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daily nebraskan
friday, february 16, 1979
Bluegrass band
down-to-earth'
By Deb Emery
Like a blast of fresli air sweeping in from the windy
city, the Special Concensus Bluegrass Band blew into
town, leaving audiences demanding more.
In its first Lincoln appearance, the band swept in from
that world-renowned capital of bluegrass, Chicago, to
play at The Zoo.
The band includes Mark Weiss, mandolin; Marc Fdel
sten, bass; Greg Caliill, banjo; and Ld Walsh, guitar.
Chicago-based bluegrass comes as a surprise to most
bluegrass fans, Cahill said. But, he said, bluegrass is very
big in Chicago and six other full-time bluegrass bands ori
ginate from the city.
Cahill said he thinks that bluegrass 's popularity is only
natural in a city known for its black, blues jazz musicians
because bluegrass is the "whiteman's blues."
Down-to-earth
"Bluegrass is alive music, down-to-carth, and not elec
tric, with much improvisation," he said.
Bluegrass music seems to appeal to mostly college-age
adults, he said, because it is a "rowdier, good time crowd
thing."
A mostly college-age crowd turned out to hear the
band Wednesday evening.
They opened with a fast-paced number called "The
Glenville Train " and then contrasted it with a slow
moving piece entitled "The Tennessee Blues."
The band avoided the fault common to many other
bluegrass bands with songs that start and end sounding the
same by throwing in slow, blues-like numbers among the
faster tempoed pieces.
Though a fiddle player could have enhanced the band,
the musicians did a sufficient job on their instruments to
make up for a fiddle part.
Rousing instrumentals
Cahill and Edelsten supplied strong vocals that satis
fied the versatility needed to sing songs ranging from
upbeat hoedown tunes to sad, Most -my -love strains.
Weiss and Walsh carried the band with rowsing
instrumentals.
Many of the band's songs were bluegrass standards like
"Rocky Top" and "The Wabash Cannonball" but, the
band did play a few original pieces.
First album
One of the pieces, "The Black Mountain Rag," appears
on a recently produced 45 and will also appear on the
group's first album, "Long Winter, " to be released in two
months, Cahill said.
The band has played together for four years and was
interviewed for an article in this month's issue of
Bluegrass Unlimited.
The group is currently on a Midwest tour and its next
stop is Springfield, 111.
However, the band members said they hope to return
io Nebraska soon because of the warm reception they
receive wherever they play.
"Nebraskans appreciate bluegrass music, and we look
forward to returning soon," Cahill said.
Considering the band's reception, a strong easterly
wind from Chicago could spell bluegrass good news for
Nebraskans to warm the spirit, if not the snow.
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25
Photo by Mark Billingsley
The Special Consensus Bluegrass Band picks away for a crowd at The Zoo bar.
Sontag compiles novel arrangement
By Bill Regier
Susan Sontag's , etcetera (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is a
collection of short fiction that bypasses usual narrative
formats for dialogues, diaries, a sci-fi fable and an anthol
ogy of quotations. It is like a display where lapis lazuli
rests beside moon rocks and malachite beside fool's gold.
Its attraction is in its arrangement, not in a uniform
property.
bk reuierj
For starters she offers a timely "Project for a Trip to
China." "Words that are pictures. Shadow Theater. Storm
over Asia." Each paragraph gives an image of China; some
recall its repression by the West in the current century.
Sontag quotes a Missouri senator saying, "With God's help,
we shall raise Shanghai up and up and up until it reaches
the level of Kansas City."
The story overtly practices the Chinese art of quota
tion. Sontag adopts Walter Benjamin, Mao, Hegel, Fou
cault, La Condition Humaine, Althusser, Robbe-Grillet,
Victor Hugo and The Great Gatsby for her re-examination
of the idea of the "individual." Her reading list, like
the reading of her stories, is neither easy nor narrow.
Jazz orchestra in financial straits
The Neoclassic Jazz Orchestra may leave Lincoln next
year if attendance does not improve, according to the
president of the orchestra.
John Tavlin said the band has lost Si, 700 in the first
two concerts this year. Tht total cost for the two con
certs was $4 700, with the Nebraska Arts Council paying
$3,000 or the total cost, he said.
For the band to break even, Tavlin said, attendance has
to reach 250. In the band's first concert of the year
attendance was only 150.
Smaller communities such as Ogallala,Ord and Seward
are more interested in the band than is the Lincoln area.
"People in Lincoln and Omaha take cultural events for
granted," Tavlin said. "Almost 90 percent of the cultural
events in Omaha and Lincoln are supported by one
percent of the population."
The Neoclassic Jazz Orchestra is a non-profit organiza
tion supported partly through grants from the Nebraska
Arts Council. Tavlin said people do not realize that "any
non-profit organization treads on thin ice every year."
Financial problems
Other reasons for the orchestra's financial problems are
the costs involved in renting a place to play and in
advertising. Tavlin said.
"Our funds are so limited that it's hard to advertise
extensively."
Because the band is a non-profit organization, it re
ceives publicity through public service announcements
on the radio, he said. He also said the hand advertises in
the Omaha World Herald and Lincoln papers
The cost for rental of a hall and advertising is $900 per
concert, Tavlin said. He said this cost does not include the
salaries of band members and guest performers.
Another reason for the poor response to the orchestra,
he said, is that a community will support outside groups
but not their own local bands.
"People think that if it's local it's no good."
Biggest draw
The Neoclassic Jazz Orchestra will perform this April
with Clark Terry, a jazz trumpet and flugelhom player.
Tavlin said Terry is the "biggest jazz draw in the Lincoln
area."
"Clark Terry is a great jazz musician. He's as popular as
Maynard Ferguson," Tavlin said. "That concert should
draw a large crowd."
Rex Cadwallader, director of the Neoclassic Orchestra,
said the attendance problem stems from a form of pre
judice against jazz.
"We're not dealing with as big a segment of the society
because people think jazz is an intellectual form of
music." Cadwallader said. "I think that kind of attitude
came from the 60s."
Poor attendance jeopardizes future concerts in Lincoln.
Cadwallader said.
"We found this year that the concert series had poor
participation," Cadwallader said. "Whatever playing we do
in Lincoln next year, it won't be a series, it will be on a
single concert basis without guest artists."
Guest artists. Cadwallader said, aren't really necessar
to the success of the band. He said the band can stand on
its own.
Cadwallader said he's optimistic about the future of
the Neoclassic Jazz Orchestra.
Iconoclastic campeadora, she rattles many popular
prohibitions. She knows how to turn off the censorious
early. "American Spirits" depicts Miss Flatface, a stifled
woman who dedicates herself to venery. She is abducted
from Dear Jim and the children by Mr. Obscenity, who
lives up to his name.
She soon tires of his excesses and runs away to a
tattooed sailor, falling in love for the very first time.
Her torrid life ends with ptomaine from a taco. "Ameri
can Spirits" is Sontag's contribution to American bawdy.
"Old Complaints Revisited" is present-tense Orwell, an
abstract of an international organization. It could be a
corporation, a political movement, or a religious order.
We are not told.
We are told that its members think there is too much
talking, too little action; that its members are well
educated, and liable to persecution. We are told that the
narrator wants out.
Doubt confession
The story is a confession of doubt written "a few
inches off the ground." The narrator's problems are care
fully generalized to express problems with virtually any
organizations.
"Merit through suffering" is one of the organization's
slogans. Another is "Deeper and deeper into the books."
One such book is What Must Be Done, which echoes
Lenin; equally venerated by the organization is the four
volume Commentaries, which echoes the Vedas, the New
Testament, or Code Napolean.
Taking no chances that bias will obscure the problem
of the organization, the narrator refuses to name its sex.
"If I'm a man, the problem stands but I become a type.
I'm too representative, almost an allegorical figure. If I'm
a woman, I survive as a singular individual but my
dilemma shrinks: it reflects the insecurities of the second
sex. If I tell you I'm a woman, you II write off my
problem still the same problem! as merely 'feminine'."
Parents' contradictions
Problems of a different sort appear in "Baby." The
parental halt of a dialogue with a psychiatrist is given,
seemingly a couple having difficulty with their c! ;!d
prodigy. Soon images of the child are shredded by me
parents' contradictions.
He is poor at sports, but good at basketball and volley
ball. He wets Ins bed. tries to poison his folks with his
chemistry set. has an eight-year-old baby sitter, edits the
high school paper is married, is plannine'to marry . goes to
a good school, goes to a bad school, is dead, alive, and
likes rubbci ducks With a child like this, the parents are
seen to he the one. needing therapy.
Doctor Jeckylls title heio is a surgeon who envies
I dd Hyde, a petty crook Jeckyll thinks Lddy is more
free Jeckl! reels oppressed h his burls guru. Itterson. a
clairu.y jr.t hi!K w h. . preaches "the proper uses of selfish
ness JeJ.vll. "jionc in a world of monsters." finds Lt
terson maddening. His struggle to find "freedom" takes
him ar trom I ;,erson faddish definitions.
Continued on Page 13
