University Daily Kansan, April 4, 1985
ET CETERA
Page 6
'Hippie' gathers rock'n' roll memories
By SHELLE LEWIS
Barry Tucker examines a Jimi Hendrix album at Quantrill's Flea Market, 811 New Hampshire St. Tucker runs a used records booth at Quantrill's each weekend and works as a co-host for a three-hour vintage rock 'n' roll show every Sunday night on radio station KJHK. Tucker's life has been influenced greatly by rok 'n' roll music from the 1960s and 1970s.
Staff Reporter
At age 16, Barry Tucker idolized a British rock group whose members sported long hair and started girls' hearts throbbing.
"The night the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, my life changed," Tucker said, recalling Feb. 9, 1964. "At that point, I knew I wanted to be in 'rock n' roll."
Twenty-one years later, he rides along smoothly in the rock of grove 'n' roll.
Tucker, 37, works as a co-host for a three-hour job at KIKEV, a digital media company. KIKEV kills every Sunday night.
Barry Tucker
And he not only spins records, but sells them too. He runs a used record boots at Quantrill's Flea Market, 811 New Hampshire St.. every weekend.
sure JOHN CHENEY. MUSIC director for KJHK, works as co-host for the vintage radio show. He said that on the show the duo used many albums from Tucker's collection.
sad she needs 4 chairs.
"He's a good guy." Robinson said. "He is really creative and very smart. He would make a good talk show host."
In addition, Robinson said Tucker's prices were quite reasonable.
Robinson, who plays bass guitar, said Tucker's selection of music was different from others she had encountered, including some rare works.
"He supplies half or over half of the records we play on the show," Cheney said. "I could do an oldies show without his help, but I wouldn't begin to know how to do the themes we do for the show. I would never be able to do three hours of New York City bands, for example."
While in Boston, Tucker said, he was offered a job with Associated Booking Cooperation (ABC), but turned it down.
Tucker, a grin spreading across his face,
said he was somewhat offended that
Cheney referred to their show as an oldies
program.
Tucker said, "I have everything from album covers at 50 cents a piece to rare albums that cost hundreds of dollars, but the bulk of the albums are $2 or less."
TUCKER SAID, ``ABC was straight coat-and tie at the time. They offered me a job, but told me I would have to get a haircut. I told them to forget it.
THROUGH HIS CONNECTIONS with album collectors and others, Tucker said he has been able to find almost any album for almost any buyer.
"He has things that no one else does," she said. "For example, he has a lot of Beatles things, some of which never have been released."
"I just call it hippie music, British invasion or flower power music," he said. LESLIE ROBINSON, WHO first met Tucker five years ago in Rochester, Minn., said she liked Tucker's wit.
"I'm appealing to two segments," he said. "I'm serving the $2 buyer and also the comboseur."
the compass to
Except for the short time he worked at his father's radio station and later as an antique furniture dealer, Tucker's life has revolved around the music of the '68s and '70s.
Minn., Tucker saw a small local band's concert and afterward he asked whether the group had a manager.
'I was a true hippie, a flower child. There's no question about it.'
"I was a true hippie, a flower child. There's no question about it."
As a high school drummer in the small town of Bussey, Iowa — which Tucker recalls had a population of 656 at the time — Tucker lived for rock 'n' roll, he said.
"THEY SAID NO, and in a matter of minutes they had one." Tucker said.
Tucker laughs, recalling how he booked the group's first show at the Rochester State Mental Institution.
Shortly after high school, in Rochester,
"It was $7 for the whole show and we never got paid," he said.
In 1967, Tucker and the parents of one of the band members started their own booking agency, called Hour Productions
BOOKING Later, Tucker said, he moved to Boston, where he took a ballroom management position.
"I managed three ballrooms there," Tucker said. "I got my first real taste of national acts. We booked shows for Blood, Sweat and Tears and other acts that were big at the time."
"I enrolled five different times in five different places," he said "I liked everything about college except classes."
Tucker said he had made various attempts at going to college, but had never earned a degree.
In 1971, Tucker started his own booking agency, Agency for the Contemporary Arts, in Denver.
"I used every job as a step up the ladder." Tucker said.
But he closed the business, moved to Lawrence and became the manager for
TUCKER SAID HE next went to work for East-West Talent in California for six months and was a booking agent for music and was the book DJ Liana Rostadt and The Band.
"I had made it, but I was conforming to everybody else's conformity," he said of the fast-paced life on the West Coast in the early 1970s.
the magnificent Sanctuary Band, which formerly had been the Fabulous Flippers.
early 1970s. Tucker moved back to Lawrence in 1973 and opened an antique furniture booth at Quantrill's.
"I knew nothing about antiques except that I liked them," he said. "I knew antiques pretty well by the end of that first year. I learned it the hard way."
BUT HARD TIMES hit Tucker once again. Tucker said he and his partner saw the economy crumbling and decided they wanted to liquidate their assets.
He put $20,000 into the business and lost most of it. So in 1974 he decided to move to Minnesota where he opened an antique store, which he hoped would invest in paintings, gold and silver.
They conducted an auction and advertised it in antique trade magazines. The auction resulted in financial disaster.
Tucker said he had expected 1,000 to 1,200 people at the auction, but only 400 came.
"It was the most depressing thing that I had ever been through," he said.
Many items went for considerably less than their value, he said.
"I lost $496,000 in six days right before my eyes." Tucker said.
In September, Tucker left Indianapolis and returned to Lawrence. He came to town with hundreds of albums and began selling them at Quantrill's.
selling them a quantity of
"I really didn't mean to get into this
business," he said. "I had 600 to 700
albums that I wanted to sell."
Tucker said, "This was definitely an unplanned business venture."
upholded business.
Max Humprey, manager of Quarrill's Flea Market, said, "It's amazing how many people he'll have back there on a weekend. Part of his success is that he really knows about the record industry.
"HE COULD PROBABLY write a book about rock 'n' roll trivia."
Tucker said he owned at least 8,000 albums from performers such as Bruce Springstreen. The Who and Grateful Dead.
Tucker says his future plans include bringing top bands to Lawrence. He's seeking financial backing to get that plan off the ground.
Meanwhile, Tucker says, he's just sitting back, relaxing — and letting the good times roll.
"I came back to escape the urban rat race," he said. "Lawrence is an oasis in Kansas. I would like to become a fixture like the Tan Man."
Tucker said, "I had a choice of getting back on the merry-go-round of rock 'n' rock or rolling out of it. I would have gone crazy if I had gone back."
Musician to toy with his piano in KU recital
Staff Reporter
By PEGGY HELSEL
When Evan Tonsing's recording studio equipment was stolen from his house, a dream went with it. Tonsing had sunk most of his money into the equipment and was left financially strapped when it was stolen.
All that remained a $25 toy piano that Tonsing, an associate professor of music at Oklahoma State University and KU graduate, had purchased from the Sears catalog.
"My usual Swedish attitude is that if you have a lemon, make lemonade," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Glepoe. Okla.
Rather than lemonade, Tonsing decided to make the most with what was left — the toy
"YOU CAN STEAL equipment, you can steal instruments, but you can't steal creativity." he said.
creativity, he said.
So he decided to stretch his creativity and compose using the toy piano. His goal: 100 compositions for the diminutive instrument.
He achieved his goal and eventually
The challenge, he said, prompted him to write efficiently, using the limited number of notes available.
recorded the 100 compositions, which total four hours on tape.
four-room residence. Tensing will play two of those compositions, along with four other pieces he wrote for standard-size instruments, when he returns to the University of Kansas next week for the KU Alumni Recital Series.
The concert will be at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Swarthout Recital Hall in Murphy Hall and will be free and open to the public.
Tonsing said he got the idea to record nature sounds after a late night of grading papers and composing. He stepped out onto the front porch and listened to the sounds that permeated the wooded area around his house.
win be free and open to music.
BESIDES PLAYING TOY piano. Tonsil will add another unusual twist in one composition, "Nocturne After a Spring Rain" — a tape-recorded chorus of frogs and bugs.
"I realized that I hadn't been listening to the sounds around me," he said.
the mouse in the basin. So he grabbed his equipment and recorded an hour of croaking frogs and chirping insects.
"they're very musical," Tonsai唱. The musical frogs can be heard at next week's performance, along with other Tonsai compositions: Sonata for Un-
music. "They're very musical," Tonsing said.
accompanied Cello; "Frontier Snapshots (Variations)" for piano, cello and tape, Opus 56; "Crystallization (Requiem for a Shoebox) for Toy Piano," Opus 62; A transformation of William Blake's The Book of the Book; for flute and woodwind, Opus 63; and for keyboard and Wraght in Memory of Scott Joplin, for cello and piano, Opus 63.
"jopin was trying to be, in his own way, a Mozart," Tonsing said of the ragtime composer and pianist. He said that the only jobs available to black musicians at that time were in "sporing houses."
THE JOIPLIN PIECE, he said, "is an attempt to pay homage artistically to someone who didn't receive homage during his lifetime.
JOPLIN'S MUSIC WAS relatively unappreciated in this country, Tonsing said. But in Europe, composer Igor Stravinski was very impressed by it. Tonsing also is impressed by Joplin's work today.
Despite the unsavory surroundings, Tonsing said, Joplin was high able to produce "an enormously high quality of music."
"I respect him. So I wrote a piece in memory of him," he said.
Tonsing's appreciation for ragtime and jazz arose in his late 20s. While in college, he
So when Tonsing decided to explore the realm of popular music after graduation, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly. He discovered the music of Joplin during this time, he said, and tried his hand at rock music for a while.
was fascinated by the music of such cultures as Eskimo and Australian aborigine, he said. The study of popular music didn't appeal to him at the time.
music for a white.
He played keyboards and synthesizer for some grass-roots rock bands in Oklahoma, but that phase didn't last long.
"I WAS BROUGHT up a preacher's kid," he said. "I don't even drink, and there I was playing in bars."
Tensing said he decided that enough was enough — life on the road was not for him.
The experience wasn't a total loss, he said, because it led him into studio recording Tonsing has recorded scores for three films, including two by the Emmy award-winning television director Sharon Miller.
Tonsing, who received his bachelor's degree in music in 1962 and his master's degree in 1967, will be accompanied in the concert by OSU faculty members John Enis, pianist, and Gwen Powell, flutist.
Bel Airs to cruise into town for Jazzhaus concerts
Staff Reporter
By SHELLE LEWIS
Today, David Prutt is putting a new transmission in his blue, 1963 Chevy Bel Air. But tomorrow night the guitarist will be revving up with rhythm and blues with his band, the Bel Airs.
"I'd been thinking about it, and when I walked through the door it just came to me."
bands, the Beethoven
The rhythm and blues group, formed four
years ago in Columbia, Mo. will roll into
Lawrence for 9 p.m. shows both tomorrow
and Saturday at the Jazhauza, $202/2 Massacu-
ssetts St. Admission will be $3 at the door
THE LATEST TUNE Pruitt wrote down while he was sitting in the lobby of the Columbia, Mo., police station when he was trying to find the driver of the car that hit his.
The band also features Prutt's brother, Dick, on bass and Patt O'Connor on drums. Henderson and the Prutt brothers provide the group's vocals.
"I'm not much of a poet, but I'm working on it," Pruitt said. "I write music that makes people want to dance. I try to stick to themes that aren't very obscure — straight ahead lyrics. I write about what we go through — love songs with a satirical or a sarcastic twist sometimes."
Once in a while, Prutt said, he comes up with a new song in an unusual place.
the group's vocalist.
Prutt, who is the band's songwriter, said that besides cars, women were the band's favorite motif for songs.
Actually, Mike Henderson, blues harp and guitar player, owned his 1968 Bel Air before Pruitt bought his. And Henderson liked his car so much that he attached the name to his band.
Pruitt, 30, said the Bel Airs' song "Thunder and Lightin'" was influenced by his emotions when he wrote it two years ago.
"A big truck hit it," Henderson said of his car,
bando
UNFORTUNATELY, THE ONLY thing that remains of Henderson's Bel Air is its namesake.
"We have a lot of similar tastes and a common musical direction." Pruitt said. "A lot of things go unsaid."
Pruitt said he enjoyed being in the same band with his older brother.
Harmony is working to the group's advantage.
"I think I'd been really depressed," Prutt said. "Part of me was angry, and the song came out kind of dark sounding. I think it's one of the best songs we've done."
Appia suggested that Dalcroze's dancers use various platforms during their performances. Appia built cubicles and platforms that were flexible so they could be rear ranged to fit various choreographed numbers.
" our biggest problem is breaking in new audiences." Prutt said. "But our motto is, 'Everybody likes the Belt Airs — some of them just don't know it yet.' "
THE BEL AIR released their first album, "Need Me a Car," six months ago and have been on the road promoting their music more than ever.
By JEANINE HOWE
heir just cut a key if it knew
Henderson said the group had made
considerable progress over the last four years. Most of the group members had experience as professional musicians before the band formed.
Besides theatre and opera designs, Appia worked with Jacques Dalcroze, the force runner of modern dance, Unruh said. Appia suggested that the movement of the dancers could be enhanced if they didn't perform on the same level as the audience.
Instead, theatre design now depends upon three-dimensional sets, lighting and shadows to create a visual, emotional effect.
"We had already learned the sneaky, little lesson you learn on the road." Hasserson said. "Who to trust, who not to trust, where to stay and eat. I bet we have 60 or 70 years of experience among us, if you add it all up."
Staff Reporter
Likewise, instead of having a painter backdrop of a forest, Appia would use space and light to create the mood of being in a forest, Gronbeck-Tedesoa said.
Gronbek Tedescio said. 'Appia trans posed emotional sensations in visual terms.'
TO CREATE THE location and feeling of being near a cliff, early theatre would construct the rock ledge and would paint scenery to look like a cliff, Gronbeck Tedesco said. Although Appia may have use a set construction of a cliff, the feeling of the location was created more with the use of light and shadows.
Modern theatre design could have been more flat and more dark without the influence of Adolphie Appia, a German theatre designer and writer.
Pruitt said that he would like to stray away from the U.S. concert circuit and perform in Japan. He was born on an Air Force base there and would like to return.
rhythm and blues. However, small clubs, such as the Jazzhaus, will always be home for rhythm and blues music. Pruitt said.
"A good blues gig is a social situation — a small nightclub with smoke in the air and couples up dancing," he said.
Theatre design focus of exhibit at Murphy Hall
Appia use light and space to create mood or place.
Appia proposed three-dimensional constructions that actors could stand in front or in back of or on, in contrast to when actors had to stand in front of the painted backdrops. He substituted the painted backdrops with more set constructions. He introduced the overwhelming use of light and its play with shadows, Unruh said.
"It's always fun to play in front of new people." Pruitt said. "I understand that they're really supportive of American rhythm and blues."
Early theatre design, Appia's radical changes and the influence Appia had on today's theatre design are reflected in a sprawling photo exhibit at Murphy Hall. The exhibit, titled "Adolphie Appia (1862-1928) Air-Action-Space," is on display in the foyer of the Crafton-Preyer Theatre through April 15.
The exhibition is produced by the Arts Council of Switzerland Pro Helvetica. The KU exhibit is one of a limited number of small exhibitions being shown around the world. The small exhibitions are reproductions of the original exhibition in Switzerland.
THE EXHIBITION CONTAINS photos of Appia's actual sketches, which are now on display in the original exhibit in Switzerland Appia's sketches show his conceptions of what theatre design should be. The exhibit also displays photos of what theatre designs looked like before and after Appia.
DELBERT UNRUH, ASSOCIATE profesior of the theatre, said Appia was responsible for contemporary stage design.
The University of Kansas received the exhibit from the American College Theatrical Festival, which was selected as one of the regional institutions that would sponsor the exhibit.
John Gronbeck Tedesco, professor of graduate studies and associate professor of theatre, said the central popular tradition of early theatre design consisted of painted canvas backdrops. Appia wanted to change that.
conceptual shape. He said, "Besides seeing these wonderful sketches, you get a history lesson of theatrical design."
OPERA AND THEATRE continued as if Appia never existed, Unruh said. It was not until 1935 that the realization of Appia's ideas were understood.
Appia was in his 20s when he saw one of Richard Wagner's plays performed at the Bayreuth Opera House in Germany. Unruh said that although Appia thought Wagner's operas were perfect, Appia was appalled at all the painted backdrops.
Unruh said, "He wanted to get away from any artificial suggestions of realism. He rebelled. He proposed radical changes in stage design. But theatre was so primitive that he never could execute his ideas."
EDWARD GORDAN CRAIG, an Englishman, proposed similar theatre design ideas. Unrush said that some people thought that either Craig stole Apple's ideas or Appla stole Craig's ideas. However, Craig worked primarily in England, France and Italy andAppla worked in Germany and Switzerland.
Appia spent most of his life writing book and making sketches of his new theatre designs.
designs.
Unruh said, "He didn't actually produce o design that many sets. He did lots of sketches."
sketches.
No one liked Appia's ideas. And Craig wasn't accepted either. Unruh said that it took almost 45 years before the romantic theatre tradition changed to the modern theatre of today.
Theatre people didn't understand Appia or Craig's ideas. Unruh said that eventually romantic tradition exhausted itself and slowly Appia and Craig's ideas were accepted.
After World War II, two American designers, Robert Jones and Louis Simonson, traveled to Europe where they saw Appla work. Appla became widely known in the United States when Jones and Simonson returned to the United States and incorporated his ideas on Broadway.