Wednesday, January 22, 1DG6
Daily Nebraskan
Page 9
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Folklore program
to be given tonight
"The Frontier Heritage in Nebraska
Literature and Arts" humanities pro
gram series continues tonight with a
program by UNL folklore professor
Roger Welsch.
His program, "Folktales and Folk
songs: Literature of the Frontier," will
begin at 7:30 p.m. in the fourth floor
auditorium of Bennett Martin Library,
14th and N streets.
Welsch will discuss the importance
of folksongs and folktales to the front
ier settlers. Program organizers said he
will show that folktales and songs
shouldn't be dismissed as amusement
for children, but considered historical
and literary documents created by a
"collective social genius."
Welsch has written several books
and numerous articles on folklore and
folk music, including "Treasury of
Nebraska Pioneer Folklore,' "Folklore
W.A.S.P.
to teen-age hostility
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Reporter
"As long as there's hostility in teen
agers, there will be a place for heavy
metal."
So saysrBIackle Lawless, vocalist,
songwriter and bass player for the
metallic group WAS.P. W.A.S.P. will
open for Kiss Friday at the Omaha Civic
Auditorium.
"Adolescence is painful at best.
School is a hassle, parents are a hassle.
They need something for themselves,"
he said.
Band Preview
Over the phone, Lawless does not
communicate in the series of high
pitched screams or guttural expletives
you might expect from a heavy
metalist. Lawless doesn't say "man"
after every sentence. I never got the
feeling I was talking to someone wear
ing a dog collar and a leather cod
piece. If you played the telephone
conversation backward, you probably
wouldn't hear 666, the number of the
beast, repeated again and again.
Now that all the stereotypes are
dispelled, we can talk to Lawless.
WA.S.P.'s new album, "The Last
Command," is the first LP to get a
warning label from the Parents Music
Resource Center. Lawless, of course,
has some thoughts on the PMRC.
"It's a bunch of crap," he said. "The
very idea of anybody in Washington,
D.C., telling rock'n'roll to clean up its
act is complete hypocrisy. It's the
Hitler thing where people will believe a
big lie before they believe a little one."
i''" 'f:-
'
? - . ...
.4
Beth EmersonDaily Nebraskan
Methodology," and "Shingling the Fog'
and Other Plains Lies." He also writes a
weekly column for the Lincoln Journal.
This program is one in a series of 12
funded by a grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and
sponsored by the Nebraska Literary
Heritage Association in cooperation
with the Lincoln City Library Founda
tion. All programs are videotaped and
may be viewed by contacting the library.
Welsch' s program will also air live on
cable-TV channel 20.
A booklet containing the essay and
bibliography for each program in the
series will be available in the Heritage
Room or at all public libraries prior to
each program.
For more information, call the Herit
age Room at 435-2146.
caters
"The Last Command" is a rare heavy
metal record. Critics from "Guitar"
magazine and several other publica
tions have hailed it as a "milestone"
album, transcending the limitations of
that critically berated genre.
The hit single from" that albums
"Blind in Texas," is a catchy piece of
pop, riff-based songwriting with the
guitars whooping it up throughout.
" 'Blind in Texas' is a true story,"
Lawless said. "During our last tour we
had three days off in Texas. Those boys
love to have a good time. We were
literally 'blind' drunk. The police, the
trouble, those cowboys robbed us of our
sanity."
Recently Guitar Player magazine
published the guitar music for some of
WAS.P.'s songs. The man who wrote
the article came to the conclusion that
heavy metal wasn't as simple as it
sounded.
"People have been saying heavy
metal was simple for years, as if all we
were doing was exploiting our lis
teners," Lawless said. "Rock'n'roll is
meant to be sweaty and smelly and
there is genius to simplicity. Things
can be enormously complex but simple
to the ear. The Rolling Stones sound
very simple, but try to play it."
Although Lawless said WAS.P. is
looking forward to playing Omaha, one
might question his knowledge of the
Midwest.
"Heavy metal is especially popular
in the Midwest," Lawless said. "The
people there lead a more radical
lifestyle. Punk is no big thing in those
Midwest steel and farm towns where
they've been wearing leather and
carrying steel pipes around for 25
years."
Fheatleir student a oafiyiral
performer, processor says
By Charles Lieurance and
Kris Leach
Staff Reporters
You might not have noticed Treva
Tegtmeier in "Terms of Endear
ment." She was an extra and stood
in for the cashier in the grocery
store scene during lighting rehear
sals. In the film it may have been easy
to lose Tegtmeier in the crowd, but
in UNL's theater department, she
stands out.
"I've acted with Treva, directed
her and taught her in classes," said
Kevin Hofeditz, an assistant profes
sor of theater. "In all instances she
has shown the utmost professional
ism. She has shown talent as a sin
ger, actor and as a dancer."
4
Cards & Letters
Rev ie w ' i n
ome people just can't appreciate
subtlety.
That's the only conclusion I
come to when I read another scathing,
unthinking review of New Acoustic
Music like the one thinly disguised as a
record review by Chris McCubbin (Daily
Nebraskan, Jan. 20).
I, like other New Acoustic musicians
I know, get sick and tired of anxiety
ridden teenagers, with their glands in
an uproar, taking their frustrations out
on our music and calling it the same as
the "easy-listening" music that they
program for dental offices.
I didn't appreciate the review of the
Windham Hill record. I won't con
centrate on the album in question,
since the reviewer didn't bother to
either, except for three paragraphs out
of an 11-paragraph review.
Differing tastes aside, the worst
thing reviewers can be is inaccurate.
This lets the informed reader know
right off that reviewers don't know the
subject on more than a surface level
and shouldn't have been assigned to
review a subject they know so little
about.
Here are some examples from Mc
Cubbin's review: It's difficult to ap
preciate what the reviewer describes
as an "interesting guitar piece with an
authentic folk feel," when it is "High
Plains," by Phillip Aaberg, a solo
pianist who doesn't play guitar.
The reviewer then goes on to say that
V .1 14,
Tegtmeier, a fifth-year senior
majoring in theater and dance, said
her love of the performing arts
began as a child when her mother
gave her voice lessons.
When she was 9, Tegtmeier began
dancing lessons. It was a 50-mile
drive to the lessons in Hastings from
her hometown of Davenport, she
said.
Throughout her youth, Tegtmeier
said, she studied dance and music.
When she arrived at UNL as a fresh
man she had every intention of
becoming a music major. But after
taking several theater classes, her
interest began to shift more toward
dance and theater.
"The dance degree with the
theater is a really good combina
tion, each enhancing the other,"
she said.
Tegtmeier
acc u rat e'
the Windham Hill "band" usually plays
"lots of flutes." I own all 40 of the
Windham Hill albums (as well as
hundreds of others in the rough
category of jazz fusion and new acoustic
music), so I did some research. I found
that very contrary to McCubbin's
statement, only nine albums out of 40
even use any kind of flute, and it is
played sparingly on most of those.
Admittedly, two of the songs on the
album in question did have flutes,
although the one song with "lots of
flutes" originally was released on a
different label and only included here,
I assume, because of the seasonal
aspects of this album.
All this leads me to believe that
McCubbin only listened to this one
Windham Hill album to form his grossly
misinterpreted generalizations, or
possibly listened to one or two other
Windham Hill albums.
Listening to this album, "A Winter's
Solstice," would be good enough
credentials for a layperson's review of
this album, but it hardly qualifies as
enough experience to make such gross
generalizations about the whole record
label, let alone the entire New Acoustic
genre.
To add insult to injury, all of this
misinformation comes after telling us
that a Windham Hill album has "finally
made the charts." Where was McCubbin
when Windham Hill albums were plac
ing and staving on the national
Throughout her academic career,
Tegtmeier has been in many UNL
theater productions. Last year she
was in eight shows, including
"Charley's Aunt" in the role of Kitty,
"The Hostage" as Diedre, "Grease"
as Betty Rizzo, "Amadeus" as Kater
ina Cavalieri and Henrik Ibsen's
"Ghosts" as Regina.
A born-again Christian, Tegtmeier
hopes to express her love of Christ
through her work, she said.
Besides UNL theater productions,
Tegtmeier has worked with and per
formed for The Nebraska Repertory
Theater, the Mule Barn Theater in
Tarkio, Mo. and won a scholarship
to study dance under one of the four
pioneers of modern dance, Hanya
Holm.
See TREVA on 10
. it
Mark DavisDally Nebraskan
o n genre
jazz and pop charts since George
Winston broke into national promi
nence in 1980?
As a disc jockey who has played this
music on a local radio station for the
past Vi years, I've had numerous calls
from people with "rocker, punker and
cowboy, etc." tastes, who also seem to
enjoy this music when they get a
chance to hear it. In fact, one fan who
called frequently to comment favorably
and inquire more about the music was
a bass player in a local punk group.
In all fairness, I must admit that to
my particular tastes, the album in
question is perhaps one of the least
consistent and weaker Windham Hill
albums. I would suggest to the novice
listener Will Ackerman's "Past Light,"
Michael Hedge's "Aerial Boundaries,"
George Winston's "Autumn" or Darol
Anger and Mike Marshall's "Chiaro
scuro" as a small group of albums
representative of the best the label has
to offer.
Rather than "driving the state of the
art even further into the new dark
ages" as McCubbin would have us
believe, and which would seem to be
the territory of MTV and VH-1, 1 think
that New Acoustic Music has given us a
good alternative, a creative option,
somewhere between the extremes of
Lawrence Welk and Ratt.
Dennis Taylor
jazz programerKZUM radio
recording artist
