University Daily Kansan / Thursday, October 1, 1987
Arts/Entertainment
7
Musicians combine visuals with sound
By KJERSTI MOEN
Arts/Entertainment editor
The Pacific Northwest is on its way to Lawrence.
A video capturing the nature of Big Sur, Mount Rainier and other mountain ranges in the Washing- area, accompanied by New Age artists in nurves of viewers and listeners in Lawrence this weekend.
"it's kind of like going to a movie and a concert at the same time." Lanz said Saturday in a interview from his home in Seattle.
Visuals and sounds will merge when Seattle musicians David Lanz and Paul Speer play selections from their album "Natural States" on Saturday at Liberty Hall, while a video of the same name unfolds on two screens on stage.
The video, produced and directed by Jan Nickman for Miramar Productions, was made partly by walking with a video camera, called Steadycam, through the landscapes and partly by shooting aerial views from a plane.
"The Steadycam gives you a feeling of walking through the scenery — it's very smooth, almost floating." Lang said.
Pianist and keyboardist Lanz, along with guitarist Paul Speer, composed the music for "Natural States" bit by bit by improvising as they watched raw footage of the fireworks over the video of editing the video and polishing the music to match the two mediums perfectly, Lanz said.
The result is an album of instrumental music that reflects the natural moods captured on the video — sometimes spirited and joyous, sometimes mysterious and alarming. The print instruments are piano and electric guitars with synthesizer orchestra.
The sounds have a soothing, relaxing effect, but without becoming too sentimental or boring.
"One of the things music is supposed to do is relax you, but it
can also excite you," Lanz said.
The music has its own identity and works well independently, although it was inspired by and written for the video.
"The visuals and the music work hand in hand. It's really strong," Lanz said. "They work best team — like two people in a team."
As a team, Lanz and specter have varied music backgrounds. Lanz began playing piano at age 4, and by age 13 was leading a rock band. Lanz played everything from rhythm and blues and ballads to soundtracks and lieder.
Speer plays electric guitar and occasionally tours with rock bands. He has produced and engineered nearly 40 albums and has written and recorded scores for many television projects. Two such projects won him regional Emmy awards in 1984 and 1986.
Their first "Natural States" concert outside Washington will be tomorrow night at the Kansas City Music Fest 87. 'Seer's brother, Neal Speer, will join them on electronic percussions.
The two have performed live with the "Natural States" show in Seattle and at "Expo '85" in Vancouver, Canada.
“What we’re doing is a new concept even within New Age music,” he said. “It’s something that really fits.” He added that to be completely understood.”
The music on "Natural States," the first release on the Narada Equinox label, fits the New Age mold perfectly. The contemporary, instrumental soft-pop album isn't just anymore, but New Age visuals are, and people aren't used to the combination, Lanz said.
As an opening for the Lawrence performance, Lanz will play with guitarist Eric Tingstad and obstant Nancy Bumbel. They will play in a band. Their album, "Woodland Skiff," is now available at Liberty Hall for $10, $12 and $14. Students get a $2 discount.
New exhibit features late professor's work
By a Kansan reporter
Paintings and drawings by Thomas Klaverkamp, an associate professor of art who died last year, are on display at the art gallery in the Art and Design building through Oct. 9. Klaverkamp had taught drawing and painting at the University of Kansas since 1967. His work was chiefly figurative representations of people or still lifes.
Klaverkamp's works have been exhibited all over the United States, including the Allan Stone Gallery, a gallery of art that displays a display gallery for figurative artists.
The 13 pencil drawings, 15 oil paintings and two pastel paintings are among those not already in museums or private collections, said Mr. Browne, who is curator of art. Klavierkamp's will specified that the Spencer Museum of Art would choose whatever it wanted from the estate as donations.
The art museum selected nine drawings and two paintings, Dishinger.
The remaining works are for sale, with proceeds going to endow the Thomas Klaverkamp Memorial Art Scholarship Fund.
Most of the paintings and drawings are portraits, frequently nudes, represented in a realistic style. The rest are still lifes or paintings of interiors.
The display demonstrates Klaverkamp's skillful use of color in representing various tones of light. He endowed his models with dignity and power; the paintings are realistic and their colors if not their forms.
Works not sold by the end of the display still will be available for sale. People interested in buying them may get in touch with Dishinger. The gallery is open 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 1:4:30 p.m. Sunday and Monday.
Lisa Jonea/KANSAN
"Untitled," oil on canvas, is one of 15 oil paintings in the Thomas Klaverkamp Memorial Exhibit in the gallery at the Art and Design building. The collection will be shown through Oct. 9.
Date Fulkerson/Special to the KANSAN
Noah Adams will host a new public radio show called "Good Evening," to be broadcast on public radio for the first time Oct. 10. Adams was the keynote speaker Saturday at a fund-raising banquet for KANU-91.5, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary.
'Good Evening will air here soon
By KIRK ADAMS
Noah Adams launches radio show
Staff writer
A familiar voice in public radio news soon will be hosting what might be the most listened-to public radio entertainment show in the nation.
Noah Adams, who has written and reported for the National Public Radio news show "All Things Considered" for 10 years, said he had recently spent time preparing for the performances of the World Theater in St. Paul, Minn., where his new show, "Good Evening," will be produced.
Adams is filling the void left by Garrison Keillor, who resigned from his NPR show, "A Prairie Home Companion," after becoming nationally known as a storyteller and humorist. Keillor was host of the two-hour show for 13 years.
Adams said the new show would have a format similar to that of "A Prairie Home Companion" but that his role would differ from Keilor's. The show will feature Adams reading the story in which there will be guest storytellers and all kinds of music, ranging from folk and country to jazz and rock, he said.
Adams characterized the show as a music and variety program, but said that he thought the show's format was hard to classify.
He said the staff had one writer, Dan Rowles, who would do some of the writing for the show's short-form theater pieces.
Adams said he and Rowles were trying to develop fictional characters that could be used regularly on the show.
The 90-minute show will be produced by Minnesota Public Radio, which owns the World Theater, at 5 p.m. on Oct. 10 and every Saturday for five weeks. Eventually, the show will be broadcast nationally to member stations of the American Public Radio Network, including KANU-91.5 FM, the University of Kansas radio station.
Earn about 10 people make up the "Good
Boyfriend" group and about four
women make up the "Woman" group.
Band promotes new album here
Adams did not come from a traditional news background. Before working for "All Things Considered," he was a carpenter and a car mechanic. He first appeared on air in 1962 as a disc jockey for a rock music station .
Adams said he didn't feel any pressure about filling Keillor's shoes as host of the program, in spite of Keillor's popularity.
"There's no pressure. It took Garrison ten years to sell out the theater. We're going to start out with a full theater, so there's no pressure."
New Jersey's Ben Vaughn Combo finds home base for Midwest tour
By KIRK ADAMS
Staff writer
A New Jersey band, The Ben Vaughn Combo, is making Lawrence its home for about the next month.
The Combo played Tuesday with the Alex Chilton Band at The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St., and also will play there every Wednesday night this month. The band is a fourman "volume down" rock band that plays classic and folk rock, rockabilly and several other musical styles.
Members of the Ben Vaughn Combo, a rock band from Camden, N.J., play around on stage before performing at The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. The members are, from left, Aldo Jones, bass; Gus Cordovox, accordion; Lonesome Bob, drums; and Ben Vaughn, guitar.
The group will be based in a house on Kentucky Street this month while touring the Midwest to promote its new album, "Beautiful Thing," which the songwriter and lead singer. Ben Vaughn, produced himself.
The Combo has a repertoire of about 100 songs, many of which are original compositions.
The Combo has taken rock 'n' roll back to the basics.
Lonesome Bob, the band's percussionist, said, "It's sort of like taking the music from the eras that are behind and putting them all together."
Vaughn said, "We don't really care about anything. We get up there and goof off. We have a good time. We play well. We also don't care about our image, you know, we just don't care.
"I'm a songwriter, so it takes the pressure off me as a performer, and if I want to get up there and not look like a rock star, we use the songs stand for themselves."
"I'm a lyricist. I always write the lyrics first, the music later — well sometimes they both come at the same time, but I spend a lot of time on lyrics. My favorite songwriters are all really good lyricists, like Henry Winks, of the amazing lyricist, Hank Williams. I like more obscure writers that you have to read the record label to know who they are.
"These guys — our band's real good. It doesn't take us long to learn anything. We just jam on it and we've got it."
Other members of the band are Aldo Jones, who plays bass guitar and piano, and Gus Cordovox, who plays the accordion, organ and maracas. Lonesome Bob plays drums, James Cohen plays guitar and her hubcap. The hubcap is from Vaughn's old car, which he wrote a song about for his first album.
According to some reviews, Vaughn is known for being funny on stage, often ad-libbing his way through the performance. "Beautiful Thing" is not as funny as the first album, Vaughn said, although it's still funny in an ironic way, and the songs are probably more mature.
"What I'm doing now would have been huge in 1966," he said. But, he continued, nowadays record companies don't recognize a good band.
Vaughn said the band was non- commercial, because members didn't care what record companies wanted to hear.
"I don't use a big drum sound," Vaughn said, "and I don't care what I look like, so, I'm out, you know, I don't have a chance.
"It's weird, it's weird, because our songs are actually about things that people can relate to more than what's on the radio now, but that doesn't matter, that doesn't matter, 'cause record companies don't really care
Vaughn said he liked almost all kinds of music. He listens to Marshall Crenshaw, the Kinks and some country performers like Johnny Cash and Randy Travis, and he likes jazz and gospel music.
about what the people need or want,
they just care about what they think
they can sell. My sincerity and honesty
is not often seen in a person who else
is not important to them at all.
Vaughn started playing in bands at age 12. He described his first band, Verbal Garbage, as a psychedelic garage band.
"That was in '67," he said, "and then I had about a million other bands throughout high school. We'd play at dances and battle of the bands and everything. My big career pretty much peaked and waned before I graduated high school. I was the local guy, you know, that always had a band together playing dances and stuff."
Vaughn said his first band was "weird" because the members couldn't play well enough to do a cover tune well.
"But we could jam for ten minutes on one song we wrote ourselves, you know, so that's how we started," he said.
In high school Vaughn also played in The Derelics, Johnny Cash and the Registers, and Hairy Gertz.
Vaughn said he didn't like the popular music that was being played at the time he graduated from high school. He didn't go to college and instead worked as a factory helper, a banker or a retailer. He also a hitor store clerk and a landscaper.
"I was writing songs the whole time, and I guess I kind of view myself as a writer more than anything else. The whole time I've spent observing people and being normal and unknown and a nobody."
He doesn't think much of many of today's popular music groups because he finds their lyrics superficial.
"They have trouble writing about real experiences because they're not allowed to have them anymore," he
1987
We don't really care about anything. We get up there and goof off. We have a good time. We play well. We also don't care about our image, you know, we just don't care.'
— Ben Vaughn
Songwriter and lead singer in
Little Saints
said. "They have only unreal experiences — you know, being in a limo, sound checks, hotel, dinner, you know, autographs, and that's their whole life. I think if you want to write about stuff that's real you gotta, pretty much, maintain a pretty real life."
Vaughn said that he had been influenced by all kinds of music.
"I grew up in a time when AM radio was totally integrated and great," he said. "You know, like when you'd hear a Dylan record, 'Rolling Stone', which was a number one hit, hey, or at least number two, next to the Four Tops, next to 'Nineether Nervous Breakdown' by the Stones, next to Wilson Pickett or Arthel Franklin, it was amazing, you know, but they were hits. 'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane was a hit. It was just open, man, it was just wild.
"It it was all like dancerie, you know, pretty dark, club-dominated type of music. It was all taking itself way too seriously."
Vaughn said the band members didn't like to play too loudly because they wanted to emphasize their lyrics.
"I like different styles. I really don't even notice that I'm jumping from one style to the next, it's pretty natural."
"That's the reason we started out acoustic because I wanted people to hear the songs, I didn't want them to hear the sounds, I wanted them to hear the sounds, I wanted them to be something there to relate to, and to think about, and to come back to."
Vaughn said that classic rock, such as Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull's music, was not as good as some people thought today.
The band now has electric guitars, but they still play low volume.
"Me, I was there when it was happening and it wasn't that great, let me tell you." Vaughn said. "If you were 18 when that stuff was brand new, you would have hated it too, you would be embarrassed to use a bearable to sit through Jon's Thick as a Brick' album. That he was worse than anything."
So, he said, he started listening to old blues records, doo-wop records, surf music and rockability, all the time expanding his record collection.
Many of the older songs the band plays are from Vaughn's collection.
"I'm a record collector," he said;
"Not a collector in the sense that I know the value of any of my records
they're all scratched up and I play
them all the time and, you know,
they're beat up. I get 'em for fifty
cents at a garage sale. But I collect
blues and blues and country and everything."
The other band members were heard strumming a tune from inside the house. Vaughn said, "There's a modern music going on right there!"
Vaughan said he resumed playing in bands after an eight-year period of writing songs partly because of what he learned about the punk hands in the early '80s.
He said, "Suicide, which was one of my favorite bands of the '70s, I heard them playing like one or two chords over and over and just having lyrics and stuff, it was really rock 'n' roll. It made me start thinking about getting back out. The time was right again, and thank God for that."