University Daily Kansan
Arts/Entertainment
Thursday, March 12, 1987
7
Doug Putney and Steve Riley perform a wild duet to an appreciative crowd at the Jazzhaus, $926^{1}$ Massachusetts St.
Altered Media entertains its audience at the Jazzhaus with loud music, flashing lights, and a hovering shoe.
Altered Media is similar to other Lawrence bands. The five members work or go to school during the day. They slip in practices at night and perform when they can coordinate their schedules. And they aim to be a full-time band
Altered Media
By JENNIFER FORKER
Staff writer
Altered Media's members play a range of music that reflects their personalities. The five members grew up playing and listening to experimental computer music to hard-core funk.
Drummer Mark Lomax said, "You really can't attach a label to our music. It's a unique sound. Even the regular songs we do are not regular songs.
"The group is a mutt. We are not purebred." Lomax said. "Everybody is so different. We listen to and grew up playing different kinds of music."
Steve Riley, Spring Hill senior and percussionist for the band, said that if they asked five people to describe the band's music, they would tell us "that it’s awesome," "it’s hard for us to explain 't'." Riley said.
Lomax compared their music to Ajax cleaner. "There's power in it and it works," he said.
Sebastian Alfe. Lawrence special student at the University of California whose music's really good for不忍掉 anything.
Lomax said, "So we're music plumbers."
The members have diverse backgrounds in music. Sebastian grew up listening to rock music and the classical albums that his parents played.
Lomax listened to some rock but devoted most of his time to hard-core funk music, he said. In past summers, Lomax played in a band called Destiny Destroy Show Band, but it since has disbanded.
Riley balances his percussions by playing
music fired Media and the KU Symphony
Orchestra.
He said that, to him, "progressive" meant,
"A term people can bend to mean however"
But Riley described progressive music as rock influenced by other music forms.
He prefers rock'n'roll, classical and progressive music.
Lomax had Altered Media's sound embodied a lot of progressive sounds.
"The way we use it, I would assume, is to all of our influences to make a unique sound."
Brian Clevinger plays the Chapman stick and the base guitar, and Doug Putney plays the keyboard. Clevinger said he enjoyed experimental, electronic computer music.
Clevinger said that he graduated in the fall in music composition, and that he was devoting much of his time to composing.
Alfie graduated in 1986, but is taking a course at KU this semester. He works during the day at Paradise Cafe, 728 Massachusetts St., he said.
Altered Media performs only two shows each month because the members cannot spare
They need to work to stay in school, support a family or just eat, they said.
"We're spread out trying to remain financially secure," Lomax said. "For us to be gigging all of the time is really impossible.
"Everybody has things to take care of."
Riley said, "We have barely enough time to practice and get ready for gigs."
The band practices evenings during the week, either at Riley's converted house (it was a store 10 years ago), or at Putney's home in Overland Park.
The group performs at the Jazzhaus, 926$^{1}$ Massachusetts St., once a month. Lomax said it was the only bar with enough space to accommodate their equipment. The atmosphere, audience and dance floor also contributed to the Jazzhaus' appeal to the band.
"It a club with a dance floor. You can get closer to the people at the Jazzhus,." Lomax 850.
Altered Media seemed to get close to the Jazzhaus audience Thursday night, singing and laughing with the crowd. The group appears to enjoy what it does.
Clevinger attributed a lot of the band's performance persona to Steve Judy, Lawrence senior majoring in art. He said Judy's decorature contributed to his mood during performances.
"It adds a lot to the stage and makes a difference." Clevinger said.
Judy volunteers his talents and decorates the stage for each Altered Media show, although he sometimes receives a small percentage of the band's pav.
Judy decorates the stage differently for each show.
Thursday night at the Jazzhaus, Altered Media's performance involved flashing, colored lights. A man's dress shoes and a black ice skate, suspended by ropes from the ceiling, flew and bounced while the band played. Late in the evening, Judy jumped on stage and threw rolls of toilet paper one end of the stage to the other.
The band looked like it was having fun, and its enthusiasm transmitted to the audience. The tiny dance floor was packed with smiling, hopping, swinging people.
And it lasted until the early morning. As long as the band played, the people danced.
Ben Rhodes started Altered Media two years ago, but has since moved to Boulder, Colo., to study Eastern philosophies.
Rhodes knew Alife, Lomax and Clevinger. He didn't intend to form a band, Alife said.
"He knew we would work well together. He just wanted to get friends together to have fun." Alfie said.
Altered Media often plays at benefits for various causes.
"It's a way to get your face seen," Riley said. They performed at last year's Students Against Multiple Sclerosis benefit. They also played a few weeks ago at a Johnson County Community College benefit for the school's chemical abuse center.
"They didn't make any money because
they were out of abusing chemicals."
Lee said waking up.
In the future, the members of Altered Media hope to become a full-time band and leave Lawrence.
"Who knows where, but it'll have to be away from here," Lomax said. "It's not lucrative to stay here. We have a following and they support us, but everybody in Lawrence isn't like that. We're not for everybody," Lomax said.
Left: Mark Lomax, Doug Putney, Steve Riley, Brian Clevinger, and Sebastian Allie are members of the Lawrence-based band Altered Media. Above: Brian Clevinger tunes his Chapman stick before a performance. The Chapman stick is a ten-stringed instrument that can produce both bass and acoustic guitar sounds.
Story by Jennifer Forker Photos by Danny Ray
'Blue Velvet' is weird and sometimes wonderful
"Blue Velvet" is a creepy, voyeuristic thriller that has all the ingredients to weird you out of your seat. "Blue Velvet" is an sound because it truly is an education.
Director David Lynch ("Dune," "The Elephant Man," "Eraser-head") carefully calculated every detail of this film to keep the hair standing up on the back of the viewer's neck.
Most scenes in the movie are in shadows, and the shadows themselves are constantly in motion. Even scenes in direct sunlight seem to fight through a brown screen.
John Benner
The film is set in no specific time.
Columnist
evidenced by the '50s radio jingles and cars contrasted with the '80s dress of most of the characters.
It is precisely this disjointed atmosphere that prevents the viewer from guessing what bizarre and horrifying scene is coming up.
The movie opens with the father of the main character watering his lawn and suffering a bee sting on his neck. He promptly drops to the ground and is rushed to the hospital.
Jeffrey, played by Kyle Maclachan, goes to visit his father only to find that his dad's head is clamped in place by an array of rods. Tubes are running into every orifice above pa's neck.
Jeffrey, still deeply disturbed, shuffles home through a vacant lot near his house. On his way, he discovers a bug-infested human ear on the ground and stuffs it into a brown bag to take to the police station.
He gives the ear to Detective Williams, played by George Dickerson, who, in a satire of the stereotypical movie police officer, says, "Yes.
that's a human ear, all right."
Lynch uses trite dialogue, microscopically close camera angles and goody polyester street characters to display the muggot-ridden foundation of suburbia.
Jeffrey tries to put the ear out of his mind and then goes to Williams' home to ask how the case is coming. Williams refuses to give him any details but Jeffrey runs into the detective's daughter, Sandy, played by Laura Demon, on his way out.
Her bedroom happens to be directly above her father's office at home, and she gives Jeffrey enough clues to get him started on the mystery.
These sex acts, later witnessed by Jeffrey from the same closet, included sex with a woman who had been previously
He hides in a closet and overhears a phone call from Frank, a '50s-style gangster played by Dennis Hopper. Frank is holding Dorothy's son and husband, minus one ear, hostage in exchange for perverse sexual favors.
The plot eventually takes Jeffrey to the apartment of a nightclub singer who is inappropriately yet purposefully, named Dorothy. Dorothy is played by Isabella Rosselini. Jeffrey begins to search for clues but is trapped in the apartment when she returns.
in some mighty strange places.
Jeffrey proceeds to solve the mystery and along the way learns a thing or two about his awakening musonertone underworld of his town, Lumberton.
He is caught between the saccharine-sweet sham future that lies with Sandy in Lumberton, or life on the island, where she and sexually adventures Dorothy.
"Blue Velvet" will play Sunday through Wednesday at Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St. It also will be shown March 27 and 28 in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union.