Monday, February 6, 1934
Pcg3 12
Daily Mchrcskon
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By Steve Abaxiotcs
Ron Mann had just arrived in Lincoln following
six sleepless nights in Hawaii where he was finishing
a script for a film that he would begin shooting in
three weeks.
He will be working with Martin Sheen and Emile
D'Antonio. D'Antonio, of whom Mann speaks with a
fierce loyalty and respect, has influenced him with
all of the filmic choices he has had to make in his
short career. D'Antonio suggested that Mann, 25,
come to Lincoln with his films. It was Friday and
Poetry In Motion had just started in the Sheldon
Film Theatre. Mann told me to stick around for a bit
while he and Dan Ladely made sure the volume was
OK.
Imagine The Sound showed here the day before.
In that film, Mann faithfully and respectfully cap
tured the thoughts and music of Archie Shepp, Cecil
Taylor, Bill Dixon and Paul Bley, all vanguard jazz
improvisationalists from the 1960s. Mann's camera
takes in its subjects and embraces them in a iaid
back" fashion, and is content to simply let the visual
information overwhelm the frame.
"I try to make films that don't exploit women, sex
or violence. That's already being done in commer
cials and in Hollywood," Mann says as we walk over
to the lounge for some coffee. "I want to show the
people something different, open them up to some
y.ew alternatives. That doesn't exist right now."
LA. 'demonic'
Mann was wearing a red corduroy shirt, wrinkled
corduroy trousers and some worn but comfortable
looking timberline boots. Looking somewhat fraz
zled from all of the sleepless nights, he flopped his
brown coat down on the slick, black couch, and fired
up a smoke, while I fired up my tape recorder.
"I started at the top and worked my way down,"
Mann said with a smile. "I went to LA. when I was 16
and discovered that it was not the place for me. I
didn't want to make other peoples' films. I didn't
"Music is everything that you
do. Poetry is everything that you
do. That sums up my films."
-Ron Mann
want to be told what to do." More disillusionment
was to follow.
"I lost faith in film at the Cannes Film Festival. I
went there when I was 17. 1 saw film as a business,
and the economics of film: That, to me was shocking.
The pigs who watch the stock go up, the distributors
who are all crooks, liars and thieves, the critics who
get drunk and beat up their wives and then write a
lousy review of a film you spent a year on. I saw that
in the Babylonesque-crystal ball vision of horror, it
was demonic and I lost a sense of film as art. I really
do consider film as art. Not many people do.
Net a snob
"I'm not a cultural snob. I liked Flashdance. I liked
it because it was a pop phenomenon, a reworking
of..." Mann's voice trailed off.
hp eia-ss ashtray and con-
tinued. His voice sounds smooth and is pleasant to
listen to. He has been very open thus far, but part of
his mind is concerned with how the audience is
reacting to Poetry In Motion over in the theater
across the gallery. The film is half over now and
Mann will answer questions afterwards.
Mann does not consider himself a poet, but he is a
mediocre musician. He plays the piano, saxophone,
harmonica and guitar. He once played in a jazz band
called Earl Fruchtman And The Roka Sam Sara
Orchestra. I told him that I thought Cecil Taylors
compositions were difficult to listen to because of
the atonal quality of the music.
The question isnt the difficulty of the music
though, tne question is being able to choose whether
you like the music or don't like the music. Right now
there is no way of choosing," he said.
MTV crap
"I think MTV is a racist, offensive, exploitive piece
of crap. Those . . . who run it started out distributing
and exploiting Neil Young and all of those rock n' roll
films like The Great Cocaine Cowboys and if that's
the direction music is going in then it's a big pain in
the ass. It's all designed for profits...I don't know
what the alternative is. There has to be new aesthet
ics for a new world for new music."
Mann's advice to up-and-coming filmmakers is
simple: Go about making a film with nothing but a
fanatical devotion, whether that means selling your
car, mortgaging your house or whatever. Mann
takes the same fresh, aesthetically pure approach to
film that the musicians do in Imagine The Sound.
"Music is everything that you do. Poetry is every
thing that you do. That sums up my films."
Bar hm&d -beats tadlrMmiB Memufflsws
By Tish Mockler
and Donna Sisson
Most people go through life hating
Mondays; most people have never
discovered the blues.
The blues, a music which can
purge the depression of a day like
Monday, can be found at the Zoo
Bar, 136 N. 14th St.
Currently the Backbeats play
Blue Mondays at the Zoo Bar and
will continue every Monday through
March. They frequently play in
Omaha and have plans to play at
Bill's Saloon in Lincoln.
"One of the things that makes our
band unique is that we play a tradi
tional (blues) style and not very
many people do," Marc Wilson, drum
mer for the Backbeats said in an
interview last Monday.
Other members of the band in
clude Sean Benjamin on guitar, piano
and vocals; Joe Cabral on tenor and
baritone saxaphone and vocals; Jon
Lawton on vocals and guitar; and
John Sheppard on bass guitar.
Cabral and Lawton, formerly of
Risky Shift, started the Backbeats in
March of 1983.
Marc Wilson started by playing
Baptist gospel music for a church
choir. Sean Benjamin has done solo
work and recorded a single called
"Tribute to Collins," of which Albert
Collins bought 50 copies, Benjamin
said. John Sheppard, the band's new
est member, has played in primarily
rock and roll bands.
As the Backbeats, they are still
trying to understand each other's
styles, said Lawton. With the blues it
is important to feel comfortable
with the other musicians and their
styles, he said.
Open Kind
Theymentioned having some prob
lems getting together to practice
because two of the members, Ben
jamin and Wilson, live in Lincoln
and the others live in Omaha. Per
haps it is this distance, forcing them
to improvise, which allows them to
play the blues with a freshness that
lets the audience know the blues are
still alive.
When they play, their shows are
very relaxed. Often times they have
musicians from the audience come
on stage and play with them, and at
times the music seems to just play
itself. The music is presented in an ,
easy and natural manner that puts
the listener at ease allowing him to
do what he wants with the music. It
can be cried to, laughed with,
danced to, or just used as a back
ground rhythm for the evening.
The best way to listen to the blues
is with an open mind, Wilson said.
"It's a give-and-take thing. All
through the history of music there
has always been the players and the
audience and the two work together
for the ultimate experience," he
said.
Recent artists such as Stevie Ray
Vaughn have helped to increase the
number of blues fans at a time when
some people thought the blues to be
dead, Wilson said,
Eccn far creativity
"There is a huge creative space
within the blues," Lawton said. Even
if a band plays the same song and
tries to copy it, it is impossible to
exactly replicate it, unlike other
forms of music. The blues is an inti
mate expression with a large ele
ment of style, he said.
Most of the original music they
play is written by Benjamin and
Lawton. Other songs consist of tra
ditional numbers done in the Back
beats' unpretentious style. It is a
sound which seems to have grown
around their knowledge of and love
for the blues. Each time they re
create an old song, it is their own.
The Backbeats' unique style of im
provisation makes them the band
th ey ere.
"We're sitting there playing and all
of a sudden I look over and Joe is
(looking) at me to start the next
solo and I'm not even there and I
have to start a solo right then
that's where it starts. It's a very exis
tential kind of art form: Here it is.
It's now, the notes, the vibrations,
.the strings. It only lasts' for a few
seconds; it's there and it's gone,"
Lawton said.
They aree their goal is to keep
blues alive as a tradition. "Much of
:
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The Backbeats performed at last week's edition cf Else Mondays,
From left to right, band members are Sean Benjamin, Joe Cabral, John -S3bsj-rcl
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the younger blues music is not tra
ditional," Wilson said. "It tends to
have an uptown modern style that
ends up sounding more like rock."
Sometimes original work deviates
from the blues form, Lawton said,
which is one reason they stick to
older songs.
It is one musical form unique to
America, Wilson said. The blues are
important because all American
music forms have their roots in the
blues, which started as gospel music
in the late 1800s and early ICOOs,
he said.
We spent almost an hour talking
about the blues, seeking a definition
and understanding of it. It is almost
more like a concept than a musical
classification. "It's a natural expres
sion and that is its beauty, it's feeling
music," Wilson said. "The more you
listen to it the more you understand
it."
As we played back the tape from
the interview and searched for the
vocabulary to explain the blues and
the band, we noticed that often the
music in the background drowned
out their words. That is just the way
it is with the blues; the music speaks
for itself.