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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 1991)
Keen plays his brand of country-folk music The Front Porch Cafe brings for mer Texas A&M student and Texas music great Robert Earl Keen, Jr. back to College Station tonight for a performance scheduled for 9. Keen’s music is more on the folky side of country, with an em phasis on narrative songs and story-telling. “I’ve been able to write narrative songs pretty easily," Keen says. “I’m better at following a plot line than I am at using a certain amount of assonance or allitera tion.” Several of the tunes off Keen’s most recent release, West Tex tures, stem from this type of story telling. "I prefer a story-based song more than a love song,” Keen adds. “I just think they have more to say. It comes down to actions speaking louder than words. “For instance, in The Road Goes On Forever,’ this guy basically takes the fall for the girl. If you show that in a song it shows how much more this person cares for that per son than just saying ‘I love you, I love you’ over and over.” Keen's songwriting inspiration comes from varied sources; from little-known acquaintances to his By Rob Newberry love of reading (Keen was an En glish major while at Texas A&M). "That particular song (The Road Goes On Forever’) is inspired by a couple of people that I don’t know very well — by their lifestyle — which is basically a girl that never gets enough partying and a guy that’s this kind of shady wheeler- dealer. But what I did with them in the song is entirely fictional." Keen feels his interest in coun try-folk isn't exactly unique to him self. “What I do is fairly common, particularly when you’re talking about one person with a guitar,” Keen says. “Everyone I know who has taken a solid stab at that kind of music usually supports a lot of the songs by telling stories around them.” Nevertheless, commercial coun try radio seems to be heavy on the pop side of country — mostly the trite love songs that Keen shies away from. Keen says he’s not con cerned about the commercial mar ket. “I wouldn’t ever try to make the market want what I am,” Keen says, but then adds, “I may become more commercial as I go on in because my albums will become more so phisticated, musically as well as ly rically." But Keen will likely experience some commercial success in the upcoming months, not exactly as a performer, but as a songwriter. Eddy Raven is scheduled to re lease a single that Keen co-wrote this month. “There’s something that has always been a dream of mine —to hear one of my songs on the radio. It will come out this month, and I expect by March, I can turn on the radio and there’s my song, which is real exciting to me.” Keen’s show tonight should be pretty much a set of his standard material. “I've got lots of new songs and new stories.” He adds, with a laugh, "As far as handing out heart- shaped chocolates, I may do that — it's a possiblity. "Getting back there always does give me a good feeling,” Keen con tinues. “This club, the Front Porch, and one of my old songs, This Old Porch’ — that sounds like some thing out of a Tennesee Williams play to me.” ■ Violinist to perform at Festival Hill Festival Hill in Round Top will present a concert featuring violinist Sheryl Staples on Saturday at 3 p,m. in the large concert hall. The program, also featuring pia nist Eugene Rowley, will include works by Jean-Marie Leclair, Eu gene Ysaya and Sergei Prokofiev. Staples, a native of Los Angeles, is one of America’s most promising violinists. In addition to performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Pacific Symphony, she has appeared on several nationwide television and radio broadcasts. The Los Angeles Times has de scribed Staples as having “an exhi- lirating poise, as well as a tone of opulent sound and consistent sheen.” Concert tickets are $7.50 per person. An optional $30 gourmet dinner will be served at 6 following the concert. Less expensive fare can be found one mile away at the Round Top Cafe, voted the best country cafe in Texas. Festival Hill is a few miles past Brenham, a beautiful hour’s drive from College Station. For more information and reser vations, call (409) 249-3129 or write Festival-Institute at P.O. Box 89, Round Top, Texas 78954. page8 •February 14;.1991 music Kiss and tell Anthropologist describes beginnings of kissing Do you remember your first kiss? Maybe it was during recess way back when, or on the front porch at the end of your first date. It could be one of those things you do not want to re member. Who thought of kissing anyway? When the anthropology department asked its freshman classes to make a list of customs practiced by all of hu mankind, one student listed “kissing.” “None of our training, our texts nor our graduate classes had ever men tioned the subject of kissing,” Dr. Vaughn M. Bryant Jr., head of the De partment of Anthropology, said. “So we had no ready answer to offer.” Bryant discovered there was very little information on the subject and be gan to search for answers. Even in the earliest written texts there are no indi cations of kissing, he said. However, around 1500 B.C. in the Vedic Sanskrit texts of India, there are references to the importance of rub bing and pressing noses together as signs of affection. “This may not be true kissing as we know it today,” Byant said, "but we believe it may have been its begin ning." By the early fifth century A.D., he said, Vatsyayana had recorded many of the ancient verses of Vedic litera ture in the “Kama Sutra.” “In it, he faithfully records hundreds By Terri Welch of erotic kissing examples and tech niques of kissing,” Bryant said. Among the many examples are the detailed instructions of how one should kiss, what parts of the human body are the best places to kiss and the special techniques one should use when kissing sensitive areas. Interestingly, kissing does not seem to become an important prac tice in any of the Mediterranean region until the Roman era, Bryant said. "Of the early Western cultures,” he said, “it is the Romans who should be credited with popularizing and spreading the art of kissing through out the western Mediterranean and Europe." Bryant says the osculum was a kiss of friendship, delivered as a peck on another’s cheek. It was not a kiss of passion, but a way of greeting a friend. Our custom dictates that males do not kiss other males, Bryant says, but that is still popular and expected in other Western cultures. The “French kiss” was the Roman kiss of wild passion, the ultimate kiss, Bryant says. Poets like Catullus pre ferred its use and described it as “sweeter than sweet ambrosia.” Centuries later, Christians incorpo rated the kiss as a symbolic and cere monial event. “The public and passionate kiss at the end of the wedding ceremony sealed the eternal bond of love be tween the bride and groom,” Bryant said. Yet love and good nature have not always surrounded this cultural phe nomenon, he said. At one time, kiss ing abruptly declined. “The Great Plague raged through London in 1664-1665," Bryant said. “At the time, it was believed that the plague was transmitted by touch. These circumstances would easily have led to the avoidance of kissing.” Relating to the decline of physically kissing today, Bryant says that even though no instances of AIDS transmis sion from kissing have been docu mented, the non-contact kiss, or "air- smack,” seems to be gaining popular ity. Bryant attempts to provide the rea sons why the kiss is not universal. “Some societies likened kissing to exchanging filth from one mouth to another. Others believed their life force or souls could be sucked from their bodies while kissing,” Bryant said. Still others believed kissing was a cannibalistic act conceived by Euro peans who hoped to "eat” their vic tims, he said. "No wonder that kissing wasn’t, and still isn’t, accepted by many of the non-Western cultures of the world,” Bryant said.