Tuesday, October 28, 1986
Daily Nebraskan
Page 7
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Glass Eye
Glass Eye returns
Preview by
Chris McCubbin
Senior Reporter
Austin's Glass Eye is one of the
nicest bands you'll ever see. It com
bines bar-band friendliness and ac
cessibility with exacting musical
Band Preview
professionalism and an unwavering
forward-looking musical aesthetic.
The band will be at The Drumstick
Wednesday.
This is a band that really knows
how-to play off its own contradic
tions. Last June, after its last Drum
, stick appearance, the band alter
nated between almost post-punk
aloofness and gonzo rock-show goof
ing. They put out like crazy for a tiny
crowd and they deserve a chance to
see what a big Drumstick crowd can
do.
Their album "Huge" is as wond
Semi-softened hardcore for the masses
Can Angst save Music?
Preview by
Charles Lieurance
Diversions Editor
Progressive hardcore, huh?
I guess that means it has a readily
identifiable (accessible?) melody line,
words that someone besides an anthro
pologist can understand and, savior
forbid, pop potential (that is, after the
stigma wears off). You can sing along to
it. If you're excited enough about it,
Band Preview
your parents might even admit it's not
so bad. Angst, Husker Du's "Candy
Apple Grey" LP and "Love is All Around"
single (Mom peeks her head into your
room: "Isn't that the theme from the
"Mary Tyler Moore Show?'") are proto
types. Hardcore so nice it's about a year
away from MTV heavy rotation, the
crystal clear airwaves of Z-92 and, nail
me to a utilityhed, KFMQ Home of
the Hits.
What is it really, though? Well, it's a
sellout. A pleasant sellout but a sellout
nonetheless. It's music and musicians
honest enough to grow a little older, a
little more talented, a little more
production-wise, a little more aware of
their potential significance in the
scheme of things and honest enought
to shed the ephemeral "punk ethos"
for the pure joy of being in a rock 'n' roll
band. Bands like the Germs, Circle
Jerks and Fear either tailspin into
heavy metal or start sounding like
pathetic jokes. Hardcore punk was
about burnout, about one-upsmanship,
about going faster and playing lousier
V
"
V-;
will play at the Drumstick Wednesday night.
erfully contradictory as their live
show. Sometimes their jagged, fun
kish interplay between bass and
guitar sounds like Gang of Four,
sometimes it sounds like other stuff.
Keyboards are like crabgrass let
one into a band and pretty soon it's
taken over everything, but somehow
Glass Eye has learned to tame the
keyboards. They're there on every
song, providing sweeping background
effects or a jangly, semi-tuned elect
ric piano line, but they never take
over the mix or slow the band's
energy.
But the best argument for Glass
Eye's unconventionality is the band's
songs. The best stuff is poetry. In
songs like "Lake of The Moon," and
the gorgeous, spooky "Maggie," ima
ges shimmer for a moment with
unearthly clarity and then vanish in
the band's moody, evocative accom
paniment. Then there's a song like
"Mean," about the trials of working
in the meat department of a super
and more violently than the last band
on stage. It was the American way. The
Sex Pistols certainly had no monopoly
on rebellion. That hardcore is pro
duced with such a cowboyredneck
mentality is its saving grace and its
downfall. Because first and foremost,
hardcore is stupid. It's unsalable. It's
transient and undeniably brilliant within
its very limited time frame. Hardcore
has blown its wad.
Atavistic hardcore?
Now, there's progressive hardcore. A
little like soft rock (which in radio
lingo is what VH-1 and KHAT cater to,
i.e. Whimps). The idea is that hardcore
is atavistic, which it is, and that in
order for it to be valid it has to calm
down, soften its core, as it were.
The bands who aspire to this term,
who bucked off the term hardcore in
favor of nomenclature more befitting
their art-school backgrounds, are gen
erally quite good. We see a lot of them
at The Drumstick.
Angst, who play at The Drumstick
tonight, and bands like Angst (Husker
Du for one) are no longer concerned
with punk or punk politics or the
"punk movement" whether it be hard
core or old school, but with reinventing
rock 'n' roll. By toning things down a
few decibels, adding elements of folk
music and pacing themselves temp
wise, Angst and their peers manage to
drag rock Y roll back to its origins as
obnoxious junk with too much beat and
soul and not enough control and, once
again, open rock 'n' roll up to people
who may not even know where the
import rack is in their local record
store. They confuse the issues. They
!
I
Courtesy of Stella Weir
market.
"I Don't Need Drugs (to be F
Up)" is simultaneously the world's
funniest AC-DC parody and a dead
earnest statement about urban alien
ation. This is not a band that's big on
covers, but it does do the Cab Cal
loway classic "Minnie The Moocher."
Alternative meets Tin Pan Alley
it should have happened a long
time ago. And, no promises, but at
their last Drumstick show the drum
mer took center stage for the last
song, showed us his boxer shorts
and belted out "You Shook Me All
Night Long." But the band only does
that for special audiences.
This is a good week to be rich and
idle with all the great concerts in
town and all the weekend parties.
But if you're short on time and shor
ter on cash, why not treat yourself to
seomthing you've never heard before,
Glass Eye.
confuse alternative music, punk, Chuck
Berry, James Brown, Pete Seeger and
Dylan. They take them by the throat
with gall and spirit. So critics can do
little else but make silly suggestive
comparisons. Hell, Angst's "Glad I'm
not in Russia" is a folk song, fun and
purposefully simple. It's also a parody,
and that's its punk side. The sentiment
is sincere, insincere, nonsensical and
perfectly reasonable. Angst's "Never
Going to Apologize" is a '60s garage
band tune written and played in a way
no '60s garage band could have played
it. "This Gun's for You" is punk. But it's
only punk in its tempo, attitude and its
sloppiness. It is also pop verse, cho
rus, verse, chorus a melody straight
from Tin Pan Alley.
Angst the Savior
In the New World these New Bands
will stir things around enough that
there won't need to be college charts
and import racks anymore. It will seem
silly to have to wait five months for
Rolling Stone magazine to review the
new Meat Puppets, Angst, Saccharine
Trust or Leaving, Trains LPs. It will
seem odd to the pointed toward one
rack to get your Fetchin' Bones album
and another to get your X album. In the
end rock 'n' roll will defy its categories
as it always does at its best. You'll call
some thing punk and your friends won't
know if you're talking about a greaser,
a skinhead, a light for your firecracker,
a gay person or a juvenile delinquent.
The bands like Angst will have done
their job and saved the music from its
apparent limitations. You'll thank them
then.
Angst will be at The Drumstick
Thursday.
i
3 ?
By Kim E. Karloff
Staff Reporter
' Zoe Caldwell has j ?J Kefca
and Surah rrnkir-J.!,, (";..; !. , ; :
Colette. Tonight it-c
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I memorable and tony, c-tertnir;
and teaching
The one-woman Acrz ty Wi'lum
Luce is based on Hc!!oi; aii r,;.--:u !:s
in "An UnHnbhcJ V-." V "I n
Uncnto" end "Scorju'ri 1 Tine." (
The cficn-ccr.trcVvT'jLI
:'-alaU VWir-u? 5Uwt pldjaad vi-
rcn's Ileur," "The Unh Foxr.'.,"
"V-V.tch on the Chir-j" ard "Tcva in
tSi-3 Attli" Shs die! h If. I.
HUlhn miTzzn rr::ri ccr.'r.:'
v.:.5vcr!:ed d:r:t!.- 'x, V.r -
f ? 1 . '. .
Cu.t Ci 01 1
she waits, she talks al I "D:," :
recallirj their stcnr.y, tt;;Lr .v.
together. She reminisces about h:r
childhood in New Orleans anl of her
friends, former fm-rtds ar.d a f,,v
r.ollywood people. -
v ' , , ' n. r '- " ' i'- '
appearance before the Kcu o l..-
cr;:.cru:::i-i iir: -n u
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Spy ""-JjC
X.
in;i the McCarthy era. IteUman ap-
peared before the coramitteti end :
to;k the Fifth Amendment against
f? c 1 fi r.cri m i n at i on, fr-ayiii-j the r.c.v
f '.;ous line, "I car.net and will net
cut my conscience to fit this year's
Ildhtan was not a politico per--.
r:z, iut &t& ha;l tlmnz bulkti, a
i i:cr::.r.a!ltv.
L'rvf r, Ca! Jr.cll has said, MUI-
.V..:: was tee&L!y fentiniac. Ilsr
faal was a very femir.ine soul z?d
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r.;;,r.:tSii Jv,:ihvvor;:cn. . . she
3 'as very much a TM.1' :
Ar. J so it was, in part, IIcllmEn's
"J ;pp fernir.irity," a trait not cftca
a::;sociated with the feisty, outspoken
author, that attracted 52-year-old
C. V.veil to the fby.
; . Caldwell's husband, Broadway
rrcdiscer and director Robert White
lzt dircct$",LiS'ian.Mi." :;:
; Iho husband anj wife tea:ti have
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p.m. Tickets ?re $15 and $11 for the
pallic and half-price for UNL stu-
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