8A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ENTERTAINMENT
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 13, 2002
Student leads rock group tries to revive '80s hair bands
By Adam Pracht
Kansan staff writer
AARON LERNER/KANSAN
Jeremy Parker, Manhattan freshman, has put together an 80s-style hair band. "We haven't played any gigs yet," Parker said. "But once the weather gets nice we're going to set up in front of Wescoe."
Over the sound of electric guitars, the band's vocalist speaks:
"In 1986 Syrp 'N Teen was created by a demon to take over rock music. Unfortunately Syrp 'N Teen saw that there was rock music and it was good and sacrificed itself only to be resurrected in the dark year of 2002 when their rock was no more."
hair bands such as Def Leppard and Cinderella. Faces in the Crowd
So begins "The History of Syrp 'N Teen," the self-titled song of a local group that is ensuring that big hair, denim jackets and tight leather pants don't die with 1980s
Teen is the brainchild of Manhattan freshman Jeremy Parker, who formed the group with five of his friends.
Parker said hair bands, named after the large hairdos of the musicians, marked the golden age of rock and roll.
"I feel that the best form of music," he said. "The music of today just does not measure up to what Cinderella was giving us in 1877."
Since Syrp 'N' Teen was formed, the group has recorded demos such as "If (Love is a Golf Course, Then I'm on the Rough)" and "The Grapes of Wrockth / A Rockwork Orange."
Parker said that while they did want to be humorous, they also wanted to be serious band.
Listen to practice sessions of Syrp 'N Teen
"I hope people don't think this is a total joke band because we put a lot into it," he said.
Lead singer Josh Dubois, a Manhattan sophomore who is known as "Ricki Flixx" in the band, said the sound of the band was difficult to describe.
"If you take Celine Dion's head and put it on Eddie Van Halen's body, it might sound something like our sound," he said, "but it wouldn't rock as hard."
kansan.com
Under the pseudonym "JP Extreme," Parker plays lead guitar for Syrp 'N' Teen.
The other members are rhythm guitarist Gabe "Killer the Killer" Holcombe, lead bassist Andrew "Hollywood Biberstein" Biberstein, both Manhattan freshen, rhythm bassist BJ "Egon" Congleton, Manhattan sophomore, and Parker's roommate Arjun Bhat,
Chestfield, Mo., freshman, who is the drummer.
Congleton said that Parker was the driving force behind the band's formation.
"He's the mastermind behind it," he said. "He just thinks on a different level. He's the biggest musician in the band and he was definitely gung-ho about this. We were in this because of him."
Dacia Lower, Phillipsburg junior and self-described fan of Syrp 'N Teen, said they had a unique sound. She saw them perform at a music festival in Manhattan.
"They have a great stage personality," she said.
While Parker plays rock and roll today, he has a classical background.
His father, Craig, teaches music history at Kansas State University and his mother.
He took piano lessons and played bassoon until he discovered the guitar at age 12.
Susanna, is an elementary music teacher.
Craig Parker said that his son had a great ear for music.
"I think he's one of the best musicians I've known," he said.
Parker's parents support his interest in rock music. In the second grade, his father took him to his first Def Leppard concert.
His mother said that Syrp 'N' Teen was a shock because she has a classical background, but she respected what he was doing.
"Whatever he's excited about and interests him and whatever is a creative outlet for him is fine with me," she said. "As long as they're not in my basement."
Contact Pracht at apracht@kansan.com. This story was edited by Kristi Henderson.
The University of Kansas
Chancellor's Student Awards Committee is accepting nominations and applications to recognize graduating seniors for academic achievement, leadership service and involvement.
The awards are as follows:
The Agnee Wright Strickland Award
The Donald K. Alderson Award
The Class of 1913 Award
The Alexie F. Dillard Student Involvement Award
The Rusty Leafel Concerned Student Award
The Caryl K. Smith Student Leader Award
Nomination and application forms for these awards are available at the Dean of Students Office, 133 Strong Hall, or you can access them at http://www.ku.edu/~stlife/award.html .
Nomination forms must be returned to the Dean of Students Office in 133 Strong Hall by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, March 11th, 2002.
Providing visual excitement for over 110 years
Show features forms of surrealism
Initially organized by the Tate Modern in London, the exhibit remains in New York, its final
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — When a group of middle-class artists and writers letoose and dives headlong into its subconscious in search of the very roots of desire, love and sexuality weird things happen.
"There's so much more than Dali, the figure who remains caught in the web of the popular imagination," said William Lieberman, chairman of Modern Art at the Met, who organized the show. The Surrealists were driven by the notion that love, desire and total freedom of the imagination were the salvation of humanity.
stop, through May 12. But visitors beware: It is not a show for the shy.
A lobster finds itself attached to a telephone. A face sprouts breasts and pubic hair. A well-dressed couple kisses as best they can, lips not touching because their heads are cloaked in fabric.
Although lacking the recorded orgasmic grunts and groans that accompanied some of the works at the Tate ("We didn't think they were necessary," Lieberman explained dryly), the works range from provocative to explicit. In one gallery, a tongue becomes a penis, a head becomes a penis and, elsewhere, a whole body becomes a penis.
In what the museum says is the first major exhibit of international surrealism in more than two decades, the show surveys more than 300 works, including paintings, sculptures, photos, films, poems, manuscripts and books by well-known artists such as Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Rene Magritte and Frida Kahlo, as well as less famous artists like Dora Maar and Lee Miller.
Surrealism, the first major artistic movement to openly explore desire and sexuality, emerged from the writings on dreams by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung in the 1920s. The extreme breadth of the movement, its frankness — and moments of humor — are explored in "Surrealism: Desire Unbound," a sprawling show opening Wednesday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The next gallery focuses on the Dada Movement, with works by Man Ray, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp. Introducing the idea of the body as machine, it features pieces like Man Ray's 1918 "Man," with its image of a hand mixer.
However, as fliers from 1924 state in the final gallery: "Si you aimez l'amour, you aimerez le surrealisme." ("If you love love, you'll Love Surrealism.")
Organized chronologically, the show begins in Paris right before the 1920s, around the time when Freud's writings were first translated into French, and Breton, the French poet who became a spokesman for the movement, began preaching a new vision of the world in which desire and imagination thrived unfettered.
The exhibit winds through more than a dozen galleries, opening with works by Giorgio de Chirico. The Italian artist's paintings so moved the early Surrealists that his "The Child's Brain," a sensual image apparently of the artist's father, hung above the bed of poet Paul Guillaume nearly all his life.
"They were actually very bourgeois. I mean, they played around quite a bit but they could be shocked," said Lieberman, who knew Andre Breton, Max Ernst and other major Surrealists. "Miro was quite prim, really."
Next come works by Miro and Andre Masson, among the first artists to explore "automatic drawing," the attempt to put down lines intuitively without thinking about what forms they might take.
"Here artists think of their bodies and their functions or their sex in terms of a machine," Lieberman said.
"There were two parallel strands to Surrealism. One is what I call the dream world, the painted dream, which, of course, derives from the familiar Dalis." Lieberman said. "The other is the artists doing automatic drawing and painting, and I think that's quite clearly shown in the gallery devoted to Miro and Masson."
They are followed by Dali, whose "Fried Eggs on the Plate Without the Plate" (showing droopy eggs and, yes, a plate) brings a smile, as does his 1936 "Lobster Phone," a sculpture consisting of black telephone with a pink lobster-like receiver.
The show also features Magritte's 1928 painting, "The Lovers," a haunting image of a couple kissing, each of their heads wrapped in cloth, and his 1934 painting, "The Rape," in which an androgynous face sprouts breasts and public hair.
The works are followed by a gallery of Surrealist photos, including works by Miller and Maar, both better known as artist's models than as artists in their own right.
The exhibit ends in 1959, when the Surrealists gave their last exhibit.
Although the Met show wraps up earlier than the Tate's, it covers a lot of territory.
"I think it's a show that people, if they're interested at all, will have to go through more than once," Lieberman said.
FDIC
"We're giving away a basketball autographed by the 2001-2002 Jayhawk team. If you're not presently a FirstBank customer, we invite you to come in and get acquainted. And, if you are already a FirstBank customer be sure stop by and register! Contest ends March 11, 2002. So come in and register soon!" Register during regular banking hours. No cost. No obligation. Need not be present to win.
Lawrence - 841.667 2710 Iowa
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WHAT IS OBJECTIVISM?
Dr. Andrew Bernstein provides an introduction to this controversial philosophy. Don't Miss It. Tonight at 7 p.m. Centennial RM, KS Union STUDENT SENATE
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