Dakotah
Band wants regional audience
i
- ■■
Photo by Glen Ozonewood
Tuesday 's sunshine provided a good setting for outdoor music and Dakotah (I. to r.: Terry Bell, Mike Carney,
Willie Elliot, Mike Van Liew) delivered theirs at Lane Community College.
By GLEN OZONEWOOD
Oregon has a nationwide repu
tation as a hip place and Eugene
is the focus. The reputation at
tracts those living slightly askew of
the mainstream. It attracts people
like Terry Bell and Mike Carney,
guitar players for Dakotah.
Carney and Bell grew up in the
Midwest and stopped in Santa
Cruz for about four years before
ending up in Eugene. In their eight
years together the two have
played a lot of styles of music.
“We were a folk duo when we
first came to town," says Carney
as he restrings his guitar. “Then
we were kind of blue-grassy and
country, played country-rock and
ended up doing hard rock.”
For the past year the music's
been from a mixed bag. Bell cre
dits Dakotah s changing style with
keeping the band alive.
"Every time someone would
come in and see us we were dif
ferent than the last time. It kept
everybody guessing.”
Last summer Carney and Bell
took a vacation, did some writing,
and started their music on a new
route. In December, the vacation
ended and Dakotah started mov
ing again.
In the new band Mike Van Liew
was added on keyboards and
flute, Dennis Senoff and his drum
set were asked to join and Willy
Elliott, who had played with the
band earlier, brought his bass
back. Armed with new material
and an expanded sound, the band
is trying to forge a style with which
it feels comfortable.
"It’s not coming out yet,” admits
Carney. “That's why we’re trying
funk tunes, blues tunes, barber
shop quartet tunes and gospel
tunes. We re still playing the field
idiom-wise.”
Van Liew says it won’t be that
way forever.
"There is a point where if you
stay together long enough you
develop your own style. You play
a lot of different music and a lot of
different sounding tunes but peo
ple recognize your style.”
On electric pieces the band dis
plays a strong San Francisco in
fluence and while its guitar work is
solid, its vocals are weak. As the
group picks up speed, it’s playing
bars. That means music that can
be danced to.
"Recording is where we want to
end, to move into,” says Carney.
“But right now we’re trying to
make a living so we can start re
cording. Recording is expensive.
You gotta have money.”
Bars present the band with
non-musical challenges.
"We are playing the art of turn
ing on the crowd,” says Carney.
Would the band’s music be that
different outside the bars?
“We’d probably still play good,
jumping, boogie tunes,” predicts
Van Liew. “We might play looser,
more spontaneous, less up-town,
but it would be basically the
same.”
Dakotah got its start at the Black
Forest but would like to become a
regional band. The group says
Eugene just doesn’t have enough
clubs.
’“We want to center here and
move our greedy little fingers
everywhere we can,” says Carney
with a hint of cynicism gained from
paying the rent playing music.
"This is a hard area to make it in.
It’s supposed to be so groovy but
the local people don’t support
local musicians.”
Dakotah is one of the few local
bands able to pay the bills through
playing. Camey says the number
could be increased simply
enough.
‘‘The minute Oregon has a
19-year-old drinking age, musi
cians in this state will be able to
make a decent living. Those extra
two years of people in bars
would make a real difference.”
In the end, Bell and Carney
hope their move to Eugene works
as they envisioned. The hope is
that the reputation is deserved.
S1C- C1 n p m 3 (Continued from Page 5B)
people, inrougn ponemous nara
tion and editing, that rock'n’roll
was finally dead. Although the
Stones perform well, the attitude
of the film leaves such a bad taste
that it’s difficult to watch.
Much superior is Jean-Luc
Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil,
a Rolling Stones' recording ses
sion interspersed with leftist
polemic in fictional form. The rock
stars are at least treated with re
spect, though they are as politi
cally used in this film as they are in
Gimme Shelter. Unlike the Bea
tles, the Stones were never to ap
pear as a group in a critically and
financially successful movie.
Rock’n’roll films, like rock music
itself, seemed to go dormant in the
early Seventies. More concert
documentaries appeared, notably
those featuring Janis Joplin and
Jimi Hendrix, but they added little
new to the catalog of rock movies.
Only late in this decade have
rock’n’roll films come into their
own, and this time they are doing it
with a vengeance.
Inspired by the success of
American Graffitti, not itself a mus
ical but a film which used a con
stant soundtrack of Fifties’ hits,
-"producers scrambled for proper
lies max wouia recreaie ine goiaen
age of rock’n’roll.
First out of the gate was
American Hot Wax, an interesting
revisionist exploitation film in the
grand tradition of The Girl Can't
Help It and Beach Blanket Bingo.
But a new wrinkle, or rather a
newly borrowed one, appears in
the fabric of this rock film. Stealing
both documentary techniques de
veloped in non-fiction rock movies
and biographical notions from Big
Band pictures like The Glenn Mil
ler Story, director Floyd Mutrux
created a fictional musical biopic.
Not surprisingly, the film be
trays an allegiance to too many
masters and is thus not entirely
successful. But it set a trend which
will continue as long as we will fork
out money to watch carbon
copies.
Due in Eugene June 21 is the
next installment of the revisionist
film biography, The Buddy Holly
Story. Because Holly was one of
the greatest of all rock’n'rollers,
and because gifted actor Gary
Busey is playing him, this may be
the film that will tell us whether the
new rock film hybrid will work.
In the wake of Saturday Night
Fever will come an inevitably les
ser Daicn ot caroon copies mve
TGIF, another minor movie with a
disco theme. And John Travolta
himself, perhaps the most exciting
young American star, appears
soon with the dreaded Olivia
Newton-John in Grease, which
combines the sub-genres of
Broadway musical adaptation and
rock’n’roll revival picture.
Let us leave the last word for
The Last Waltz, a filmed record of
the Band’s farewell concert that
opens in Eugene this week. By
most accounts it is the ultimate
rock concert film, using new tech
nology like the Panaflex camera to
take the moviegoer more inside a
rock concert than he has ever
been. Some critics complain that it ,
is so technically proficient that it is
cold. It needs, they complain, the
gritty edge of reality that Bob
Dylan achieved in the concert
footage of his first major effort to
combine rock music, rock culture
and fiction, Renaldo and Clara.
Time, the Band and director
Martin Scorsese will tell whether
the rock’n’roll film has really
reached its peak or whether The
Last Waltz is merely another
bump in the rocky road of pop
music movies.
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485-6595
TDA presents in concert
TOM PETTY
& The Heartbreakers
Monday, June 12, 1978
Lane County Fairgrounds
Auditorium Bldg.
8:30 p.m.
Tickets $6.50 in advance
Tickets available at Odyssey, Everybody’s, Sun Shop