrupulously color- coded, inanely well-spoken band of college cronies that have staked iconic status around Ann Arbor with their brand of deliciously catchy rock music. The Tally Hall train has gathered so much national and even international steam that they have found themselves semifinalists in mtvU's "Best Music on Campus Contest." That is, they have managed to land a spot as one of the top-10 best college bands in the country. The contest, which features an open online voting system on mtvU's website, ran until April 17. Snippets of Tally Hall's song, "Good Day," which also won keyboardist Andrew Horowitz the grand prize of the John Lennon Scholarship Competition at the 2004 BMI Pop Music Awards, ran on mtvU until the contest was over. The top-five campus bands moved on to the finals, where they were judged by industry professionals and artists like G.Love. The grand prize was a $25,000 recording deal with Uni- versal Records. From their first performance at a 2002 Basement Arts showcase in the Frieze Building to a sold-out show at Ann Arbor's legendary Blind Pig, Tally Hall never thought this musical venture would land them at the potentially career-changing seriousness they face today. "That show convinced me that we had something more than just being a way to keep yourself busy," drummer Ross Federman said. Even though Cantor says they'll devote a couple years to their project, they remain grounded to the fact that this strange trip may come to an abrupt end. "We all have all these different career paths that could possibly happen, and all these people know that," Horowitz said. But Hawley is optimistic: "We're feel- ing like we're onto something." And on to something they are. Tally's website has suffered a slowdown due to an overpowering num- ber of visitors, and the Hawley-directed video for the Caribbean-fused "Banana Man" was broadcast to millions on Albinoblacksheep.com. This limelight has garnered fan mail from Tally- Hallniks as far as Japan, Belgium and Germany. This international exposure, combined with the devoted following of University students, has led Tally to the point where they can step back from their tri-harmon- ic, shared vocal duties and let the crowd sing. Yet fans unfamiliar with lyrics don't bother bassist Zubin Sedghi. "Even worse than nobody knowing your words is we've played in places where you really don't feel welcome," said Sedghi said. This obstacle isn't really an issue for the close-knit group. "We're pretty confident with our product," Horowitz said, on the eve of a Cancer Awareness Week performance on the Diag. When it comes to scrutinizing the fine line between Tally's lighthearted performance style and prolific songwriting, Cantor drops the silly shtick. "With five tough critics working on each song, we can usually come with a pretty fair balance," Cantor said. The writing process for Tally Hall is fairly simple; Hawley, Cantor and Horowitz individually pen the lyrics and melodies, and then show the product to the rhythm section of Federman and Sedghi. "I think we try to achieve some level of profun- dity in an accessible fashion," said Hawley, reflecting on the incredible variance in the songstyle of Tally Hall's Catalog. A proposed short spring tour would "wonkify" crowds in states from New Jersey to Illinois. But for now, Tally Hall is content inhabiting the dual roles of campus and band life. "We're college kids and we use the resources we have," Cantor said. Those resources must be working, because Tally Hall's opportunity to take "Best Music on Campus" award was anything but local. "It's basically gonna be a ride, and we're takin' it," Cantor added. Quite the ride for the profound, banana slingin', megaphone rockin' harmonies of Ann Arbor's favor- ite group of friends. 'ith'marks magic ofori*j By Adam Rottenberg MAY 23, 2005 Daily Staff Writer MOVER EVI E W After three of the most wildly popular films of all time and two of the most loathed, George Lucas has finished his work on the theatrical "Star Wars" films. Fans will debate, for years whether or not the prequel trilogy tarnished not only the "Star Wars" name, but also Lucas's own legacy. But now that the final chapter is playing across the country, "Star Wars" fans can breathe a bit easier. That said, "Revenge of the Sith" is not the best movie in the series, but it recaptures the magic that was absent from the previous pre- quels. In other words: It doesn't completely suck. From the beautiful computer-generated imaaerv that nermeates the film to the breath- return to ~Inal trilogy young Jedi into the villainous Sith lord Darth Vader. The plot picks up a few years after the events of "Attack of the Clones" and throws viewers right into the action. After all the political diatribes and ramblings about midi- chlorians, Lucas finally remembers what his fans really want: action. Unfortunately, he's still unable to completely throw the plodding themes away, and the film suffers greatly from these moments of "deep" political thought. The rhetoric is laid on thick in the film's dialogue ("Either you're with me, or you're my enemy"), but it's not clear whether or not Lucas intends his film to be a comment on the current political landscape. Either way, it makes the movie lag and is often cringe-wor- thy, but it merely mires down "Revenge of the Sith" instead of crippling it. Worse yet, there is no chemistry between Christensen's Skvwalker and Natalie Port- - I