Arts & Entertainment
Tuesday, October 13, 1992
The Battalion
Page 3
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Staff Writer of the BATTALION
Plain and simple, Texas A&M journalism profes
sor Don Tomlinson loves country music for what it
is: plain and simple.
"99% of the time" Tomlinson devotes to country
music is spent writing and co-writing original songs,
though he rarely performs.
"The main form of my enjoyment is writing and
putting songs together," Tomlinson said. On Oct. 7,
Tomlinson and his acoustic guitar visited an English
class at Blinn to lecture on country music lyric com
position.
"Songwriting is an evolutionary art; all creation is
evolutionary," said Tomlinson as he described the
process.
He said, however, songwriters have a tendency to
borrow from other accessible sources.
"Songwriters steal lines all the time, of course— I
steal them constantly," he said.
Tomlinson cited country music songwriter Jerry
Foster, who wrote 19 number one songs for Charley
Pride.
"When he hit the wall and he couldn't think of
anything to write about, he'd do two things," Tom
linson said. "First of all, he slept until the soap op
eras came on , and he got his pencil pad and his
whiskey or whatever; sat down and watched all the
soap operas, and he would write down lines from
them.
"The next thing he would do is get in his car, dri
ve down to the mall and go read all the cards in the
Hallmark shop until he found the line he liked,
somebody else's line, and bastardize it somehow,"
he said.
Tomlinson started at age 15 playing 50s rock and
roll music in a band, covering material from artists
like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Roy Orbison.
He strayed down the road of popular rock and
roll, listening and performing music from the 60s
British invasion and the early 70s acid rock move
ment until he realized he could not understand the
song "Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly, an acid
rock group.
"Irealized— I don't like the music; didn't under
stand the words," said Tomlinson. "There was a gen
erational difference for me."
A flip through the radio dial one day soon after
wards brought Tomlinson's ear to country music,
where 50s rock and roll artists such as Jerry Lee
Lewis and Conway Twitty had crossed over.
"I enjoyed the simplicity of the music and the
beat," Tomlinson said of early 50s rock and roll.
He said that many people characterize country
music as being lyrically simple — not simple mind
ed.
"Pop has a lack of sophisticated lyrical content,"
By SUSAN OWEN
WIILLIAM HARRISON/Tlw BATTALION
Texas A&M journalism professor Don Tomlinson
performs for a Blinn College class last Wednesday.
Tomlinson said. "It's lightweight compared to coun
try."
He criticized several modem country performers,
based mostly on their lyrical content.
"Garth Brooks is as over-rated as anybody I can
think of; Billy Ray Cyrus is a flash in the pan," Tom
linson said.
Tomlinson says he does not favor one particular
favorite artist, though he praised several newtalents
such as artists Mark Collie and Brooks and Dunn.
"I like songs better than individual artists," Tom
linson said.
"Kids Need Songwriters, Too," "Just Play Me a
Country Song," "Lyin' in Bed," and "Makin' Lies
Come True" were some of the original songs per
formed and explained by Tomlinson at Blinn.
Tomlinson's lyrical content deals mainly with re
lationships and personal issues, like most country
songwriters.
At the end of Tomlinson's presentation to the
English class, he helped the students compose a song
titled "What are You Doin' to You?"
Tomlinson set the record straight, however.
"If we write a song tonight. I'm getting all the
royalties," Tomlinson declared.
Ass't Arts & Entertainment Editor of THE BATTALION
There's another musical tradition taking shape
here in Aggieland.
The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band doesn't need to
worry, though; Dr. Peter Rizzo — also known as
"Sneaky Pete" — doesn't play marches and he
doesn't do halftime shows.
Rizzo, an associate professor of cell biology, per
forms every Wednesday evening at Two Pesos. His
guitar covers of classic rock and his own fractured
original tunes have been a staple feature of Wednes
day nights in College Station since 1984.
Some of the long-standing features of his show
are singalongs to tunes by the Eagles and Jimmy Buf
fett, parodies of popular songs, off-the-wall songs
like "Fish Heads" and "Dead Puppies," and his stan
dard closing number, the "Time Warp."
One of his most popular original songs, "(Who
Put The) Booger On My Beer Mug," will appear on a
CD commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Dr.
Demento radio show, which frequently plays Rizzo's
music.
The CD will be available to members of the Dr.
Demento club but will not be sold in stores. Rizzo
said about the recording, "There's no money in
volved, but I never care about that — I just like the
exposure."
Rizzo received the honor of having a camp named
after him at Fish Camp 1992. He said he was not
sure how he was chosen as a namesake.
"I think it's just being close to the students," he
said.
Two students presented him with a certificate
commemorating Camp Rizzo in class one day. They
raised their hands as if to ask a question and then be
gan playing "Booger On My Beer Mug" on a
portable stereo.
Rizzo has been performing around Bryan-College
Station since he came to Texas A&M in 1975.
Singer/songwriter Lyle Lovett was in Rizzo's
freshman biology class in the spring of 1976 and fre
quently came to watch him play.
"(Lovett) was always there, and then he started
playing there too," Rizzo said.
The two alternated performances at restaurants in
the area, but never played together, Rizzo said.
"I was doing cover tunes, and he was leaning
more towards his own stuff," he said.
In 1984 the Sunset Grill, a Northgate restaurant,
hired Rizzo and his band, the Neon Madmen, to play
Wednesday nights, primarily to entertain the A&M
rugby team, which hung out at the grill after
Wednesday night scrimmages at the polo fields.
Rizzo has played regularly on Wednesdays ever
since, moving to the Flying Tomato, the Cow Hop,
and then back to the Tomato before it closed in the
spring of '91. He played at Sneakers in the summer
of '91, but his regular fans found parking at Sneakers
troublesome and persuaded the manager of Two Pe
sos, in the Tomato's old location, to bring Sneaky
WILLIAM HARRISON/ The BATTALION
Sneaky Pete, seen here with senior Susan Czigany,
performs at Two Pesos every Wednesday night.
Pete back to Northgate.
The Neon Madmen broke up in 1988 after the
birth of Rizzo's daughter.
"The study was taken over for a nursery, and all
of a sudden we had no place to practice," he said.
Rizzo said, however, he enjoys playing solo.
"There's so much flexibility," he said. "With a
band you have to have set lists. It's very easy now: I
can just pull songs out of the past and do them if
they're requested."
Such impromptu performances often lead to the
birth of a new parody.
"If I'm asked to play a song and I don't know all
the words. I'll do the song anyway," he said. "If
there's a line or a lyric I don't know then I'll just sing
something and sometimes they like that better."
He writes down song ideas as they come to him
— on the back of extra Cell Biology 413 exams or
whatever comes to hand — and keeps a file of them
in his office.
"A lot of them come during attacks of insomnia,"
he said.
Rizzo said his musical philosophy is best summed
up by the song title "Boogie Till You Drop," and he
plans to continue performing as long as he can.
"I don't see any reason to quit," he said.
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r
TheTTexas A&M Bicycling
Club
announces a
General Meeting
on
^ Wednesday, October 14
fol §toom 407, Rudder Tower
•li ! 8:30 pm
Walyitp Bryan of Aggieland Schwinn will speak about bicycle
eff tte Santa
CMara Center
SPRING 93
Study Abroad at the
birthplace of Western
civilization.
TAMU's Santa Chiara
Center is waiting for
YOU!
Informational Meeting
251 W. Bizzell Hall
Tue. October 13
from 2:00-3:00
Study Abroad Programs
161 W. Bizzell Hall 845-0544