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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 6, 1978)
Jazz great Gillespie sets two Eugene performances John Birks ‘Dizzy' Gillespie is the greatest trumpet player the world has seen,” said the late Rolling Stone columnist Ralph J. Gleason. Gillespie, generally considered to be one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz, will appear at The Place Monday Dizzy Gillespie and Tuesday for two shows each night. The 60-year-old Gillespie has been a band leader since his early twenties, after playing with such men as Earl Hines and Cab Calloway. He was largely responsible for the transition from swing to more pro gressive jazz, and also introduced African, Cuban and oriental elements into his music. "Dizzy, along with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, and with the assistance of a couple of others, extended the whole swing era, pre-free-form jazz, to its widest boundaries,’’ says Gleason. "They did all you could do with set chord patterns, set time signatures and the melody of the pop song as a basis for improvisation.” Gillespie's students have included the members of the Modem Jazz Quartet, Lalo Schifrin, Quincy Jones, Uusef Lateef and James Moody. He is an annual guest of the American Wind Symphony in Pittsburgh, and also lectures on campuses across the country. He is a member of the jazz hall of fame. Show times both evenings are 8 and 11 p.m. Tickets are $4.50, and are available at the Sun Shop, Everybody’s Records and The Place. Award winner Tom Scott takes music to Ballroom Grammy Award winner Tom Scott will make his first Eugene concert appear ance Sunday at 8 p.m. in the EMU Ball room. At only 29 years of age, Scott is one of the most respected musicians in America today. A composer, arranger and jazz/pop musician, Scott is most noted for his saxophone work. He has recorded nine albums since 1967, two of which were Grammy nominees. A foun der of the L.A. Express, Scott recorded an album with that group in 1973 (Tom Scott and the L.A. Express). Scott has underscored several televi sion shows including Baretta and Aspen, and the theme from Starsky and Hutch, which appears on his latest album, Blowin’ It out. His film scores include Class of '63, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Sidecar Racer. A Los Angeles native, Scott’s father composed themes for Lassie and Dragnet series. Scott began his film scores at age 16. He has also accumu lated an impressive list of album work with several name performers. For his work as an arranger on Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark, Scott took a Grammy Award in 1974. He has also been featured on Barbara Streisand s Butterfly and A Star is Born, Carole King's Jazz Man, Steely Dan’s Aja, and Ringo Starr's Oh, My, My. Scott will be accompanied by his four-piece band. Scott’s special guests opening the event will be the University’s own Charles Dowd Trio. Dowd, an assist ant professor of music, specialized in percussion. He will be playing vib raphone along with David Hudson on electric bass and James Reinking on drums and percussion. Tickets for the event, sponsored by the EMU Cultural Forum, are $4 for Uni versity students and $6 for the general public and are available at the EMU Main Desk, the Sun Shop, and Everybody's Records. On the night of the concert tickets will be sold at the EMU Main Desk only. Death-wish dominates new Vidal effort By Gore Vidal 1978, Random House $10 hardback Vidal’s latest novel represents an enormous death-wish... a death-wish for the entire human race, courtesy of the author. Vidal, never one to garnish reality with pie-in-the-sky optimism, spices his story with enough insight and sarcasm to make Kalki enjoyable — but not memorable. While Vidal’s novel concerns it self with everything from Lesbians to biological/chemical warfare, the book seems most intent upon squeezing a little literary juice from Karl Marx’s famous state ment about religion being the opiate of the masses.’’ The au thor glibly demonstrates how an organized religion can front for an international dope ring, thereby implying that drug-users and true believers may share many of the same spiritual qualities. The narrator of Kalki, and its heroine, is Teddy Ottinger, a bi sexual aviatrix who worships Amelia Earhart and typifies women’s liberation by paying alimony to her husband. Because of money problems, Teddy takes presages the destruction of mar kind. Charismatic and handsome Kelly attracts millions of followers Teddy’s assignment is to discove the connection between drug; and Kelly’s apocalyptir prophecies. By BRUCE CAMPBELL a newspaper assignment to inter view an alleged guru-drug king in Katmandu, Nepal, named James Kelly. Kelly, an ex-Vietnam ser viceman, claims he is Kalki, the final incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, and that his presence In the fashion of so much mod em writing, Vidal litters his novel with many real-life contemporary personalities. And so the author's fictional creations freely cavort with the likes of Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Merv Griffin and Jimmy Carter (Teddy calls him a "creeping Jesus” and a “born again redneck"). As the plot snakes through in creasingly ludicrous situations, Teddy takes time to philosophize. In the land of the vibrator," she says, “the bisexual woman is queen; and heterosexual man on r the ropes.” Teddy even touches upon the eroticism of the Hindu religion, deciding that depicting God as a human sexual organ is a swell . idea: “Christians had done that in the twelfth century,” she en thuses. "God the father was the penis, the son was the scrotum, the holy ghost was the ejacula tion.’’ She also takes a few swipes at Erica Jong and her cult of the "Big O " “Girls who feared flying de cided to race blindly through zip less fucks,” Teddy declares. Teddy gradually becomes sucked into the inner circles of the Kalki-cult (after a sexual tryst with Kelly). And with a stinging sense of misanthropy, Vidal continually stocks his plot with cold, caustic caricatures of modern existence: doped-up derelicts, cripples, pros titutes, vicious politicians, insane narcotics agents, Jesus freaks and sniveling journalists, all of whom embody a futile lust for sur vival in an absurd world. Vidal discerns tragedy in this situation. But only a tragedy of far cical proportions. He suggests that humanity may be the genetic innuendo of some cosmic and sadistic joke. As Kelly states, “Creation is without logic. De struction is without logic.” But other writers have explored these themes with greater force, clarity and compassion. Vidal tries to grow second-rate ideas in the tired soil of modem fiction. From Voltaire to Vonnegut, writers have recorded the growth of alienation, absurdity and despair with more artistic integrity than Vidal's sar donic platitudes can muster. Even Vidal's coy assertion that the monkeys shall inherit the earth is especially bereft of originality. Ironically, he is usually more in teresting than his books. The au thor of such borderline best sellers as The City and the Pillar, Messiah, Myra Breckenridge Burr, and 1876, Vidal seems to have milked dry his imagination. But his reputation has been rein forced by his witty conversation on talk shows and much-publicized spats with other authors. Despite his residence in Italy, Vidal is still a fixture of American society. His vulture-like impati ence for the demise of the West ern World never fails to cause sheer consternation in conserva tive cirdes. Somebody once said tha t|f Gore Vida! didn’t exist, then William Buckley would have to in vent him. Feet in the sand make footprints. Feet in Birkenstock fmtwear do the • same thing. Fhe Birkenstock tooth*' _^J©“ressnrp sensitive, to mold r* tAv come your footprint ^ 50 "is barefoo difference. V© lot like walking i one very convenient V>u can walk in Birkenstock all year long. Let your feet make a place for themselves. Atrium (2nd floor) Mon-Sat 11-6 Repairs & Resol m3 687-0065 In Concert... Chile’s Musicians in Exile SUNDAY APRIL 16 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. EMU Ballroom — U of 0
