OCR Text |
Show Wednesday, June 2, 1976 Page 7 MUSIC NOTES byJayMMhan by Clara Voyant This week is promising. It promises to be as miserable as last week. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) You have hidden resources which could come in handy this week. Unfortunately, you can't remember where you hid them. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) This could be a poetic week for you Aquarius, but, as you know, rhyme doesn't pay. PISCES (Feb. 19-Mar. 20) Don't be afraid to say, "I love you." You've had lots of practice in front of the mirror. ARIES (Mar. 21-Apr. 19) A friend may pass the germ of an idea to you, resulting in a severe brain infection. TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20) The world and all its complexities will appear simple to you this week. But, then again, you appear ap-pear simple to the world . GEMINI (May 21-June 20) You'll try to let your imagination run wild only to find that it won't even go jogging. CANCER (June 21-July 22) Your time is growing shorter. Take comfort in knowing you're one of the few people who can make things grow shorter. LEO (July 23-Aug.22) While driving your car you'll collide with the bearded lady from a nearby circus, just one of those freak accidents. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) You're a freethinker and will remain so. No one would ever pay for your ideas. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) You should be a tailor. Your off the cuff remarks will soon leave you in stitches . SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) You should harbor no fear of becoming a ' 'has-been-," since you'll always be a "never-was." SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Remember that other people have their problems and you're probably one of them. PUZZLE Ten U.S. rivers are hidden in this block of letters. The rivers may be spelled forward or backward and may run horizontally, vertically or diagonally. Can you find all ten! C 1 0 L I II n I A D 0 JJLJLJLJLJJH JLJAAJLX?JL AJLJLJLJLJL-LJL AJLJJLJLJLLJL LJLJLJLXAJL JJLJLJJ-JL JLJ-Ji-JLiLJLXJL R I u 1 o I s 1 s 1 1 1 n 1 E LAST WEEK'S SOLUTION D I 0 I L I L I A I tytA T He was wearing Aunt Jemima's hat and ah did pair of Barry Barneau's trousers, but he didn't fool anyone. It was Blind Boy Grunt aka Tedh am Porterhouse aka Bob Dylan and the tambourine tam-bourine man had brought his ROLLING THUNDER THUN-DER REVUE into the Salt Palace last Tuesday night as a windup to their second tour. The first had been concentrated in the northeast, with Tour II concerning itself mainly with the southeast and some Texas dates. Poor promotional communications between tour director Barry Imhoff and local promoters in Texas caused the cancellation of a couple of those dates with Utah and Colorado Dylan fans becoming the beneficiaries. Two days before arriving in Salt Lake the THUNDER performed before 25,000 at Fort Collins with a video-taping being shot for a Dylan special scheduled on NBC this September. In order to get the review aspect of this article out of the way, it should suffice to say that Dylan is the hardest working musician I have ever seen and the ROLLING THUNDER REVUE the tightest, most totally musical group of pickersingers in the annals of pop music. With about a third of the house in their seats and the rest going through a rather strange pursepaper bag inspection at the front door, up came the rather elaborate thunder curtain and the show was under way. Led by the vastly under-touted Bob Neuwirth the "house band" led off with the up-tempo "Good Love Is Hard to Find," the first of what turned out to be a 44 song evening. The groups tremendous and diverse talent was then demonstrated as they each performed a tune following Neuwirth's individual introduction. What a band: Texas' T-Bone Burnette; bassman Rob Stoner; Steve Soles and Mick Ronson on guitars; David Mansfield, pedal steel and fiddle ; Howie Wyeth (of the painting Wyeths) on drums and piano; Gary Burke on congas and drums; and gypsy fiddlerviolinist Scarlet Rivera. Ron-son, Ron-son, who has been the butt of more than a few one liners in local music circles lately, proved to be a glitter rock-man capable of winning over even; the most dyed-in-the-wool Ernest Tubb fan.: Talent was the name of the game and if you. didn't pick-the-shit out of it right you didn't eet on the bus. - Following the house band's stint, Kinky Friedman' Fried-man' arrived on stage' bedecked in ,the finest "charo" gear and belted out three tones in-1 eluding his poetic "Sold" American' and a great parody ot Haggard s "Oakie from Muscogie," a ditty entitled "Asshole From El Paso." The lights x then dimmed, the band , evaporation, leaving a solitary figure at the microphone. An unbelieving wave of recognition then swept the Salt Palace as a legend, with accoustical guitar and harmonica rack, gave everyone in attendance at-tendance an audio-pinch to let them know they were indeed seeing Bob Dylan in person; a soulful rendition of "Mr. Tambourine Man." If it would have ended there, I wouldn't have been disappointed, but Dylan and crew would keep us there another three and a half hours. "Gates of Eden" ensued, followed by a DylandNeuwirth duet of "Where Did Vincent Van Go." "We'd like to do this for Brigham Young" was Dylan's way of introducing "Maggie's Farm" as the entire band re-emerged. "Just Like a Woman," "Mozambique," and "Isis" wrapped up the first portion of the show. About five minutes into the intermission that followed a recently-shaved, bow-tied Alan Ginsberg appeared to recite one of his shorter poems, an event which serve to advise ad-vise those in attendance that one should never relax at a ROLLING THUNDER REVUE concert. con-cert. kV;.----'.'''-)--'' Pioneer "BYRD" Roger McGuinn opened up the second part of the show with the biblicalpete : Seeger tune "Turn, Turn, Turn." The band's enjoyment en-joyment of playing behind McGuinn was evident as they boogied through "JoUy Roger" from his latest LP and the lyrical "Chestnut Mare." Now it was Joan Baez' turn, and boy were we unprepared for her. The crowd's positive reaction reac-tion to her opening two a capella tunes, the anti-chauvinistic anti-chauvinistic "Do Right Man," and the sometimes political "Turn Me Around" caused her to remark that what she thought would be a "bunch of squares" was in reality " a bunch of fourth generation Mormons in rebellion." Grabbing Grab-bing a guitar, she proceeded with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Her recently penned "Sweeter for Me," was next as she took to the keyboards. Up to now, there had been little out of the ordinary, but Ms. Baez was about to break down any preconceptions we may have had concerning con-cerning both her musical taste and her biological energies. Announcing "Here's an old folk ditty I picked up during the old days," she and the band launched into a ten minute heavy rock and roll version of the Martha and the Van-dellasMamas Van-dellasMamas and the Papas classic "Dancing in the Streets." Gyrating her body like "spider-woman", "spider-woman", the old Joan Baez started to resemble a synthesis of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin. During his guitar break, Mick Ronson got into an onstage on-stage relationship with little Jaonie and his guitar, not unlike, say, Jimmie Hendrix used to have with that famous Stratocaster. "Well I'll be damned," the opening four words to "Diamonds and Rust," also followed that great Baez composition, as Dylan appeared on stage beside his '60's folk-culture counterpart. "Blowing in the Wind" was followed in ac-coustic ac-coustic -duet form by the"Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" tune from "Blood on the Tracks" LP. The band reappeared for "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" and Baez exited stage left. Then came almost a solid hour of Dylan and i band, with the master selecting widely varied tunes from his much-more-than-vast repertoire. The individual tunes nestled in the corners of our minds, conjuring up our., collective change- : i. i iul. l: l ...u:U became the theme music of a generation. They came one upon the other in a seemingly unending wave: "Shelter From the Storm," "Oh, Sister," f 'Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Mephis Blues Again)", "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," "Lay Lady Lay", "Tangled Up in Blue," and more. ::- The entire audience joined in on "Knocking on Heaven's Door," a tune which served to turn the Salt Palace into a cathedral. We had become one. A one that was more than ready for the celebrative well-chosen swan song. Now, everyone was on stage: Dylan, Baez, McGuinn, Friedman (who by the way, had offered "a shocked waitress at the Royal Inn $200 for an order or-der of onion rings the night before), Neuwirth and the rest of the ROLLING THUNDER REVUE, even Ginsberg, who joined the percussion per-cussion section. The tune chosen by this giant among super-groups to end their show was the joyous, almost baptismal "Gotta Travel On." It's organization and seemingly unending positive musical energies had indeed made THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE much more than the sum of its parts. We had been awarded a four hour respite from purgatory and we would never be the same. by Quicksilver Making a comedy is a serious business .It's not easy to make people laugh through an entire film. Jokes must be carefully developed and well timed.Making a comedy about Hollywood's golden age of comedy could tend to be a very difficult dif-ficult job for one of today's masters. For Michael Winner, director of Won Ton Ton, the job proved even tougher. Won Ton Ton starts out fine, with a title sequence that uses excellent footage from the silent comedies of the twenties. Unfortunately, the film fails to live up to the energy developed by the old black and white silents. In fact, one wonders if any of the people working on Won Ton Ton ever really studied the comedies at all. The film has none of the snap, zing, or pop that make the silent comedies the Keystone Cops for example, exam-ple, such a joy to watch even today. The main problem Winner had with Won Ton Ton is that he could not make a very visual film, which is what was required to pull off this spoof on Hollywood in the twenties. Not that the acting in the film was poor. Madeline Kahn, Bruce Dern, and Art Carney all turned in creditable ''performances, although Kahn has done better in the past. Many of the cameo appearances from Mickey Rooney to Victor Vic-tor Mature, added spice for the film lover, although all too often the true talents of the stars was buried underneath a Won Ton relish. A good example of how much fun Won Ton Ton might have been was provided by the Ritz brothers in the scene where Jimmy and Harvey Ritz play a couple of washerwomen. The Ritz brothers, in what was the funniest scene in the flick, literally showed Winner how to make a good comedy. They were originally offered one line, but refused to do any work in the film unless they could rewrite their part. Had many of the other comedians had the same good sense, the film could have had some blockbuster scenes. (There is talk of a possible Ritz brothers rediscovery similar to the Keaton revival of the late Sixties. Pauline Kael is working on a book about their films, and then is some talk about releasing their comedies of the 30 's. Their appearance ap-pearance in Won Ton Ton seems to indicate that they've been neglected too long and a revival could prove very interesting) . Won Ton Ton's most effective jokes seem to be 5 inside, spoofs, on; Hollywood of the.. 20's. A,;i out to be a transvestite who has extreme nar cissist tendencies. Now who could that be? The camera enter the Mark Bennet studios right in the middle of the filming of a pie throwing sequence. Mark Bennet? Couldn't that be ... still, even in those scenes the picture reached for the obvious gag. For instance, no real use was made of the vamps of the 20's. Theda Bara, Clara Bow, and Pola Negri all could have bedn included in the whimsy of the film. It seems that the real Hollywood of the 20's was actually more exciting and comical than the scenes dreamed up for Won Ton Ton. Through the peaks and valleys of this film it becomes obvious that Won Ton Ton is actually a mediocre film. The lack of a visual sense of comedy in cinema, coupled with obvious jokes make the picture a lackluster second to the real Hollywood it was trying to spoof. Of course, the high points do make the film an enjoyable way to spend an evening. But Won Ton Ton is not the dog that is going to save the Hollywood of the seventies. seven-ties. - "' v - 4' $$S. S-30 FONDUE -10:30 o rratr nn TivTnnTivTn Your Own Personal Touch... Design your own stationery to your own specifications with help from our creative staff . . . full name and address or monogram. mono-gram. It's a great gift idea, too. Our rates are reasonable. Ask About Coor Printing AND THE PRINT SHOP |