Withthetimes
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page 10 daily nebraskan thursday, September 11, 1980 Roxy Music albums are changing withthe times the with the By McCabe creative instrumentals and rhythms keep such songs is allowed to get into rhythmic interchanges Casey title track and it from under their own weight. keyboards on the "My Only Love," collapsing the best moments. Flesh and Blood is not the type of album that makes for some of inspires Manzanera's takes on the critical analysis the way Roxy Music albums of the past Ethereal feel On "Over You," guitar mid-sixtie- s sound. All the more interest-ing- . decade used to. Ferry's keyboards have a consistantly ethereal feel Byrds' "twang" art-roc- the is a cover of the Well times have changed, and apparently so has Roxy throughout the album, adding that progressive k considering following Byrds' "art-rock- Miles which sounds like the Music. The experimental " quality of their past flavor to otherwise tame arrangements. Phil Manzanera, classic "Eight High," nothing more like Music than some ot efforts probably wouldn't make many waves if released an excellant guitarist, is in a supportive role more often Byrds and perhaps Roxy today, since hordes of new bands are trying new twists than in the spotlight on Flesh and Blood. Yet when he Ferry's composition. on the grounds broken by other artists. And out of all this, little ever surfaces to reach the public's attention. Flesh and Blood is Roxy Music's first album for the 80's. While the band still retains an enigmatic British quality about them, they have become progressively sleeker, better contrived and easier to listen to for those outside their cult following. Disbanded in 1977 This is the second l.p. for the group since reuniting after a short disbanding in 1977. Back in place are lead vocalist Bryan Ferry, guitarist Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay on sax. Again Roxy Music comes off as less of a band and more of a vehicle for Ferry, whose emotive, crooning voice sets a standard for any fast mellowinf, slightly ec- centric, romantic ex-rock- This is a label that admitted- ly covers few in the music business (though Paul McCart- ney could certainly fit the bill). Because FerryRoxy Music have a talent for creating a certain musical mystique, they can get away with songs that hover perilously close to a middle of the road format. Roxy's hits have been relatively few in America, while they enjoy almost a reverence back home in England. Their "hits" here in the states have progressed from "Leve is a Drag" off Siren, a pulsating string adouble entendres, to "Dance Away" from Manifesto, a grand-ois- e ballad of lost love. Well-produc- ed song Taking a gradiose step further is "Oh Yeah," the single offering from Flesh and Blood. A lush, well-produc- ed song, it features Ferry drawing out the melancholy high-scho- ol lyrics for all they're worth. It seems to be a song about itself (the chorus goes "they're playing 'oh yeah' on the radio) and follows a formula that Ferry seems fond of; falling in love in the first stanza, getting more intense in the second stanza, then getting burned and reminiscing about it for a grand finale. Ferry wrote the eight original tunes on the album and they all deal with jaded, one-side- d love affairs. Lines like "..jf only dreams came true I could even pretend 1 - :1 - - I'll fall in love .. That again" or "your sweet lips tell me J I , there's no chance no more romance-ove- r you" permeate Album cower courtesy Atlantic Recording Corp. the album. Only Ferry's effectively haunting voice, 'Flesh and Blood' the latest effort from Roxy Music Paintings' deceptive simplicity laments destruction in life he By Penelope Smith ing support" his owes to music chromatica, ideas of color and of life." "When I first came here I ran into a and his awareness 'and of For his series of seasonal "Skies" Butt perception quotation from Francis Bacon that put Art professor Gail Butt's exhibition of natural forces, whether in his garden or decided to get his feet "off the earth" and me onto this. demands more than a casual the move paintings watching skyline. into "color and joy." He said, I don't enquire the form glance. It requires a relationship. The Butt said he thinks that one of the "When you move to the Great Plains of a lion' or an oak, the form of multisen-soril- enquire viewer must allow himself to be y more important sets of paintings in the the first things you notice are our skies. cold and hot."When-w- e define form'as exhibition is the permeated with atmospheres of series of five 'missa" They're the most beautiful part. For edges or recognizable we or shapes ignore the coolness and of heat, impressions of masses, that were inspired by musi- example, October with its purple and azure true meaning of form." cal dampness clinging to a March wind and dry Baroque masses. blues and creamy clouds... Butt said form comes from been ' originally summer breezes. "I've working on the "mass" The "skies paintings use abstract im- the Sanskrit word "dharma" and means or "missa" series of five works on and pressionism which Butt describes as softer "law" or "order." off for about 30 years now," explain-e- d than expressionism, and his own Western Butt. I've come to believe some that interpretations of calligraphy utilizing "Form only exists in our minds. If you of the best music has been put into masses. color and bold decisive brush strokes to pour concrete and take the form because away you Partly of religious motivation, create a sense of atmospheric force. still have the steps he said. The works an examination of partly because such as did These are often in three require people Hadyn sky paintings The anzone accompanying the paint- form and technique and seem at first to be not feel compelled to please secular horizontal Butt said the hori- layers. that ings are a result of the sympathetic and em-pathe- tic simple and spontaneous. If one audiences. zon is a theme of Midwestern purely v major artists. feelings Butt has for people sits and one sees the turbulence of "I to concentrate on last He has created his own looks, began Hadyn's horizontal quality around him. There are many and raised lavender that is a storm three masses for In with the above superficial paint lip my paintings. the early space the clouds, the storm things that bother him, he said, such as a cloud. Beneath the cloud are soft undulat- 50s I could two the clouds and wind only get or three of the and rain below. decline in workmanship and but washes their fineness accen- five basic movements I could service,, ing of sunlight, painted; Butt said he does not agree that reality what concerns him the most is the disin- with indistinct never visualize or tuated pencil pattern. complete the entire is m the "edges" of a work. This is exem- tegration of society. These paintings seem to stress order and thing." plified in the calligraphic form of the Butt, an oriental art in the historian, spent the beauty of cyclic rejuvenation paintings, wherein a cloud is not in the for some time in Japan and the difference in addition in the 'Ideas ofcolor and life universe. But in paintings form of a cloud per se, but it possesses the two cultures helped him to under- the viewer must deal with Butt's canzone Butt said depression helped stimulate the essence of a cloud. stand our own culture. for what he the the masses or songs of "Lamentation" completion of by helping "In the Orient I learned the belief that drive 20th him to search for sees as the destructive of meaning beyond the c Symbolic meaning every Individual lives three simultaneous America. "obliteration" and "void" he mentions - century "A painting is very much internal. It existences; the personal, the family or the motivation and the in the canzone. and Butt spoke of has how when and why and where, but peer group, and the state oi cultural hii and poems. "life goes on in whatever gastly or it also has meaning behind paintings symbolic meaning. There is a feeling of strong coEapse in our peculiar way, but there is a parallel What makes storm or the sun i is light country, and we are experiencing the pro- Artistic motivation support mechanism, whether God or cul- and said Butt. color," To make the sun gressive degeneration of the family deal of his artistic motivation tural," he said. This is the first .time I've a circular line is idiotic A great compass and ButtV work is now -- the emotional stand all five completed. are showing at tnd what he calls "the gotten They light Sheldon Art Gallery. ..