daily nebraskan
Wednesday, august 26, 1931
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Kimball Art Series books renowned performers
page 10
By Scott Kleager
The Kimball Performing Arts Series is now selling
season tickets at the box office, Kimball 113.
Ron Bowlin, series director, said this year's schedule
offers a list of artists just as strong as in previous years.
He said those purchasing season tickets are required to
buy a minimum of four performance reservations. Tickets
are available for individual shows also.
The UNL student rate is again offered this year, which
is below the regular series and door ticket prices.
If, for example, a student picks the four least expensive
performances, a season ticket would run $10.80. Choosing
the most expensive lour snows would be 3 ib.su. irus,
Bowlin said, is way below a comparable season ticket in
New York, and yet the level of talent is the same. The box
office will be open Monday through Friday 11 ajn.
through 5 p.m.
Individual musicians headline this year's series. Shlomo
Mintz, Russian-born Israeli violinist, will open the season
Sept. 25 at 8 pjn. Mintz began playing as a boy, and at
one time was the prize pupil of Isaac Stern "Stern has
worked very hard with him, developing his musicianship,"
Bowlin said.
Igor Kipnis performs Nov. 20 at 8 pjn. Considered to
be among the best harpsichordists in America today,
Kipnis was in Lincoln tor the first time in the Spring of
1972. He gave performances at several dorms at the time.
The Houston Ballet will be the first dance ensemble to
appear. According to Bowlin, the company is a reflection
of the recent upsurge of the arts in Houston. They will be
in Lincoln Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 1 through
3. Each show will begin at 8 pjn.
The Nikolais Dance Theater follows at 8 pjn. on Sat
urday, Nov. 7, and at 3 at 8 pjn. the next day. Bowlin
indicated that these particular performances may prove to
be the most interesting of all the dance presentations.
Alwin Nikolais, the artistic director of the company, is a
creative genius who has been at the forefront of the dance
scene for 25 years, Bowlin said. Each performance will be
a singular experience combining progressive electronic
music, slides on a hugh screen behind the dancers with
unique lighting, costumes and sets.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 1 through
3 at 8 p.m. the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater will be at
Kimball Hall. An expression of black culture, many might
be familiar with the number Revelations A combination
of spiritual music and modem dance will comprise three
performances.
Theater groups will be presented this season, beginning
with The Acting Company, on Thursday through
Sunday, Nov. 12 and 15. With John Houseman as artistic
director, actresses and actors are classically trained in the
repertory concept. The company will be doing A Mid
summer Night's Dream the first two nights at 8 pjn.,
followed by Samuel Bucket's Waiting for Godot on Sat
urday night at Venetian Comedy (II Campietto) by Carlo
Goldoni the final night.
The Polish Chamber Orchestra will be the first major
orchestral group to appear this year. Conducted by Jerzy
Maksymiuk, they will play works by -Vivaldi, Tchaikov
sky, Handel, Haydn and Dvorak in two performances on
Sunday, Oct. 11.
$
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Photo courtesy of I CM Art ists. Ltd.
Shlomo Mintz
The Fast promotes street gang look and sound
By Casey McCabe
The Fast is a band that proudly displays their leather
and chains. They look like a street gang, and in a sense
they are.
Guitarist Miki Zone is the undisputed leader of the
pack. He sports several tatoos ... a target, a pirate, a black
widow spider, and an octopus. Everything he wears is
black; his boots, his leather, his aborted mustache, his
pulled-back hair. The flyers advertising his band's Monday
night appearance at Lincoln's UrumsticK feature a puuio
of the four piece group staring out with bold intimidation
and an undisguised threat of violence.
But poised behind a bottle of Budweiser, Zone is actu
ally quite tame, literate, and talkative. What does he think
people should expect wandering into the bar with only
this visual image of the band?
"Sounds from trie street," Zone quickly replies.
The streets that have inspired Zone are those of New
York City. He admits it's a jungle, but he wouldn't live
anyplace else.
"Uvin in New York isn't like walking down Main
Street in Lincoln," he astutely observes. "Daytime is just
like midnight, you're subjected to the same element . . .
People don't wait till dark to knife you. It really is a jun
gle. We survive it every day."
"But one thing is, 1 can't wait to get back to it. If I'm
away for two days, I feel it .
In fact, The Fast is away from New York many days
out of the year. Zone is a firm believer in touring, and is
currently taking the band on the road for their third
cross-country American tour this year. They travel in a
van through a grueling schedule (''tonight Lincoln, tomor
row Madison, Wisconsin"), and play a mixture of halls to
audiences with varying degrees of familiarity with the
group. It's all necessary, says Zone, to give The Fast the
recognition he thinks they deserve.
Zone started The Fast in the early 70s along with his
brother, lead singer Paul Zone. In 1976 they were one
of the instrumental New York groups (along with Blondie,
Television, The Talking Heads, and New York Dolls) in
starting the American punk renaissance. Their contempo
raries went on to various degrees of national prominence,
but The Fast became a household word in a more select
number of homes, limited mostly to the eastern seaboard.
"Some of those other bands on the scene kept develop
ing, whereas we held back, says Zone. "We didn't go on
to record contracts because we overlooked a few whereas
they took some bad deals in the beginning.
"Maybe I regret that because maybe we could have
done something and ended up better today, he reflects.
"But the only reason I might feel slighted or degraded is
because they have gone so far and I could have been in
the same league at that point with what I'm doing now. 1
really don't think about it that way now because I've been
developing myself and my band over these years."
Zone overcame some of the corporate headaches by
establishing his own independent label, Recca Records.
The label is a thinly disguised send-up of the much larger
Decca Records, and the band's first album J tie fast tor
' Sale blatently mocks the cover art of 77ie Who Sells Out
by the Who, one of Zone's most beloved influences.
"That kind of thing (parody) is something you can do
with your own label, says Zone. "The major labels are
scared to death of it,"
Zone likes shaping his band into a full audio-visual ex
perience. Their stage presence follows along the lines of
Alice Cooper and The New York Dolls (two more major
influences) and The Fast happily includes a newspaper
clipping calling them1 "more wild and disgusting than the
Plasmatics" in their press kit.
Actually The Fast keeps the on-stage theatrics at a
consistent slow boil, avoiding the Wendy O. Williams
school of prop destruction. Instead they hop, skip, and
jerk around to the high-decibel intensity of Zone's songs,
penned with a flare lor both heavy metal and pure punk
palates.
Occasionally they will do a cover. One is the Rolling
Stones' "Paint It Black" which fits brother Paul's vindic
tive vocal quality. The other is "These Boots Were Made
For Walking," which, not surprisingly sounds utterly more
threatening coming from a feather-dad street gang than
the vocal chords of Nancy Sinatra. That threatening West
Side Story aura is a quality The Fast enjoy embracing.
Continued on Page 11
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Photo courtesy of Th Drumstick
The Fast bring their leather-and-chains look to The Drumstick.