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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 27, 1984)
Pago 14 Dally Ncbraskan Friday, April 27, 1C34 An M ! I i f JM I ( ! I !l jl II :i ill 11 I H 1 o o o o Hii TLcni 'S iiiTn(riiiii(niTiiir!, is ) no I 111 M.VI Marc cats "nuclear food," Lisa sleeps with stuffed animals and Frank has a tattoo. What do these three have in common? They comprise the band Get Smart. With Marc Koch on guitar, Frank Loose on drums and Lisa Wertman on bass, Get Smart says they try to play music that represents and inspires individuality. "It's really nothing new musically, we just try to inspire people to be less apathetic," Loose said. Rock and roll, after all, is a limited genre, he said. Like folk music, the music they play is of the peo ple. The difference is Get Smart uses drums and loud guitars. They want people to genuinely listen to the music and word3 (which all three collectively write and sing) instead of being just there to fill a void, he said. . Get Smart originated in Lawrence, Kan., where they first played together on Halloween in 19S0, Loose said. This was the first serious band for all three of them, he said. They got together because they had similar tastes in music, he said. They had all been frustrated at not finding what they wanted, Loose said. In the fall cf 1C32 the band moved to Chicago, Illinois. It was fun in Lawrence being a big fish in a small pond, and they wanted to see if they would fare as well in another locale, he said. They chose Chicago because they wanted to keep a Midwest base. Loose said. In comparing Lawrence with Chicago, Loose said they found Chicago a little more close minded because people don't jump boundaries and listen to different types of music. Certain types of people like certain types of music and because there's so much going on, they can listen to only that type of music, he said. Lawrence h more honest, Loose said. When some thing's going on, it's usually the only thing that night, so people are forced to get in on a wider range of music, he said. The band's home is a store front where they prac tice and where Loose and Wertman live. "In the summer, we can't practice without somebody rap ping on the door to see what's happening," he said. They have played most Chicago data and had one tour, Loose said. Their best audience is a young crowd, about 18 to 23 years eld, because they thrive on the energy, he said. People over 25 tend to just sit in the back and tinkle their ice cubes, he added. For the most part, their performance has a very high energy level, Loose said; "We sweat and we really mean it when we play." Itfs fast dance music designed to produce a response, Loose said. One time at Lincoln's Drum stick, things got real energetic and Koch accidently cut the tip of his finger off during a performance. The band has recorded a flexi-disc. single titled "Talk-Talk," which they released inside one issue of their fanzine. They have also released a four song extended play album, Words Have' and four cassette compilations, Loose said. They expect to release an album, Action-Reaction on Fever, on an independ ent Chicago label, at the end of May. Get Smart will play Sunday at the Brickyard, 1 7th and Holdrege streets. Local bands, Baby Hotline and Sacred Cows, will play with them. The show, which is open to all ages, begins at 7 p.m. Cover charge is $3. - .-" u -r' . 'f r i V r i ) v.-' ? ;' 1 ' ! I 1 I . i Epic Records Dan Fogelberg will appear tonight at the Deb Devaney Sports Center. There ere tickets still available. Television It's a bad movie fan's dream come true. Satur day afternoon, Channel 7 will feature two bads from the past. First at 1 p.m., will be The Empire of the Ants. Seems some of those pesty insects found their way into a barrel of nuclear waste and well, you know what happens. The film stars Dynasty's Joan Collins. It's followed by Frogs, a classic about a bunch of reptiles who take revenge against a bayou land Barron. Knott 's Landings 'Joan van Ark stars. On Campus The Nebraska Dance Ensemble will present an encore performance today at 7 p.m. in the Dance Studio of Mabel Lee Hall. The ensemble will perform five dances, including their interpretation of Michael Jackson's "Beat It." Admission is $2. A story on the Dance Ensemble appears on page 16. On Stage UNL Theatre's production of Tennessee Willi ams' Summer and Smoke continues this weekend at the Howell Theatre. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fri day and Saturday. The play also will run Tuesday through May 5. Around Town Bill Buntain, of the University Program Coun cil's concerts committee, said there are still plenty of good seats available for the Dan Fogelberg concert. Fogelberg, one of the most consistent chart scorers of the decade, will appear in concert tonight at the Bob Devaney Sports Center, beginning at 8 p.m. Reserve seats are $1 1.50 and $13.50 and are availa ble at the Nebraska and East unions, Brandeis and Picldes Records. By Eric Peterson Julia Reichert and James Klein have made some of the strongest social and political documentaries in the United States, and that commitment has resulted in Seeing Red, showing tonight at 7 and 9 - p.m. and Saturday at 3, 7, and 9 p.m. in the Sheldon Film Theatre. Film Review Union Maids, which showed Wednesday as part of a Sheldon Film Video Showcase with Julia Rei chert present to discuss her films, was an affirma tive picture of what labor organizing meant for three women in the movement; Seeing Red is much more complicated in its contrast of the individual courage and fulfillment many Americans took from their participation in the American Communist Party with a consideration of the regimentation and stifled thought which that participation often neces sitated. Seeing Red is a powerful and carefully considered documentary, constructed with such skill that both admiration and pain are in turn aroused for those who worked in a movement which most Americans thought struck at the roots of their country. Much of the work Seeing Red has to do is to convincingly show the humanity and concern of the rank and file Communists who came to be regarded as tools of totalitarianism in the McCarthy era. This is done through an intimate interviewing style which allows the camera to see the subjects in an unpressured and unprejudiced way, that woman with carefully arranged silver hair and a crocheted blanket over her couch doesn't look like a monster, but a grandmother. Marchers in a Communist dem onstration proudly carry American flags along with Soviet banners, and push their babies along in carriages. -" And in contrast to the actually very funny picture of the single-minded political machine that Greta Garbo presents of Communist living in Ninctchka, the people in Seeing Red come across as they are, and were in their days of activism vibrant and passionate people. Howard "Stretch" Johnson, now a university professor, grins and tells how he relaxed a lot and adds that all work and no play "not only made Jack a dull boy, but it made him grim." Dorothy Healey, a dissident leader in the Corarau- nist Party until 1968, comes across as a genuine hero, a brilliant and beautiful woman whose energy and passionate conviction come across in both early footage from her organizing of farm laborers and her reflections now. This eating and breathing humanity contrasts with news re els and other mainstream material which depict American Communists as something less than human. Ronald Reagan begins the docu mentary, his face blue from the glow of General Electric Theater, telling Americans that "how we meet the Communist challenge depends on you." Although espionage and treason charges were rarely successfully brought against actual members of the Communist Party, politicians from Joe McCarthy to Hubert Humphrey paint a picture of American Communism which has little to do with the labor organizing and eviction protest which most rank and file Communists concentrated on, and more to do with an intended repression of civil liberties. Traditional liberal don't get off easy; 1 Humphrey b shown arguing for the abolition of the Communist Party, and a law he passed i3 pointed out by the narrator which set up detention camps for subversives in case of "emergency." Yet this film is not a naive adoration of the Ameri can Communist Party and everything it did. Rose Podmaka speaks of how women were as a rule deprecated or excluded from the movement; sev eral women speak of how they could never follow a party line laid down from top leadership (which was in turn laid down by Soviet international policy) so blindly again. A southern woman speaks softly of . how the generally observed secrecy of party mem bership was, in retrospect, a grave error. Dorothy Healey chuckles ironically when she talks of how Communists thought they knew all the answers in her youth, and gravely mentions her role in expelling people from the party. "I was a little Stalin." A rather frightening shot shows a giant balloon-kite of Josef Stalin lifting up off the ground; and when revelations of Stalin's brutality were incontrovertibly disclosed in 1956, the American Communist Party was devastated when the party leadership refused to adopt a line independent of the Soviet Union. The balloon burst, and member ship dropped 80 percent in two years. A social movement which did speak for justice and actually Distance is beautifully accomplished by shots of Kennedy, Martin Luther King...and then today's protesters are dispersed by cops on horses, which parallels 1930's footage of strikers charged by mount ed police and brings us back to where we st arted. By DcaVondra Yaot X-1MS Dt5Tlj4cTcy Show HAvl' -To rCtATE 1 . zz-m- BUT TW5 JO ST n", pcl X CM'T y ) 4- 1 ,1 -- r". 1 Y si.. -' 1 I-T X) , x t i t 1 Hi uji (xOort'T HAS ThE OOT51. 5 - 1 2. ' - v.1