The Battalion • Page 3
Tuesday • July 25, 1995
Teenage Fanclub's new
album draws on
influences while
(carving new identity
T
By Kyle Littlefield
he Battalion
Ah, the plight of many a good band.
E ^he musicianship is there, but the
tars are just not in alignment — or the
uck needed to make a band commer-
ially successful is lacking.
Or as Raymond McGinley, guitarist
for Teenage Fanclub explains, “If what
you’re doing inter
sects with the
xood of the mass-
js, you will be
Isuccessful.”
Grand Prix ,
Ithe latest release
I from Teenage
I Fanclub, contains
| no evidence that
Ithe band is chang-
ing in order to
>lease the American masses. Instead,
the album finds the band writing great
>op music and maturing.
Teenage Fanclub has always had an
mcanny knack for writing songs that
Album Review
Teenage Fanclub
Grand PrSx
DGC
★★★★ (out off five)
left listeners wonder
ing if they had heard
them before. Grand
Prix seems to stray
from this tradition,
which is proof the band
has found its own
sound.
The notable exceptions
to the band’s distinct
sound are
“Sparky’s Dream,”
which sounds a lot
like the chiming
harmonies of the
Byrds, and
“Verisimilitude,”
which could have
resided on the
Beach Boys’ album
Pet Sounds.
The songwriting
has Come a long way since the band’s
last album. Thirteen. Songs like
“Tears.” show that love songs are no
longer the band’s only forte.
Singer/guitarist Norman Blake
sings, “You’re exalted
Your exit was so dramatic.”
Although it’s nice to hear a band that
is not afraid to poke fun at itself, the wit
of the album is, at times, overbearing.
Some of the song titles show humor
and cleverness. The title “Mellow
Doubt” certainly has a double mean
ing. If said too fast, it becomes “mel
lowed out,” which is the mood project
ed as Blake sings, “It gives me pain to
think of you / And all of the things to
gether we’ll never do” to the slow
strum of his acoustic guitar.
“Neil Jung” — pronounced “Neil
Young” — sounds like the grandfather
of grunge, but actually has nothing to do
with him or the famous psychoanalyst
Carl Jung.
“It’s about a friend who was having
a relationship with a crazy woman,”
Blake said in a press release.
“Sparky’s Dream,” a song about a
cosmic love,, finds bass player Gerard
Love singing, “I took a wrong direction
/ From a shooting star / In the love di
mension / Fading fast from taking this
too far.” The song is equipped with ce
lestial harmonies and vintage-sound
ing guitars to boot.
With many songs these days being
filled with cliches and words that have
no face value or deeper meaning,
“Verisimilitude” is an interesting look
at the human side of songwriting.
“It is an anti-dishonest love song,
song,” McGinley said in an interview.
The selective art of choosing words
for lyrics is summed up as he sings,
“I’ve got a pocketful of words in my
brain / I pull something out when I
think I should ... I’ll try to find some
thing I can give to you.”
In this day of punchy, distorted gui
tars and blood-curdling screams that
mark the resurgence of punk rock.
Grand Prix may sound anachronistic.
However, it is indigent to times when
everything was laid back, and music
could be described as “pretty” without
that description being a bad thing.
It's a small, thin, good-looking world after all
Too much Disney can be dangerous
Elizabeth
Garrett
Columnist
E very summer it’s a
new movie but the
same ol’ thing.
Pochahontas, the
latest Disney creation,
immediately spawned
a mass of followers
when the trailers hit
theaters.
And no wonder —
Disney does a fantastic marketing job.
The company’s advertising blitz cannot
be avoided.
Fast food restaurants offer children’s
menus that include Disney toys.
Radio waves and music video chan
nels are flooded with Vanessa Williams’
rendition of Pocahontas’ theme song,
“Colors of the Wind.”
Hallmark is selling a line of greeting
cards, stationery and party goods in
spired by Pocahontas.
Other Disney projects are still being
exploited. The stage version of Beauty
and the Beast is a hit on Broadway and
is also touring the country.
And we can’t forget the Disney store.
Located in malls across America, the
stores give parents the opportunity to
purchase Disney clothes, accessories,
videos, books and toys under one roof.
Children pressure their parents
enough without having an entire store
devoted to Disney to rummage through.
Many times, I have participated in elab
orate covert operations with my family
to distract my 6-year-old sister’s atten
tion away from the Disney store as we
walk by.
Although we may avoid Disney at the
malls, the blitz also comes by mail.
For the periodically-inclined young
ster, there is the Disney Adventurers
Magazine, which is read by 5 million
children monthly. Subscribers can look
forward to the September issue, when
they can take a Pocahontas personality
quiz to find out which character they
are most like.
Yes, Disney has
made itself quite com
fortable in the market
place.
If it wasn’t busy
playing the kids for
every cent-of their al
lowance, the company
could train children to
be good capitalists.
But with the power over such a vast
audience also comes responsibility.
To its credit, Disney has tried to put
a modern and realistic spin on its latest
releases.
In Beauty and the Beast, Belle, the
heroine, loved to read. This is more be
lievable and acceptable than Snow
White, who loved to clean.
But Belle’s bookish appearance made
it obvious that Disney was trying to
make up for its shallow femi
nine portrayal in the past.
With Jasmine of
Aladdin, Disney introduced
multiculturalism to its pre
viously ethnocentric reper
toire. The leading couple
even had Arabic noses. Yet
the rest of Aladdin’s charac
ters were completely An
glo. In fact, the only people
who truly looked like
Arabs were the bad guys.
And now it’s
Pocahontas.
In its attempt to provide
a history lesson for its audi
ence, Disney falls short and
merely exploits a folk tale.
Disney fails to accurately portray
Pocahontas as one of the first American
Indians to speak English and act as a
translator between her tribe and the
colonists.
The fact that she died in England,
married to John Rolfe and never to
John Smith is never even hinted at.
And the typical squaw’s outfit did
not, as the movie implies, have a thigh
high slit, nor did it show cleavage.
In fact, all modern Disney heroines’
scantily clad bodies have becorqe alarm
ingly similar to Playboy centerfolds.
In The Little Mermaid, Ariel swam
around wearing nothing but seashells,
if she wore anything at all. Jasmine
was practically falling out of her genie
outfit in Aladdin. But Pocahontas wins
the Penthouse Pet Award for her ex
tremely exaggerated figure.
And Disney’s men are not immune to
high standards. Captain John Smith of
Pocahontas looks just like Fabio.
In Disney cartoons, the good guys
(and girls) are always extremely attrac
tive. The characters who do nothing are
mediocre looking, and the villains are
always hideously ugly.
.. Fortunately, this hierarchy
of good looks does not
tafe. exist on this side of
the big screen.
There is nothing
particularly wrong
with being estheti-
cally pleasing to oth
ers, but children
^ should see that
just because
someone is good
looking on the
outside, it does
not always
mean that they
are good on the in
side.
It seems as
though Disney wants to add a bit of re
alism to animated movies to benefit its
viewing audience. But it certainly has
the power to influence, as well.
This year’s influence has been wasted.
But maybe there will be some frumpy he
roes, or gorgeous villains next summer.
Silverstone surprises with
Clueless performance
By Amy Uptmor
The Battalion
The basis for the movie Clueless
can best be described in the words of
its leading woman, Cher (Alicia Sil
verstone) — “Searching for a boyfriend
in high school is as pointless as
searching for meaning in a Pauly
Shore movie,” she says.
Director Amy Heckerling’s new
movie essentially is a meaningless
display of high school kids trying
to find love, much like her directo
rial claim to fame. Fast Times at
Ridgemont High. And much like
Fast Times, the
movie is successful
with its catchy dia
logue, biting one-
liners and captivat
ing characters.
The movie centers
around Cher, a
wealthy Beverly Hills
bombshell, and her
best friend Dion
(Stacey Dash). Both
girls are named after
“great singers of the
past who now do in
fomercials” and are
friends because they
know why others are jealous of them.
They befriend a rough transfer
student named Tai (Brittany Mur
phy) and take her on as a fixer-up
per “project.” In the midst of their
quest to find the perfect guy for
Tai, Cher realizes she wants a
boyfriend of her own.
The ever-picky Cher — “You see
how much trouble I have picking out
my shoes, and they just go on my
feet,” she says of the opposite sex —
experiences a run of bad luck with
guys such as Christian (Justin Walk
er), her James Dean-like dream guy.
The problem is that everyone figures
Movie Review
Clueless
Starring Alicia
Silverstone and
Stacey Dash
Directed by
Amy Heckerling
Rated PG-T3
Playing at Hollywood
16
★★★ (out off five)
out is gay, except for Cher.
It takes over half the movie for
Cher to realize she is in love with
her politically correct. Amnesty In
ternational T-shirt-wearing ex-step
brother, Josh (Paul Rudd). Where
Cher is obsessed with coordinating
the perfect outfit, Josh is more con
cerned with growing the perfect
goatee — “you just couldn’t be the
only guy at the coffeehouse without
chin pubes,” Cher tells him. It’s the
perfect case of opposites attracting.
There is an obvious age gap in
Clueless that makes it a little hard
for college-age students to relate. It is
more geared toward the
high school students it
portrays. Nevertheless,
the movie is enough of
a spoof on high school
mentality for people of
all ages to enjoy.
The acting in Clue
less is surprisingly
good, especially con
sidering that Silver
stone is best known
for her performances
in Aerosmith videos.
The young actress is
charming and por
trays a character of
considerably more substance than
the movie trailers would lead view
ers to believe.
Cher has a heart of gold and only
wants the best for her friends. De
spite her obvious ditziness, she occa
sionally surprises viewers with bits of
intelligence. For example, she knows
it was “that Pollonius guy,” not Ham
let, who coined the phrase, “To thine
own self be true.”
.The film may never be the classic
film of the- current high school crowd.
It is not- a Fast Times or a Sixteen
Candles, but Clueless is good for a
few laughs.
s
The World unfolds for Graduate
Students and Graduating Seniors ivith
J\ rxnfYR
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