Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Oct. 2, 1968, edition 1 / Page 3
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BNTERTRimEHT J / ®r W.I.T Patrick Sky —Poet Patrick Sky is a poet. He is a newcomer to the elite cadre to which Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Donavan Lietch, and David McWilliams belong. He employs a mixture of sensual imagry and classical reference to convey points and ideas. Often .Sky uses his songs as satires of themselves. In his new album on the Verve label, reality is bad enough, Patrick impresses the listener with tales of “experimental” girls who are “up for graps” to an unusually gifted official in a twentieth century army. In “Children’s Song” Sky uses a lather interesting verse structure as he uses the first line of each of the first six lines to compose the seventh, and final, verse. In “Silly Song” Patrick weaves a simple rhyme in order to convey a rather profound remark about life- “reality is bad enough. Why should I tell the truth?” The young artist expresses amazement that opposites often serve the same purpose as he chants the lines of “Sometimes I Wonder”. Sky can also tell the story of lovers long since parted, as in “I Don’t Feel That’s Real” and “The Loving Kind”. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps, “even Santa Claus ain’t free”? “Follow the Longhaired Lady” is a philosophical song about the quest for meaning and understanding. “Jimmy Clay” is the melodic ballad of an unwilling soldier who is asked to remember all the good and bad times of his life. People he doesn’t even know ask that he die for them. “And somewhere in the distance you can hear the fiddle play but not one note will change, Jimmy Clay. In “The Dance of Death” Sky takes an all-embracing chop at society. He leaves out no man as he satirizes the silly games of men. Perhaps the number one poem on the album is “Modern Major General” which is introduced by a few bars of “The William Tell Overture” and tells of an individual who claims to be possessed of the most incredible catalogue of credible attributes on record. Not even the fabled Davy Crockett could rival this three-and-a-half minute boast. In this song. Sky displays a stupendous vocabulary at which he has been ninting throughout the album. “In fact, when I know what is meant by ‘mamelon’ and ‘ravelin’, “Wlien I can tell at sight a mauser from a javelin “When such affairs as sorties and surprises I’m more wary at, “And when I know precisely what is meant by ‘commissariat’,” Truly, in the Skys there is a star. (Or in the stars there is a Sky.) This young man can also pick a banjo in such a manner that many other artists will be amazed. He knows where those strings are! The Carolina Journal Sept. 2, 1968 Page 3 IHe’s A Friend Of Mine I Jeannie C. Riley | I ♦ JEANNIE C.RIIEY s HARPER VALLEY RT.A. nui '• mconosMiiK a MiJlOOrtOUQI ^ * lonissuis SnSHDIOlUB WOONJOItS KU9II smuv TtMfsoi RKKinnmsQsui Jeannie C. Riley is a sharp looking girl with a real unusual story to tell. She tells it on an album of the ballad variety. The Plantation release of Harper Valley P.T.A. is the continuation of the story that sold a couple of million copies of the single of the same title. Miss Riley unfolds the story of the widow Jones who teaches all the boys of Harper Valley what they know about anatomy. Jeannie knows why old Mr. Harper drinks so much, and she isn’t hesitant when the question of whether or not to tell the world. In “The Cotton Patch” Jeannie gives the opinion that she has just too much class for the one-stop town of Harper Valley. She’s ready to move on! Then there’s good ole Shirley Thompson who can always be depended on to have a drink close at hand - “Sippin’ Shirley Thompson.” Jeannie enlightens her audience to the heartbreaks and joys of the poor people and to the problem with HARPER VALLEY P.T.A. is that Miss Riley has belabored a stylistic point. She uses the same type of background for each of her songs. Eleven songs to the same tune. Perhaps this is because Harper Valley is a town of sameness. A town of like Bowie’s Creek, or some such ... Marlena, Marlena, Marlena Tall. Mysterious. Sexy. Twenty-six years old. A singer from the word “go.” Soul. Sophisticated. COOL! Eclectic, yes, really eclectic. Marlena Shaw. A slick chick with a way of interpreting songs from all genres of music. No fear here. The vivacious Miss Marlena Shaw demonstrates her ideas of all types of songs is ablely demonstrated in her new Verve album “Marlena Shaw - Out of Different Bags” Marlena starts the show, for it is a show, with “Matchmaker. Matchmaker” from the stage and screen production of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, a spirited production. The next jewel is “The Eyes of Love”. Slower. Softer. Nice. “Nothing But Tears”- soul, soul, soul. The beat cut on side one is “It Sure Is Groovy.” Marlena really lets it all hang loose on this one. Brassy. Groovy. Side two. “Ahmad’s Blues.” Jazz. Marlena’s own Bag. At home, she excells. Yeah! (Continued on Page 8) He’s a friend of mine. I’m sure that you’ve seen him on campus Before; sometimes he enters with profound announcement, with heralds and the blast of trumpets. Other times he creeps in while everyone is curled up in his warm bed. You may have awakened one morning as a child and cried, “He came last night. Mommy. Ole Man Winter is here.” But, to me, he’s not an old man at all. He’s as new as tomorrow, as fresh as the sea, as fine as a snowy mist, as elusive as a snowflake, as fun as a toboggin ride. The icy smile of the skating girl on the pond is winter. The “crunch” of a burnt log falling into the coals is winter. The immediate laugh of a snow-child captured forever in my Polaroid is the face of winter - ever-changing, ever-flying, ever-spinning, never dicing. The four elements of being—earth, air, fire, and water-winter is the friendly combination of the happiest of these, water, and the direct opposite of the most destructive, fire. To me winter is not the death of the year, not the fading of the sunshine, not the flight of joy. He is, instead, the one who allows the summer loves to rest, frozen in eternity. Tire cold winter wind sterilizes the earth and prepares it for the coming of the spring; “If winter come, can spring be far behind?” 1 see winter as a pleasant necessity, without which there could be no spring, no blooms, no green. Winter is the white-the pure. The moonlight on the still snow provides the perfect reflecting screen for my dreams and joys, trials and history. Pain flees before the rumble of impending winter storms, only what is sharp and good and fine can stand the test of the cold. The white season is the tester. Only the true and sincere survive the winter unscathed. The peaceful winter, test of summer’s delirious promises made in daffodil fields or by the evening seaside. The happiest of winters is the one that proves a summer love to be ever-lasting, untouched By tlie spear of unkind fate, a winter of poetry by the hearth in the closing hours of the evening, a winter of happiness and promise of a future far brighter than the chariot of Loxias. William Cowper knew what I’m talking about when he wrote “The Winter’s Evening”: Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast. Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round. And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups. That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each. So let us welcome evening in. Scenes like that one, experienced with the sparkling smile and laughing eyes of a loved one, are the nector of the gods. Winter knows men and understands them, but how many men know winter? Robert Bridges did: Winter was not unkind because uncouth: His prison’d time made me a closer guest. And gave my graciousness a warmer zest. Biting all else with keen and angry tooth. And now night calls. The wind assigns little stones to tap at my nocturnal window. Happy calling. Most happy quest- to seek the joy of a silent winter night alone, whether it be from a high mountain’s peak or on a dimly iit Chicago street. Night. Fusing with winter for maximum realization of the pleasure of the white. Most happy union, darkness with the liglit that is winter. I am but a pawn in the game where winter rules as king, indisputable, invincible. O Winter, ruler of th’ inverted year. He’s a friend of mine. Work, work, work. A feature here, a feature there. Talk, talk, talk. Without a conference if you dare. Rush,rush.rush. We told the printer we'd be there. Print, print, print. Headlines, by-lines, done with care. News, news, news. Do you think we'll get it all? Help, help. help. Wlio said writing was a ball? ^‘Therese And Isabelle’’ “Therese and Isabelle” is not a subtle film. It deals with the subject of loneliness in a frank md artistic manner, but it is not a subtle film. The story of a lonely girl in a sterile finishing school for ( girls is recounted in a strikingly skillful manner. The plot structure is revealed in a series of flashbacks ( in the mind of a young woman who is visiting her old school, now closed down. As the woman, who , is Theresp, walks the grounds and I revisits the classrooms and I dormitories of her adolescence, the scenery comes alive with the L stories of her past. Therese’s father dies. Her i mother begins to see another man. Therese, having formed an intense ilislike for her mother’s new paramour, is sent to a boarding school for girls, where she meets ' Isabelle. Isabelle helps Therese fdjust to her new environment. I rhe two girls begin to form a ' trong attachment for each other. Both have disappointing liasons with the young men of the nearby town. TBe two girls become inseparable. They fall in love. I They spend much time alone ' together, both on campus and off. After a long night together in the I forest, Isabelle does not show up I for class. Therese discovers that Isabelle’s parents have withdrawn her from school. Therese runs to I the gardens, where she purges herself of her emotion in a scene of extended weeping. Simple story. Girl loses father. Girl finds girl. Girl looses girl. Girl recovers. The scenes in which the flashbacks take place are done in a very effective manner. The young woman is on the Screen one moment, and, as she hears a voice out of the past, she looks to another part of the room. As the camera follows her glance, the scene shifts to the past, giving the effect of looking through time. Metzger, the film’s producer, is obviously not afraid to expose the public to sex scenes of the most explicit nature. As a matter of fact, some of the scenes, taken by themselves, cross the border into the field of pornography. Perhaps the most shocking element in the film is Therese’s narrative descriptions of the lesbianic experiences with Isabelle. Also, there is humor, as when Therese and Isabelle are making love behind the alter in the old sanctuary (one need not search for the symbolism here). The head mistress, who is conducting a tour of several of the parents, remarks, “This used to be the chapel. The students use it occasionally for their dramatic productions.” Another good line from the movie is Therese’s, “Isabelle, if I die tomorrow, would you go on living?” Isabelle is portrayed as a demanding and experienced lesbian and Therese as a paranoic novice who fears the watching eyes of her imagination. The climax of the movie comes when the girl Therese is confronted with the woman Therese. The O’lfcnry-type ending is another curious feature of (his movie. One must be cautious while viewing this flic, but not frightened. It does fall into the category of the “art film”. “Therese and Isabelle” is presently playing at the Plaza Theater in Charlotte. From The President’s Desk The Print shop in the Union basement will operate under a new policy this year. Student assistants will be in the shop to give assistance to persons wishing to use the equipment. These assistants will be in the shop from 2:00 until 5:00 PM on Monday -Friday afternoons, and from 12:00 until 5:00 PM on Saturday. In special circumstances, arrangements can be made with the assistants to make the room available at other times. The Print shop will not be open unless the Student assistant is on duty. BWOC? See Page 4
University of North Carolina at Charlotte Student Newspaper
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Oct. 2, 1968, edition 1
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