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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 1978)
Ampersand Publisher Durand W. Achee Advertising Director Jeffrey A. Dickey Editor-in-Chief Judith Sims Music Editor Todd Everett Art Director Catherine Lampton Production Rick Bauer, Marya Blackwell, Mel Rice Contributing Editors Colman Andrews, Jacoba Atlas, John Hatch, Lynne Manor, Del Porter Advertising Offices Los Angeles Jeff Dickey 1680 N. Vine Street #201 Hollywood, CA 90028 213/462-7175 New York Barney O hara, Joan Dorbian Barney O’Hara & Associates 105 E. 35th Street New York, NY 10016 212/889-8820 Chicago Frank Avery, Jane Jeffrey Barney O’Hara & Associates 410 N. Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60611 312/467-9494 JJ u New Contributors ART FEIN (on Disc) writes about music in Hol lywood. He likes to live sumptuously and dine in the finest restaurants. He is in the wrong business. Flo (Mark Volman) and EDDIE (Howard Kaylan) (In Print) use other names and other voices; among them Turtles, Mothers of Invention, radio people, rock critics, interviewers and all-around good guys. DON SNOWDEN (On Disc) has been known to go by the name of “Mr. Chivas.” As in “Regal.” When not surveying the music scene from one of Hollywood’s higher class gutters, he dreams of playing John Steed to Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel. TOM VICKERS, (On Disc) former ghetto corre spondent for Rolling Stone, is a Bostonian now resid ing in L.A. He shuns razor-blade jewelry and wishes that Dyke and the Blazers we’re still around to add some reality to an otherwise d’voidoffunk scene. ©Alan Weston Publishing, Inc., 1680N. Vine Street, #201, Hollywood, CA 90028. All rights reserved. Letters be come the property of the publisher and may be edited. Publisher does not as sume any responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Published monthly at Los Angeles. RICK BAUER Illustrator Harold “Hal” Vettika, perpetrator of the art for our Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy article last issue, has disappeared. He was last seen relaxing on Ampersand’s spiffy sundeck (above), where we found his book and ashtray and a few other personal effects. Someone had written the name Weishaupt on a nearby dirty window. He fear foul play. Nag, Nag I’m a journalism student at Purdue Univer sity. It’s in Indiana. Indiana is by those big lakes, near Chicago. Will you read this letter and heed it? Probably not. You fascist pigs. I don’t know what sort of manic fit caused me to write this letter. What gives you the right to throw this letter in the garbage? “Hell, Joe, here’s another one of those goddamn letters from some farmer back east. Some poor soul twisted on cowshit and jimson weed. I’ll toss it like the rest.” Sorry about that. I also tend to ramble a bit at times. I’ll try to stay calm and refrain from launching into bits of Thompsonism. No sense in going Gonzo too early in life. What I wondered was if you have enough record reviewers. Why don’t you bastards pull yourselves out of that cocaine stupor and give a poor, braindamaged journalism stu dent a chance? As for my musical experience, I don’t like Barry Manilow. If some of you like him, you probably won’t comprehend this letter any way. Just hand this letter to the nearest long hair with sunglasses on; he’ll know what to do with it. Michael Backus Purdue university Our cocaine stupor? We handed your letter to our - shorthaired music editor, who’s a Barry Manilow fan. He says that he knows what to do with it, if you’ll just turn around and bend over. (Note to other aspiring Gonzos: it’s been done. Find your own approach. And learn to type.). Of all the recordings of contemporary Am erican music (Good American Music, Sep tember ’78) you did not mention, one stands out in my mind as deserving praise. It is the recording of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, done by the N.Y. Philarmonic and the Swingle Singers (MS 7268 Columbia). I believe this piece represents a perfection of the compos ers uniquely individual style. As for with standing the test of time, the piece was just played a few months ago by the conservative Chicago Symphony Orchestra! Doug Osborne Champaign, III. Your nomination of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia to the list of “ten best” American compositions forces me to concede the point immediately. (Hell, I would bow away to another half dozen works that come to mind immediately). The trouble with the Berio work is that it was written for the uniquely gifted Swingles. Without them, it cannot be performed—or so Ernest, Fleish mann, executive director of the L.A. Phil, told me. Assuming that condition still pertains (other “un playable” works have, in time, become routine reper toire pieces), I can only wonder if the Berio work can survive in the concert hall. Thank Columbia for preserving itfor us. A record is better than nothing. Ed Cray Merrill Shindler, author of “Raised on Kane: A Connoisseur’s Guide to Obscure Classic Films” in the September issue, is described in your author’s note as “the proud owner of a master’s degree in film aesthetics and criti cism.” He ought to send it back, at least based on the degree of familiarity with film classics he betrays when he describes Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac as “starring Shake spearean actors Jack MacGowran and Donald Pleasance as a pair of wounded gangsters who terrorize a middle-ageed mil quetoast and his beautiful young wife (pla yed by Jacqueline Bisset).” Disregarding the matter of whether or not Shindler’s identifi cation of the aforementioned actors as “Shakespearean” is correct (MacGowran was Irish, for Chrisssakes), I would like to point out that (a) the gangsters were played by MacGowran and Lionel Stander (Plea sance played the milquestoast); and (b) the beautiful young wife was played by Francoise Dorleac (Bisset had a rather minor role as a visitor to the Milquetoast’s keep). Colman Andrews Los Angeles,C a In Here Features Richard Dreyfuss Is Hot In more ways than one 8 Bloated Budgets The high cost of recording 18 Joni Mitchell She walks, she talks, she gambles 21 Departments In One Ear Letters & Out the Other News & Gossip On Disc Latest Lacquers 10 In Both Ears Keeping clean 14 In Print Mank, Benjamin, etc. 20 On Screen Days of Heaven, etc. 22 Amperchart Q Q Rock,jazz, soul & country hits Z, O On Tour Foreigner, Paul H'inter 30 Our Cover Joni Mitchell in the desert, photographed by Henry Diltz.
