Monday, January 23, 1034
P2go6
Daily Hebraskan
4
,111
Ey Christopher Barh-ch
The little girl who sang gospel hymns in church
back in Memphis, Term., is now "Queen of the Blues,"
but she's still singing for the same reasons.
"I do what I do because I enjoy it," Koko Taylor
said in an interview before her show at the Zoo Bar
Thursday night. "I aint gettin' rich, that's for sure.
"I grew up singm' gospel, blues, listenin' to the
blues Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters. Them's my
influences."
Taylor resembles the late great McKinley Morgan
field (aJca. Muddy Waters) in many ways. She's
short and round and she belts the blues with a
reverberating, gravelly voice that forces its way out
from somewhere deep inside her spirit and delves
into her audience's soul
Her listeners can either feel assaulted or carried
away by her music. Indifference is simply not an
alternative. Taylor sings with that kind of passion,
ensnaring an audience in her musical web, raveling
vocal threads around them and sending those who
succumb into euphoria with a deadly blue sting.
"Every clr.C3 appreciate the
blueo. IVe worked an audience
with conic of the richest people,
and they rich, and they love the
blues."
"Are you ready for the blues?" she said, " 'cause we
goin' all the way down to the basement."
What does Koko Taylor get out of all this? "Satis
faction. It mean that I'm doin' somethin' to help
people all over the world by makin' them happy with
my music. I help lift peoples' spirits. Satisfaction."
Taylor said blues music is for everyone. "It's no
particular class of people. Everybody, every class
appreciate the blues. IVe worked an audience with
some of the richest people, and they rich, and they
love the blues."
As for the future of blues music, Taylor said, "The
blues is definitely on the rise. My audience is so
much bigger then they was even last year. Especially
young white kids."
Why? "Not a lot of black clubs have blues music
now," she said. "Blues just ain't as popular with
blacks as with whites right now."
One place Koko Taylor and her band are popular
is the Zoo Bar. "I have a lot of fans and followers
here. I been comin' to Lincoln for the last ten years."
A mob cf people forked over the $4.50 cover charge
Thursday ni(qit, filling the bar to standing room by
8:30 p.m.- After a solid warm-up set by Lincoln's
Backbeats, Taylor played for less than two hours
but they were two very good hours. The crowd didn't
disperse until Taylor finished singing just before
oUrlnittimo wttfn it loft: cwortv p.nd c-.fcfirH
As the Queen sang, "Hey everybody, let's have
some fun. You only live once and when you're dead
you're gone." She has a way of getting that point
across.
Baitery5 dies on weak dialogue
By Mcna Z. Koppeka&n
A battery of problems plagued a local theater
group's production of Battery: unlikely dialogue,
unconvincing characters, uncomfortable scene
changes and an unmentionable number of elliptical
puns on the word "battery."
Playwright Daniel Therriault's script seemed to be
more at fault than the tirelessly struggling perfor
mances of James Cook, Paul Pearson and Chetley
Kincaid.
Theater
Review
Stagestruck Productions' Battery ran through
Sunday night at the Spigot, 1624 0 St.
Pearson was puzzling in his role as Stan, a manic
depressive, schizophrenic or mentally handicapped
electrician's apprentice. (You pays your money, you
takes your pick.)
Stan works for Rip, played by Cook. Rip refers to
himself as the Washington Monument, a man who
would rather "stick his piston" in a woman than look
at her.
Rip is an electronics wizard with the vocabulary of
a 1950s greaser. His non-stop sex-automobile anal
ogies contrast wrenchingly with his pseudo-philosophical
relationship with Stan. (The Great Battery
analogies: "I'm the pitcher, you're the catcher."
"We're the same current AC AC") Of course, Stan
hangs on every monosyllable that drools from Rip's
mouth, and of course, Rip turns this to his advan
tage. (Very predictable duo relationship.)
The third leg of this barstool is Rip's main "bumper "
Brandy. Brandy is a gum-chewing, leggy southern
blonde, mysteriously transplanted to Rip's Electric
in Chicago.
Battery struggles to develop new twists in the
8 eternal triangle. So during the course of the evening
we are treated to such wild stretches of suspended
disbelief as shock treatments, amnesia beatings, red
clown noses and therapeutic word-associations.
Thi3 is in RiD's Electeric in Chicago. Remember
that. Rip has Playboy centerfolds on his pegboard.
To clarify, Stan has a frustrated sexual crush on
Brandy. Brandy thinks Stan is the closest thing to a
wet-nosed weaseL She teases Stan mercilessly for
Rip's amused benefit.
Rip leaves one day. Brandy and Stan confront
each other with their mutual possessiveness toward
Rip. Brandy tells Stan he sucks on Rip Eke a pacifier,
and Stan beats Brandy's face in then knocks
. himself out. But "he doesn't remember." (Hi3 mom
was like that, too.) Rip decides to help his little
buddy and to keep him from kicking the heck out of
Brandy. Brandy wants to charge Stan with assault
and (what else) battery. So Rip completes a nifty
gadget which gives shock treatments . . . the Treat
Machine.
Rip uses the Trent Machine to magically trans
form Stan into a real neat guy (yes, the playwright
read Flowers for Algernon in eighth grade, too).
Stan, the real neat guy, manages to win over Brandy
by calling her Drambouie and wearing a red clown
nose and telling her she has real intellect. (Hints for
potential Casanovas out there.)
Stan and -Brandy play word associations (hand,
heart, blood, life, birth, rebirth, and so it goes) And
discover love in Rip's Electric. They conspire to leave
Chicago behind for greener pastures in Houston.
Before they leave they yell at Rip, and Rip gets his
moment in the audience's sympathetic
And that's it.
With a great plot line like that, what went wrong
with Battery? Out-of-character dialogue. Back when
Stan was a sweetly endearing dummy, he would
break out with thin gs like: "When I throw a penny in
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