Mondav. March 15, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 7
Entertainment
Commentary
Bass variety Placebo's lone highlight
Kansan music boy
By Matt Cox
Fans of Placebo who hoped for a live duplication of Placebo's debut CD at the Granada Theater Saturday got just a little bit less than what they expected.
Placebo played an hour and fifteen minutes before Stabbing Westward stole the show. They didn't display enough punch, energy, or diversity in musicianship to warrant playing the entire time.
Their performance didn't match the quality of their album, Without You I'm Nothing, or do much else
interesting.
Placebo did display some originality by playing half the songs without a bass guitar, a vital instrument for almost every band.
The absence of the bass guitar on those songs didn't mar the tunes, and rather instilled surprise in the audience that the songs still sounded good without the bass.
However, this could not over-shadow lead singer Brian Molko's voice. Vocal effects made his voice on the album less annoying than it could've been, but that was not duplicated live.
During two songs, his voice was
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so sharply nasal that half of the audience in the Granada had to cover their ears — not because of the volume, but because Molko's voice almost made their ears bleed.
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Despite that, it was an average representation of their album.
Stabbing Westward then took the night away with incredible punch, and everyone in the audience noticed.
Revamped Roller Derby draws new following
The Associated Press
ORLANDO, Fla. — The camera rolled and California Quakes skater Sean Atkinson, taking a cue from a producer, jumped out of his seat in the stands and started taunting a member of an opposing team.
Soon, Atkinson and his opponent were rolling around on the skating track, exchanging fake punches and body slams.
The show is the latest incarnation of Roller Derby, the low-rent piece of Americana that entertained audiences for four decades before it ground to a halt in 1973.
In Roller Derby, men and women speed around an indoor track, scoring points by passing members of the opposing team, who try to stop them by shoving, elbowing and slamming them to the ground.
Although it basically follows the same rules, the next generation of Roller Derby is a tad glitterier and flashier than its knock-'em-down predecessor, immortalized in the 1973 Raquel Welch film *Kansas City Bomber*. The skating is also faster, sometimes up to 35 mph, because the teams use in-line skates instead of roller skates.
RollerJam is taped at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, Fla. and is shown Friday at 8 p.m. EST On the Nashville Network. Its January premiere reached about 1.2 million homes, according to Nielsen Media Research. By comparison, cable's highest-rated show, WWF Wrestling on the USA Network, reaches about 4.6 million homes.
The roaring studio audience ate it up. Producers of RollerJam hope cable TV audiences will, too.
"Even though it's 60-plus years old, it appears very modern for people raised on MTV and the Extreme Games," said Jerry Seltzer, commissioner of the World Skating League, which calls itself Roller Jam's organizing body.
Seltzer's father, Leo, started the original Roller Derby in 1935 as a way for Depression-era audiences to forget their troubles. At first, the game was based on distance and endurance and physical contact was banned. That changed two years later when audiences took to the shoving and pushing.
Roller Derby was first televised in 1948 on CBS in New York. Television later made stars of skaters as Joan Weston, known as the "Blonde Bomber," who skated for the San Francisco Bay Bombers in the 1960s.
"The they were mean and lean," said Diane Frederick, a Detroit postal worker, fan of the original Roller Derby and spectator at a recent taping of Roller Jam. "The women were meager than the men."
TV producer Stephen Lamb says the inspiration to resurrect Roller Derby in its current form was Weston's death in 1997 at age 62 from an incurable nervous disease.
Loden is romantically involved with Atkinson, the Quakes skater whose father and grandfather competed in the original Roller Derby. The couple's true-life romance has been incorporated into the show's storyline.
There are now five teams that have already taped shows at Universal Studios; the New York Enforcers, the California Quakes, the Florida Sundogs, the Nevada Hot Dice and the Texas Rustlers. A sixth team, the Illinois Riot, is being created. Each team skates with five men or five women, with one to two reserve skaters.
Skaters include a cousin of boxer Marvin Hagler; a woman whose publicity material describes her as an ordained minister, bodybuilder and bodyguard; a former American Gladiator contender; several competitive speed skaters; a former homecoming queen from Iowa; and the "creamed corn wrestling" champion from Daytona Beach's Bike Week.
"When I found out I could knock people over, I said 'Yes!'" said the Sundogs' Denise Loden, 32-year-old former speed skating champion. "I let all that aggression out."
So have the frequent outbreaks of shoving, wrestling, body slams and trash-talking between opposing teams that often make Roller.Iam look like the World Wrestling Federation on skates.
"The violence is part of it." Atkinson said, smiling after his tussle on the track. "We're in the Jerry Springer era and I think that sells."
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