October 4
The Battalion
IELIF
Page 3
Friday • October 4, 1996
)n also signed a r
:laring October as|
tic Violence Awa
and other bills that e
al FBI database tot
•s who have been ft
son, authorize!
rams to treat
use and help famifei
nent officers killed inti
ifter May 1,1992,toa
college for their diitta
:er Registrati
Deadlines
4 — Deadline for
in person to vote
:ations: BrazosCs
C fice, libraries and a
ation drives on cars
7 — Postmark deal
ter registration aoti
' mail
16 to Nov, 1-1
irly voting
ations: Brazos Co.d
i, Arena Hail on Tata
yan, Galilee
h on North lop
, MSC, College Sta
1812 Welsh inM
General 1
Highs & Low
Today’s Expeciet
Tonight's E\|
70°f
Tomorrovi
Expected Hi
85°F
Tomorrows
Expected Li
70°F
mation courtesyotlM
hods
i shots, foam,
oms)
ounselmg
id counseling
of urinary
ms,
linic provides a
C every two weeks,
om the communit)
5-1576
ION
ora Rasmussen, Cl#
Day, Sports Editor
•her Pace, Opinion Erf
is Yung, Web Em
. Hickman, Radio Edi®
Moog, Photo Editor
j Graeber, Cartoon EF'
uck, Christie Humphries,Ca* 11
ker
imber Huff, John LeBas.W
ellor
ising, Jeremy Furtick,Colbf6 i:
r, David Boldt, Bryan Gooi!»' 1
vard, Mason Jackson,Sean^
llor & Angie Rodgers
tchel Redington
Depot, Ed Goodwin,
■
sity in the Division of StinWj
d Building. Newsroom phone"
/eb.tamu.edu.
by The Battalion. Forcampjs ^
■ 69. Advertising offices are in®'
267S.
:opick up a single copy ofRy;
year. To charge by Visa.Vast^'
the fall and spring semesW 1
yiyusic
Les Claypool and
the Holy Mackerel
Highball with the
j Devil
Interscope Records
Ever have a craving for
{ pizza so intense it hurts?
So you run to your fa
vorite pizza parlor and or-
!| der a hot, greasy pie with
the works.
You stuff a slice into
your mouth and realize ...
I as good as pizza may be,
it’s still just pizza.
Les Claypool’s debut
solo album, Highball with
l the Devil, is like pizza — it’s
yummy, but tastes similar
i to all the rest of the pizza
you’ve ever eaten.
Highball with the Devil
! offers no surprises. The
venerable bassist and
j singer for San Francisco’s
| “audio acid” legend Primus
| sticks with a predictable
I 15-track serving of odd
i musical narratives, leaving
| behind his history of musi-
| cal innovation.
Primus fans have heard
I this stuff before. Claypool
| doesn’t push any bound-
j aries here.
This doesn’t mean
\ Highball with the Devil is
[not good — it’s just not
: very interesting.
The album sounds
homemade, and a lot of the
songs are probably live
| recordings. This low-budget
I effort suits Claypool’s bass
grind, and the result is a
I cool peek into garage band
practice. Unfortunately, the
I “low-fi” also muddles the
bass — the backbone of
! Claypool’s music.
Claypool recruits fellow
Bay-area musicians Jay
| Lane and Charlie Hunter
I for the live tracks. The
i Charlie Hunter Quartet
drummer and guitarist
lend a refreshing, jazzy facet
to the eccentric bass fid
dlings on “Me and Chuck.”
Most of the other songs
could easily fit a Primus
set. “Running the Gaunt
let” features Claypool’s
trademark hick-a-billy mu
sic laid over his eerie whin
ing, the approach used
with commercial success
in Primus’ “My Name is
Mud” and “Wynona’s Big
Brown Beaver.”
The days of Primus’ “au
dio acid,” that lovable
world of rambunctious
bass lines and off-key gui
tar screeches, are gone.
Claypool’s only new ap
proach on the album
makes the listener wince.
On several tracks, he plays
all the instruments. Now,
Claypool is a terrific bass
player and a decent gui
tarist, but is not quite con
vincing as a drummer. He
doesn’t always seem to lock
the instruments together
on these tracks. It’s as if he
can’t find his own groove.
Claypool’s storytelling
gifts haven’t suffered with
his creative stagnation. His
tales of the weird and ran
dom perpetuate songs like
“Cohibas Esplenditos:”
“Saw Mr. Potato Man
the other day / down at
the wasteland / He’s a
happy boy, full of vim and
vigor / since the day he
left his wife.”
Whatever, Les. This ex
pected nonsense is Clay-
pool’s norm and not at all
new.
One serious matter may
keep some from consider
ing Highball with the Dev
il, and make others rush
out and buy it — a spo
ken-word track featuring
Henry Rollins.
This waste of audio tape
seems to be a cheap excuse
to get Rollins on the album.
Nice try, but Rollins is so
damned irritating it doesn’t
help much.
But this is just one slice
of Claypool’s pizza. Drop it
on the floor, and the rest of
the pizza is still edible. The
toppings are familiar and
the crust not half bad, but
don’t expect a masterpiece.
B- - John LeBas
—ggl
Sunny Days Ahead
Former student Sunny Nash has taken the world
by storm as an artist. Her new book describes
her pre-Civil-Rights childhood in Bryan.
By John LeBas
The Battalion
W hen Sunny Nash was a girl growing up in
Bryan in the ’50s, Texas A&M seemed like an
other world to her.
The school was all-male, all-military and all-white.
Everybody looked the same, Nash said. And, at the
time, African-Americans could not attend A&M.
Yet in 1977, Nash received a journalism degree from
A&M. She was the “second or third” African-American
woman to graduate from the University.
Nash said she wasn’t aware of this at the time.
“I didn’t know that until I did a speech for the Asso
ciation of Former Students years later,” she said.
Nash says she did not notice because she was not
concerned with being a minority here. Overlooking her
minority status as a woman and African-American, she
said she worked through her college career with one
goal — to get a degree.
Nash, who is a photographer and freelance writer
living in California, is reading passages from her new
book, Bigmama Didn’t Shop at Woolworth’s, at
Friends Congregational Church in College Station on
Sunday at 7 p.m.
The book is the journalist’s latest writing effort,
chronicling her childhood experiences in the Candy
Hill neighborhood of Bryan.
In a world of Jim Crow.laws and rampant discrimi
nation, the future looked bleak for a young black girl.
Nash, who was born in 1949, writes of the daily obsta
cles she and her family had to overcome in the pre-Civ-
il-Rights-Movement era.
From Singer to Aggie
Nash’s road to A&M began following gigs as a musi
cian. Nash, who said she had always wanted to be a
writer, began singing commercial jingles immediately
following graduation from Kemp High School in Bryan.
This led to jobs with musical luminaries such as her
cousin, Johnny Nash, and Jackie Wilson. For a while,
Nash toured with singing groups and lived and worked
in New York and Chicago.
Nash said by the early 1970s, the traveling lifestyle of
a performer had begun to wear thin. She had a daugh
ter and didn’t want to raise her on the road.
“I decided I needed to settle down and go to
school,” Nash said.
Nash returned to Bryan to live with her parents.
She said A&M seemed an obvious choice for school
ing. Recently demilitarized and integrated, the Univer
sity was cheap and close to home.
“I think that then it cost $4 a semester hour,” she said.
Time has stoked the growth of A&M’s fees, and its
diversity. But when Nash attended, A&M was mostly
white and male.
“I would sometimes go for weeks without seeing
other African-Americans,” she said. “I could also go for
several days without seeing another woman.”
Nash said her race was not an issue, though.
“I didn’t experience overt racial prejudice at A&M,”
she said. “I wasn’t looking for that kind of treatment —
I was too busy. But I experienced isolation because I
was a woman.”
This isolation, Nash said, may have been further
See Sunny, Page 4
MONDAY, October 7
Co-op Career Fair
Zachry Engineering Center
Lobby
Monday, October 7
Tuesday, October 8
Different employers each day
ABB Vetco Gray
Advanced Micro Devices
ARCO Chemical
City of Missouri City/Engineering
Cryovac
Elk Corporation
Energy Operations
Halliburton Energy Services
H.B. Zachry
H.E.B.
Hewlett Packard - Convex Division
Hoechst Celanese
Honeywell
Lockheed Martin Space Information
Lyondell-Citigo
Motorola, AMG
NASA - JSC
National Instruments
Praxair, Inc.
RTEC
Sperry-Sun Drilling
Texas Instruments
Transco
UFE Incorporated
Universal Computer Systems
TUESDAY,
Central Intelligence Agency
Champion International
City of Houston/ Public Works & Eng.
Cyrix Corporation
Dow Chemical
DSC Communications
DuPont
Eastman chemical
Flowtronex Chemical
Fluor Daniel
Freese & Nichols
General Cable
General Homes
IBM
Ingersoll-Rand
InterVoice
Le Tourneau
Lockheed Martin Vought Systems
M&M Mars
Marathon Oil
Mobil
Monsanto
Nortel
Price Waterhouse
Southwest Research
Union Carbide
CVEN, MEEN
CHEM, CECN, CEEN, ELEN, PHYS
CHEM, CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
COSC, CVEN, GEOG (CIS)
CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
CHEN, MEEN
CVEN, ELEN, INEN, MEEN
MEEN, INEN
COSC, CVEN, ELEN, MEEN
INEN
CEEN, CECN, CPSC, ELEN
BANA, CHEM, CHEN, CPSC
CHEN, CECN, CEEN, CPSC, ELEN
CPSC, ELEN
CHEM, CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
CPSC, CECN, ELEN
ACCT, FINC MGMT, AERO, ELEN, MEEN
CPSC, CECN, CEEN, ELEN, MATH, PHYS
CHEN, ENTC, MEEN
INEN, CPSC, CECN
CPSC, CEEN, CECN, ELEN, ENTC, MEEN, INEN
CPSC, CEEN, CECN, ELEN
ELEN, ENTC, MEEN, CVEN
MEEN
ALL MAJORS
October 8
LBAR, BUSI, ELEN, CPSC, CECN, CEEN
CHEN, ELEN
BUSI, LBAR, CPSC, ENGR
ELEN, CEEN, CECN
CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
CPSC, CECN, CEEN, ELEN, TELE, MGMT
CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
CHEN, MEEN
CHEN, ELEN, ENTC, INEN, MEEN
CHEN, COSC, CVEN, ELEN, MEEN, ACCT, FINC
COSC, CVEN, ELEN
CHEN, MEEN
COSC
ACCT, CHEN, CEEN, CECN, CPSC, ELEN, MEEN
MEEN
CEEN, CECN, CPSC, ELEN
ELEN, OCEN, CVEN
AERO, CPSC, CEEN, CECN, ELEN, MEEN
ELEN, MEEN
MEEN, ELNE, CVEN, CHEN-Environmental, INEN-Safety, HR
CHEN, MEEN
CHEN, ELEN, MEEN
ACCT, FINC, MGMT, CECN, CEEN, CPSC,
ELEN, MEEN, MATH, PHYS, ECON
ALL MAJORS
AERO, CECN, CEEN, CPSC, ELEN, MEEN
CHEN, MEEN
Place Your Ad In
The Battalion
Call 845-0569