University Daily Kansan, September 5, 1980
Entertainment
Hoochie Coochie man warms Lawrence fans
By JOHN McNAMARA Contributing reviewer
The steamy, smoke-filled sweatbox could have been any South Side Chicago blues bar, but it was Lawrence's own opera House.
The occasion was a rare appearance by the Mannish Boy, the Rolling Stone, the Hoochie Coochie Man—some call him Muddy Waters.
Waters, born McKinley Morganfield in the Mississippi plantation town of Stovall, is credited with preserving the haunting Delta blues of Son House and Robert Johnson. In the process he created his own form of city blues backed by a heavy drum beat, cloaked in the subtleties of his instrumentation, to his heart and sandwiched between walling harp and screaming guitars.
It was this hard-driving song that Waters delivered to an all too willing crowd last night. Sauntering to center stage amid frenzied aplace, Waters leaped into the blues with a thunderning rendition of his theme song, "Hoochie Cochie Man." Written by Clarence Dixon in the 1980s, it captures Waters' boastful authoritative style like no other song.
Picking up an already fast pace, he moved into "Baby Please Don't Go." Waters' dueling with the shrill notes of George "Mojo" Bufords' harp was the only sound that generated intensity that easily brought the crowd to its feet.
Slowing down a little and reaching back to his Mississippi Delta roots, Waters played a manshion version of his Robert Johnson inspired "Country Blues." Leaning against a stool, bowed in concentration as though remembering his own troubles, Waters squeezed high notes out of his guitar that echoed the mournful tone of his voice.
Waters mixed old and new material in the hour
set, including an expected and well-received rendition of "Kansas City."
His face creased with age but a look of boyish excitement in his eyes, Waters launched into the bluesman's blues song, "Got My Mom Workin'." Mining across the stage, booming in a voice as resonant as a preacher's, Waters worked the crowd to a peak of blues fervor. He closed the show with this number, returning only briefly to sing another verse as an encore.
The Muddy Waters Band—Rick Kreher and John Primer on guitars, Ernest Jones on bass, all illusion in the drums, Lovie Lee on piano and Jojo "Jojo" Butford on harpe—proved their skill early.
Opening the show without Waters, they performed a steaming version of the Elmore James' classic "Hurt's Me Too." Primer's nimble fret work made the tune smoke.
Lee displayed a voice perhaps as powerful as Waters on "Caledonia" and "Sweet Little Angel." Buford and Kreher established the band, but it was only in the heat for a very tight and versatile blue band.
Overall, Waters' material, voice, slide guitar and band were above reproach; however, the brevity of the set—slightly less than an hour—left some of the audience disgruntled.
Paul Gray's jazz Band with Claude "Fiddler"
Williams opened the show with a rousing
music of big band jazz and a touch of country-
western.
Gray's band proved themselves more than anyone else, including the Count Bates and Fats Waller, among others.
Claude "Fiddler" Williams, standing in inconspicuously in the left corner of the stage, brought cheers from the audience with violin playing. "Rose" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
ROBERT POOLE/Kansan staff
Muddy Waters belts out a dose of Delta blues at the Lawrence Opera House Wednesday night
Lyric Opera brings Italian comedy to KU
Rv JANE NEUFELD
Staff reporter
The Kanat City Lyric Opera will open the 1980-81 concerts season at the University of Kansas tomorrow with a debut performance of "The Elixir of Love," an Italian comic opera by Gaetano Donetti.
The opera will be performed in English at 8 p.m. in the University Theatre in Murphy Hall.
The plot of the opera, set in the 1830's, revolves around the efforts of the peasant Nemorino to win the love of Adina. In desperation after being rejected by her, Nemorino purchases a love
potion from Dr. Dulcamara, the 19th-century equivalent of a snake doctor.
The potion, in reality Bordeaux wine, makes Nemorino bald, and he offends Adina with his arrogant manner of proposing marriage. She and her寄伴 Sergeant Belcore, head of the village garden.
Meanwhile, the village women learn that Nemorino has inherited a large fortune from his uncle. Nemorino does not know about his inheritance, and thinks his new popularity with the women is due to a second bottle of potion he purchased.
Adina discovers she is jealous of the women around Nemorino and must decide whether to marry him or Belcore.
"The Elixir of Love" is staged by Francis J. Cullinan. Russell Patterson directs the Kansas City Lyric Opera.
Matthew Foerschler, a special student in voice
Kansas City, Kan., will sing in the chorus of the
performance.
"It is an opera that is not particularly easy to produce and it has been produced in so many ways that anything you do has been done before," Foerscher said. "The difference in our production is in the characterization of Nemorino. He is not played as a village idiot."
Tickets for the opera are on sale at the Murphy Hall box office and may be purchased at the door if the performance is not sold out.
Xanadu's reality falls short of dream
By KEVIN MILLS
Entertainment editor
Like most utopias, however, Xanadu's perfection is only skin—er, celluloid—deep.
In "Xanadu" magic prevails, dreams come true and the 1940s and 1980 coexist in utopian harmony.
This maximally produced, minimally directed movie musical features visual entertainment of the highest degree. Lavish sets, stunning costumes and special effects please the eyes with frequency.
But the magic stops there. Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck turn in vacuous performances as, respectively, a Greek muse and a commercial artist.
A Greek muse? The script is full of such adjectives as 'glorious', 'radiating' and a roller-string daughter of Zeus.
Granted, the premieres for music have often been fantastic and far-fetched. But witty interiors are equally interesting.
There is precious little wit in Xanadu. The story is glossy melody and never transcends a junior high sophistication. Beck is a struggling artist who paints poster reproductions of record album covers. Newton-John skates into his life and provides him with divine inspiration.
Bek meets construction mogul Gene Kelly, who was inspired by the Newton-John museer in his life. Kelly convinces Beck to his partner in the opening of a nightclub, Xanadu.
Xanadu is not your typical nightclub. It offers a rock band, a '40s big band, country music, disco and even disco's celebrated offspring, roller disco. How these musical forms compete under the same roof is a matter of speculation to the magic of an ambiguous, hazy script.
One fantasy scene forges the '80s band with the '40s in a highly syncoped hybrid, but the music takes a backseat to the period dancers. Choreographers Kenny Ortega and Jerry Trent mix jitterbugging and modern dance into a natural blend.
Spare Time
saving graces. The choreography is directed at the ubiquitous camera rather than an audience at the foot of the stage. This enables the movie viewer to share the dance floor with the dancers. The choreographers even pay homage to Busby and his telideoscopic dance routine shot from the ceiling.
The ensemble dance numbers are the movie's
Universal Pictures has billed Xanadu as the "first, big, lavish old-fashioned music to utilize the new music." If the mediocre fare offered by the Electric Light Orchestra is indicative of the new music, then musicals would be better off in sticking with the old.
Gene Kelly, Mr. Enthusiast himself, delivers a graceful, if limited, routine along with Newton-John. What he now lacks in athletic prowess is compensated by style.
Newton-John sings five original songs by John Porter and Paul Mantello, undure, but perplexless will album songs.
Gene Kelly fans may well wonder why he submitted to such an ill-conceived spectacle as Xanadu. Fans of musicals may wonder if this is the best the rock generation can come up with.
Spare Time
TODAY MUSIC Jay McShann, 9 p.m. at Paul Gray's Jazz Place Nation, 9 p.m. at G.P. Loyd's West The Janet Jameson Band, 9 p.m. at the Lawrence Opera House Bonita Shortline, 9.30 p.m. at The Pladium
ART "Benton's Bentons," "Americana from the Collection," and "From Drawings to Sculpture: The Creative Process" at the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art Stephen Murielio and Tom Overhoiser, photography exhibit at the Lawrence Arts Center
MOVIES Airplane, 7:18 and 9:16 at Hilcrest 3 Blue Lagoon, 7:30 and 9:30 at Hilcrest 2 Caddyshack, 7:20 and 9:20 at Hilcrest 1 Xanadu, 7:30 and 9:30 at Cinema Twin Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, 7:30 and 9:30 at Cinema Twin Chuech and Chong's Next Movie, 7:20 and 9:20 at the Varsity Smokey and the Bandit Part II, 7:30 and 9:30 at the Granada Coming Home, 3:30 and 9:30 at the Union Comes a Horseman, 7:00 at the Union The Beatles at Shea Stadium/Magical Mystery Tour, midnight at the Union
SATURDAY MUSIC Jay McShann, 9 p.m. at Paul Gray's Jazz Place Nation, 9 p.m. at G.P. Loyd's West Heart, with Robert Palmer, 8 p.m. at the Starlight Theatre, K.C., Mo. The Janet Jameson Band, 9 p.m. at the Lawrence Opera House Bonita Shortline, 9.30 p.m. at The Pladium
THEATRE "The Elixir of Love," an opera presented by the Kansas City Lyric Opera, University Theatre at 8 p.m.
SUNDAY MUSIC Big Band Dance with the Jazz Place Big Band, 6 p.m. at Paul Gray's Jazz Place
ART "The Early Works of Claude Lorrain," a lecture by Marcel G. Roethlisberger, University of Geneva, at 2 p.m. in the Spencer Museum Auditorium
MOVIES The Lacemaker, 2 p.m. at the Union
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The University of Kansas 1980-81 Concert Series Presents
The Kansas City Lyric Opera in The Elixir of Love
图
A Comic Opera in English
September 6,1980
8:00 p.m.
University Theatre
Murphy Hall Box Office
864-3981