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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 22, 1992)
Arts@Entertainment Regional bands seek out repairs at Lincoln shop Tress rod stress upholds Dietze reputation By Jill O’Brien Staff Reporter If you wander into Dietze Music House at 1208 O St., walk past the drum sets and music sheet bins to the back of the store, there’s a door lead ing up a flight of stairs. Stop for a breath on the second floor landing and you’ll sec a sign, “GUITAR SHOP is through the Re pair Shop.” The Repair Shop, located on the third floor, is home for an odd assort ment of everyday tools and sandpa per, guitar necks and bodies, music newspapers and a Vintage Guitar magazine. On one table, a slack of vulnerable stringed basses wail for repairs and adjustments. Behind the customer counter, Jon Taylor wears a baseball cap back wards and adjusts the tress rod in the neck of an electric Ibanez, guitar. A tress rod allows musicians to compen sate for the pressure of the strings, he said. Taylor, a 1986 journalism gradu ate of the University of Ncbraska Lincoln, said he used to be a roving reporter for the Council Bluffs Nonparicl. Now he repairs guitars. With this job, he said, he can lake time off if he needs to keep up w ith his roving band — Mercy Rule. “It’s the best job in town,” he said. “It’s really fun. I didn’t grow up to be a guitar repair man, but stumbled or to it.” He started working at Dietze as ar apprentice learning the guitar rcpaii trade. “Doing grunt work,” he said. At first, he sanded and repaired guitars one day a week while helping to renovate the Pro Shop on the third floor. Eighteen months later, Taylor slipped into the repair position. 4 Having the best job in town doesn’t mean there’s any less stress on the job. Dictzc'has a reputation to uphold, he said, and every repair must be perfect. If he’s not careful, he can totally wreck a guitar when he’s try ing to fix it, he said, adding that he hasn’t wrecked a guitar yet. He does everything from “day-to day oil change repairs” on guitars to customizing, restoration, and build ing electric guitar bodies from scrap, he said. Pointing to a big chunk of ma hogany, he explained how mahogany was used for guitar bodies. When musicians arc guitar shopping, and fail to find suited for their needs, they may realize what they really need is a custom-made instrument, he said. Taylor said he enjoyed working closely with'customers. When some one brings in wounded guitars, he said he shows them what needs to be done and how he will do it. He is also learning the ropes about other stringed insirumcnts from Bob Popek, Dietze’s long-time lutenist and manager of the stringed instrument repair. Popek has worked at Dietze ever since the Repair Shop opened in 1976. At that time, only one salesman was doing the string adjustments, Popek said, but the volume of busi ness grew too much. It became neces sary to expand into a repair shop, he said, plus it gave Dietze an edge over other music stores. “We’re the only music store here in Lincoln that has a full-range shop,” he said. Taylor repairs guitars, Popek re stores stringed instruments ranging from symphony basses to electric guitars. “Right now there’s three of us here p doing the work,” Popek said. “We c r have one high school student, Kevin h Lavender. He docs some of the light d duty work.” t Meanwhile, Steve Bustccd, bass Julia Mikolajcik/DN Jon Taylor prepares a guitar for refinishing at the Dietze Music House. Taylor has been working there for three years. layer for High Heel and the Sneak rs, wails for him to finish adjusting is Tobias guitar. Bustccd said he rove up from Omaha because he usted Popek’s work. “People arc more picky about their guitars than anything else,” Taylor said. Usually, on Wednesday and Thurs days, quite a few regional band mem bers show up at the shop, Popek said. They may not have anything wrong with their equipment, but they want it checked out. “Because,” he said, “they may be going somewhere off the other side of See GUITAR on 10 Science fiction anthology celebrates authors of powerful, timeless stories “The Great SF Stories: 25” Edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg DAW Books ' By Sam S. Kepfield Staff Reporter In 1979, Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg began what has since become rccogni/cd as the definitive anthology of the Golden Age of Sci ence Fiction, which began in 1939. They took the best stories pub lished in the magazines for one year and collected them in one volume. The talent thrown together was truly amazing. The anthological group includes Robert Hcinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Clifford Simak, Robert Silvcrbcrg and talents such as Ross Rocklynne, John D. Mac Donald and Eric Frank Russell. This volume marks the last entry in the series, as originally planned. In a manner, the timing is appropriate, i coming as it docs on the heels of t Asimov’s death in April. t The stories arc truly unforgettable, tested by lime for their power to pro- j vokc and entertain. Poul Anderson’s “No Truce With Kings” is a war story that packs a punch about a fulurQ America at war i with itself. 1 Courtesy of TOR Science Fiction Pauline Ashwell’s “Unwillingly to Earth." Alfred BcstcrVThcy Don’t Make ,ife Like They Used To” is one of the est post-holocaust stories ever writ en. Roger Zelazny’s “A Rose for icclesiastcs” is a bittersweet talc of tlicn love and of religious prophecy. ‘‘Turn Off the Sky” by Ray Nelson s an ultimately tragic love story bc ween an anarchist and the last pros titutc in the world. Silverberg’s “The Pain Peddlers” should be read during commercial breaks on “I Witness Video,” “Code 3” or “Rescue 911.” This is the rare anthology, as the other volumes in the series have been — every story is a classic, with true staying power. Read it and discover the power of science fiction to convey ideas, or to entertain. Black erotica literature reads similar to other sexual works “Erotique Noire/Black Erotica” Edited by Miriam DeCosta Willis, Reginald Martin and Roseann P. Bell Doubleday Books By Mark Baldridge Senior Editor This collection of erotic stories, poems and anecdotes— if it proves anything—proves this: Black writ ers write about sex in just the same way as white writers do. This is a little disappointing; one expects a difference. At least the editors appeared to — they collected erotica entirely from black writers, enough to fill 440 pages. But probably all Western writ ers write about sex in sim ilar terms. It’s difficult at limes to tell, just by reading, any one author of erotica from another. And erotica seems decidedly difficult to write. Though “Erotique Noirc/Black Erotica”boasts some talented writ ers, among them Audrc Lordc and Alice Walker, the overall effect is the same as that of most literary erotica: vaguely unsatisfying. No matter how probable the details, something always seems to be missing, to get lost along the way. What erotic literature attempts to do is isolate or at least feature the sexual energy of a story. This is a difficult trick to pull off. So much of what is exciting about a sexual encounter has noth ing directly to do with copulation as such. More important in any sexual act is an entire sexual context. All characters, if they arc to seem quite human, must have a large and mostly incommunicable sexual his tory that informs and energizes the moment. This appears astonishingly dif ficult to portray in print. Some of the writers here, as elsewhere, come right out and tell you, “So-and-so’s heart was broken by a man with a wooden leg, so wooden legs*-are extremely attractive to her,” in the worst kind of cxposilional slog. But what’s a writer to do? Any other approach will have to rely ort stock clichd — popular and empty images of sex. It seems that the first thing to go by the board in erotic fiction is emotional content. And it’s easy to see why: One wants erotica, not a love story. But it is emotional context we miss in most of these works and in erotica in general. Maybe it’s like anything: it takes a certain genius to pull off a really good story or poem without relying too much on formula — a genius sadly rare to the .world of erotic letters.
