THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2002
ENTERTAINMENT
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 3B
Flick has lesson for graduates
COMMENTARY
Throughout my short tenure at this publication I have pitched several articles commemorating one anniversary or another. Unfortunately, I was a few years off for both Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Michael Jackson's Thriller.
It just doesn't seem like anything interesting happened 10, 20 or 30 years ago. But it was brought to my attention that the classic Mike Nichols film, The Graduate, was released in 1967. Exactly 35 years before the date listed on my diploma.
Brad Weiner
bweiner@kansan.com
The film opens with a shot of a very young, very scared Dustin Hoffman returning home after he finished college. At a graduation party, Benjamin, who was Hoffman's character, tries desperately to escape the congratulatory atmosphere, but is continually roped into increasingly boring conversations.
The only interesting person is the enigmatic Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft, wife of his father's business partner, who convinces him to take her home.
The film's setup takes only minutes before we are catapulted into the weird world of a love affair between an awkward, boyish character, and an older, recovering alcoholic. The story gets even more deranged when
Benjamin falls in love with Elaine, who is The Robinsons' daughter.
The Graduate defined the "coming of age" genre. Without Hoffman's often clumsy movements and awkward dialogue, Benjamin would come across looking like a man instead of a boy who is "worried about his future."
Finally, Benjamin goes after Elaine and drives his sporty Alfa Romeo to interrupt her wedding. When he arrives at the wedding he disrupts it by pounding on the glass in the organ chamber upstairs.
One memorable component of The Graduate is the beautiful soundtrack sung by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Tunes like "Scarborough Fair." "Mrs. Robinson" and "Sounds of Silence," accentuate the film's story and bring the musicians into the limelight. When Benjamin's car runs out of gas on his way to the wedding chapel the music retards dra
matically. then stops.
Viewers have no closure on the story. Although Elaine does run off with him,it is impossible to tell whether they will make a decent couple.
So what does this have to do with graduation? It teaches us that a diploma is not a guarantee for our future. Benjamin didn't get what he wanted by laying around drinking beer. He went out on a limb. He tried something new. Some might say he went crazy. Whatever your interpretation, it is clear that Benjamin gains confidence and life experience as the film progresses. For the first time, Benjamin learns from life instead of from class.
The most poignant message in The Graduate is given by Mr. Robinson, who tells Benjamin over a short glass of bourbon, "You'll never be young again."
It sounds frightening that a week from Sunday, University of Kansas grads will feel slightly older as we toss our caps in the air and become whatever we will become. Ideally, college wasn't just a vehicle for us to feel young. I'd like to think that through the course of the coming months, there will be a chance for us to show that our years at this place also made us wise.
Guitarist discusses influences
Andy Gassaway agassaway@kansan.com
Seven years ago, four students at the Rhode Island School of Design took it upon themselves to craft a sound built on the spastic mid-range guitar fury of D.C. hardcore and calculated dissonance of mid-80s indie-rock, pairing it with literate vocal explorations of the bizarre, humorous and sentimental. Through the course of three full-length releases and a live EP, the members of Les Savy Fav have continued to press the boundaries of their deep-seated organic rock leanings into stranger, more indulgent territory.
Their latest offering, Go Forth, released on bassist Syd Butler's Frenchkiss label, finds the band hearkening to varied influences such as new wave and dark 80s pop, adding electronic nuances that dras its sound ever closer to the oddball zeniths of vocalist Tim Harrington's lyrics.
Last Sunday, Les Savy Fav exhibited this sound in a performance at the Bottleneck. Before the show, guitarist Seth Jabour was able to take a break from tweaking the band's onstage setup to discuss the new approach taken with Go Forth, writing songs in-studio, and not-so-triumphant moments in the history of anesthesia.
Andy Gassaway: You guys seem pretty album-oriented. Do each of your albums carry a cohesive idea throughout?
Seth Jabour: I wouldn't say any of the records carry one theme. It's more about where we were stylistically at the time. Basically, before we recorded Go Forth, we had all these sketches and knew this was going to be a song and this was going to be a
song and so on. But some became what they were when we recorded them and were nothing as we had imagined.
As far as Go Forth goes, we pretty much knew what we wanted. Our drummer Harrison [Haynes] likes drum sounds on Police records; some drum sounds on Talking Heads records.
AG: It's reverb!
SJ: Yeah, and there's the same thing with the guitar lines. Sometimes I want them to be very nervous-sounding.
AG: Was this the first time you wrote in the studio and worked the live versions out later? Is that an accurate assumption of how the recording process went?
SJ: That's actually a very fair assumption. It [Emor: Rome Upside Down (2000)] was the first thing we did as a four-piece, and I think that's where a lot of the ideas came from for Go Forth. Suddenly where there isn't always two guitars playing off each other, we brought in some sequencing, some synth sounds to add a little texture and give it that overall shape and attitude we were going for — moments of synth-pop sensibilities, but still with a lot of rock 'n' roll or however you want to call it.
I love bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division and the Cure. On this last record, it was like, I like Fugazi, but I don't want to write another record where people are like, 'It sounds like Fugazi.'
AG: I've noticed medical themes tend to pop up from time to time in your lyrics. Has anyone in the band ever experienced any odd medical trauma?
SJ: Tim writes all the lyrics; I never really picked his brain about it. This part about the anesthesiologist was taken from an article he read about the person who invented anesthesia, the first time he practiced it on a patient. He puts somebody under and during the operation he comes out of it, and it's just about how botched and humiliating it must have been for this great doctor to be like, 'I just invented anesthesia. We can perform operations on people without them being conscious' without having it work
AG: Absolutely, and it's a great story.
SJ. They're great narratives, but at the same time, it's a great song. It's not literally about anesthesia or a burning bush. Maybe it has multiple levels.
Maybe. But even if the subject matter and meaning of Les Savy Fav's songs elude the band members themselves, the aural progression documented on Go Forth suggests a wealth of untapped levels of their sound waiting to guide them through new shades of the rock spectrum on future efforts.
Weezer concert displayed unity
Commentary By Bill Heinen Special to the Kansan
There exists in the world of psychology the principle of psychic unity. This concept claims that all human beings are inherently the same, despite being raised in various cultures and in eclectic socioeconomic standards. Tuesday night, at the Weezer concert in the Kansas Coliseum in Wichita, I was able to get an intense glimpse into this principle.
First off, though I don't mean to downplay the generosity or courtesy of the fine people in Wichita, I was amazed to see so little fighting at a public venue.
I had been to one Weezer concert in the past and many shows for other bands, but until Tuesday I had never encountered a pacifist audience. This was one of the first things that made me realize that the night was special, different somehow than all other concerts.
Within the first five minutes of entering the Coliseum I saw a few punk rockers, a plethora of preteen girls, high school jocks sporting their colors and school letters, and even a few of those interesting goth-deathrock individuals.
Second, Weezer fans are the best first and foremost because they consist of so many different types of people.
Yet the minute the music pounded through the system and the fans heard Rivers' peaceful, tranquil voice through the static fuzz of the microphone, we became more than our individual beliefs; we became united, and I saw the principle of psychic unity at its finest, if only for a two- hour show.
I spent my time jumping to the .poppy sounds of songs such as "Why Bother?" and "Photograph" and throwing myself into
For one night, tolerance did exist, and I felt comfortable in a crowd of strangers. I will always consider Tuesday's Weezer concert to be more than an amazing, electrifying show, which of course it was.
To me, it will always be the ideal of humanity purported to be true by the principle of psychic unity.
the mix of the crowd while swaying with them to "Say it Ain't So," where the crowd also sang in unison with the band.
ContactHeinen.at jayplay@kansan.com.
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