I
Collective Soul shines at Pershing tonight
•.' **• ■ ■ ' •■ ^ j ~ Courtesy Photo
COLLECTIVE SOUL brings its endearing rock holiness to Pershing Auditorium tonight in support of its widely
ignored album “Dosage.” From left, Collective Soul is Shane Evans, Ed Roland, Will Ihrpin, Ross Childress and
Dean Roland.
Radio-record-setting group rolls
into Lincoln armed with big hits
By Christopher Heine
Senior staff writer
Well, there is no doubt that you’ve
heard them before.
Collective Soul, a staple act of
1990s FM radio, set a record earlier
this year with more than 6,000 broad
cast plays in a week’s time for its song
“Heavy.”
The band is scheduled to perform
its rock-heavy, Electric Light
Orchestra-inspired batch ofsongs
from their new album “Dosage”
tonight at Pershing Auditorium.
: Collective Soul began its march
toward its arena-football-venue status
of rock stardom with the hit Single
“Shine.” The tune was named the No. 1
Hot Album Rock Track of 1994 by
Billboard Magazine. \ ? \
% “Shine” represented just a fraction
of the band’s success that year as
Collective Soul’s “Hints...” completed
a 76-week run on the Billboard 200.
The album went on to triple-plat
inum status and earned the band open
ing-tour slots that year for such formi
dable groups as Van Halen.
Collective Soul’s second, self
titled compact disc produced another
smashing financial success for the
group with the hit single, “December.”
The album was recorded in a cabin
deep within the kudzu-blanketed
Stockbridge, Ga.
“December” held the No. 1 chart
position for a staggering nine weeks in
1996.
; The group’s effort also rendered
two more No. 1 songs in “Where the
River Flows” and “The World I
Know.”
, They are the only two groups in
Concert Preview
The Facts 4PP
What: Collective Soul with Marvelous 3
Where: Pershing Auditorium,
226 Centennial Mall South
When: 7:30 p.m. today
Cost: $22.75
The Skinny: 1990s radio fave comes to
Lincoln with heavy, thick sound
pop music history to have such air play
in a week’s time.
Opening the show will be The
Marvelous 3, a goofy pop band touring
in support of its second record “Hey.”
Truth be told, Collective Soul isn’t
important music. Music critics will not
be referring to the original beauty of
“Dosage” the way they do The
Beatles’ “White Album” or even
Bruce Springsteen’s relatively obscure
“Greetings from Asbury Park”
Collective Soul is to R.E.M. or
Beck what Wmgs was to The Clash - a
band that makes a good act look even
better.
“Dosage” is an album that a well
versed music snob would fail to add to
his or her CD collection for a $5 gift
certificate to the coolest water hole in
town.
’ '"However, as Sonic Youth’s Kim
Gordon once said, the only way a band
can truly judge success is by how
many records it sells.
- The droves of graphically ugly T
shirts and bowed-out, high-top tennis
shoes downtown tonight will be visual
proof of Collective Soul’s popular suc
cess.
‘Affliction’ shows gritty,
pained view of man’s life
By Sam McKewon
Senior editor
-Mt
Paul Schrader’s “Affliction” is a
focused, honest film, as bleak and harsh
as the snowy landscape in which it takes
place.
It pulls no punches. It holds no real
secrets. It begins with a singular vision
and drives that notion toward a conclu
sion that is as harrowing as it is
inevitable.
At its core is an easily recognizable
morality - the power of a father’s influ
ence on a son-the
the novel by Russell Banks. It is the
story of Wade Whitehouse (Nick
Nolte), a second-rate sheriff in wintry
upstate New Hampshire who spends
more time as a crossing guard than he
does solving crime.
He’s not the typical cop, though.
Wade doubles as a worker for a land
scaping contractor (Holmes Osborne)
to make ends meet. He lives in a trailer.
He wears flannel sweatshirts and
raggedy coats on the job. He smokes
marijuana, drinks incessantly.
And behind that, Wade’s life stands
even worse. He’s pushed by almost
everyone. His
cornerstone or our
modem society, as
the film purports.
Put simply,
“Affliction” is a
masterpiece. It is a
vision inside the
human mind, its
soul and psyche -
the rare peephole
into an abyss of
our weaknesses - a
downward spiral
Film Review
tin facts
Title: Affliction’
Stars: Nick Nolte, James Cobum
Director: Paul Schrader
Rating: R (adult language, violence)
Grade: A+
Five Words: “Affliction’is a stunning
masterpiece
mind is half
clogged by his ex
wife (Mary Beth
Hurt), a distant,
cold woman who
took Wade’s equal
ly distant, cold
daughter with her
when they
divorced.
There is a
backlash awaiting
all of it. Wade has
uuo aesoiauon ana
fear, or, as one character puts it: “Man’s
seduction into revenge.”
Schrader, who wrote an adaptation
of “Raging Bull” and penned “Taxi
Driver” and “The Mosquito Coast” for
the screen, tells the story here based on
wrath inside of
him; a pressure cooker is waiting to
blow. Nolte, in the best performance of
his long career, defies his typecast of the
leading man. He’s got a chewed-up face
here, a bad haircut, a slouchy demeanor.
But his presence looms larger in
“Affliction” than it ever has before.
His smile, more a sneer, chews up
the scenery. His outbursts of anger
are a sight to behold.
Wade’s anger is willed solely by
his father, Glen (James Coburn),
who actually looms larger than
Nolte does. Through flashbacks
(done beautifully by Schrader) and
present-time scenes, Glen’s charac
ter is fleshed out as less a man than a
force of hatred, tainting all those
around him.
Rarely has been a perfor- ^
mance so wickedly effective.
Coburn, who won the Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor in this
role, doesn’t speak his lines, he spits
them. He snarls, he growls, he cackles -
he’s a derivative of evil, a man who’s
been allowed to rule by fear and intimi
dation, a man who, when his wife dies,
is still taken in by the son who truly
hates him.
This slow, inevitable journey is the
core of‘Affliction,” but surrounding it
is a curious murder investigation that
serves as an impetus to Wade’s descent
It seems Wade’s real boss, Ewan
Trombley (Sean McCann), accidentally
shot himself with a rifle in a hunting
accident. Wade thinks otherwise.
Possibly it was a murder. There is some
evidence to support that, though it’s
clear the issue at hand in the film isn’t a
whodunit.
The
investigation is merely a catalyst for
Wade’s ultimate collapse. He perceives
the event as a chance to finally beat his
detractors; we know it will only sink
him further.
As dark as it is, “Affliction” delivers
a clear message through the narration of
the Wade’s brother Rolfe (Willem
Dafoe), the brother who got away to
Boston. An outsider really, Rolfe peers
inside at his brother, even tells Wade that
he’s been “afflicted” with the patriarch’s
anger. So strong is the bond between
father and son, sometimes they become
one and the same.
At its end, all of Wade’s problems
sink into one: his ex-wife, his daughter,
his girlfriend, his job, his getting pushed
around. These events swell a menacing
last
20 minutes from
Nolte, and they all lead to one place:
dad’s house. There are images not to be
forgotten, and they won’t be, thanks to
Nolte, Schrader and Cobum.
“Affliction” didn’t miss anything.
Nothing - nothing - has been left out
here. The film has a singular focus with
multiple characters and complex deriva
tions. It achieved all it aimed to achieve.
And it did so with unwavering perfor
mances and unflinching direction.
As a character study of human
nature, “Affliction” belongs with the
aforementioned ‘Taxi Driver,” “Raging
Bull” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona”
as classics not to be forgotten and to be
viewed again and again. It is, simply,
that good. Yes, it is.