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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1991)
cover story Student workers taste real world at rodeo By Yvonne Salce What grand event rides into town once a year, offering students the chance to gain valuable experience, meet interesting peo ple, enjoy free entertainment and skip class with an excused absence? The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Texas A&M University and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo have been re cruiting students for internship positions longer than many can remember. The pro gram hires animal science, agricultural jour nalism and journalism majors every year to help publicize and pull together the million- dollar extravaganza. Students work three- to seven-day shifts getting a taste of the real world. Joe Townsend, Ph.D. and Associate Dean and Director of Agriculture at A&M, worked with the program when he was a freshman at A&M in 1963. He says about 200 A&M students will be working in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo between Feb. 14 and March 3. "A&M has had a long, long positive relationship with the rodeo," says Townsend. "We have a special relationship with the ro deo and provide the predominant support.” The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo generates more than $1 million worth of scholarships every year. Of those schol arships, 382 A&M undergraduates, majoring in biochemistry and other forms of traditional agriculture, received support in 1990. Townsend says although students do not page8 get any academic credit'for the internship, they do gain a tremendous amount of experi ence. "In Houston, they have the most modern television equipment and radio production units. It’s first class all the way, and it’s done in a first-class situation.” Ag journalism and journalism majors work as either minicam operators, news writers or television production aides. Animal science majors work directly with the livestock, checking in and handling the animals. In the past, Townsend says, student work ers found the rodeo to be a fun experience. But the job is often demanding, requiring a lot of hard work and long hours. Students re port to work at 9 a.m. and leave no earlier than 11 p.m. Brooks Hagler, a senior ag journalism ma jor from Anson, worked as a writer for the past two years. He says the experience was better than he ever expected. “It was an incredible experience, not only working with fellow students but working alongside professionals from the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. They treat you like a professional, which does a lot for your confidence." Students work with top producers and lo cal and national networks. The contacts and networking alone are invaluable. Deborah Kostroun, a senior ag journalism major from Cameron, also worked as a writer for three years and describes her first experi ence with deadline pressure and nervous excitement. “I went as a freshman, and I didn’t even know what a lead was. I was given a story as signment and told to do the interview, come back and write it as quickly as I could. Luck ily, my editor was more than happy to help me write the best possible stoi7.” Later, to Kostroun’s surprise, the Asso ciated Press liked her story and picked it up. "I remember seeing the article and saying, ‘Hey, I wrote that story!’ Since then, I’ve seen my stories in different places,” she says. “You really do have such a big part in what’s being said about the rodeo.” Students produce stories sent to newspa pers all over the state and country. They also produce film clips that go out everywhere. Kostroun also says that Aggies are "in de mand" down in Houston. While the University of Texas, University of Houston and Texas Tech University die for the golden opportu nity, Texas A&M always has the upper hand, she says. "We’ve been doing it for so many years. They just love us!” Townsend says students just can’t imag ine what it’s like until they get down there. It is a tremendous experience, he says. Part of the other education at A&M is building contacts and learning what it's like in the real world. “Degrees open a lot of doors, but people get you jobs." February 21,1991 Unique recordings peak reviewers interest By Kevin Robinson The Darkside The Dead revives tunes with collection By Brian Paradis Grateful Dead Without a Net Arista records The Grateful Dead is a motif in lit erature wherein our hero helps out a dead person in need, by financ ing a proper burial, with the de ceased showing up later to return the favor. There are many-a-fabled phe nomena in the world of music, one of them being the bond that exists among the Grateful Dead and their fans. These fans, known affectiona tely as Deadheads, are famous for their steadfast loyalty and ubiqui tous disposition. The Dead’s most recent release, Without a Net (their sixth live album) is yet another return of favor, a gift of thanks to the oh-so-faithful fans. The reality is that with pirate record ing and distribution, which the band whole-heartedly encourages, there are actually thousands of live Dead albums. What makes this collection so special is that it employs the “old tunes, but new grooves" gimmick. Although the band has under gone a few lineup changes through the years, this album features the most recent touring composition of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir on gui tars, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart on drums and Phil Lesh on bass. Also appearing on the album (but as the band puts it “no longer with us") is Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland. The compilation includes per functory favorites such as "China Cat Sunflower" from their wonder fully trippy 1971 album Aoxomoxoa (filled with tab-under-tongue hu mor), and “Feel Like a Stranger" originally released on Go to Heaven (with the Dead gracing the cover in white spifs a la Bee Gees) in 1980. While many of their songs can be interpreted as fun-loving or even nonsensical, others such as “Al thea" and “Looks Like Rain” touch on the more sentimental and even spiritual emotions. I find myself compellingly attuned to Garcia, the recently comatose grey-bearded guru of the Dead, as he croons with whining regret, "I told Althea I’m a rolling stone / That I was born to be a bachelor / Althea told me OK that’s fine / You know now I’m trying to catch her." Now that’s deep. Also hitting painfully close to home are the words of Bob Weir as he laments, "Run me round, make me hurt again and again / But I'll still sing you love songs / Written in the letters of your name / And brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain.” What saves these lyrics from being filed away into the “sap/cheese" category defies ex planation. The answer lies within the honesty and sincerity which the Dead exude live. A Grateful Dead show is more of . See Dead/Page 12 All right, it’s time to clear out the closet. The following are a few of the albums I’ve been listening to for the past few weeks. As usual, there's not really a pattern to this stuff, besides the fact that they're all fairly interesting in their own unique ways. Mazzy Star She Hangs Brightly Rough Trade When I first heard this album, I was absolutely sure that the ghost of Patsy Cline had jumped out of her grave to boogie with the Doors. Combining a somber country-blues style with a quasi-mystical ambience, Mazzy Star has come up with something truly original. Responses from people who I've played this for include, “Hey, isn’t this real old Cowboy Junkies” or the obligatory, "I don’t like this. Please turn it off now,” but nobody has really been able to put thqir finger on it. In any case, Mazzy Star is a perfect example of a band that would have been huge with college bohemes if the band had a really cool, arty video that got airplay on primetime MTV. Much better than most of these bands, Mazzy Star is the final product of what used to be Opal, one of the better bands from the late '80s psychedelic revival. Guitarist Dave Roback is the half of Opal that has remained. Vocalist Hope Sandoval brings a new bluesy- style to the songs, replacing the Siouxsie-like singing of Opal’s Kendra Smith. Roback has toned down his musical excursions considerably. Instead of feeling like you’re at one of the Acid Tests, songs like “Be My Angel” are like being in a Louisiana icehouse as the rising sun slowly burns the night fog off the bayou. Or maybe not. After all, the slow, effects-laden guitar is as trippy on the title track as anything Opal ever produced, just milder and better. Categorize them as you will, but She Hangs Brightly is one of the best albums I've heard in a while. Sorry MTV, this time it looks like you let a good thing slip by. The Darkside All That Noise Beggars Banquet On a similar level as Mazzy Star is the premiere album from The Dark side. These guys are also from a band spawned in the psychedelic wave. Whereas Mazzy Star only hints at their roots, however, All That Noise hits you over the head with tunes that are posi tively acid-drenched. They’re used to this sort of thing. As former members of the Spacemen 3, these guys were members of one of the better under ground cult bands in England and a major influence on the current Man chester scene. While the first song “Guitar Voo doo” really had me going, the rest of the album falls kind of short. Not that it's really bad, but it’s much too deriva tive of late '60s progressive music, right down to the droning organ. Wait! Isn’t that a riff from Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother? Or maybe it's really old Jefferson Airplane. In any case, The Darkside seems to sputter along in this same track without offering any thing new or modern. However, there are a few standout tracks on the album. The title track and the previously mentioned “Guitar Voo doo” all escape this problem, using the feedback and distortion of their guitars to transport the listener to an other state of mind. It’s just too bad the only state of mind the others bring is boredom. It’s really unfortunate that the underground experimentation of Spacemen 3 couldn’t be transferred to this new project. I guess the song title “Love in a Burning Universe” will give you an idea of where this retread is coming from. William S. Burroughs Dead City Radio Island If you've never heard any of Bur- rough’s spoken word material before, that's reason alone to pick up this disc. I mean, who could resist the chance to hear the author of Naked Lunch reading quotations from the Bi ble, while Cecil B. DeMille-like epic scores blare in the background. I had previously heard Burrough’s voice on an old Laurie Anderson re cord and seen him in the film Drugstore Cowboy. The one thing I never realized about Burroughs from those appearances is his incredible voice. Burroughs reads these works in a way that burns them into your soul. Sounds corny, I know, but it’s true. A good example of this is his read ing from his classic Naked Lunch. While the more homoerotic aspects of the novel are not really my bag, the book is a horrific masterpiece. The passage he reads here is rather tame compared to most of the novel, but no less bizarre. Burroughs rasps and spits his way through it as if this hell were right around him. It stays with you for a long time. "Thanksgiving Prayer” shows an other facet of Burroughs, the social satirist. This track is one of the most biting looks at modern America since, I don't know, maybe the last Dead Kennedys album? “Thanks for a coun try where nobody is allowed to mind their own business/ Thanks for a na tion of finks.” While Burroughs’ theory of AIDS (that it was created by the government to get rid of homosexuals and drug users) seems kind of ridicu lous to me, the shots at Reaganism and the war against drugs hit head on. If none of this peaks your interest so far, the backing music on many of these tracks is by, alternatively, Sonic Youth or John Gale. How can you re sist? page5 Life Style magazine