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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 26, 1981)
e 10 aDip am jo ^oi b miM paXoxj -sap s;auB|d pus pajaBssBiu H e »s uoiteweg ~ ' ■“ vreinQ Xuax Xg OSIAI OPBAU! SJBfPIOS ‘SBIUUV ThursKlay, February 26, 1981 FOCUS ON: REVIEWS Nashville success story meets hard times Haggard album not the break he needed By Rod Arrington Battalion Reporter Merle Haggard is not a new name in country music circles. Having produced over 30 albums and received a number of awards. Haggard has become the epitome of the Nashville success story. Yet, with all this behind him today. Haggard has fallen on hard times. He has not had a top selling album in over five years, and country and western disc jockeys are tired of playing his old hits. Haggard's latest LP, “Back to the Barrooms/' doesn't sound like the well-deserved break he needs. The album's music re minds me of Hank Williams, with a touch of Willie Nelson's country-rock. It looks like Haggard may be changing both his sound and approach. With producer Jimmy Bowen, Haggard has added a variety of new sounds to his red neck style. The song, 'T Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" blends a subtle rock touch with a hard-driving country rhythm, and "Make-up and Faded Blue Jeans" adds a new twist to Hag gard's old style. The rest of the songs on his album, however, stick to his used-to-be popular sound. Haggard went too far with his effort to achieve a new and excit ing approach: his old band. The Strangers, is not included on the album. However, he did a fairly good job of recruiting some new B ickers. Joe Osborn, Don Mar- ham, Reggie Young and the in- RECORDS famous Johnny Gimble sound nice together, although they have been known to strum bet ter licks. Osborn (a refugee from B.W. Stevenson) plays some simple, but effective bass parts. He real ly makes a show with "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink," but the album could have had a more appealing overall effect without such overpowering bass lines. Young, the lead guitarist, is no amateur; he has picked with Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmy Buffett and other musicians. But Gim ble and Markham are the real heroes of this record. Gimble's fiddle never sways from its accu rate precision. Each song on the album in cludes a bit of sax player Mar kham's personal touch. Like all the others, his true talent shines in "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink." Yet with all these performers to back him up. Haggard still doesn't appear to have his act together. Some of his works just don't have the personality and appeal it takes to make a top- seller. Perhaps Haggard tried to make a quick recording, hoping for a quick best-seller in return. After 30 albums, he should know it doesn't work that way. If there is anything appealing about the album, it's the title, because it's also the theme — "Back to the Barrooms." Spinach and Disney good for you By Scot K. Meyer Battalion Staff G-rated films are like spinach and milk. Nobody really likes them, but they are considered wholesome and healthy, and we like to have them around so that the kiddies will have something to watch. The kiddies tend not to like them MOVIES either, of course, but that is beside the point. G-rated movies are good for them. So adults are programmed to sigh and shake their heads when they read that few G movies are being made, and that even fewer people go to them. "What will the kiddies do," they wonder. The same adults would not go to a G movie themselves, of course. And not just be cause they are perverts (although that might be part or it). The problem with G films is that they are poor vehicles for representing the real world. When all the non-G elements are removed from the world, what is left is not unlike diluted root beer. Nobody likes diluted root beer, not even kiddies. And it makes for lousy movies. The best Walt Disney films were able to avoid this problem by not portraying watered down versions or the real world, but by creating worlds of their own. "Jungle Book" was such a film, and so is "The Aristocats." "The Aristocats" is about a family of well-to-do felines (a mother and her three children) who live in a Parisian manor with a very wealthy old woman. No fat cats these, but rather genteel, cul tured and aristocratic cats that only a marxist could hate. The trouble starts when the long- suffering butler finds out that the old woman is planning, upon her demise, to leave her entire estate to her cats. The butler is to be their caretaker, and get his own hands on the estate only when all the cats die. Cats live about 12 years, he figures, so that's four cats with nine lives each — all of which means he'll be very old, poss ibly very dead, long before he sees any of that money. So the butler decides to take matters into his own hands, and dispose of the kitties. He does so by taking them for a long ride in the country, and dropping them off without bus fare or subway tokens (or, in fact, any idea of which way home is). Having led rather sheltered lives, the future looks dismal for our cat and cat- lets. But fortunately, they run into Abra ham DeLacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley, the Alley Cat. O'Malley is a street-wise, be-bopping jazzy kind of cat, and as his lengthy name implies, he has been around, but he has a soft spot in his heart for our cat family. So, with his help, the trek back to Paris begins, and before it is over there will be music, chase scenes, another tangle or two with the butler as well as run-ins with O'Malley's low-rent cat friends and a few other colorful characters, t The film doesn't have any messages about social class or modem music, but it doesn't care and neither should its audi ence. This film is not literature; instead it is a slice of imagination served with the deservedly famous Disney animation. Should you see this movie? Sure you should. And not just because it's good for you; it's also a lot of fun. And aren't you tired of watching psychopaths hack young people to death with large knives? FOCUS Editor Cathy Saathoff Assistant Editor Susan Hopkins Staff Writer Kate McElroy i Focus will accept any items submitted for publication, although the decision to publish lies solely with the editor. Deadline is 5 p.m. the Thursday before publication. Hundreds of people gathered in the MSC last weekend for war games. By Terry Duran "The Children's Hour" starts tonight at 8. By Kate McElroy There's a new club in town. Faces, which caters to rock and roll fans. By Mike Burrichter 3 4 5 On the cover: KAMU-TV will offer a radio adaptation of "Star Wars," as well as a popular British program, "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Tune in to 90.9 FM in March. See pages 8 and 9 for stories about KAMU-TV and KAMU-FM. ES ga.snrs^'s: 3-SB7 •W {>5 0-0)