Arts The Michigan Daily Tuesday, July 27, 1982 Page 7 Records Pete Shelley - Homosapien' (Arista) Ah, now this is a pleasant surprise. Usually when there's a difference bet- ween the import and domestic versions of an album, it's usually at our expense. Not this time, though. For a change, Arista has replaced three melancholy tunes from the import Homosapien with more upbeat selections - most notably the absolutely essential "Witness the Change." And that small rearrangement seems to have made a world of difference. While the import album seemed an un- convincing mismatch of hit singles and tentative also-rans, the new additions fill in the gaps to make the domestic version of Homosapien an album of seamless warmth and vibrancy. It seems ages ago that Shelley disbanded his seminal punk-poppers The Buzzcocks and threw us all for a dance-floor loop with the unexpectedly electronic pulse of the dance-club hit "Homosapien." Now, this new sound has fallen into place as just another phase in his musical development, making it clearer than ever that Pete Shelley is first and foremost a pop songwriter, a fact that won't be influenced at all by whatever musical trends he should choose to explore. His current elec- tropop endeavours act as a foil to his raw, biting melodies and raspy war- bling much the same way that The Buz- zcocks' rough crunch counterbalanced his eternally adolescent outlook and sweetly melodic tunes with such a deliciously sweet tension. That sort of tension and songwriting talent is just the sort of stuff that is so obviously missing from most elec- tropop, where the temptation is so dangerously handy to scour the music clean of any of its rough edges and allow the technology to write "songs" for you. Shelley, though, knows how to use those rough edges to get across the all-important human facet of his work; as long as he's got that pure songwriting talent he'll be a far call above most merely functional elec- tronic music. And just asa true pop star should, Shelley makes it all sound so easy on Homosapien. -Mark Dighton Visage-'The Anvil' (Polydor) Waita minute. Did I miss something? Wasn't Visage supposed to be the dan- ceable offshoot of Ultravox?!? After their unconvincing debut album, I thought they finally made good on that promise with the EP that spawned the frenetic dance club hit, "Frequency 7." Now, they seem to be retreating from the gimmicky im-. mediacy of the EP to once again em- brace the dry artifice-as-all-purpose- outlook of Ultravox. With their foundation still firmly in Eurodisco, Visage can hardly help but be danceable, but they insist on doing everything in their power to put icy dampers on the damn-all release so essential to good dance music. Their attempt to combine the easy accessibility of dance music with the thematic complexity they take to be Art may sound great ... but it just doesn't feel anything. -Mark Dighton Letters show man behind the myth By Ben Ticho T HERE IS something curiously fascinating about the correspon dence of celebrated people. Perhaps because they were never intended for the self-consciousness of publication, compiled letters evoke a sense of im- mediacy and authenticity that biographies and even autobiographies seldom achieve.. Given the prevalence of artificially. contrived public images and miscon- ceptions, glimpses into actual (if sometimes mundane) business tran- sactions, social courtesies, and per- sonal quarrels, satisfies the deep- seated curiosity about what celebrities are (were) "really" like. Igor Stravinsky, the renowned and enigmatic Russian composer who died in 1971, presents an almost ideal subject for such curiosity. Interest in the com- poser of L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird), Oedipus Rex, Petrushka, and many other innovative works has revived during this, the centenary an- niversary of his birth. Robert Craft's volume of selected Stravinsky correspondence (the first of three) of- fers a set of diverse and unique per- spectives on the life of this cbntrover- sial figure. Craft arranges the book in nine sec- tions, each dealing with a different correspondent and each thus revealing a slightly different view of Stravinsky. The divisions follow a loose chronological order with some overlap- ping, starting in the 1910-30s with letters R and telegrams to and from his first wife - Catherine, French composer Maurice Delage, Russian music editor Vladimir Derzhanovsky, French writer and playwright Jean Cocteau, and Ernest Ansermet, the French conductor who served as one of Stravinsky's most im- portant early musical patrons. Stravinsky, who studied with fellow Russian Rimsky-Korsakov (composer of Sadko and Scheherazade), moved to Paris a few years prior to the start of World War I. In France, Stravinsky became acquainted with Delage and other proponents of brashly contem- porary music, including Maurice Ravel (Bolero) and Eric Satie. Though well-known (if not always appreciated) in Europe, Stravinsky did not really achieve true acceptance in the United States until after he im- migrated to this country, one of the many European artists fleeigg from World War II. His experiences here are presented through correspondence with French-born conductor Nadia Boulanger, American ballet patron Lincoln Kirstein, English poet W.H. Auden, and American conductor Robert Craft himself. By then the "grand man" of new classical music, Stravinsky settled in Hollywood, leading a far richer life than the difficult years he spent as a near-unknown in Russia. Perhaps the best aspect of Craft's persona arrangement is that it clearly shows Stravinsky from so many angles-musically, artistically, of- ficially, personally. The letters demon- strate that a composer's lot is by no means encompassed by composing, or by his compositions themselves; (seemingly) endless negotiations must be made for performances, program selections, casting, ballet adaptions, set designs, financial arrangements, and of course the personal meetings to arrange all the arrangements. In- vitations and thanks thus fill a good portion of the book. It is interesting to watch a great piece of music germinate from a friend's Stravinsky ... composing correspondence suggestion, as was the case when Kir- stein suggested that a third work be written to accompany the Apollo and Orpheus ballets; Stravinsky eventually wrote Agon to complete the well-known trilogy. Equally revealing are the con- tributions from Catherine Stravinsky, who suffered not only from a debilitating disease, but also from the knowledge of her husband's ongoing in- fatuation with another woman, Vera See STRAVINSKY, Page 10 TUES-4:14, 6:15, 8:15, 10:15 WED-12:30, 2:40, 4:50, 7:00, 9:10 (R) ENDS TONIGHT: "ROCKY Il'' (PG) TUE: 4:00, 6:00, 7:55, 9:50 STARTS TOMORROW! OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN Richard Gere (American Gigolo) Dera Winnaer 1aial: ainting ti ste lutihtnom MICHIGAN ARTISTS ALL-STATE EXHIBITION Regional Winners from '80-81 Now until August 29 19 Artists 80 Works All Media Six Galleries THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS Free " Cafe, Shops Hours: Tues. thru Sun., 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. * WED-12:40,3:00, 5:20, 7:40, 9:55, (R)