Arts ©Entertainment
Friday, February 3, 1995 Page 9
Grant fans
excited for
good reason
By John Fulwider
Staff Reporter
Eva Nekovar likes to go against the
musical flow when she’s driving in her
home state of California.
“Usually people have low bass music
blasting,” the freshman'broadcasting
major said. “And here we are blasting
Amy Grant.”
Nekovar said she’s been blasting Grant
since sixth grade, when a friend gave her
Grant’s “Lead Me On” compact disc.
So Nekovar is pretty excited about
Amy Grant’s concert tonight at 8 p.m. in
Pershing Auditorium.
So are a lot of other people, appar
ently. The concert sold out—more than
6,000 tickets—in six weeks, said Derek
Anderson, Pershing spokesman.
And they have reason to be excited.
Grant will be performing.songs from her
hugely popular “House of Love” album,
which has gone platinum since its Au
gust release.
She’ll also offer songs from her previ
ous album, “Heart in Motion,” which
sold more than four million copies and
spent 52 consecutive weeks on the Bill
board Top 200 Album Chart.
Grant will perform her specialty, what
she has called “basic and true” pop mu
sic, because that’s what she does best.
Grant has diverse musical roots. She
grew up in the 1970s listening to James
Taylor, Carole King, Jethro Tull and the
Beatles. In high school she discovered
R&B music, listening to Aretha Franklin,
the Jackson 5 and Joni Mitchell.
A key to the success of “House of
Love” has been the title song. The album
version features a duet with country music
star Vince Gill.
But country fans may be disappointed
tonight. Gill is not scheduled to make an
appearance.
Drummer
recovers,
beats on
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
Jazz drummer T.S. Monk canceled his
Lied Center performance last February be
cause of what he thought was a simple case
of mononucleosis.
Days later, he discovered that he had
Bell’s Palsy, a disease that paralyzed all his
facial muscles.
For someone who likes to talk as much as
Monk does, Bell’s Palsy was a serious ob
stacle. But through charisma, devotion and
determination, Monk overcame his disease
and is talking up a storm.
“I’m back on line. I had to come back,
because I like to be loved,” he said in a
telephone interview. “When I thought I was
going to be able to come there (Lincoln) last
year, I said I was going to tear the roof off the
joint.
“That was no j i ve. How can a guy tell you
all that and not show? I’m coming back to
rock the house.”
Monk will perform at the Lied Center
with Moore by Four Saturday, and nobody
could be happier about it than Monk.
After diagnosing Monk with Bell’s Palsy
last year, doctors kept Monk under observa
tion for months and treated him with medi
cation and therapy. Monk said he now has
control of more than 90 percent of his facial
muscles.
Not one muscle moved in my face for
four months,” he said. “It was a frightening
and devastating experience.”
Bell’s Palsy is a disease without much
definition, Monk said, so he didn’t know
when he would recover. Monk didn’t wait
around to find out. He began practicing
more. At age 44, he had the opportunity to
practice like he practiced when he was 14.
“There was four feet of snow on the
ground outside. I wasn’t going anywhere,”
he said.
Sick of being a recluse, Monk said, he
finally accepted an offer to play at Carnegie
Hall in May.
“I did that gig with my face hanging
down and not being able to talk,” he said.
Since then, Monk has toured everywhere
from Puerto Rico to Iowa City, Iowa. He was
recently on the cover of Downbeat maga
zine and just finished a vocal competition in
Washington D.C.
Just days before his Lincoln performance,
Monk will be in South America on a good
will tour sponsored by the U.S. government.
“CBS Sunday Morning” is following him
Photo Courtesy of Blue Note Records
Jazz drummer T.S. Monk will appear at the Lied Center Saturday night.
around for a documentary, and he has a new
compact disc coming out in March called
“The Charm.”
“It’s been quite a busy year being a guy
who was sick enough for everyone to think
he wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “I’m
stormin’.”
Aside from educating people, Monk said
he wanted to make his concerts fun by
dancing and moving around the stage and
shouting to the audience.
“I want to talk, talk, talk, play my butt off
and give you a whole lot of different works,”
he said.
His goal is the same as it was last year, he
said, but he’s even more energized.
“I’m the guy that’s going to move jazz,”
he said, emphatically.
Monk said he wanted to sell and market
jazz, and the way to do that was to “talk the
media’s ear off.”
He doesn’t want to just make jazz popu
lar on the charts, he said; he has a higher
goal.
Monk’s trip to South America illustrates
his message.
“A lot of cats know the deal, but they
can’t explain it without bitterness and jeal
ousy,” he said. “... Jazz is the musical,
artistic embodiment of democracy and free
dom.”
“Jazz is more American than rock and
roll,” he said. “Jazz and country western
and hip hop are as American as apple pie.”
Jazz has been too boring in the past, he
said.
“It’s like a guy standing there with a
straight face, and his old lady’s kissing him,
and he’s still standing there with a straight
face,” he said. “After a while, she stops
kissing.”
Monk said he wanted to change that
image by making people laugh, cry and
think during his concerts.
“You will leave my concert with a smile
on your face. You had a good time, and you
had fun,” he said. “This is not about alesson
in history. This is not a lesson in musical
theory. It’s me doing something that you
wish you could do.”
Monk will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets are $22, $ 18 and $ 14, and are half
price for students.
Musicians together equal more
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
Take four vocalists and five in
strumentalists and mix in a sam
pling of gospel, jazz, pop and the
ater, and the result is a little bit
more.
Moore by Four, that is.
This Minneapolis-based, jazz
group, composed ofvocalists Steve
Faison, Yolanda Bruce, Ginger
Commodore and Connie Evingson
and directed by pianist Sanford
Moore, will perform in Lincoln
this weekend.
•Instrumentalists Jay Young and
Robert Commodore will also ac
company the group.
Evingson, at home after a short
tour in Italy, said Moore by Four
may have four separate voices, but
the group worked as a unit.
“Ensemble singing, by its very
nature, requires a certain amount
of sensitivity to each other in terms
of dynamics and blend,” she said.
“You have to listen to each other
“The friendships just grow deeper. We’ve been
togetherfor a long time, and we’re pretty
attached. ”
■
CONNIE EVINQSON
Moore by Four vocalist
and create the best sound you can
with four voices.”
A certain chemistry makes the
group come alive, she said.
“The friendships just grow
deeper,” she said. “We’ve been
together for a long time, and we’re
pretty attached.”
As the years go by, Evingson
said, the group members try to chal
lenge themselves with new material.
All four singers have theatrical back
grounds, she said, and want to try
more musical theater and possibly a
jazz version of an opera.
Jazzing things up is one of
Moore by Four’s specialties.
The group is often compared to
the jazz styles of the ’30s and ’40s
and Manhattan Transfer, but
Evingson said the similarity ends
where the performance begins.
Moore by Four modernizes its
style by using lighting and other
special effects both on and off stage,
she said.
Moore by Four will perform at
the Lied Center Saturday at 8 p.m.
Tickets are are $22, $18 and $14,
and are half-price for students.
Echoing Green’s free show
one option for live music
From Staff Reports
Lincoln band Echoing Green
will give a free show at
Knickerbockers, 901 O St., Sat
urday night.
Vocalist Andrew Snook de
scribed the band’s music as
“harder or heavier alternative,
guitar-oriented, yet still melodic.”
Echoing Green is composed of
Snook, guitarist Clint Lawrence,
bassist Nathan Woodhams and
drummer Andy Scheerger.
The band has no recordings
available, he said, but has re
corded some songs in Los Ange
les to send out to clubs and record
companies.
When band members booked
Saturday’s show, they requested
not to have a cover charge.
“We play there
(Knickerbockers) pretty fre
quently, and I think people turn
away from the $3 cover,” Snook
said. “I would rather play for
more people than make money
from the show.”
Knickerbockers also will host
Think and Red Max on Friday.
Grimace will open for Echoing
Green Saturday.
Le Cafe Shakes, 1418 O St.,
will have Rascal Basket and
Blaster Friday and Omaha’s
Mousetrap and Fisher Saturday.
This weekend at the Hurri
cane, 1118 O St., Sinister Dane
will play Friday, and Punkinhead
will play Saturday. Blaster will
play Sunday with One Shot Won
der in a free 19 and over show.
Lie Awake will give free shows
at P.O. Pears, 322 S. Ninth St.,
Friday and Saturday nights.
And at the Zoo Bar, 136 N.
14th St., Little Mike and the Tor
nados will play Friday and Satur
day nights.
