6
Mondav. March 28,1977
University Dally Kansan
Koko sings the Chicago blues
By BILL UYEKI
By BILL UPTER
Entertainment Editor
By Monday morning, some were probably still feeling the biting backbite and driving sound vibrating from another Chicago blues concert at Off the Wall Hall Saturday night
concert at Or the war room.
This time it is a rocked vocal blues vocalist it took for the second time in Lawrence. For three hours Taylor and her Blues Machine, her back band, rocked the packed hall into a contagious frenzy with a generous sampling of Southeast rock.
Taylor is a husky black woman in her forties with a voice to match. She sings in a
Performance
gravity shouting style, heavily laden with vibrato. She seems to pull the power in her voice from down low and her feeling from down deep.
"OH YEAH!" Taylor shouted to the crowd between songs, and the crowd echoed her immediately. Toward the evening's end, most listeners were brought to their feet and dancers soon found themselves clammering for space on the hall's massive stage.
rer tightly knit backup musicians, the Blues Machine, provided the necessary steady instrumentation and backstage appearance. The energetic appearance was the execlible, energetic
guitarist, Johnny Twist, but there was an ample replacement in Johnny Bee. Bee's facial contortions during extended solos at times resembled a young B. B. King; his solo lines, though not flashy, were purposeful and commanding.
THESE MUSICIANS come from a city that remains the center of urban blues. The migration of blacks from southern rural areas to outside spawned a popular idiom in itself.
The music reflects the environment from which it grew. It's loud and mean, and comes at you full force. Although blues are mostly blacks, the remain the driving and driving force. The rich African heritage of rhythms, the pain and suffering from slavery, and the stark and harsh conditions of big city urban played roles in the development of urban
In style, the music remains largely the same, but the faces are changing. Muddy Waters is still playing, but Bound Dog Taylor, Howin' Wolf and Fred King have pass on. As part of Off the Wall's Chicago blues series, Lawrence Fews brings her sound to Chicago in Chicago's blues community: the young, emotional Son Blues and the polished Fenton Robinson.
KOКО TAYLOR has played with all the great ones, from Buddy Guy, Juniors Wills and Might Joe Young, to Willie Dixon. It was Taylor's version of Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" that thrust her into national fame.
Formula . . .
From page one
"ONE OF THE fundamental arguments given for dismissing my work," Watkins said frowning, "is that it's a kind of television reportage. I think that if films like mine were on television, the definition of an reportage would change overnight.
He said that with the type of coverage peddled by the three major networks in this country, there was no need for all three of them to present the news.
"One of the great illusions in this country is that in order to make a television program you need money." Watkins said. "This is an entire myth, engendered by the networks and Hollywood." He said that at the time he was growing up, the networks made four or five films like it with the budget used for one episode of "The Beverly Hillbills."
WATKINS SAID he was disappointed in "Roots," and compared the nationally televised series to an old Victorian novel. He complained that, "It takes something black people have been denied and gives the pretense of dignity to the black experience." He said the author is a black-tie character in a network series about a black biotic cop, who do great psychological damage to black audiences.
But Watkins is an exception in the contemporary cinema, and he is keenly aware
"The safer that films are politically and socially, the more they are accepted," he said. "You won't find one Western filmmaker who is striving for serious social change or self-examination of our culture who has been accepted. Not one."
IN CONTRAST to the mass surrogate experience that characterizes most films, Watkins' work has been alternately ignored and savagely attacked by critics and public alike. In his earlier work, the basis of contradictory reactions had been his subject matter.
Now, with his film "Edward Munch,"
most of the negative comments have concentrated on his attempts to expand film content
"I used to work in counterpoint, structuring films like a debate," he told one class. "But it's too segmented, like television. What is more interesting for me is to work in a weaving texture, intertwining sound and image like a rope."
MUCH OF THE resistance to his attempt to add to film language in "Edward Munch" comes from the "guardsians," Watkins said. "Most educators teach film in a very banal narrative structure," he said with a sigh. "Endless professors are teaching film in a monoliteral way about a monoliteral film ideal."
Watkins also drew parallels between the way many classes were taught and the use of film and television. He pointed out that in both cases the information flow is one way, and that the audience class, had no option to interact with the screen instructor.
And how can the filmmaker keep from contributing to this process? Watkins paused a long time before responding. He had already surprised one group by saying that he was so fearful of the way television programming was used in his game "Gaine" to be shown on TV, because it might be too easily digested and discarded.
- mally, he addressed himself to the question, "I don't intend to make films much longer. I may be doing two more films, and then I think I shall stop for quite a time to work in the area of questioning the mass media."
Given Watkins' position as one of the foremost opponents of the "guardians," such a retirement may make the "crisis in media" even more acute.
Peter Watkins' video drama, "The Trap" will be shown today at 11:30 a.m. in the TV studio in Plum Hall, and again at 3:30 p.m. In the showings are free and open to the public.
- MONDAY •TUESDAY •WEDNESDAY
Perhaps it was most significant that Off the Wall promoter Brian McKinney, himself from Chicago, joined Taylor and the Blues Machine for a couple songs on guitar. Without his initiative, there would have been no Chicago Blues Series, no Koko Taylor, and that much less live music in Lawrence.
dancing to the Chicago blues for more than 50 years, and they're still going strong. Though the blues may seem simple in form, almost primitive, much of today's popular music owe's a great deal to the beat, the rhythmic patterns that characterize the blues.
Disco shmisco. They've been playing and
Just ask any music historian. He'll tell you they had to play the blues before they saw the pops.
By CHUCK SACK
Arts & Leisure
Comedy kings featured
Reviewer
Comedy is king this week, when SUA sponsors a group of films starring three of the greatest clowns in cinematic history. Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and W. C. Fields each are featured in two of their best efforts in this mini-series.
Harold Lloyd may be seen in "Safety Last," his greatest film and one in which he gets canned into subbing for a professional stunt man. He assumes the duties of a human fly and attempts to crawl up the exterior of a skyscraper. "Hot Water," a silent short with a hilarious car demolition, also will be shown.
The Chapin films are from his sound period. "Monsieur Verdoux" is a black comedy in which Chapin steps out of his Little Tramp role to portray a '40s Bluebeard who marries and the daughter of an antics, the bitterness of the satire and the lack of Chapin's familiar paths make this one of his most unusual films.
In "Limelight" Chaplin reverts to form with his portrayal of an aging vaudeville. The film co-stars another champion comic, Buster Keaton, in one sequence. Orson Welles, who was present during the filming, said Keaton outshone Chaplin so much that Chaplin was forced to edit the scene drastically in order to save face.
Finally, W. C. Fields stars in "International House" and in "My Little Chickadee," which co-stars Mae West. The shown is展 shown, and is notable because it earned Fields a long-term contract with Paramount. The sketty plot has something to do with an intrigue that brings the restaurant where the Great One orders "a bird's nest with a couple of hundred-year-old eggs boiled in perfume."
The week of films concludes with Gene Wilder's farce about sibling rivalry in Victorian England, "Sherlock Holmes" Smartter Brother." The film co-stars Marty Feldman, Leo McKern and Dom DeLause, with Madeline Kahn thrown in for laughs.
Super Cuts for Guys and Gals
only $5.50
Blane's SALON MALL
Malls
Phone 842-1144 Shopping Center
KU-Y's ROCK CHALK TECHNICAL EVALUATION
and
GROUP PAIRINGS Tues., Mar. 29
KU.Y is partially funded by the Student Senate Activity Fee.
7:30 p.m. Jayhawk Rm., Union
Anyone who is interested in past or future Rock Chalk Revises is welcome to come and talk with the 77 Production Staff and members of the KU-Y.
This Week's Highlights
Theater
"UNCLE VANYA," 8 p.m. Thursday.
Friday and Saturday, University Theatre.
Concerts
BYRON JANIS, piano. Concert Series, 8.
night. Hight. Auditorium.
BOB HOPE and the PRESERVATION
HALL JAZZ BAND, benefit for Baker
University Scholarship Fund, 7:30 tonight,
Kemper Arena, Kansas City, Mo.
JOHN BROWNING, piano, with the Kansas City Philharmonic, 8 p.m. Tuesday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Music Hall, Kansas City, Mo.
WOODY HERMAN, 8 p.m. Wednesday,
Raytown South Auditorium, Kansas City,
LEO KOTTKE with Martin Mull. B, 8 p.m.
Monday. Uptown Theater. Kansas City.
THE WILLIAMS MANHATTAN TRANSFER,
Saturday.
brockert Inn, Kansas City, MO.
Recitals
BRAD WERTZ, string bass Student
BRAID HILT, 8 p.m. Tuesday, Swarwhort
Brad Hilt
MARK HOLLMBERG, carillon, 7 p.m.
Wednesday, campanile.
in both look and feeling is this classic seersucker vested suit in light blue and white stripes. A very fresh outfit for spring as only John Meyer can do it ...
FINE ARTS HONORS RECITAL featuring Martin Agee, violin; Jane Becker, voice; Carla Edwards, organ; Suzanne Fairbairn, Sarah Johansen, voice;
Wonderfully crisp...
Lectures
Nightclubs
JAZZ JAM SESSION, 9 to midnight,
Thursday, Paul Gray's Gazz Place.
"THE POETRY OF JOHN MILTON."
Marilyn Levine, Har壁Art lecture series. 3 p.m. today, Kansas Union's woodruff Auditorium.
JAM SESSION, bluegrass, folk, and old time; 8 to midnight, Wednesday. Of the Wetlands.
AIKO ONISHI, piano, professor of performance at San Jose State University. Visiting Artists Series, 8 p.m. Thursday, Swarthout.
Martin Morley, piano, Janice Paradis,
bassoon, clarinet, claringt: 8pm
Wednesday; Swarthout
"THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT LITERARY CRICISIM: MILTON'S AESTHETIC OF TESTIMONY." Stanley Fish, professor of English, Johns Hopkins University, 8 p.m. Tuesday, Woodruff Auditorium.
DOUGLAS PARKER, visiting professor in the departments of English and classics, University of Texas, will lecture on the playwright Terence, 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Hall, and read from this translations, 4 p.m. Thursday, Union's Council Room.
Walt Disney's
CADILLAC MCNA, a country rock band, 9 tonight. Off the Wall Hall.
"NEVER A DULL MOMENT"
PG
Granada
Eve. 7:30 & 9:30
Sat. Sun. Mar. 2:30
Phone +54 (21) 661-6800
Email granada@granada.com
An Epic Fantasy of War & Peace
Plus a Cartoon Short Subject
10 Academy Award Nominations
"WIZARDS"
"ROCKY"
Eve. 7:30 & 9:15
Sat.-Sun. Mat. 2:30
747 crashed at sea.
Passengers aboard are trapped underwater.
Ends Tuesday
"The Devil
Within Her"
"Don't Open The Window"
Show starts at 7:00
Sylvester Stallone
Eve. a17:20 & 9:35
Sat.-Sun. a11:45
Varsity
WALK - August 17, 2016
Sunset
810 in 164772 above on Highway 69
Eve, 7:25 & 9:40
Sat.-Sun, Mat. 1:50
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