Page 6
Entertainment
University Daly Kansan, October 8, 1982
CO
Singer displavs talent in lunchtime concert
By VINCE HESS
Staff Reporter
Gerry Grossman grew up like many other children - by very closely following something that was funny.
Some children can remember the statistics of their favorite baseball or football players without even studying the numbers. He liked music when he was young and remembered the hit rock 'n' roll songs of the 1950s and 1960s, Grossman said Wednesday.
He put his musical knowledge to use by becoming a full-time rock musician. He displayed his musical abilities in the Trails Room, Kansas Union Wednesday afternoon 9:30p.m.
ACCOMPANYING HIMSEL on guitar, Grossman performed a 20-minute medley of Beatles songs, told jobs and honored requests to audience to play hit songs by various artists.
Grossman, a songwriter as well as a guitar player, said he had played guitar since he was 9 years old. He also listened to rock music and found that he could remember the hit rock songs from 1958 up.
Grossman said he used his memory two years ago when he was the opening act for Chicagofest, when he was a child. "He's really smart," he said.
Grossman played a medley of every No. 1 song on the Billboard magazine charts from 1855 to 1970. The 400-song medley lasted about an hour, he said.
"Rock 'n' roll is so simple that if you hear it being played or in your mind, you can play it," he said. "It was so interesting that I absorbed it."
HE PLAYED in a rock band in the 1960s and in 1969, performed what he said was the first one-man show of "Tommy," a rock opera written by the group The Who.
Grossman began touring colleges around the country and released six singles, none of which were listed among the Top 40 most popular songs. Last year he released his first album, titled "Not Available in All Store," which is available in many stores, but not in any in Kansas, he said. He is preparing a single to be released in January.
Grossman said he had worked his way up in the musical world in the 1970s to perform as an
opening act for such musicians as John Denver, Three Dog Night and Cheap Trick, but he tired of spending 35 weeks a year on the road.
He said he also did not like the hectic lifestyle of the musicians in New York City and Hollywood, where he lived before returning to Chicago, his hometown.
"I think people confuse being successful with being hit," he said.
GROSSMAN NOW uses Chicago as his home base between mini-tours of Midwestern colleges. He said his album was "all-Chicago." The back-up musicians and promotional agents were from Chicago, and production work was done in Chicago.
This weekend he will perform for the 504th time at Minstrels, a Chicago nightclub. Grossman said 11 years of performances at the nightclub had forced him to be versatile by performing different songs and telling different lokes to the same crowd.
After his concert Wednesday, Grossman was approached by members of the audience, including members of the local band Get Smart! who said they planned to be in Chicago soon.
Grossman said his goal was to do something different. For example, he said, for several years he hosted a series of specials for the Public Broadcasting Service. The specials contained music and interviews that featured practical news "that people care about," he said, not Joan Rivers and other celebrities who dominate many talk shows. However, PBS ended the series.
Grossman said he also tried to be different by playing medleys, for which he needs little rehearsal because he already knows the songs. He said he played different songs in the Beatles medley at either a fast or slow pace, depending on the mood of the crowd.
"Good music is timeless," he said. "The Beatles are classical rock'n'roll."
GROSSMAN SAID the Beaters were the group whose songs were most frequently requested.
Grossman said the only groups whose music he listens to were the Beatles The Who, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks.
Student Union Activities sponsored the Grossman concert. Irene Carr, program adviser, said she was pleased with the size of the crowd, which varied between 38 and 50 people. The program was completed and night program several years ago, she said, and night schedule more programs for this year.
Theatre sells out tickets to Renaissance concerts
But those who did not buy tickets may still have a chance to see the group, she said.
Two performances of Baroque and Renaissance vocal music by the Deller Consort that are scheduled for Sunday and Monday have already sold out, Charla Jenkins, public relations director for the University Theatre, said Wednesday.
The Dellier Consort will perform at 3:30 p.m.
Sunday, and at 8 p.m. Monday in the Saworth
auction.
These who want to see the performance may put their name on a waiting list beginning one hour before the show at the Murphy Hall Box Theatre. Before the show, the list will begin 15 minutes before curtain time.
"We have had pretty good luck seating people," Jenkins said. "It seems there will always be some season ticket holders who cannot make it."
"We spend about 6 months out of the year touring. The rest of the year I spend conducting choral groups," Deller said in a phone interview from Colorado.
THE DELLER CONSORT comprises Mark Deller, director and counter tenor; Lynne Dawson, soprano; Maurice Bourn, baritone; Emma Brennan, vociferous Cowe-Crump, tenor; and Robert Spenser, lutetian.
The group last performed at the University of Kansas during the fall of 1980, Jenkins said. She saw them then.
"They are young and enthusiastic," she said. "You can tell they love what they are doing. They are talented, and historically, they are on-the-money accurate."
are doing them because they want to. "The Saad," Sunday night's program is titled "The Courts of Islam." It will include ayatolls, madrigals and motets, which are musical pieces based on sacred texts.
The consort will be teaching master's classes during the day on Monday. Jenkins said.
Monday night's show, "Music in Tudor and Stuart England," will include music from Shakespearean theatre, Elizabeth England, and the Court of Henry VIII, she said.
"They don't have to teach these classes. They are doing them because they want to." she said.
The group will be playing secular as well as religious music. Deller said.
Gerry Grossman, a singer and comic from Chicago, told a joke
Rich Suss(KANSA)
while performing Wednesday at the Hawks Nest in the Kansas Union.
Cinematic 'Wall' falls short
Pink Floyd production lacks subtlety
By MICHAEL GEBERT
Guest Reviewer
developed. "The Wall" is a film whose lack of subtlety is matched only by its pretensions, and whose lack of meaning is buried in the imagery of a third-rate MTV video.
The British band "Pink Floyd" has made some wonderful music, and their "Dark Side of the Moon" album ranks with "The Velvet Underground and Nico" and Roxy Music's "Siren" among the great dope classics of dope music. But profound they ain't, and when Floyd's Roger Waters teamed up with British director Alan Parker to turn their elaborate ballet into an anthem, the result seemed doomed to disaster. The surprise is — it is considerably worse than that.
Those who felt that Parker's earlier "Fame" showed his skill at audience manipulation and that his "Midnight Express" demonstrated a great sense of humor, said the note that both talents have been greatly
A rock star's hotel-smashing crackup; his batched marriage; his father's death in World War II; his oppressive education; his rebirth as a demagogic Nazi leader of youth if got news for themselves if they think they were that big); and his trial that finally breaks down the wall.
THERE ARE some bits that suggest a much better movie; or the scenes of the star's
"THE WALL" a concept album (a concept that itself is ten years out of date) is vaguely based on the real-life constructs of Floyd's Syd Barrett. Parker constructs the supposed narrative around the monotonic soundtrack, some artsy animation and several repeated themes.
childhood, his broken marriage, his drugged-out desperation, have a kind of power. The self-destructive rock star is one of the icons of music, something better could have been done with that.
But too much of the film is taken up with jink. The Nazi angle was handled far better in an old British movie called "Privilege." Here Parker seems to enjoy only the black boots, the Riefenstahl feeling of power. The same holds true for the violent scenes of World War II and the rock star's suicide attempt; I haven't seen such photographic, pretty violence since "A Clockwork Orange," and Parker isn't being ironic.
That's the worst thing. The film hasn't got a sense of humor to go with its satire; Parker only wants to make the "Fantasia" of violence. "The Wall" isn't dull, but is honest. It is only stupid.
On campus
CATHOLIC CENTER WORSHIP will be at
12:30 p.m. in Danforth Chapel
ASTRONOMY CLUB will meet at 8:30 p.m. in
500 Linden Hall if it is a clear night.
BIOLOGY CLUB will meet at 4 p.m. in the Sunflower Room of the Union.
Sunflower Room of the Union.___
A FRIDAY ALTERNATIVE. sherry and
conversation, will be at 4 p.m. at the Canterbury House, 1116 Louisiana.
**SLIDE LECTURE:** "Art in China" - Past and present will be at: 2:39 p.m. in 21 Spine Museum, will be at: 2:40 p.m. in
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT READING, featuring Seamus Heaney, poet, will be at 8 p.m. in the Javahawk Room of the Union.
Modern Times Theatre, a New York City based company, will perform "Hibakusha: Stories from Hiroshima" at 8 p.m.
tomorrow in the auditorium of Lawrence High School, 19th and Louisiana streets.
MENACHEM PRESSLER, Beaux Arts Trio pianist, will hold master classes at 10 a.n. in Swarthout Reital Hall in Murphy Hall.
TOMORROW
MENACHEM PRESSLER, Ballet Arts Trio
pianist, will hold master classes at 8:30 a.m. in
the Metropolitan Opera House.
Play shows effects of atomic attacks
Rv SUSAN O'CONNELL
Staff Reporter
"‘Hibakusha’ in Japanese means an explosion-affected person. More specifically, it is a term for the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August.
Modern Times Theatre, a company from New York City, will produce the play, "Bhikusha: Stories From Hiroshima," at 8 p.m. tomorrow in the auditorium of Lawrence High School, 19th and Louisiana streets. The play deals with the aftereffects of the nuclear bombings in Japan.
Schofield is a member of the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, which, with private citizens and the Plymouth Congregation's Board of Mission, is underwriting the play.
"After the explosion at Hiroshima, these people's lives were changed in many ways—physically, emotionally and mentally — by the experience," Ann Schofield, assistant professor for American studies and women's studies, said Wednesday.
The play is a about two of the survivors, Hiroshi Okamoto, a young electrical worker, and Kiku Maetani, a sheltered upper-class girl with a crippled leg.
They join forces to comfort the sick, shelter the abandoned and petition the government.
THE TWO MEET, fall in love and begin a long correspondence which leads to their marriage. Along the way, first separately and then together, they realize that what has meant to them and to all other Hibakusa.
During the play more than two dozen characters — orphans, students, monks and derelicts — live out the stories of the survivors.
Joan Rosenfelds, tour director of the company, said Modern Times Theatre was an independent, multi-racial theatre company founded in 1977 to play about the human realities of social change.
"Hibakush" features original music and a cast of six.
"One of the strong aspects of the play is that it is being presented by a professional New York theatre company," Schofield said.
The Rev. Gary Bryant of the Congregational Church said he saw part of the production while he was in New York City last summer. His work has become a powerful dream and recommended it to him.
SHE SAID the company performed throughout New York City for some of the thousands of people who attended the June 12 demonstration and named Nation's Special Session on Disarmament.
Bryant said that although he did not see the complete play, he thought it was very good.
Rosenfelds said the company would be touring the Midwest, Southwest and West Coast during the summer.
Anne Moore, another member of the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice, said that before coming to Lawrence, the cast performed in Omaha, Neb., and Wichita.
She said reviews indicated the company had had a good season off-Broadway.
"We have a strong and unique performing style, and in our five years we have developed a large and loyal audience, as diverse as America," Rosenfels said.
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