lifestyles
By Jake Arnold Kansan staff writer
Lawrence is loaded with great bands. Bands play in bars.People get loaded in bars.
Wait, there's a concept here.
Pull a bunch of local talent together, have them play in a bar, record it and sell it as — what else? "Loaded in Lawrence."
Brian Byers, president of Mercy Records, and Brett Mosiman, owner of the Bottleneck, are putting together "Loaded in Lawrence" for the third consecutive year.
The event at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St., features 16 bands, four bands each night for four nights. Mercy Records, 735 1/2 B New Hampshire St., records the live shows, picks one song from each group, puts its on a compilation
album and distributes it nationally.
"It highlights the music scene and culture around here," said Adam Stein, Mercy Records publicity manager. "It is about having Lawrence
The cash registers will be ringing if the Bottleneck packs them in as it has in the past. However, much of those profits help defray the costs of the promotions.
"This is not made up to be a profit-making thing." Stein said.
That promotion benefits everyone, especially the fans, who nightly get four of Lawrence's most popular acts condensed into one show.
bands highlighted on a compilation. It is an opportunity for them to get their music out."
"The whole thing is just good will, public relations," said Byers. "The whole thing is a big promotion."
Jeff Shibley, publisher of *The Note*, said it was a great idea.
es bands a quality recording and doesn't cost them a heck of a lot," he said.
(Loaded in Lawrence) highlights the music scene and culture around here.
ence because consumers would buy the CD for one band and then hear others they might like. He said Mercy Records also benefited from the
Adam Stein Mercy Records publicity management
Bands are not paid for their contributions except in exposure. Mercy takes the profits from the compact disc sales and puts it toward the next "Loaded."
plus a lot of exposure," said Shibley. "It makes their label more visible."
Mercy records the entire show. If a band likes the sound of several songs not on the compilation, they might be inclined to work
with Mercy. Mercy said this was not really a motivation for the company, and only a few bands had decided to work with them as a result of their experiences with "Loaded."
It is easy for Mercy to record the event. Mercy's studio is next door and upstairs from the Bottleneck. Mercy ran a wire down from its studio and made it permanent in the wall of the Bottleneck, so minimal equipment had to be taken into the bar.
The Bottleneck isn't being hurt either.
The boutenice isn't being nut enther.
"It is always packed," said Shibley. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out how much money that is."
Shibley said it also added an aura to the Bottleneck because a CD was being distributed throughout the nation carrying the tag "Live at the Bottleneck."
"Loaded" started last night and runs through Thursday. Admission to the shows, which start at 9 m., is $$.
Thursday will conclude with the nationally known band Stick, but the four nights will showcase everything from acoustic to punk.
mercy records plans to press 1,000 CDs of the compilation and title it "1995 Still Loaded in Lawrence, Live at the Bottleneck." The CD probably will sell for $10 and will be available all over Lawrence.
Shleyble said the fact that this was the third year for the project said a lot for the quality of Lawrence music. He said that The Note received compilations from cities all the time but that he couldn't think of one that had done three in a row with nearly all new bands.
"We really are loaded." he said.
Loaded $ ^{3} $ : Who and when
TIME TONIGHT TOMORROW THURSDAY
9:00 p.m. Bubble Boys Velvet Teens Priss
10:15 p.m. Action Man The Blueshead Beggars Gospel Porch Singers
11:30 p.m. Acoustic Juice Means to an End Power & Fear
12:45 a.m. Vitreous Humor Frogpond Stick
Art films break out of boring mold
AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES — Independent filmmakers have delivered a steady flow of thoughtful and often provocative stories about life, love and heartbreak — a "Red" here, a "Howard's End" there.
By John Hom
These directors have failed, however, to produce old-fashioned, edge-of-your-seat thrills. In some cases, their films may be as good for your mind as they are for your insomnia.
A new crop of art-minded directors is working to reverse that sleep-inducing stereotype. These current and upcoming titles may lack the million-dollar casts and eye-popping special effects the big studio pictures trumpet, but they are nonetheless entertaining in the classic movie way: They rattle your bones.
Charles Burnett, who made 1990's domestic drama "To Sleep With Anger," will release in May "The Glass Shield," a police corruption drama. James Gray's debut feature, "Little Odessa" ( April 28 ), tracks a Russian hit man.
Despite the vaguely pretentious title "The Underneath," Soderbergh's April 28 release is a bank-heist flick at heart. Based loosely on the 1949 Burt Lancaster movie, "Criss Cross," "The Underneath" follows a drifter (Peter Gallagher) whose return to Austin, Texas, rekindles all the problems he left behind.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
One of the most notable filmmakers in the
middle of this new creative confluence is Steven Soderbergh, the maker of 1989's art-house hit "sex, lies and videotape" and 1991's "Kafka."
Unlike "sex, lies and videotape" or Soderbergh's 1992 work, "King of the Hill," "The Underneath" is what Hollywood could call a "genre" film — a work adhering to the storytelling formulas refined through hundreds of dramas.
"Most people who grew up loving those movies liked those kind of films," Soderbergh said.
Not too long ago, some of Hollywood's most acclaimed films were genre films — "The French Connection," "Dirty Harry" and "Seriep" among them.
"The main reason is they're such fertile ground: Drama is about conflict, and these films have lots of conflict on many different levels. So the stage is set to have lots of subtext and watch these people bounce off each other in really interesting ways," he said.
These days, the major studies have turned the thriller formula into just that: formula. You can see the plot twists a mile away because you've seen them all before.
Other Hollywood films don't have the courage to follow one storytelling premise. Instead of sticking to its killer-virus-wipes-out-the-world hook, "Outbreak" wanders into a story about rogue military agents and helicopter chases. "Disclosure" isn't just about sexual harassment. It's also about computer hacking and corporate ladder-climbing.
"The Underneath," like another ary thriller,
"The Usual Suspects," puts a premium on story
— making sure the plot is inventive without being unbelievable. Working on lower budgets, these independent filmmakers don't have to start the cameras the second Bruce Willis or Sharon Stone is available. And since less money is at risk, fewer people will try to interfere.
Lead Story
In December in Bartow, Fla., spurned and distraught lover Edward Leonard Hand, 33, confronted his girlfriend and her husband, stuck a gun to his own chin and fired. The bullet glanced off a bone in Hand's face, hit the husband and killed him. Hand survived. In January, police said they were satisfied Hand had not intended to harm the husband and thus filed only gun-use charges against him.
First Things First
Said a rescuer, "It was unbelievable. She's hanging partially out of her vehicle, and she proceeds to have an argument with her husband about where she is."
In November, firefighters near Portland, Ore., were called to rescue a woman and her two kids who were trapped upside down in an Alfa Romeo as a result of a one car crash. The woman interrupted the extrication — by the "jaws of life" tool — in order to take a call on her car phone.
Kay Mounsey, widow of one of the "friendly fire" servicemen killed in the F-15/Black Hawk helicopter incident in northern Iraq last April, complained to reporters
in September that the federal government had offered her only the $6,000 survivor benefit but gave the families of 11 foreign citizens who died in
the incident $100,000 each.
According to police in Circleville, Ohio, in December, Elaine Pope fired one shot at ex-husband Charles R. Pope, hitting him in the chest as he slept, and she would have fired several more times had the gun not jammed. According to a detective, Charles then woke up, was unaware that he had been shot, and tried to get Elaine to have sex with him. Elaine declined, saying, "I just shot you."
Testifying at her murder trial in November in Arlington, Va., Monique Mullen said she endured her abusive three-year marriage to Kenneth Mullen despite his having struck her, choked her, raped her, stalked her and threatened to shoot her. However, in March 1994, she stabbed him to death with a butcher knife because he threatened to kill the family dachshund.
Eh-uuuh,Gross!
The opening of the West Woods Elementary School in Hamden, Conn., was delayed in August when officials discovered a massive, green, woolly fungus — which sprang up virtually overnight — covering walls, furniture and books. The final bill for cleanup was expected to be about $100,000.
In December, U.S. Customs agents in Miami found 200 baby tantalus, 300 thumb-sized frogs and several sacks of tarantula eggs in luggage belonging to Venezuelan Manuel Frade. Agents opened his luggage after they found 14 baby boa constrictors in bags tucked in his trouser legs.
Recent overpowering stenches in the news: In January, Hamilton, Ontario, dermatologist Peter Bolton was charged with depositing an unidentified but extremely foul-smelling substance several times outside the office of another doctor with whom he had been feuding. The July 1994 floods in Macon County, Ga., drowned 250,000 chickens, creating, according to the Associated Press, "an unfathomably foul, gag-inducing" stench that hung over the area for more than a week.
.