6A
Entertainment
Monday
November 2,1998
Review
Cake album has more layers than last one
By T.R. Miller Kansan music critic
Cake's third album promises to deliver 13 songs in the grand Cake tradition — rife with vocal harmonies and heavy on wry humor. After the success of Fashion Nugget, Cake would be wise not to wander far from the quirky and catchy tunes that first made the band popular. The new release does just that, which may
take away points for originality and difficulty. But Prolonging the Magic makes us for it simply.
Cake, Prolong the Magic
Kansan rating: ***** out of *****
upor it simply because it's good listening.
If it ain't broke, why fix it?
Cake's first single from the album, *Never There*, successfully combines human irony with humor. The new album does show a darker side lyrically. Singer John McCrea laments his unrequited love in this song with common metaphors that everyone can understand.
"Sometimes I wonder if you even miss me / You're never there," he sings. Surely not a forthcoming song, but hands like Cake are good at
making self-absorption and self-wallow a common, yet manageable theme.
Satan Is My Motor is one of my favorites on the album. Featuring guest guitarist Tylor Pope the song has a total sing-along quality that is
almost annoyingly infectious. The singer confesses his own negative traits but defends himself by saying that through his vices, he has come to understand the importance of virtue. This concept sounds so much like a western civilization paper topic that I begin to shudder. Nevertheless, while you're dancing around your room or singing in your car to Satan, Cake is using music as a vehicle for critical thinking.
Strains of country and mariachi influences are scattered about the album. Guitar features a musical saw and several songs use pedal steel to enhance the flavor.
As successful as Fashion Nugget was, Cake's rap and trumpet integration made audiences think of Cake as a novelty band. Cake's willingness to expand itself musically goes to show that the band may be more than a one-hit wonder after all.
By Pallavi Agarwal Kansan staff writer
SUA brings museum of famous magazine covers to campus
"The magazine is a cultural icon," said Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor of the magazine, who will be speaking and answering questions on Rolling Stone and the magazine industry at 7 tonight in the Kansas Union Ballroom. "The exhibit explores the relationship of writing to image."
Starting today, University of Kansas students can take a peek at John Lennon in the buff with Yoko Ono and Madonna's golden bra from her Blond Ambition tour, all in the atmospheric ambience of dim lights and neon-yellow display cases.
The exhibit will also contain taped interviews with rock and roll legends, copies of magazine articles and memorabilia from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which has been sponsoring the tour with AT&T.
The magazine, which has 1.2 million subscribers, extends pretty deeply among music fans, said DeCurtis, who has written 16 cover stories for the magazine and has won a 1988 Grammy Award for "Best Album Notes" on Eric Clapton's Crossroads.
Rolling Stone display reflects its history
The AT&T Rolling Stone Covers Tour, a traveling museum of more than 250 covers of the magazine and rock'n' roll memorabilia, is berthed at the University for a week-long exhibit that ends Thursday.
The tour was conceived last year to mark 30 years of the magazine's existence and has traveled throughout American campuses, Curtis said.
While several KU students have grown up reading the magazine, some consider it to be a sell-out in recent years.
"In the 1960's and 1970's, the magazine wrote about musicians that one didn't hear on the radio," said Billy Page, McPherson freshman. "Now it's more mainstream."
DeCurtis said that in past exhibits, the magazine's mainstream content was often a subject of discussion. Its critics accuse it of not being cutting-edge enough and its fans are curious about what it took for an erstwhile underground magazine to make it big commercially.
"People say 'why do you put naked girls on the cover' and those kinds of things," he said. "But then we also have a big subscriber base of 1.2 million readers."
Sharon Bass, associate professor of journalism has followed the career of Fred Woodward, Rolling Stone art director, and said that the importance of the magazine lies in the political articles it has written over the years, some of which will be on display at the exhibit.
"Early on, it created a niche for itself," she said. "It reaches an awful lot of people."
The free event is organized by Student Union Activities and will be open to the public from 11 am to 7 p.m. at the Kansas Union Ballroom.
John Brann, from the AT&T Rolling Stone Covers Tour, sets up display cases for the magazine covers. The tour will be displayed in the Kansas Union Ballroom until Thursday. Photo by Tara Bradley/KANSAN
Commentary
Technicolor restores Wizard of Oz amid controversy
By Michael Fleeman The Associated Press
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — So maybe Rhett and Scarlett were a little fuzzy at last summer. Rest assured, Technicolor says, this fall the Munchkins will look fabulous.
The color lab that restored Gone With the Wind amid controversy and disappointment insists this time the job was done right with The Wizard of Oz, which Warner Bros. is rereleaseing Nov. 6.
"It will blow you away," says Tim Reynolds, senior vice president of plant operations for Technicolor.
"These colors are brighter. They're more distinct. The detail is greater," says veteran technician Richard J. Goldberg, who oversaw the restoration.
Of course, this is coming from the same Technicolor lab involved in last summer's troubled Gone With the Wind restoration. Filmoogers complained large portions of the movie were out of focus and the sound wasn't properly synchronized.
These complaints triggered finger-pointing and denials. Technicolor said New Line Cinema, which re-released the film, imposed a substandard restoration system on the lab. New Line suggested the problems were isolated, overstated by the
media and quickly fixed, though theater-goers continued to report problems.
For Oz, technicians used a different and they say, better restoration technique working from the original negative.
achieve a maximum color impact.
The risk is that Technicolor opens itself to criticism that it has overdone it, turning $Oz$ into the first colorized color movie by making Munchkinland more vivid than the original filmmakers envisioned. It is a suggestion Goldberg rejects.
"Is this what they intended? I don't know, dig them up and ask them," Goldberg said. He contends the filmmakers would not have used so many bright sets and so many brilliant costumes if they didn't want to
For Warner Bros., which acquired Oz, much is riding on the film. The studio has put out a string of financially disappointing films this year.
The re-release is particularly risky because Warner Bros. is gambling that moviegoers who have probably seen the film several times on video and on the yearly TV broadcasts will shell out money to watch it on the big screen.
Warners said O2 needs to make $25 million at the box office to qualify the rerelease as a success, but refused to say how much it spent to restore the film.
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Intimacy For Couples With Dr. Dennis Dailey
If you are in a relationship that you consider committed in someway married, engaged, live-in, or long term dating. Regardless of sexual orientation, this workshop will offer many things for you.
Committed relationships require nurturing. This workshop will focus on central issues in the maturation of committed relationships. Topics will include emotional intimacy, sexual bonding, negotiation of differences and the tolerance of sameness. There will be time to do and share the work of a relationship.
- Dennis Dailey, Professor of Social Welfare, KU
Time: Friday, Nov. 20 $ ^{th} $ 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Continuing through Saturday, Nov. 21 $ ^{st} $ 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. & 1:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. in the ECM-1204 Oread
Cost per couple: $40 for non-students;
$35 for students
(limited to 20 couples)
Sponsored by:
Ecumenical Christian Ministries at KU (Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Church of the Brethren), Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Hilli Foundation (Jewish), Canterbury House (Episcopal), United Methodist Campus Ministry, Lutheran (ELCA).
For registration please contact Thad at 843-
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Commissioner of Insurance: Kathleen Sebelius
State Board of Education Dist 3: John (Jack) Davidson
Governor: Tom Sawyer, Lt. Governor: Elizabeth Baker
U.S. Senate: Paul Feleciano
Attorney General: Dan Lykins
Secretary Of State: Don M. Rezac
State Treasurer: Rita Cline
1st Dist. County Commission(Lawrence): Charles Jones
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