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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 11, 1996)
The Battalion Page 3 Wednesday • September 11, 1996 arded a $500 c ue during a sps rees. an 40 emploJ ive, 10, 15 arcl ipitalized ninor strol armer Sen. B: ! was in good co linor stroke atic ;d any paralysis, id they found o.: daughter Joa’ ling serious, re of the 1960s: admitted Monte no repercussw lOldwater’s reie: n of his test resj ; Senate from 1: ) the seat to te lent. rndon Johnson ained a Senate ! retired in 1986, )th of his hip tic devices. He heart surgery tate surgery in lighs & Lows yesterday's High 95°F Vesterdav's Low 71°F < (day's Ixpectei High 96°F lb day's Exptd Low 68°F it Chapter of the#| Foundation the Jewish / a Healthy Year. relucted by am n m unity 696-7313 ON r, City Editor Sports Editor ^ace, Opinion Ed® : jg, Web Editor :man, Radio Edito* i, Photo Editor eber, Cartoon & SiM University In tlie n. News officesareif -2647; E-mail: ndorsement byllie 45-2696. For >onald, and office^ IS this thine on? ° Singers and songwriters test the sound systems and bare their talents at Open Mike Night at 3rd Floor Cantina By Brent Troyan The Batt alion H is hand shakes as he adjusts the microphone. The stage lights hum through the silence. Somewhere in the audience, a leather- backed chair scoots across the hardwood floor. Mike Ethan Messick, a junior biology major, takes a deep breath and begins to sing. Songwriters like Messick gather for Open Mike Night at the 3rd Floor Cantina in Bryan on Wednesdays to bare their musical talent to the crowd. “It’s a great chance to hear brand new stuff, something differ ent,” Messick said. Roy Gene Munse, a morning disc jockey for KORA, is the official host of Open Mike Night. Munse said he started the singer/songwriter night to give amateur entertainers a forum to play original music without the pressure that new musicians sometimes face. Anyone can play music at Open Mike Night, but the songs have to be original material. Munse said the artists’ mater ial ranges from rock ’n’ roll to blues to country and western, and they range in experience from seasoned veterans to first time performers. “Playing here takes the edge off,” Munse said. “There’s a real community feeling.” The community also has its own spiritual leader, though the Rev. AI Mays is not the typical holy man. The ordained minister rides a ’76 FLH Police Special Harley named “Baby Doll.” His vest ments are a black leather vest and a red bandanna. “Whether it sucks or whether it’s great, it’s fun,” Mays said. “This ain’t no talent contest.” Patrick Ressler, a Texas A&M oceanography graduate student, started coming to Open Mike Night last month. “I feel like this is a good atmosphere,” he said. “Everybody’s real supportive.” The performers in the audience also offer more than applause. Munse said many of the artists invite other regular participants to sit in on their sets. Last week, Mays improvised on his harmonica to Messick’s acoustic guitar, and Mays called Munse to the stage dur ing his set. “Performing is not something I set out to do,” Munse said, “but I like it now.” Munse said that he started writing music when he was 12 and picked up the guitar 20 years ago so he could hear what he had written. Open Mike Night at the 3rd Floor Cantina began last November after Munse saw other singer/songwriter events in Austin and Nashville. See Singers, Page 4 Tim Moog, The Battalion Patrick Ressler plays for Open Mike Night. 1 Something backfired for Headcrash with Overdose on Tradition. The band’s anti-corporate groove rock must have seemed a promising formula for appeal and success. Too bad the “tradition” here is that Headcrash’s approach has already saturated the pop rock scene. It certainly has overdosed on the angst of the decade, and the result is a boring apd uninspiring attempt at social commentary. Overdose on Tradition is disappointing, even before the bjjtylTing .begins. Headcrash’s brand of repetitive distorted guitar and syncopated drumming has long been exhausted by bands like Helmet and Orange 9mm. Synthesizers are employed in a failed attempt to fuse an elec tronic and industrial influence with this style. In a press release, the band’s label compared Headcrash to Rage Against the Machine, which, unfortunately, is a valid judgement. The social commentary of Headcrash’s lyrics is as overdone and annoying as Rage’s. The world needs, at most, one rap-slash-metal- slash-pissed-off-at-the-rich-and-powerful band at any given time, and Rage was popular first. Headcrash loses. Headcrash’s mission opens a world of irony. According to the press release, “The message is clear — corporate brainwashing is stealing our souls ... the system doesn’t work.” Oh, please. This attitude, though somewhat noble, is Generation X-ish and among the bands that should have faded with grunge and teen angst fads. It sounds like someone forgot to tell Headcrash. The band is anti-industry to the point of absurdity in songs like “Imitation of Life’.” “In eternal servitude to a stable salary / Sign the dotted line and prepare for starvation / Once an individual, now a company clone.” Speaking of the “dotted line,” singer Allen Wright surely considered his animosity for what he calls the “American nightmare,” when his band signed to this Warner Brothers-backed label. Quite the anti-corporate move. Next time, Headcrash should try overdosing on substance and originality. D - John LeBas The Jerky Boys The Jerky Boys 3 Mercury / Ratchet Records The bad boys of comedy albums are back with a vengeance, but they missed their target by a mile. Johnny Brennan and his sidekick, Kamal, are bringing the country their third series of prank comedy in The Jerky Boys 3. The album consists of 29 prank calls per formed by Brennan and Kamal. In this recording, eight of the calls are incoming, advertisement response calls from unsuspecting people. The comedic pranksters fill the album with a variety of characters ranging from a hip-hop rap per, Curly G., to a confused woman by the name of Sol Rosenberg. The album is flat and will probably leave its audience in tears instead of guffaws. The character of Sol Rosenberg is the album’s high point. In a call titled “Sol’s Chainsaw Shock,” Rosenberg receives a call from a woman responding to her chainsaw advertisement. As Rosenberg gets up to see if her husband has sold the chainsaw, she has a terrible acci dent which leaves her ankle bone protruding through the skin. The sympathetic caller, not knowing the con versation is a phony, continually asks if Rosenberg is okay and advises her to see a doctor. The other characters on the album are cre ations that should have stayed in Brennan and Kamal’s imagination. Compared to their two previous multi-plat inum selling albums, the new release from The Jerky Boys is a complete waste of listening time. The Jerky Boys must be working without a dictionary, because album No. 3 is a far cry from the meaning of funny. F - James Francis till , i 1 ■Life’s Circus Free!! Food & Drinks tudent punseling ervices Live Music & Performances Provided by: ^.ritry Dunk these local celebrities at our Dunkin’ Booth!! Carl Baggett Polly Bell Fred Brown Darryl Bruffet Bill Kibler A&M Yell Leaders Door prizes donated by over 75 university organizations and community businesses. 1 student to pickup 2 $40 per school yeu f Express, call 845-26' iring the fall andsp^j (except on Univeisi/ tage paid at i, 230 Reed McDofr': Aggie Wranglers Kappa Pickers Don’t miss the biggest student appreciation day ever!! Thursday, Sept. 12th, 2-6 pm Henderson Hall a adjacent grassy areas!