The Michigan Daily - Saturday, June 18, 1983 - Page 11
Beat Rodeo brings
Joe's some
By Larry Dean
STEVE ALMAAS has chutzpah. In
the fall of 1981, after spending a
summer playing guitar and singing
with the Bongos, only one of a fresh
crop of outstanding now 'pop-bands to
be emerging from this netherlands of
America, he enlisted the erstwhile aid
of Bongo Richard Barone, flew down
with him to Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, and cut an EP at Mitch
Easter's now legendary-before-its-time
garage studio. Easter, the modern-day
equivalent of Phil Spector, helped out
with additional instrumental duties,
and the Beat Rodeo was christened.
Almaas is no newcomer to pop music.
His first band, the Suicide Commandos,
put out some vinyl and earned quite a
respectable following in Almaas'
hometown of Minneapolis in 1977. After
the Commandos went down, Almaas
helped fill-out the ranks of Crackers, a
pop fun
sometimes-four-but-often-three-piece
pop ensemble.
An offer to play rhythm guitar with
the Bongos was hard to beat, so Almaas
switched from bass and joined them for
their summer tour. Afterward, he ex-
pressed the need to front his own band,
so Barone and he cut the Beat Rodeo
EP with Easter and the rest is history.
Well, not quite. Once the songs were
down, and the disc was out (on in-
dependant Coyote Records), Almaas
corralled together three others to make.
the Beat Rodeoa traveling experience:
As the cheery note from Steve on the
back of the EP reads - "watch for the
Beat Rodeo, we may be coming to your
town." Joe's Star Lounge is the place,
and Sunday night is the date.
Looking for a night out for some sin-
cere, breezy pop, country, and folk-
tinged fun, and all at a reasonable cost?
Saddle up and head on over to Joe's to
see the Beat Rodeo.
Beat Rodeo saddles up Sunday night.
Duvall extends range
in 'Tender Mercies'
A Midsmmer Night's class last semester and have them
A M du m r NgtsSex Comedy explain what the bright light is.
(Woody Allen, 1982) (Saturday, June 18; MLB 4; Allen -
6:45,10:15; Bergman -8:20).
(Continued from Page 10)
of sorts that serves to both identify
Sledge's recent past as well as to set the
elliptical tone of the narrative to follow.
The first image is that of shadows or
silhouettes seen from outside of a
Tender Mercies
Starring: Robert Duvall, Tess Harper
Directed by Bruce Bereford
Playing at State Theater
drawn shade of a motel room in Texas.
The first sound heard is that of a
drunken Sledge demanding liquor from
a friend; an argument ensues; a blow is
heard. Director Beresford cuts next to a
shot of the motel's owner and her son
staring at that window shade and then,
most significantly, to a shot of Sledge
falling, just before he hits the floor. The
companion is never seen.
The insightful viewer, accustomed to
the way plots are often constructed,
would note the alcohol and suggest that
the film would be concerned with a
man's fight against the demons of
drink. On seeing the mother and her
child, fatherless, someone else might
be led to think that Tender Mercies
would be the story of how Sledge woos
the woman and, finally, marries her.
Both guesses would be wrong - the
film never shows how or when Sledge
stops drinking; it doesn't depict a cour-
tship or a marriage even though a
marriage does take place early on in
the plot. Scenarist Horton Foote (To
Kill A Mockingbird, The Chase) and
director Beresford, it seems, are less
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concerned with the details of a conven-
tional, oft-told tale than with the
honestly observed verities of life and
the moral tale they can create from
them.
Duvall's Sledge, for example, is tran-
sformed from the fallen shadow of a
man he is first presented as into the
reborn and humane figure at the film's
end. Yet this transformation is not
presented through a plot device or some
hot flash of theatrical lightning but, in-
stead, via a calm and unassuming
collection of detail.
Tender Mercies tends to locate what
one might call grace within the self -
hence the film's concern with self iden-
tity and identification - thus it is not
the actual process leading up to the at-
tainment of grace in which the film is
interested. No, the filmmakers here
wish merely to make clear the
possibility of grace, and this is cer-
tainly moving enough.
For their restraint, both Foote and
Beresford deserve praise - Beresford
especially. I'm glad to see that he has
returned from the thudding ironies of
the overpraised Breaker Morant to the
subtle, more filmic virtues of his earlier
The Getting of Wisdom. He has once
again managed to define his characters
in terms not only of their physical en-
vironment but also of the spaces that
surround them, holding shots for great
lengths, shooting as much as possible in
crisp wide shot. It could not have been
easy acting in such a film. As such, the
unusual strength and dignity found in
the performances of Robert Duvall and
Tess Harper and Allan Hubbard (as
Sledge's new wife and stepson, respec-
tively) holds this film together.
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Smiles of a Summer
Night
(Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
A must-see double feature for Woody
Allen fans. Woody, Mia Farrow, and
Jose Ferrer star in the touching
tribute to summer love that was
strongly influenced by (who else)
Ingmar Bergman's Swedish sexual
romp. Take along someone who took
Hugh Cohen's Bergman and Allen
WR: Mysteries of the
Organism
(Dusan Makavejev,1971)
WR has been applauded at film
festivals and by select audiences as
being a sexual masterpiece. A pen-
chant for pornography is the wrong
reason to see this collage or orgone
experiences. Makavejev exposes the
East to the West, Communism to
Capitalism, and revolution to sex.
Bring a friend who took Herb Eagle's
Eastern European and Soviet Cinema
course and he will tell you when the
candle-molding scene is about to
begin. (Sunday, June 19; MLB 3,
7:30).
Compiled by Deborah Lewis
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