1982_05 The Daily Collegian May 1982

              Pate 12-th- Daily CollefUn—May 7, I9S2
Radio
continued from page II
ihe post-Saturday Night Fever days."
The Recording Industry Association
now suggests there's a new slump. Record
shipments haven't improved since 1980,
ihe R1A reports, and future growth is
imperilled not only by pirate records and
taping, but by home video games, which
are now viewed as competitors for entertainment dollars.
In tandem with the breakup of the
almost-monolithic rock audience of ten
years ago—the baby boomers who bourlit
three albums at a time—those trends have
left stations that used to score high in
ratings sweeps suddenly short of listeners.
The record industry responded by singing fewer new bands—a phenomenon that
spawned new labels like Stiff and IRS to
accommodate the bands—and aiming at
the nostalgia market.
Radio did the same thing. Many stations jumped to tamer, safer and more
formal formats. They reduced the number
of records on their playlists. and hired
consultants to assess audience preferences.
Consultants, grouses a staffer at IRS
Records, "run radio."
"I don't know who they talk to," Kirk-
land laments. "They must call up young
housewives in their, early thirties with
three kids, and ask them what they like,
and of course they say they like what they
know: sixties stuff*
According to John Gorman, program
director at Cleveland's WMMS-FM. 40
percent of the music heard on FM radio
was recorded during the years 1967-1974.
The angry, often harsh sound of new wave
music just is not a statistical favorite.
College stations thus represent the only
places left to introduce the new music. The
stations themselves reportedly have been
receptive to the new attention.
The colleges have always sought out
the new music," says Will Botwin, once of
Capitol's college department and now
with Side One Management, which specializes in promoting acts to campus
audiences.
"They are a huge market that has never
been intelligently exploited." he adds.
Botwin says he talks to 200 radio stations a week, compiling playlists and
promoting groups that in the past year
have included the GoGos and Joan Jett,
both currently in the top ten.
"Colleges are like little cities." he explains. "You can flood them with media
and promote the hell out of a group, and
sell records."
CBS Records probably has the most
extensive college promotion department,
which works with some 320 stations (down
from Ihe 600-plus nations of the mid-
seventies). \ \
Department chief- Barry Levine describes his job as "creating rbuzz of awareness for groups scorned by commercial
radio."
Levine did it most recently for Adam
and the Ants, a band almost entirely shut
out of FM radio until it began attracting a
campus following.
Within months of the beginning of
Levine's campaign, the Ants were number
three on college charts, "with sales of
110.000. The performance finaIly seduced
consultants to recommend putting the
eroup on commercial radio playlists.
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Three characters
spin through sex,death
in 'Voices of the Dead'
Autran Dourado, The Voices of th* Dead.
New York. Taplinger. 247 pp. $10.95.
hardcover.
The Voices of the Dead, originally
entitled Opera dos Mortos. is a heavily
baroque tale ofa reclusive, nervously sensual woman. Rosalina Cota. and the opulent house that contains her.
The work is relentlessly tragic with the
voices of three main characters spilling
through the pages in a rushing, obsessive
stream of consciousness. There's Qui-
quina. Kosalina's aging, mute maid, who
bars the doors of the house in the same
Book Review
way that Cerberus bars the entrance to
hell. There's Kosalina. who walks the hallways ofa death-ridden mansion, harbouring a stale resentment for the townsfolk
due to a political feud between her late
father and the residents; who shuts off her
house and herself from the world, spending her days forming and pressing silk
flowers and her nights drinking heavily
alone in her room. And there's Jose Feli-
ciano. a one-eyed wanderer, nicknamed
Joey Bird, who enters the mansion as a
handy man and becomes consumed by
lust for Rosalina in a place where sexuality and death arc irrevocably bound. The
narratives of each character are offset by
ihe chorus—the communal voice of the
curious, gossiping townsfolk—whose
comments accelerate and off-set the action, giving this Faulkncrian drama a sobering, everyday context.
Dourado draws the reader into a world
of compulsions, where a small set of
memories is approached and examined,
again and again, often in precisely the
same language and style, like an incantation. We're hypnotized into a realm where
everyday life is predictable and sleepy but
where individual spirits are consumed by
perpetual hauntings. The chorus voice
warns us of this at the beginning. "The
scene was repeated, we witnessed it with
our minds back in the past. The scene was
repeated, everything as before."
Joey Bird.anoutsidertothesmall Brazilian town, brings, like a burdensome set
of luggage, his own unresolved voices of
ihe dead, only to confront Rosalina. who
stopped all the clocks in ihe house when
her father died, who lives in the death
space, absorbed in a ritualistic pattern of
turmoiled thought and perfunctory action.
Their meeting leads to a complete disruption of stability—the re-opening of old
madnesses and wounds.
Dourado's prose is often compelling
but it exudes a suffocating dreariness in its
excessive reliance upon the re-circling of
symbols and events. The narrative's convolutions and play-backs create such a
tension in the reading that we are relieved
when a resolution, no matter how appalling, has been discovered so that the characters can disperse into the night or into
death, far from the strangle-hold that
ihcir intertwining neuroses have engendered.
Autran Dourado. who lives in Rio de
Janeiro, has been publishing fiction since
1947, and has been hailed as a major voice
in Latin American literature. John Parker,
his translator, has done an admirable job
on the stylistically difficult Voices of the
Dead, which has gone through six editions in Portuguese since its appearance in
1967.
ii
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May 7, 19S2—the Daily Collegian-Page 13
.Theatre
Grease total entertainment from A to Z
By Leo N. Holier
Daily Colk-gUn Staff Writer
Relearning the ABC's in college.
A is for absolutely entcrtai ning. B is for
brightly brilliant. And C is for cute, comical and clever.
CSUFs production of Grease' is all or
these and more.
It usually is a difficult job to tate on a
stage play that has been adapted for the
big Hollywood screen. People will always
compare the live on stage version to the
film.
And with the case of 'Grease,* the film
version is the number one movie musical
at the box office.
The stage production differs greatly from
the screen adaptation. Musical numbers
from the stage version were discarded in
the film for more commercial tunes written by Frankic Valli.
Songs unfamiliar to many of the viewers were performed and appreciated
equally as those the audience previously
knew.
It was even the first time many viewers
actually beard the Rydcll High School
Alma Mater.
And other musical highlights included a
song entitled 'Mooning* and 'All Choked
Up* replaced the John Travolta, Olivia
Newton-John duet 'You're the One That I
Want.*
Jacqueline Antaramian played Sandy
and Larry Siarrh took the title role of
Danny Zuko.
Antaramian and Starrh were delightful
as the love struck couple forced to live
within their accepted groups—Sandy pure
and true and Danny as the tough macho
gang leader whose sexual exploits are
overblown.
In the difficult role of Sandy—having
to handle a majority of the musical
numbers including two solos and two
duets—Antaramian performs well.
Supporting characters, Rixxo and Ken-
ickie played by Kelly Rippletoe and Dar-
ryl Simonian. were entertaining.
Rippletoe, who plays the leader of the
Pink Ladies, did a marvelous job and
handled Mr solo There are Worse Things
I Could Do* as well if not better than the
film's star Stockard Channing-
Simonian, Starrh and the rest of the
Burger Palace Boys, Mike Mendonsa,
Paul Klein and Myfes Mayfield, aU do a
great job handling the difficult choreography but none of them have a vocal
range equal to their female couterpaits.   -
Jan, Marty and Frenchy, the rest of the
Pink Ladies played by Julia Andrews,
Victoria Campbell Maria Cheek, are all
exhilarating characters full of life and
energy on stage.
Director Charles Randall can be proud
of his entourage. Under his skillful eye,
the cast has grown to become a complete
team that works well together.
Vocal director Mark Ribera bad an
extremely tough job when he first took on
the 'Grease* project. Through his coaching, the men have improved 400 times
over the first rehearsal. The women in the
cast have also improved, but Ribera didn't
need to produce the same miracles for
them.
.Melanie Snyder produced and collaborated some fine choreography. The dancing in 'Grease* is superb and, considering
the performers are only college students.
Sec CREASE pace"*
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Aug. 22-28, 1982
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