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University Daily Kansan / Friday, October 4, 1991
EXCURSIONS
Jane's Addiction in the buff
The rock group Jane's Addiction may be breaking up, according to lead singer Perry Farrell and the band's publicist, so Farrell decided to make the group's "last show" a memorable one by stripping naked on stage.
Pollution attacked with humor
"Well, this is the end," Farrell said to 2,000 fans last Thursday at Aloha Tower just before the band played its encore. "They were really impressed."
"Cheers' star Ted Dann hopes humor in an anti-polio
treat and he fitted will convey a serious
feel."
Danson was at a beach Sunday to shoot a spoof on the movie "Fowr To Her Eternity" that shows a helicopter interrupting an amorous couple in the surf to warm them the water is polluted.
"I think if you can preach humorously, you stand a better shot at getting your message across," said Cory, who provides the voice-over.
Danson, his wife, Cassey, and a friend formed the non-profit American Oceans Campaign to lobby against offshore drilling.
Cheatin' Brooks rehabilitated
Country star Garth Brooks said success at first went to his head and almost runmed his five-year marriage.
'Responsibility, commitment was not my game.' Brooks.
29 told People magazine in the Oct. 7 issue.
His wife, Sandy, said that when she learned her husband was having affairs while on the road, she gave him in ultima-tion a drink.
"It was his ego proving he could look out, point and conquer," she said.
Brooks said: 'It took a nellaver human being to forgive me. I had to promise to make this workage'
Honors latest release, "Ropin the Wind" made music history by becoming the first album to enter both the country and the world.
Prince fans meet in hometown
Prince fans are meeting this week in his hometown, but they are not expecting the royal treatment from the reclusive rock star.
If he does anything, he won't say until the last minute."
Eileen Murton, who came from England to stage the conventions.
No one expects anything, said Murton, 42, who publishes a Prince of Peace magazine. "Controversies and owns more than 50 titles," he said.
Many convention activities will be held at Glam Storm, the downtown night club owned by Prince's bodyguard-trained man.
Bustours will take fans to Prince & Paisley Park Studios in suburban Channetthes and to the purple house where Prince, known for his 1984 smash album "Purple Rain," used to live and his father now resides.
File photo
■ From The Associated Press
The Turtle Island String Quartet will perform a jazz improvisational concert Sunday in Crafton-Prever Theatre
Merging musical traditions
String quartet develops specialized style through jazz improvisation
By Heather Anderson
Kansas staff writer
Kansan staff writer
What do you get when you combine an improvisational style with the sounds of jazz music?
The University will have the chance to find out this weekend in Murphy Hall.
The Turtle Island String Quartet will perform at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday in Crafton-Frey Theatre.
Charla Jenkins, director of public relations for the KU performing arts, said the quartet was structured very traditionally. The quartet is made up of two violinists, a violist and a cellist.
However, the similarities to traditional styles end there. she said.
The quartet specializes in improvisational jazz rather than classical music. The group never selects its music for performance.
instruments".Jenkins said
"They are absolutely incredible artists on the string"
Chuck Berg, professor and director of film studies in the theatre and film department, said the group was one of many string quartets that have started to perform in the improvisational jazz style.
However, the Turtle Island String Quartet stands apart from these groups because each member is an accomplishment.
Berg, who writes a column in Jazz Times Magazine, said he had reviewed all of the quartet's compact discs and had heard them.
He said everyone would enjoy the show because the quartet played pieces by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter in
Audience members can expect to hear sounds that will make their 'toes tap and fingers snaps and put smiles on them.
At 2 p.m. Sunday, a colloquium featuring at least two performers from the quartet will take place. Berg said this
would give people a chance to ask members questions about their music. The colloquium will be at Saworth and the college.
Members of the quartet are violinists Darol Anger and David Balakrishnan, violinist Katrina Wreede and cellist Mark Summer.
This is the first time that the northern California quartet has performed at the University of Kansas.
The quartet won the Los Angeles Times 1988 Golden
Globe for their group. His first album was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Jenkins said many tickets were still available for the show.
Tickets can be bought at the Student Union Activities office in the Kansas Union and at the Murphy Hall box office.
Student tickets are $6.50 and $5.50, and tickets for the general public cost $13 and $11.
REVIEWS
Public Enemy Apocalyse 91...The Empire Strikes Black
When Public Enemy released its second album, "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back," in the fall of 1988, it was a revelation.
That album redefined the way music could sound and what it could say. It was an explosion. It leapt out of the speakers with a sense of zero-hour urgency and a feroce energy that could not be denied.
With 1990's "Fear Of A Black Planet," P. E. attempted to pull things back together, trying to answer its critics, settle problems within the group and deal with a world divided by racial tension, all on one record.
Unlike past releases, the group now seems less willing to place the blame for problems within the African-community solely with the "other man."
Public Enemy's latest release,
*Apocalypse 91'. The Enemy Strikes
Black, 'finds the group exploring new
territory, both lyrically and musically.
The year or so following the album's release plunged the group into a fire storm of controversy and confusion, with its members drinking of disbanding numerous times.
On tracks such as "Rebirth" and "One Million Bottlebags," P.E. leader Chuck D takes the African-American community to task for not accepting responsibility for its own problems and urges that solutions for these problems come from within. In a song based on media's misrepresentation of Flavor Flav's most recent brush with the law, "A Letter To The New York Post" targets (obviously) the New York Post and (surprisingly) Jet magazine for their inaccurate coverage of the incident.
The album's most curious moment comes at the end of the relatively tame Flavor Flav piece "I Don't Wanna Be Called Yo Nigga." After the song's final fade-out, an ominously sparse drum track kickins, in over which Chuck D recrites the harshest criticism of the African-American community he has ever recorded. He begins by saying he wants to "talk about us and us." He then shows no mercy as he addresses African-American in the projects, in prison and in college. He even has a few choice words about religion, saying "one side of the street is a church, the other side a liqueur store. Both of them keepin' us poor, keepin' us down." Oddly, this powerful and provocative piece is not included on the album's lyric sheet.
Although lyrically the album takes some bold new steps, musically it's somewhat disappointing. The album's production is handled by the Imperial Grand Ministers Of Funk instead of the Bomb Squad, P.E.'s usual production team, which is relegated to the relatively hands-off position of executive producers. The surest sign of the lack Square Sound input comes from the writing credit along with the Imperial Ministers co-credit along with Chuck D and Flavor Flav (also lacking writing credit is Terminator X, the group's D.J.)
The Bomb Squad has an innovative production method, using Burrough-style cut-up techniques to fragmentize sound, creating dense collages of small, repeated phrases taken from pre-existing records. The listener is assaulted by the barrage of noise the Bomb Squad crams in its songs. Large part of it the Bomb Squad's maelier enemy that has made Public Enemy's music. The Squad's slack of presence on this album is surely its weakest point.
There are some tracks, most
notably "Move!", that achieve the abrasive buzz of P.E.'s previous records.
Undeniably, Public Enemy is an "Important Group." Although it's difficult for anyone to live up to a tag like that all the time, P.E.'s second album is a milestone in the development of hip-hop and, quite simply, one of the best rock-and-roll records of the 1980s. They were also harbingers of the menace of Black consciousness and militarism that occurred during the late 1980s. Their lyrics by no means infallible. Their lyrics have something to offend everyone and, in part, that's why the group is important.
At its best, Public Enemy forces us to look unblinking at the uglier aspects of our lives and our society. At it’s best, we have no didacticism and self-rightheartedness.
Reviewby M. Olsen
Fortunately, Public Enemy is savvy enough to always give us more of the former.
The Fisher King Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams
What would you do if your wife was killed by a psychopathic killer, lost your job as a respected college professor, you went insane and you lived in the boiler room of an apartment building?
What about if you were a popular
talk show host with a gorgeous Manhattan apartment, a beautiful girlfriend and a new television series in the works and you lost it all?
Sounds weird and confusing?
These atypical characters create these two images of absorbing movie "The Fisher King."
Robin Williams is Perry, the slightly-out-of-whack former college professor who now lives in the boiler room. His mission in life no longer is to impart knowledge upon the youth of his students, and he rescue of the Holy Grail, which he thinks is being held in a Manhattan businessman's apartment.
Jeff Bridges is Jack, the former talk show host who traded in his microphone for a bottle of Jack Daniels after his obnoxious advice to a troubled caller turned deadly.
The movie is directed by the king of surrealistic humor, Terry Gilliam. Gilliam, formerly of Monty Python fame and director of "Time Bandits" and the underrated "Adventures of Baron Munchau," haunts his diretorial idiosyncrasies to create a movie evocative of his eccentric style.
Unconventional costumes, surrealistic apparitions and characters whose psychoses teeter on the brink of horror in the Hollywood movie classifications.
Williams and Brides are unforgettable. Amazingly gritty performances by Mercedes Ruhb is Jack's girlfriend and Amanda Plummer as well as Frances frisiert zaniness that complement the antics of Williams and Brides.
"The Fisher King" is a strange movie, and Gilliam often becomes too bogged down in intertwining plots. But the film is so rich in performance and technique that the verbage is forgivable.
Poignantly serious in its subject but ghoulishly funny in its treatment, "The Fisher King" is an abstract rendering of the immensely satisfying but emotionally draining nuances in everyday relationships.
Review by Kristine Curley
Lawrence Nightlife
New Ridgid Band will perform tonight and tommorow night at the Jazz-
zaus. 926"2 Massachusetts St. The cover charge is $3.
- Now See Hear will perform tonight at The Bottlenock. '737 New Hampshire St. The cover charge is $3. Which Doctor? will open for the Salty Iguana tomorrow night. The cover charge is $5.
- ■ Chip and Jeff will perform tonight and Jack opiere will perform tomorrow night at Benchwarmers Sports Bar & Grill, 1601 W. 23rd St. The cover *charge* is $1.
- Trixie and the Triangles will perform tonight and tomorrow at Just a Playhouse, 806 W. 23rd St.
- "Drowning by Numbers" will be shown at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. today and tomorrow at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St. Also showing is "Festival of Animation" at 9:30 p.m. and midnight today and tomorrow and "1000 Pieces of Gold" at 5:00 p.m. 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow. Tickets are $3 before 6 p.m. After 6 p.m. students tickets are $4 and adult tickets are $4.50.
- "Hamlet" will be show at 7 and 9:30 tonight and tomorrow night at the
Weeks will be shown at midnight tonight and tomorrow. Tickets are $29.
- "Freddy's Dead" and "Suburban Commando" will be shown at 5:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. today and 2:45 p.m. 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. tomorrow at *Cinema Twin Theaters*, 3110 Iowa St. Tickets are $3 before6 p.m. and $4 50 after 6 p.m.
- *Necessary Roughness* will be shown at 5:15 p.m., 7:25 p.m., and 9:30 p.m. today and 2:45 p.m., 5:15 p.m., 7:25 p.m., and 9:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Varsity Theatre, 1015 Massachusetts St. Tickets are $3 before 6 p.m. and $4 after 6 p.m.
- "Late for Dinner" will be show at 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:54 p.m, 1:54 p.m, 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow at Hillcrest Theatres 1-2-3, 925 Iowa St. Also shown are "Barton Fink" at 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m, 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow; "Paradise" at 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m, 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow; "Ricochet" at 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m, 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow and "The Super" at 5:15 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:45 p.m, 5:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow. Tickets are $3 before 6 p.m. and $4.50 after 6 p.m.
■ "Shoot" will be shown at 5 p.m. , 7:25 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. today and 2:20 p.m. , 5 p.m. , 7:25 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow at Dickinson Theatres. 2339 Iowa ST. Also being shown are:"Time Bomb" at 5 p.m. , 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. today and 2:20 p.m. , 5 p.m. , 7:25 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. tomorrow; "Doc Hollywood" at 4:45 p.m. , 7:15 p.m. and 9:25 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m. , 4:45 p.m. , 7:15 p.m. and 9 p.m. tomorrow; "The Fisher King" at 4:30 p.m. , 7:10 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. today and 1:50 p.m. , 4:30 p.m. , 7:10 p.m. and 9:50 p.m. tomorrow; "Deceived" at 4:35 p.m. , 7:05 p.m. today and 2:15 p.m. , 4:35 p.m. , 7 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. tomorrow and "Dead Again" at 4:50 p.m. , 7:05 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. today and 2:10 p.m. , 4:50 p.m. , 7:05 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. tomorrow. Tickets are $3 before 6 p.m. After 6 p.m. student tickets are $3.50 and adult tickets are $4.50.