KNWSAN REVIEWS
RECORDS: Mothers
By WILL HARDESTY
It would be nice to be able to say something really great about "Uncle Meat" by The Mothers of Invention on BIZARRE (2024, stereo). Frank Zappa is a tremendous thinker and political commentator. His basic philosophy is "Be a creep—the creepier, the better." I.e., be whatever it is you feel called to be.
But, alas! Side three of this four-sided set is the only worthwhile side. Presto, the Mothers of Invention turn into Ruben & The Jets, and some fine music is produced. It is too bad the American public is so conformist a group with the talent, drive, humor and social comment of the Mothers has to starve. It is also too bad the Mothers are so far out no one can understand most of what they say.
"Happy Sad" by Tim Buckley on Elektra (EKS-74045) is a rambling, lonesome album which is very folk. The music is quality, but boring. It sounds like a lonely man sitting in a small room singing out his sadness.
"The Anders and Ponce Album" by Peter Anders and Vini Poncia on WARNER BROTHERS-SEVEN ARTS is really a knock-out. This duo has its first album out under their own names after doing things for, with and as The Tradewinds, The Vidals, The Rondettes and The Crystals. Their album is one in which each song is unique, good and different. The songs are all new and their lyrics are interesting and/or fascinating. They sing well and their musical backup is tremendous.
You'd never know it to look at his picture or to hear him sing and play, but Roosevelt Holts is 63. He may be heard on "Presenting the Country Blues" (BH-7704, stereo). He's a master of coaxing sounds and rhythms out of his guitar, and he reminds one a little of Leadbelly. He's very ethnic—just him an' his guitar singing old, old blues—the kind which probably have never been written down.
"Smiling Like I'm Happy" by Duster Bennett and His House Band (BH-7701, stereo) will leave you smiling at the fact the British actually think they know how to play American blues. This disc, while not as bad as most British blues, still has the sterile sound which almost all English musicians introduce into what should be dirty, low-down, cheap All-American music.
Why a group might call an album "Aardvark" is a question which can be pondered while listening to an album by that name by a group called Kensington Market. The disc is on WARNER BROTHERS-SEVEN ARTS (1780, stereo). While it is not a bad album, it has nothing to make it really exciting and is basically average.
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart have been considered in the bubble gum school of music. Maybe they are. But for a good-time music, moving rock 'n' roll albu, try their latest—"It's All Happening on the Inside" on A&M (A&M SP-4162). Their music is never ponderously heavy, but is always written, played and sung extremely well. The first side is particularly good with what sounds like a black church choir backing them and the side concluding with a gas of a version of "Jumping Jack Flash."
BOOKS:
COUPLES, by John Updike (Crest, $1.25)—Anybody who hasn't heard about this hot number just doesn't follow American literature. After a number of books that went a considerable distance in telling the uninitiated—and others, too—how the sexual act is performed, Updike has gone all the way. For in this one he tells all: all about wife-husband juggling-trading, that is. Of course he tells it beautifully, for he is one of the best in the business today, but even in a book like this it gets pretty ad nausea. It is in its way a penetrating examination of certain aspects of American culture, though the squares will prefer to think of it as sub-culture, and most of us are after all, pretty square.
TOWARDS A NEW PAST: DISSENTING ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, edited by Barton J. Bernstein (Vintage, $1.95); INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF AMERICAN RADICALISM, by Staughton Lynd (Vintage, $1.65)—Two works of the new history. The first of these is a set of essays by young historians who are not enamored of conventional historical interpretations. They treat history from the American Revolution to the contemporary world, and their work will prove, perhaps, to have been an important for our time as that of the earlier revisionists was for their time. The Staughton Lynd book is in the same vein. Lynd is a fiery historian of the new left, and in this work he considers the ideas of several 18th Century Anglo-American propagandists, such people as Priestley and Paine, and that of several New England abolitionists, such as Garrison and Thoreau. Lynd's contention is that radicalism is the mainstream American tradition.
THE SOCIIOLOGY OF MARX, by Henri Lefebvre (Vintage, $1.65); IN THE FIST OF THE REVOULTION, by Jose Yglesias (Vintage, $1.95); HO CHI MINH, by Jean Lacouture (Vintage, $1.95); LATIN AMERICAN RADICALISM, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz, Josue de Castro and John Gerassi (Vintage, $2.45); EGYPT: MILITARY SOCIETY, by Anouar Abdel-Malek (Vintage, $1.95)—An excellent group of new paperbacks that illustrates the great range of writing on public affairs. In "The Sociology of Marx." Lefebvre analyzes the theoretical and practical Marx and shows why Marx has prevailed as a commentator on politics and history. "In the Fist of the Revolution" is subtitled "Life in a Cuban Country Town." It is an able portrait of the effect of the Castro regime on the life of ordinary Cubans. "Ho Chi Minh" is a biography by a French journalist who probably knows Ho better than any other Western writer. The book has received wide praise. "Latin American Radicalism" is a documentary report on leftwing and nationalistic movements. Several experts have provided the picture. And "Egypt: Military Society" is a description of the army regime, the leftwing, and developments under Nasser. The story extends from January 1952 to June 1967, the time of the Six-Day War.
Kansan Arts Calendar
8 p.m.- Humanities Lecture-Jacques Barzun, Columbia U.—"Violence and the Cult of the Arts"—University Theatre
Todav
8 p. m. - Student Recital-Compositions by Michael Seyfrit-Swarthout Recital Hall
8:20 p.m.—An Evening of Original One Act Plays—Experimental Theatre
Wednesday
4 p. m. — Poetry
Reading—Robert E. Hayden,
Fisk U.—Forum Room, Union
7 p. m. - Carillon
Recital - Albert Gerken
8 p.m. - Student Recital-Nancy Hitt, flute-Swarthout Recital Hall
8:20 p.m.-An Evening of Original One Act-Plays-Experimental Theatre
Thursday
8 p.m. - St udent Recital-Judith Lynn Hughes mezzo-soprano and Jane Fager Anderson, organ-Swarthout Recital Hall
8:20 p.m.-An Evening of Original One-Act Plays-Experimental Theatre
Friday
7 & 9:30 p.m.-Popular Film - "Charades" -Dyche Auditorium
7 : 30 p.m.-Folk Dance
Club-173 Robinson
8:20 p.m.—"A Midsummer Night's Dream"—University Theatre
Saturday
7 & 9:30 p.m.-Popular Film-''Charades''-Dyche Auditorium
8:20 p.m.—"A Midsummer Night's Dream"-University Theatre
Winners of Sing are announced; relays cancelled
Although this year's Greek Week Relays were cancelled because of bad weather, Greek Week Sing went on as scheduled Saturday night at Hoch Auditorium, said Mark Retonde, Kansas City, Mo., senior and president of the Interfraternity Council (IFC).
Winning fraternities in the Sing were: first prize, Beta Theta Pi, performing "Vive l'Amour" and "Seeing Nelly Home;" second prize, Delta Chi, performing "Bouree for Bach," "The Animals a-Comin," and "Gloria," from "Missa Mater Patris," and third prize, Phi Kappa Sigma, performing "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Let There Be Peace on Earth."
Winning fraternities and sororites in the mixed groups category were: first prize, Gamma Phi Beta and Sigma Chi, performing "Nelly Bly," "Behold Her Beautiful as a Dove" and "Six Chansons on poems by Ranier Marie Rilke," second prize, Pi Beta Phi and Sigma Nu, performing "Choose Something Like a Star" and "Three Hungarian Folksongs," and third prize, Delta Gamma and Sigma Phi Epsilon, performing "Like an Eagle" and "Selection Canonets."
The two students named "Outstanding Greeks," Retonde said, were Nancy Hardin, Lincoln, Neb., senior, Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and Joe Goering, Moundridge senior, Delta Upsilon fraternity.
Because of Saturday's bad weather and the inability to obtain the stadium another time this semester, Retonde said Greek Week Relays would not take place this year.
Apr. 29
1969 KANSAN 5
Sex film evokes suit, countersuit
PHILADELPHIA (UPI) — A federal petition was filed on behalf of the Swedish movie, "I am Curious-Yellow" which so far has produced one city suit, criticism from the clergy, debate in City Council and long lines of viewers in the City of Brotherly Love.
The owners and operators of Cinema 19, which opened the nude and sex-filled movie last Wednesday, asked the federal court yesterday to take jurisdiction over a suit which the city filed in common pleas court to halt showing of the film.
Cinema 19 claims since a New York federal court ruled the film
was not obscene, a federal court should take jurisdiction in the Philadelphia suit.
In the petition, the movie house owners said the city's attempt to suppress the film has a "chilling effect" on the free exercise of constitutional rights.
The New York court had ruled, "under the standards established by the Supreme Court the showing of the picture cannot be inhibited."
The U.S. Supreme Court obscenity rules stipulate that films or books with redeeming artistic or social merit cannot be banned.