8A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ENTERTAINMENT
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 13, 2002
Student leads rock group tries to revive '80s hair bands
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."
By Adam Pracht
Kansan staff writer
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."
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
hair bands such as Def Leppard and Cinderella. Faces in the Crowd
Syrp 'N 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's the best form of music," he said. "The music of today just does not measure up to what Cinderella was giving us in 1987."
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.
kansan.com
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."
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 freshmen, rhythm bassist BJ "Egon" Congleton, Manhattan sophomore, and Parker's roommate Arjun Bhat
Chesterfield, 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."
were 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.
Susanna, is an elementary music teacher.
He took piano lessons and played bassoon until he discovered the guitar at age 12.
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
response.
"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.
Show features forms of surrealism
Initially organized by the Tate Modern in London, the exhibit remains in New York, its final
"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.
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.
stop, through May 12. But visitors beware: It is not a show for the shy.
"Here artists think of their bodies and their functions or their sex in terms of a machine," Lieberman said.
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.
might take.
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 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.
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.
ropotential Museum in
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.
The Associated Press
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.
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.
becomes a part.
However, as fliers from 1924 state in the final gallery: "Si vous aimez l'amour, you aimerez le surrealisme." ("If you love love, you'll love Surrealism.")
"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."
The University of Kansas
NEW YORK — When a group of middle-class artists and writers lets loose and dives headlong into its subconscious in search of the very roots of desire, love and sexuality, weird things happen.
The awards are as follows:
Chancellor's Student Awards Committee is accepting nominations and applications to recognize graduating seniors for academic achievement, leadership service and involvement.
The Agnes Wright Strickland Award
dainty, weird things.
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.
"I think it's a show that people, if they're interested at all, will have to go through more than once," Lieberman said.
would paint "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."
The Donald K. Alderson Award
Although the Met show wraps up earlier than the Tate's, it covers a lot of territory.
The Alexie F. Dillard Student Involvement Award
The Class of 1913 Award
The Rusty Leafel Concerned Student Award
Providing visual excitement for over 110 years
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公 hair.
The exhibit ends in 1959, when the Surrealists gave their last exhibit.
The Caryl K. Smith Student Leader Award
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.
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.
Bonnie Augustine,
President, Lawrence
Banking Center
FDIC
"Win a free autographed Jayhawk basketball!"
"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 - 841-6677 2710 Iowa Also in Junction City and Manhattan
11. 5
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
PIZZA SHUTTLE
PIZZA SHUTT
1601 WEST 23RD
Southern Hills Center
842-1212
Sun-Thurs 11 am - 2 am
Fri-Sat 11 am - 3 am
LUNCH - DINNER - LATE NIGHT
Delivery Hours
"NO COUPON SPECIALS" EVERYDAY
TWO-FERS
2-10" PIZZAS
2-TOPPINGS
THREE-FERS
(ON EACH)
3-10" PIZZAS
PARTY "10"
1-TOPPING
2-DRINKS
10-10"PIZZAS
1-TOPPING
3- DRINKS
LARGE-FERS
2-14" PIZZA
2-TOPPINGS
$35.00 $16.00
(ON EACH)
4- DRINKS
*SPRING SPECIAL SPECIAL-2 LARGE, ONE TOPPING PIZZAS-$12.00*