SINCE 18B9
Trashy paintings
Art student finds dumpsters double nicely as canvases. See page 3.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOV.14, 1985,VOL. 96,NO.59 (USPS 650-640)
Rain Details page 3.
Vietnam vet angered over drawing's theft
By Karen Blakeman Of the Kansan staff
Within 24 hours of its being placed at the site of the planned Vietnam memorial Monday, an architect's drawing of the memorial was stolen. A Vietnam veteran says this isn't a typical college prank.
The drawing, in a Plexiglas and stainless steel frame, was placed on a metal pole at the planned memorial site during a consecration ceremony at 3 p.m. Monday and was discovered stolen at 7:45 a.m. Tuesday, KU police said.
Police said they had no suspects.
Police said they had no suspects. "I don't know why anyone would do something like this," Lisa Ashner, a member of the KU Vietnam Memorial Committee, said yesterday.
John Musgrave, a veteran of the Vietnam War, said he remembered a time when people did this sort of
thing too frequently, and why they did it.
"This is a cowardly act made by a person or persons wishing to make some sort of twisted statement about the war or the policies that led us there by attacking the first physical evidence of the memorial," he said.
Musgraw, who has worked for two years to see the memorial become a reality, said the theft had not been the first act against the memorial project. The pole the drawing was to be placed on was stolen before the ceremony, he said.
Tom Anderson, director of facilities operations, said his staff worked to replace the pole in time for the congreseation ceremony Monday.
The conductor said he first considered the theft of the pole a random act that had nothing to do with the memorial.
"But of course, that's not the case now," Musgrave said. "Speaking as a Vietnam veteran, as a member of
the committee that has worked for two years for this memorial, my impression is that this is not a random act of vandalism or a high-spirited college prank."
Musgrave, who joined the peace movement after returning from Vietnam, said he thought whoever took the drawing was behaving in the same way some people behaved during the war — blaming the veteran for a situation he had not created.
"Far too often the Vietnam vet has been held up to ridicule and to blame, when we did nothing more that what our forefathers had done — we served our country."
Mustgrave said that foremost in his mind when he heard about the theft were the faces of some of the people who had attended the consecration ceremony — the widow of a man who was killed while serving with the
See VANDAL, p. 5, col. 1
House, Senate buy time to hash out
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The House and Senate yesterday approved different versions of a small increase in the federal debt limit to buy another month to work on balanced budget legislation and avert a U.S. default while President Reagan is in Geneva.
But because the two houses failed to agree on how to approach the short-term increase in the government's borrowing authority, the issue was still unresolved.
raise money, app only to Dec. 8.
Senate leaders tension, comb revenue-raising have the effect 'tions' bills thru date as the House
The House agreed to an $80 billion increase in the debt ceiling, up to $1.9 trillion, which they said was enough to cover the nation's bills through Dec. 13.
night on a voice.
Because the bit
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of money.
But the Senate, citing routine Treasury Department actions that
But Reagan have not to accept tension. The th pressure on ballet tied to a year federal borrow an increase, the money at mir
Wolf Creek de rehearing on
United Press International
TOPEKA — The Kansas Corporation Commission yesterday denied a rate rehearing to utilities that own the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant, but did adjust its order to permit two of the firms to earn an additional $6 million.
in an administrative meeting, the commission rejected utility arguments that it had acted arbitrarily when it declared $3.05 billion Wolf Creek plant should be valued like a cheaper coal-fired plant. Also rejected was a lengthy list of other arguments aimed at reopening the rate case.
The KCC did agree with utility
arguments the formula to al-
tually to reco-
vestment in the over life of
Gas & Electric Power &
together own plant — com-
mission incorate base upe
many earn a rn
The comm
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utility cost of nuclear
the resu
William Easley and Jeff Polack, student body president and vice president, and their terms next Friday. The two say their greatest accomplishment was to "restore organization" to Student Senate.
ROOTS ROCK
BY DON WALLER
n one finger, the whole "roots-rock revival" is simply a predictable, pendulum-like reaction to the slick, videoge-nic acts that currently rule the upper
reaches of the pop music charts
On the other, it's a measure of how fragmented
the audience for pop music has become that even
the purist rock 'n' roll band these days requires
clarification by hyphenation
Hence the term "roots rock," which is as strangely, early close to redundancy any two pair of words can get. B-sides, how can rock 'n' roll be revived when it never died?
Considering most of you reading this are college students and therefore don't have anything better to do until Letterman comes on, take 60 seconds out of your lives and subject Bruce Springsteen's music to some S.E.R. L.O.U.S historical analysis...
Do you when it never died?
Nevertheless, what is true—and germanne—is that a loose group of musicians, led by Bruce Springsteen and former Creedence Clearwater Revival mainman John Fogerty, most of whom had been playing the exact same music for years, has captured America's orbs' n ears of late.
Now what have you got? Jr. Walker and the All Stars' "Shotgun?" Gary U.S.' Bonds' "Quarter to Three?" Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone?" Trashy white bands from Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels to the Young Rascals on down the Jersey shore? Just about every guitar-oriented British Invasion band of '64-65'. And, of course, the spectre of Phil hanging over the entire Linguini with-Varoline, dying Northeastern industrial base mess?
roll bands for eleventy-sebenn years.
So, when my future grandchillen climb up on my knee and say, "No, Poppa. Poppa. Straight us to the Great Roots-Rock Revival of 1985," what am I gonna say "Go away, kids, you bother me," that's what.
Time's up! Blue books in!
Whereupon, they will threaten to
ask us these around?
Yes, as you can tell, I was an English major. But right now, Ah m old and tired. Been interview'r rock 'n'
roll bands for elebenty seben years.
use all my web-top Checker records for Frisbees, so I'll smile the slowest of slow-sad smiles, bum a fobilden cigarette and regale the tiny monsters with this do-wah diddy. "Fids are irrelevant. They change every three months. In the end, only the underlying restlessness matters."
10 Ampersand
That was Nik Cohn, circa 1969, in
Well, welcome to America. Where, as I write it is July 4, 1985. Independence Day. Fireworks. Bruce Springsteen on the radio at the 7:11, singing "Born in the USA," which the Iranian clerk behind the counter doesn't notice. His grandchildren, however, will grow up to be musicians. What'll they be playing? Why, roots rock, of course.
his. 457 magnum opus, "Rock, From the Beginning."
Wait a minute. Talk about your contradictions; I wish you could see mine. First, I tell you that this roots-rock music isn't a bad, that it's been around as long as rock 'n' roll itself. Then, I say that it's *only* a fad and therefore not to take it too seriously.
What we're taking so long to say here is that a whole lota these cool-kats walking around in pear-belltoned shirts' in' toting vintage Telecasters were playing in a synth pop hairsalt combo two years ago, in a skinny-tie "new wave" band five years ago and in a disco lounge act three years before that.
Anyway, here's the sanctified low down on the rock-rock sound that's going round. So open your mind, clean up your face, buy a few of these records or—better yet—go see these bands when they hit your college town and decide for yourself if they're jivin' or jammin'.
Along with Springsteen and Fogerty, the roots-rock acts with the most impact have been Los Lobos and The Blasters. Los Lobos, the more successful on record, came to Hollywood as Blasters proteges, having played everything from authentic acoustic Mexican folk music to R&B to '50's rock n' roll in front of multigenerational crowds in East El Lay for the past ten years.
The Lobos may look like they just got off work at the body shop, but they capture the ambiance of a small-time border town dance hall on a Saturday nite. This is party'n' music.
Neither do The Blasters, who've been recording what they like to call "American Music" for the last six years. Blues, country, rock, gospel—it's all grist for these steel mill union leader's sons. Phil ("the Man of 1,000 Voices") Alvin and Dave, his penman/git-tar pickin' brother.
As far back as the mid-'60's, the largest, most loyal audience for any single style of American roots music has always been the exalted brotherhood of blues fans. And there are an amazing number of good blues bands around: AOR guitar heroes Steve Ray Nuglan, a Texan who mates the bluesy side of Jimi Hendrix with the rockin' side of Buddy Guy and George Thorogood, a Delaware slide specialist who worships at the shrine of St. Elmore (James), are the current commercial champs.
They are followed by the Fabulous Thunderbirds, who play amplified country blues à la Slim Harpo and spotlight Stevie's big brother Jimmy Vaughan, Roomful of Blues, a Rhode Island-based, multi horned jive, jive and jazz outfit, and LA.'s criminally underrated James Hirman band, whose duel guitars of Kid Ramos and Hollywood Fairs enable them to whip on just about any local blues band in the land.
While the blues is such a traditional element of rock 'n' roll as it has been transformed into heavy metal—think about it—the recent groundswell of country-oriented roots-rockers represents a more significant shift in rock 'n' role models. Led by ex-punk rockers, brothers Tony and Chip Kinnan, Rank And File got there first. Mixing Everbly
Marshall the announcement
waiting collaborator for years before he
sole survivor of the spaceship Nostromos