The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, August 7, 1984 - Page 11 Rick's: From bar to barndance By Pete Williams f your objective is to transform Rick's American Cafe into an all-out, knee-slappin', fiddle playin' hoedown, there are several requirements that have to be met. The first is an acceptable country music atmosphere. Ann Arbor is not universally known for barn dance ap- preciation, so any steel guitar and fid- dle licks you use must have a touch of something Ann Arborites can easily relate to. Swing is a good example. Add a honkey-tonk piano player, a string bass, and - if you're adventurous enough-even a jazzy tenor sax to the accepted country and western or- chestration and you are well on your way to success at Rick's. It's called western swing. But Rick's crowd is not so easily metamorphosized into a handful of simple cowpokes and the like. They're not used to this type of thing and need to be sure that what they are hearing is authentic and unique. So get a band that is reknowned for resurrecting this western swing. But even after the folks at Ricks hear a few blues licks on the o1' steel guitar, them ten-gallon hats may still feel a bit awkward. They want to be an integral part of the show-to be talked through it. The best way to meet this requirement is to have a talkative and intriguing lead singer-someone who can capture the audience with a Texas accent and downhome musician's mannerisms. To my knowledge, there is only one group that can meet all the requirements. They are Asleep at the Wheel, and judging from both their performance Sunday night and the response of the audience, the transfor- mation was a success. The material was unmistakably cowboy with songs such as "Miles and Miles of Texas," "Nobody Here But Us Chickens," and the ever-popular "Take Me Back to Tulsa." Asleep used their deft understanding of both country music and blues/swing to create unique arrangements of these tunes. The formula also worked in reverse. just as he was told. An interesting aside: Sunday night was fiddler Larry Franklin's birthday. Benson announced it as Franklin took the solo intro to "Take me back to Tulsa." Benson called Franklin "The town fid- dler," and Franklin's quick and bright style of western fiddlin' made the audience feel as if they should be square dancing on the floor of Ricks. A few enthusiasts went so far as to grab their partner and do a modified new- wave dance step version of barn dan- cing. There was one predominant theme throughout Asleep's performance-a swing feel perpetuated by drummer Mike Grammar and string/electric bassist Tom Anastasio. These musicians seem to have gotten their training in swing and are now applying their talents to Benson's unique western derivitive music. Grammar and Anastasio set the mood that let the vocals and soloists create what is called western swing. There was another predominant theme in all of Asleep's numbers. This time, the .theme was country and western fostered by the vibrato and 'twang' of the steel pedal guitar. Wally Murphy, on steel, claims that he taught himself to play the western musicians' staple by listening to the radio, trying to reproduce the sounds he heard on his axe. That's surprising, considering Mur- phy seemed. comfortable with any rhythm or chord progression the band came up with. It was as though he listened to what the band was doing-remember the radio-and just tailor-made a steel pedal lick that ad- ded to the complete sound of the band. Murphy would slip ina short lead line or an almost imperceptable chord digression or a crescendo whereever he ' thought it fit in. Take a blues rhythm section that is not afraid of a solo now and then, add a few country and western tendencies and you have western swing, i.e., Asleep at the Wheel. Now put Asleep in front of an appreciative and inebriated audience at Rick's and the formula is complete: A successful transformation of a supper club to a barn dance. Ray Benson, lead guitarist and vocalist for the western swing band Asleep at the Wheel, transported Rick's American Cafe to Texas on Sunday night in a rollicking good-time show. The band had the capacity to take a jazz B (Mark Braun to his friends) sat in on tune and add a flavor of country. the 'boards for this number. Example: Count Basie's classic "One Mr. B was truly in the spotlight for O'clock Jump." this piece was the "Roll 'em" moreso than any of his solo showcase for two of Asleep's personnel: performances including those in the Tim Alexander pounding out a high- middle of the street during the art fair. energy honkeytonk piano line and Braun showed the ability to keep in step Michael Francis with highly technical with Asleep as well as the ability to take tenor sax solo. a profound lead upon singer/guitarist Alexander gave his fingers a much Ray Benson's cue. Benson pointed to needed rest on "Roll 'em Pete," when Mr. B at the end of a phrase and said Ann Arbor's own honkey tonk king, Mr. "O.K., Now go way down." Braun did Robinson wins 'Gremlins 'contest with 39 G RE MLINS is one of the summer's most interesting films for fans of cinema because references to other films are liberally inserted throughout the film's script and plot. Therefore it is not surprising that the winner of the Daily's Find-the- Films-in-the-Film contest is Malcolm Robinson, a former Daily film reviewer. Robinson found 39 allusions, homages, and direct quotes from a dozen other films in Gremlins which puts him leaps and bounds above the other entrants. We hope that his list will not only aid future film researchers but will make your viewings of Gremlins all the more enjoyable. 1) The setting for the film is a town named Kingston Falls, a reference to Bedford Falls, the town in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. 2) A film clip from It's A Wonderful Life is showing on the kitchen TV. 3) Our hero, Billy, works in a bank in a poor town terrorized by a rich person. This is exactly the same situation that Jimmy Stewart faced in It's A Wonder- ful Life. 4)There is a film clip from Invasion of the Body Snatchers playing on a TV. 5) Gizmo the Mogwai watches Clark Gable in Please a Lady on TV. 6) On a theatre marquee is the title,A Boy's Life, the original title for Steven Spielberg's E.T. 7)The second movie on that theatre's marquee is Watch the Sky, the working title of Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 8) When Gizmo sings along with Billy's synthesizer the film is making a reference to the mothership singing along with the scientist's computer in Close Encounters. 9) Stripe, the lead gremlin, knocks an E.T. Doll to the floor as he hides in the toy shop. 10) When a gremlin cuts some phone lines, it says, "Phone home," a reference to E.T. 11) Gizmo says at the films end, "Bye, Billy," an allusion to E.T.'s last words to Elliot. 12)Gizmo watches television just as E.T. did. 13) At the inventor's convention the time machine from the film The Time Machine disappears in a puff of smoke. 14) At the same convention, Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet walks around and speaks some dialogue from that film. 15) The bar room sequence with the gremlins running amuck alludes to the bizarre cantina sequence in Star Wars. 16) When Phoebe Cates escapes from the bar, she does so by blinding gremlins with the light from a camera flash bulb just as Jimmy Stewart did in .Rear Window. 17) At the convention, Steven Spielberg, director of Close Encounters, E.T., Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, is riding around ina wheelchair. 18) A gremlin breakdances in the bar in a torn sweat-shirt, just like Flashdance. 19) When the gremlins are sitting in the movie theater, they are photographed in exactly the same pose as are the muppets in The Muppet Movie. 20) The movie the gremlins are waiting to see is Snow White. 21) When Billy tries to convince the police of the imminent gremlin attack, he receives the same cynical reception that the hero got in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 22) On the desk of the town's rich widow, Mrs. Deagle, is a portrait of Frank Capra-movie-bad-guy- businessman Edward Albert. 23) The same Edward Albert photograph is hanging on the staircase wall in Mrs. Deagle's home. 24) Mrs. Deagle talks about killing Billy's dog just as Miss Gulch talked about killing Toto in The Wizard of Oz. 25) The gremlins kill Mrs. Deagle by having her electric wheelchair zoom up her staircase, an inver- sion of the scene in Kiss of Death where Richard See ROBINSON, Page 14