ly - Tuesday, June 19, 1984--- Page 11
Members of the Rain Parade brood in anticipation of their Tuesday night show at Joe's Star Lounge.
Rain ¶de mixwell
Jazz fest
sets up
under
outdoor
big tent
By Pete Williams
A FULL AFTERNOON of live jazz
performances. What could
possibly be better?
What if you add a full cash bar and
hold the whole extravaganza outdoors,
in a tent?
That's what the public radio station,
WEMU, and the Ypsilanti Depot Town
Association have planned on June 23.
Rain or shine - picnic baskets, lawn
chairs, and jazz enthusiasts en-
courged.
There are five jazz ensembles
scheduled from noon to midnight, star-
ting with Tom Saunders' Surf Side Six.
The Six area group specializing in 1930s
swing.
Other bands are The New Larry
Nozero Quartet, the J.C. Heard Or-
chestra, and, if the warm weather and
cool drinks keep you there until 8 p.m. a
Detroit all-star band.
Featured in this sextet of top Detroit
jazz artists are trumpeter Marcus
Belgrave, Roy Brooks on the drums,
pianist Kenn Cox, trombonist/flutist
Sherman Mitchell, bassist Robert Hur-
st, and saxist Donald Walden. The six
will be performing together for the first
time in the festival.
The afternoon of jazz will conclude
with The Son Seals Blues Band.
Premiere blues guitarist Son Seals will
join with the Chicago Fire Horns to cap
the evening with a poweful jazz and
blues performance.
For those interested in sitting out on
the lawn and taking in some good jazz
next Saturday, Ypsi is the place to be.
Tickets are available for $8 at the door -
the tent flap, I mean - or for $7 at a few
choice record stores in Ann Arbor and
Ypsilanti.
By Joseph Kraus
T HERE ARE some things that just don't mix. Alcohol and
1 driving for one, and rain and parades for another.
But keep your eyes open. Nowadays they're talking about
things like gasahol, which definitely mixes alcohol and
driving, and nowadays they're talking about The Rain
Parade.
Who?
The Rain Parade, one of the biggest bands in L.A.'s un-
derground (as of last year) neo-psychedelic movement. The
Rain Parade comes from the same cradle as such other
notables as The Dream Syndicate, Green on Red, The Long
Ryders and The Three O'Clock.
The Parade has been together for about three years, but
they only recently released their first album, Emergency
Third Power Trip, to very nositive reviews.
The music on Power Trip shows a band that is at home with
its simple instrumental lineup. It's a much more primitive
sound than most of today's pop, and in that light it becomes
refreshing.
Comparisons to the psychedelic greats of the '60s are
inevitable. Rain Parade's songs have not yet gone beyond
recalling the fascination and moodiness that such music had.
For now, though, that's enough. Only time will tell whether
they will be able to mature into a band capable of departing
from psychedelia into its own turf, whether they will wind up
fading away, or worse yet, whether they will wind up being to
the '60s what Sha-Na-Na is to the '50s.
But today is another story. Merely recalling psychedelia,
and giving it new energy, is a feat worthy of notice.
And even though most of the members of Rain Parade
were too young to care very much about which radio station
was on in 1967, they seem to remember psychedelia quite
well.
Neither Matthew Piucci nor Steven Roback write great
songs, but they have written several pretty good ones. Their
lyrics seem a bit underdeveloped, but they have a tendency
to create a swirling moody (oh no, here it comes) psychedelic
instrumental sound that overcomes this weakness. And who
knows, it's a weakness they may grow out of.
Like so many of its fellow Paisley Underground com-
patriot bands, The Rain Parade is stopping at Joe's Star
Lounge on this, its second national tour.
Joe's has shown a remarkable tendency for attracting
these bands recently, and this summer alone has already
brought us The Long Ryders and Green on Red.
In addition, local Ann Arborites, Grey Area, are slated to
do an opening set.
The action should get started around 10 p.m., and cover is
$4 for the evening. And don't worry, since it's inside, it's not
going to Rain on your Parade.
Life out of balance with silly masterpiece
By Byron L. Bull
G ODFREY REGGIO'S Koyaanisqatsi is unquestionably
' a stunning piece of filmmakip. A technics tour de
force combining images and music, it's a powerful
experience to sit through. Unfortunately, it's a film
burdened by a ridiculously heavy-handed, intellec-
tually vapid thesis that is both infuriating and
laughable.
The title of the film is derived from a Hopi Indian
term, translating roughly into "Life out of balance,"
and Reggio takes that idea to an apocalyptic ex-
treme, brought on by rampant industrialization.
Reggio captures images of natural and urban lan-
dscapes, and contrasts them in a mosaic of almost
hallucinatory design. He compresses and distorts
time, using time-lapse, slow motion, and assorted
other techniques to render his landscapes with a
surreal tone.
The scenery has a haunting, supernatural quality,
like a wilk, vivid dream. Clouds boil and seethe,
rolling around mountains and canyons like steam
from a kettle. Long shadows sweep across desert
floors in only seconds, as steam rises up from craggy
fissures. The whole planet seems to be a living
organism. Even when the landscape is static,
Reggio's camera isn't: It sweeps and pans, pulls
back and zooms, infusing the film with a tireless
kineticism that continually sweeps the viewer along.
When we cut to the modern metropolis, the terrain
is no less captivating. Massive earth movers dig
away whole cliffsides, as a row of 747's taxi down a
runway, turning and spinning in formation like a
bizarre ballet. Skyscrapers, when shot with an ex-
treme low angle, are revealed to reflect whole acres
of the sky. And the gray concrete canyons they form
are every bit as imposing as their natural counter-
parts.
Reggio goes wrong when he takes the film on its
pretentious, preachy turn. He cuts to inner city
slums, and such loaded metaphors as a dilapidated
playground, or a projects tenement that is com-
pletely gutted and so large it could be its own city. A
sequence of bridges and office buildings being
detonated for demolition in slow motion is gripping,
but too contrived for its own good.
The people who inhabit the cities all seem to be
soulless shells. They're overshadowed by the
massive machinery behind them, and stare into the
camera with empty listless eyes. Reggio uses
repeated extreme fast motion photography of crowds
swirling through malls, up escalators, and through
See KOYAANISQATSI, Page 14