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just Stills and Young but the long It’s been almost two years since , Neil Young ‘has put but a solo - awaited reunion album of Crosby, album. Two years of frustration, Stills, Nash and Young. rumours. and anticipation. But as suddenly as the album Young hit the record stands in -changed to the new concept, it was November of ‘75 with the critically changed back. While Crosby and and comtiercially successful Nash were in Los Angles finishing Zuma, an album that reached back a solo album of their own, their to his pre-C, S, N, & Y days ,by vocals werewiped off the tape and combining rock, country, and blues replaced. with extra guitar playing.influences into his best album in No real reason for the reversal was three years. given but the action made it seem Zuma, coupled with the aceven more unlikely that the old claimed Tonight’s the Night, placed supergroup would ever put out a Young back in the musical spotfull album again. light, a place Ke had vacated since Erom then till the present Young the release of Harvest. has stayed mostly on his own. A .But then things fell apart. Throat solo album called Chrome Dreams surgery put Young on the sidelines had its/release da‘te repeatedly set for the winter, and though he did back. He also had the release of a play at a few Steve Stills concerts in triple-album best-of collection, the San Fransisco area, he couldn’t Decade, cancelled. When Chrome ye% sing. Dreams was due for ‘delivery in Playing with Stills planted in mid-March, Young again pulled it Young’s mind an idea for .a joint back. album, which, after a spring tour of This time though, Young perEurope, he and Stills started to refo,rmed major surgery on the cord. 1 album. The first side was removed, , /During the course of the recordand Young recorded, mixed, and mastered Eve new songs. He also ings, Graham Nash and David Crosby dropped into the studio. brought out a new group for this album side, by augmenting his Suddenly the-album was no longer ,r
Hilarity to despair How could Woody Allen ever top Play h Again, Sam? What made Sam,great was that it had more than boffers; it had structure, it had pacing and it had Humphrey Bogart. W,hat more could you want? Sure, Everything’ You Ever Wanted to Know . . . and Sleeper were funny, but once you knew the jokes, what was left? With Sam you wanted to see it again just to enjoy the plot unfolding the wayyou knew it would unfold. The Front was (well, serious. It was nostalgia laced with bitterness. Sam was nostalgic too, but affectionately so. Yes, there was’no way Woody could ever top Sam, until Annie Q_ Hall came along. Wtiody’s newest film, now playing at the Waterloo>s just about everything one could want in a movie (with the poss”lble,exception of Mr..Bogart). It reaches extremes of both hilarity and despair. It has insanely funny situationstreated in insanely funny ways, as w.ell as the mandatory barrage of one-liners. It is poignant at the same time, and the protagonist’s situation is one familiar to us all, one that must surely evoke painful and pleasant memories in all who see it. On top of all this Allen i able to make some simple but significant yet keep the film entertaining comments on how peo d e survive, enough forjust about anyone. As if that weren’t enough, the movie is rumoured to be semi-autobiographical. Allen uses just about every cinematic technique known’to man during the film’s two hours. He employs subtitles, cartoons, splitscreen, on-the-street interviews (which prompt hilariously unlikely responses) and very screwy flashbacks which have a tendency to , leak into the present. ! Woody Allen has always employed his neuroses to great effect in his films, and this one’s no exception. .He insists on making Groucho-like asides to the camera, as if to keep us aware that he knows we’ve been watching him all this time. But best of all, he proceeds to do all the impossible things you’ve ever wanted to do. He talks as an adult to his childhood classmates; inviting very unchildlike responses. He asks outrageous questions to total strangers. He demolishes autos. And, in the film’s gutsplittingest scene, he does the most wonderful put-down of a loudmouth in a movie line-up you could ever hope to imagine. Only one problem remains. How can he ever hope to top Annie Hall? ‘. c -************************~*~****,~******~**~*** ,--Monty Python fans disappointed by the Terry Gilliam creation called Jabberwocky can at-least take: heart. The Pythons have not deserted you. Plans are currently underway for a THIRD (not fourth) Monty Python film. Its title? The Gospel According To St. Bryan. --steve hull.
iuly 8, 1977
usual backing group, Crazy Horse, on the first side causes them to lose popular as it is. Intertwining rock with two female vocalists, Linda some of their- appeal. Neil isn’t and blues phrasings, sparse pointed Ronstadt and Nicolette Larson, singing songs about experiences vocals, sharp snarling- lead guitar, and female violinist Carole hard bass back-beat, drumming that could and have happened to Mayedo. anyone but is singing about l?imthat punctuates the song, and as a The new album came out in-late self. Perhaps this is a new stage that new wrinkle, Frank Sampedro, June under the title, American Stars Young is in, but fortunately the rhythym guitarist, playing a string ‘n’ Bars. The cover artwork lyrics of The Star Of Bethlehem synthesizer that gives the song the showedia picture of Young passed aren’t suffering from these probdepth it needs. ~ ’ out on a barroom floor, next to a’ lems. The song is classic- Neil Young, “bar-hall <queen” holding a iiearly The next song Will,‘To Love is every bit as good as Mr Soul, Cowempty bottle of Canadian Club. interesting in that it has Young girl In The Sand, Southern Man, Like the title and artwork sugdoing something he gave up after Ohio, and Cortez The Killer. gest, Neil’s been down to the bar his first solo album ten .years ago. Young does on this song what he for these two sides, a fact evident_.. did so well on Zuma and Everyfrom the start of the album. body-Knows This Is Nowhere. He The Old Country Waltz, which is plays guitar with abandon, taking a just that, has Young sittingtin the much-abused tool like a wa-wa local southern bar when his friend pedal and using it as it was meant to comes and tells him his true love be, bending the notes to make a has left. So Young does the sensithick,! sensual, multi-layered ble thing, and proceeds to get sound. blasted. The final song, Homegrown, is a short tune that combines rock and Saddle up the Palomino, features country into something that sounds the same pounding beat typical of / like Jimi Hendrix goes to Albuqerl Zuma coupled with the off-tempo ’ que, but again it works. style of Harvest. Lyrics bog this The beat is the same up-tempo song down, with Young’s peculiar heavy back-beat sound’of the Zuma ’ phrasing becoming a distraction. album% with good guitar phrasing Accoustic guitars take over for and the same raw edge that typifies the next two songs, Hey Babe, and all of Young’s work. Hold Back The Tears. The first is Young plays every instrumeut , To c elude, American Stars ‘n’ probably the best song on that side *guitars, bass, drums, and percuss IS a go d album. The Crazy A of the album, featuring Young with sion. The lyrics are hokey, but Horse and The Bullets concept ‘his slow drawling vocals and laid some how they work. Young comYoung uses on the album’s first back guitar. Hold Back The Tears pares his life to a salmonswimming side does have a lot of positive asgoes too close to country for comupstream. Even though so many pects to it, particularly if Young fort at times and Carole Mayedo’s women have let him down, old would bring the female harmony violin also seems to be about three Neil’s going to keep right on vocals more to the fore-front. octaves out of tuge. searching till he finds the right one, The album is not the best work Rounding out the side is Bite The ‘or dies. that Young has done, but it does Bullet, a pounding country-rock Even though he uses such a lame stand head and shoulders above song which has the best work that lyric’(who else could write seven anything by his current contemhis new band has done. minutes about a salmonj he works poraries. The Eagles, America, The second side opens with Star it into a hard put-down of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash, .Loggins of Bethlehem, a song from the dou-‘ California life-style, and if you *and Messina, plus a host of pretenble album Homegrowh that Young think about it, Young himself. The ders to the country-rock throne recorded in ‘74 but never released. Eagles can’t even do as well if they may have their moments, but A soft ‘accoustic ballad with Emare blatantly open about it. Young and Crazy Horse have’al’ mvlou Harris singing .a v v accomnanvI a Like A Hurricane is without a most continuously been the bright ing vocals. doubt the-best song on the album, , lights of “L.A. rock” for the last Here, in songs like these, Young the best I’ve heard in ‘quite ten years. And that is not so surhas his’ best success. H(s lyrics j and awhile . I prising considering that Young was / \ seem too harsh on most of the first one of the people who pioneered side. Not cruel, $but the directness The song has all of the ingrethat genre of music. and individualization of the songs idients that make Young’s music as 4oug hamilton
Niceness-triumphs! Excellent special effects and ultra-inodern techniques made “The Exorcist II - The Heretic” an above average horror movie. “Linda Blair uses a “syn‘chronized hypnosis” machine to - transport her mind to the time and place of the exorcism. Using the special headgear, she can bring.a partner to the scene she is experiencing. Richard Burton, a priest, uses the apparatus with Blair to find out more about the exorcist who was killed by then demon in the original movie. \ His idea is confirmed when it is discovered that Blair had begun a conversation’ in the waiting room with a little girl who had never spoken before. Her good spirit had moved the child to begin speaking. This scene produced, the most amazing dialogue exchange of the entire script: 1 “Hi! Why are you here?” “I’m autistic* Why are you here?” I . “Oh, I was possessed by a demon.” _ In the trance, Burton receives .a vision of the demon. The same demon had possessed a boy in Africa, a boy who had been known to have a spirit of good. ’ Burton had witnessed a similar type of scene before. A woman healer allowed herself to be burned to death in a blazing fire while possessed. Those events led Burton to the inevitable conclusion: people with the spirit o.f good attract evil.
Then,the little_autistic girl gods her skeptical psychiatrist. Her acting is head, as if. this were a perfectly dull, ‘boring and lifeless. Almost a natural response. ’ catatonic. She is so bad that you begin to dread her speaking parts. Against the orders %of his boss, Hopefully she can redeem herself Burton sets out for Africa to find the man who was possessed as a in some future effort. flaw is an child. His quest for this special man _ The other outstanding unexplained sub-plot that arises is, depicted using sharp aerial when Burton goes, to confront the photography. There are daring man he is seeking in Africa. The climbs up precarious precipices, holy man asks Burton to show his throngs of angry natives and, espefaith by walking ,across a sea of cially , ugly scenes of mass destrucspikes. Burton steps out and puts I tion by,locust. his foot down.’ Those viewers keen The plot thickens and expands. on regurgitation will thrill as the It gets so intricate in parts that spike goes quickly and smoothly you’re not sure who is possessed through his bare foot. Fountains of by-what. One thing that’s certain is - juicy flood spurt across the screen, that everyone is headed for the cI;eating a colourful panorama of human effluence house in Washington where Burton . plans to fight the demon. The exciting aura of revulsion - The race to Washington brings t urns to one of mystery. Burto; k ee 1s over in agony, but as he hits the film hurtling to a climax. The plane -is struck by lightning. The the ground the scene shifts. He is taxi crashes in a colossal wreck. being helped up from the floor of a Billions of locust come flying out of 1,ocust control research centre. the woodwork. The demon This sudden transmigration is changes from revolting to voluptunever ex!$ained (or even menous. The girlfriend Sizzles to death ‘tioned),during the remainder of the in an inferno of gasoline. The priest film. The weird, creepy atmosliterally tears the heart out of the phere that it intends to create possessed body with his bare merely becomes confusing and anhands. As a grand finale, the entire noying . house is torn apart and collapses in Actually, there only is as much * a heap of rubble. nauseating horror as you would ex. The film is not without its drawpect in a feature-length movie, so it backs. The most notable is the _ is not really that special. The abysmal performance by Miss photography.and special effects are Fletcher. After an outstanding porimpressive, but worth waiting to trayal of Nurse Ratchid in “One see on television in a couple of . Flew Over the Cuckod”s Nest”, years. she is a huge disappointment as the -low pr@huny /
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