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The Battalion
Tuesday
October 3, 1995
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A lesson in unity
S.I.S.T.A.S. helps African-American women breakdown barriers
By Rachel Barry
The Battalion
A support group for African-American
women on campus and in the com
munity was kicked off this weekend
with the program, “Striving In Society To
Achieve Sisterhood.”
S.I.S.T.A.S. was the brain child of junior
political science major Octevia Evangelista
and junior speech communications major
Rabiyyah Badruddin.
The two students were roommates this
summer when Evangelista said they had a
vision of a support group for African-Amer
ican women in Bryan-College Station.
Badruddin said she had already had
ideas for a program like S.I.S.T.A.S. when
she and Evangelista began brainstorming
this summer.
“It was exciting because we were so
ready to be involved,” she said.
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Octevia Evangelista, a junior political science
discussion at the S.I.S.T.A.S. meeting Saturday.
The group hosted its first program this
weekend, and Evangelista said the group
focused on building self-esteem and giving
support to other African American women
in the community.
The program featured guest speakers
and self-evaluation projects that focused on
the mental, physical and spiritual aspects
of African-American women .
“If you love yourself, then you’re going to
take care of yourself,” she said. “If you feel
good about yourself, you’ll feel good, and
you will work to be a better person.”
Evangelista said there are factors on
campus that divide African-American
women every day.
“There are so many things that divide
black women on campus,” she said. “With
this we combine everything together and
try to break down those barriers.”
Evangelista said S.I.S.T.A.S. offers a
chance for African-American women to unite
and discuss the is
sues that face
them without hav
ing to be in a spe
cific organization.
“We have a bond
that doesn’t stem
from being an orga
nization,” she said.
“It stems from lov
ing each other and
accepting each oth
er regardless of
what organizations
we are in.”
Tina Harrison, a
senior finance ma
jor and chair
woman of the Black
Awareness Com
mittee, was one of
the speakers at this
weekend’s program.
She discussed de
veloping spiritually,
mentally, physically
major, speaks m an open and emotionally.
“I discussed the
Shane Elkins, The Battalion
images a lot of us portray in society and the
images we let society portray of us,” she said.
She said her discussion touched on living
with confidence.
“You need to have faith in whatever you
do,” she said. “You can’t succeed with fear
and doubt. How you think about yourself is
as you are.”
She said when people change the way they
think, they change their lives.
“When you think positive things, you draw
positive things to you,” she said.
Evangelista said having Harrison speak of
fered the participants a good perspective.
“It was the perspective of a student that
they can relate to and respect,” she said.
Harrison said she connected with the
audience.
“They could connect with me and identi
fy with me, and that helps get the point
across,” she said.
The S.I.S.T.A.S. group is needed because
small groups need to stick together.
“There are so few African-American women
on campus that this teaches us how to love
one another and accept one another and build
each other up,” she said.
Harrison said S.I.S.T.A.S. is open to anyone
in the community.
She said the program helps African-
American women build networks so there
will not be a future need for a support
group like S.I.S.T.A.S.
Harrison said she hopes the women who
attend the workshops will be able to use
what they learn and teach the people who
were not there.
Although it was a positive experience for
the participants, the only problem that
seemed to plague the group was the tearing
down of the group’s flyers around campus.
Evangelista said this did not create a real
problem for them.
“We just put more up and went right on
with the program,” she said.
S.I.S.T.A.S. will host more programs this
year, and said she hopes S.I.S.T.A.S. will be
able to host retreats in the future.
“Everyday well be working toward sister
hood,” she said. “It doesn’t stop there.”
Shane Elkins, The Battalion
Tina Harrison, a senior finance major, leads the discussion group at
the S.I.S.T.A.S. meeting Saturday. Harrison is chairwoman of the Black
Awareness Committee.
Exit The Dnagon
Repetition lessens impact of Urge Overkill’s newest
Alternative shows Pet Shop
Boys’ definition of dance
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By Amy Uptmor
The Battalion
As we move farther into
the ’90s, it seems that more
and more bands are popping
up that sound like they never
quite left the ’70s.
Think about it — Lenny
Kravitz and Matthew Sweet could
both be described as sounding retro to
the point of a time warp. And it’s not a
bad thing.
Now, Urge Overkill’s latest album,
Exit the Dragon, is carrying on the tra
dition. And like its predecessors, it’s not
a bad thing at
all.
Urge Overkill’s last album, Satu
ration, had the guitar-oriented rock
sound that’s characteristic of the
birth decade of Generation X. Exit
the Dragon is a continuation of the
band’s sound, so fans will have noth
ing to be disappointed about.
But at the same time, fans have
nothing to be terribly excited about.
Exit is by no means a bad album, but
a lot of the songs sound the
same. The band has a great
style, but the same guitar
lines are repeated ad
nauseum to where
many of the
songs begin to
sound like
one big
nev-
ending collaboration.
Urge also has the bad habit —
as anyone who heard the song
“Sister Havana” can attest to —
of having annoyingly repetitive
choruses. Both “Need Some Air”
and “Somebody Else’s Body” repeat
their titles about five times
per chorus.
However, the good lyrics
squeezed in between such choruses
save many of the songs. “Need some
air,” is a brilliant dialogue about feel
ing suffocated by causes and rebel
lions. The final verse ends with “The
revolution is dead /1 need some air or
I might pass out / I’m choking on your
signs” before kicking into its “broken
record” chorus mode.
Equally impressive lyrics are heard
on the desperate “the break,” with
lyrics such as “I need a break and I
need one clean / Because things aren’t
what they seem” and “I’m falling down
again / And I’m calling out for you.”
Unstable listeners should take note
that such dark themes are om
nipresent on Exit the Dragon. The al
bum’s first song, “Jaywalkin’,” begins
with the lyrics “Only evil is in this
world / Only evil in you.”
And then there’s “This is no place,”
which competes with “the break” as
far as sounding desperate goes with
lines like “I can’t remember coming
home / And she don’t know my name /
She woke up early and went home /
Here we go again.”
Despite the gloom and repetition,
most of the songs on Exit are, never
theless, good songs.
There are a few throw-aways, such
as “Honesty flies,” which has the
pointless chorus of “Honesty won’t
break my heart / Honesty won’t break
it / Honesty won’t break your heart/
Honest it won’t.” Chalk that one up in
the profound category.
This album gets a little slow and
monotonous after the first seven or
eight songs but as a whole, it has a
good sound. Urge Overkill should
look to its fellow guitar-driven retro
gods — Lenny and Matthew will do
— for a little help in remembering
the “feel-good” aspect of the music of
the ’70s. These guys need some
cheering up.
By Amy Uptmor
The Battalion
It’s ironic that the Pet Shop
Boys have managed to put out al
bum after album of dance music
for the past 10 years without
changing its sound or style and
are still considered one of the
more progressive bands of the
last decade.
But even though its sound has re
mained consistent, in the members’ own
words, “We were never being boring.”
Maybe the band members’ influence can
be attributed to what their music has
done. Their music, along with closely relat
ed bands such as Erasure and New Order,
helped to resuscitate a dance culture (and
the dance music genre in general) in the
United States and Europe, a culture that
had almost died with disco and Abba.
In the process, their music helped to
bring the underground culture into the
mainstream.
Of course, there was music that was
thrown to the waste side over the last 10
years. So the Pet Shop Boys, in keeping
with the tradition of other
successful bands, have re
leased Alternative, a dou
ble-disc collection of 30 b-
sides from the last decade.
But this collection, just like
the Pet Shop Boys, isn’t
quite like other bands’ b-
side collections.
For starters, most b-
side collections are known
to sound nothing like the
rest of the band’s music.
Not here. These 30 songs
are, for the most part, vin
tage Pet Shop Boys. How
these songs didn’t make it
onto the band’s original al
bums is a mystery, for
even though they are b-
sides, they are far from
second-rate.
The full range of the Pet Shop Boys’
spectrum is represented on this album.
There’s the random (“I want a dog” and
“Your funny uncle”), and there’s the pro
found (“You know where you went wrong”
and “What keeps mankind alive”). Despite
their content, all the songs are character
ized by the Pet Shop Boy’s witty, thought
ful lyrics.
“Your funny uncle” is particularly
unique. Imagine a smoke-filled bar in a
World War II setting, complete with a solo
clarinet and a young man crooning about
friends in the war and the approval of an
uncle — except the music is marked with a
synthesized rhythm in the background.
Believe it or not, it works.
What is most unique about this collec
tion is the other spectrum that it repre
sents. Dance music is more than a sound
— it is a form of technology. And like any
other form of technology, it is an ever-
evolving field.
The songs on Alternative are organized
chronologically, so listeners have the un
usual opportunity to hear the progression
of the technological advances this band
has utilized over the last 10 years.
Die-hard fans have a lot more than the
songs to be excited about with this collec
tion for two main reasons.
First and foremost is the debut (a few
years late, mind you) of Chris Lowe’s vo
cals on three different
songs. It would seem
that the Pet Shop Boys
would lose something
without Neil Tenant’s
trademark voice, but
that’s not the case at all.
Lowe’s voice adds a new
dimension to the band’s
sound rather than taking
anything away.
This is especially evi
dent on “One of the
Crowd,” a characteristic
club song complete with
a thumping base laced
with intricate key
boards. Lowe’s voice is
synthesized, and Tenan
t’s high-pitched harmo
ny can be heard faintly
in the background.
Pet Shop Boys Second T * nant ^
Lowe chose to provide listeners with a
step-by-step interview rather than song
Ijrics to fill the album jacket. The inter
view contains Tenant and Lowe reminisc
ing over the last decade, song by song. It’s
yet another thing that sets this collection
— and this band — apart from all the rest.
In a day and age that is characterized
by an ever-shrinking economy, bands have
to have something special in mind to get
away with actually selling a double-album
set. Alternative is definitely just that — It’s
both the same old thing and something
completely new at the same time. And yes,
it’s something special.
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