The Battalion
Page 3
Wednesday • March 26, 1997
Brad Graeber, The Batfaijon
A flood of memory and myth
Exhibit tells ancient stories of life through
a menagerie of art forms
Willie
Locals recall good times with star's songs
By April Towery
The Battalion
A fter reciting poetry at church picnics,
working as a disc jockey, selling
Bibles and recording 31 albums,
"red-headed stranger” Willie Nelson is on
the road again, and his next stop is Bryan’s
Texas Hall of Fame.
Mae Eyre, a College Station waitress,
grew up listening to Nelson’s music and has
seen him perform twice. The most recent
performance she attended was at the Sum
mit in Houston six months ago.
"I was up in the front, but I didn’t have
the nerve to go up onstage,” Eyre said. “I
was just sitting there drooling. He just
floats my boat.”
The 63-year-old Nelson performed his
first show at age 5, when he recited an
original poem at a church picnic. His first
singing appearance was at age 10 in a
polka band.
Nelson worked odd jobs before releas
ing his “breakthrough album," Shotgun
Willie, in 1973.
Nelson is known for his relaxed ap
pearances, including a performance at
the White House for former President Jim
my Carter. Nelson was dressed in faded
blue jeans, a T-shirt and running shoes.
Tim Kelly, an afternoon air personality
at KORA and a senior journalism major,
said one of his favorite things about Nelson
is his laid-back style.
“He plays with a guitar that’s had a hole
kicked in it forever,” Kelly said. “He still
plays with cat gut strings. People say,
‘Willie, you have money. Why don’t you
buy a new guitar?’ They offer to donate
money or buy him a new
one, but he tells them it
doesn’t sound the same.
He’s been telling people
that for years.”
Kelly remembers his
parents listening to Nel
son’s music when he was 3
years old.
“I’ve got most of his al
bums,” Kelly said. “I was
around when they were still
albums. Then we moved to
eight-tracks.”
Kelly said it is interest
ing how Nelson’s music
appeals to both him and his parents.
“A lot of people don’t understand —
they think since people are young, they
don’t like old country,” he said. “These
kids go into The Chicken and sing along to
the old country songs, and they’re 18 or 19
years old. That’s the roots of country.”
Nelson’s struggles with money took a
toll on his musical career in the late ’50s,
when he had to sell his rights to two
songs he had written. He sold “Family
Bible” for $50 to buy his family groceries.
On the
ROAD AGAIN
“Night Life,” which was later recorded by
over 70 artists, was sold for $150, with
which Nelson bought a Buick and drove
to Nashville.
Despite early financial struggles, Nelson
has recorded seven gold albums and six plat
inum albums. He has won
five Grammys, eight Coun
try Music Association
awards, four Academy of
Country Music awards and
three Nashville Songwrit
ers Association Interna
tional awards.
Eyre said she prefers
Nelson’s earlier music to
his recent releases.
“I like his old songs on
the Stardust album,” she
said. “But I guess I like his
new stuff, too. It’s all good.”
Kelly said his favorite
song is “City of New Orleans,” from the
1984 album with the same title.
“It’s got a laid-back beat, one of those
songs you want to be sitting around play
ing dominoes to,” he said.
Nelson’s show begins at 7 p.m., and will
undoubtedly entertain the audience for
hours, Kelly said.
“He won’t stop playing once he starts,”
he said. “He puts on a great show. They’re
probably going to have to kick him off the
stage so they can close.”
Willie Nelson is
playing tonight at
7 at Texas Hall
of Fame
By Shea Wiggins
The Battalion
A new exhibit that combines poetry, sculp
ture and music in one room at the MSC Vi
sual Arts Gallery is not about art. Sculptor
Terisa J. Mabrey said it is about memory.
“Items in the room are placed in a specific pat
tern to help memory,” she said. “Each piece re
minds me of a story. I see the piece and many
ideas come to mind.”
The memory theatre was first used by the
Greeks to help memorize ideas and events by
placing items in a specific pattern.
“Floodstage at the Memory Theatre” uses
physical, verbal and musical stimulation to help
visitors remember a world when ancient myths
explained the cycles of life.
The exhibit contains mythic stories of floods
from many parts of the world.
Slides of poetry on the walls, unique sculp
tures (including a pond with living goldfish), and
continuous music mesh together to display the
ancient myths about the heavens and earth.
Poet John Campion said ancient peoples per
ceived the constellations and planets to be
“drowning in the waters of the sky.”
“Part of what this exhibit is about, to me, is to see
how people in the past found a balance and way for
living, and how we might learn from them,” he said.
Mabrey, who has worked in Asia, Egypt and Italy,
said she and Campion
share basic philosophies.
“I am not a word per
son,” she said. “He has to
put into words what I try
to say in stone.”
Mabrey said individ
uals need to know abut
the universe and the
human place in history
to be well-rounded.
“The reason we keep
the room visually sim
ple is because, philo
sophically, it is very
complex,” she said.
Edmund J. Campion,
a composer who re
ceived his doctorate in music and studied at the Na
tional Conservatory in Paris, composed the music
that is played in the exhibit.
“It is continual, cyclical music, like the cycles
of the seasons and the years,” he said.
He said the music unifies the space “like a
vine, growing to mirror all the themes and con
cepts of the show.”
Angelica Davila, exhibit director and a senior
business analysis major, said the exhibit uses
symbols to explain the ancient myths.
See Floodstage, Page 6
Floodstage
at the
Memory
Theatre
where
MSC Visual
Arts Gallery
when
now through
April 12
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