10The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, September 25, 1986
Friends
Late Saturday night, in a little
Washington dive called The 9:30
Club, I caught Steve Earle in concert.
That may mean little to you. But to
me it means I saw America's best new
rocker someone who has a real
sense of the value of honesty in music,
someone who knows what lyrics are
supposed to be all about. I saw
someone with a sense of where
American music should be going.
Playing to maybe 150 people, on
a little stage in a sweaty and crowded
atmosphere, Earle rocked the house.
He delivered a performance of such
integrity and vitality that if he had
played for another three hours, I
don't think anyone would have
minded.
I was up in D.C. with a fellow
Daily Tar Heel comrade. We were
actually staying outside of Baltimore
but had cruised into Washington that
afternoon with U2 and The Who
blaring from the speakers. We
hooked up with a friend of this friend,
a student at George Washington
icycies age
ELLIOT RQAO
ME FRANKLIN
987-4737
1
$250 Bill W BIT mHTPC(ia.BUn)
America's 1 Film
TOP GUN (PG)
3:00 5:10 7:20 9:25
LastDayt
THE CHECK IS THE MAIL (R)
3:10 5:05 7:00 9:10
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
(PG-12) 3:20 9:10
PRETTY IN PINK
(PG-13)5:20 9:15
"Arthur Prysock is an honest singer. He sings it the way it is. He's the
torch singer's singer. He sings sweet. He sings soft He sings it right at
you. who else does that? Sinatra. Bennett. The late Billie Holiday.
Prysock belongs in that select company...a mere handful who believes
that it is not necessary to scream to be heard..."
The late William B. Williams
Welcome the velvet-voiced crooner who left Greensboro as a
teenager to become one of the charter inductees into the Apollo
Theatre Hall of Fame. A glamorous gala kick-off to our Black Film
Retrospective continuing thru November 2.
Ticket now on sale at the Carolina Theatre. Gen. Adm. $10. Dress
Circle, $25, including champagne reception with arthur Prysock &
guests. MC, Visa & Choice accepted. 688-1 939.
MANY VOICES, MANY IMAGES...ONE THEATRE
Black Film Retrospective Oct. 1-Nov. 2
THE CAROLINA THEATRE
A Monument to change 1 926-1 986
Downtown Durham '988-1939
discover rock's future
James Surcvioclci
Bands
University who also happened to be
named George.
George was into the progressive
music scene and had seen the cow
punk band the Beat Farmers the
night before at the 9:30 Club. He told
us how the lead singer of the band
had leaned over the stage and
grabbed his head as he stood near
the stage. "It was one of the top five
shows IVe seen," he said. He also told
us that the Rainmakers and Steve
Earle were playing the club that
night.
I was less than enthused. I'd heard
a couple of songs by the Rainmakers,
but they didn't seem like anything,
special, outside of the fact that their
music is anti-welfare state, if you can
imagine that. Besides, the drive back
to Baltimore was going to be a bitch.
Starts Tomorrow!
The May
l 0 B I M MLM HHTIfUS IORWAR
FilM CORPORATION
The Carolina Theatre Presents
ARTHUR
PRYSOCK
in
CONCERT!
Wed., Oct. 1
8 P.M.
and who the hell was Steve Earle,
anyway?
We did, however, end up going.
Live music is always intense, and the
prospect of seeing it in a small D.C.
club had a warped kind of charm.
The show was supposed to start at
9:30 p.m. We got on the Metro and
got there at 9:45. The Rainmakers
hadn't gone on yet, but a long line
stretched lown a corridor with ugly
bleached white walls.
The line was made up of a strange
conglomeration of people, who
ranged from the punkers with their
multicolored, spiked hair, to couples
in their early 40s, to the frat rats with
their sickeningly conformist white
shirts. Duck Head pants and obli
gatory sunglasses at night.
By the time we got in, after having
passed a building directory that
included the strange bedfellows of the
National Black Gay and Lesbian
Association and the Washington
Review of Books, the Rainmakers
were already on stage. We stayed in
the back of the club as they ripped
through "Government Cheese" and
"Drinking on the Job," pointedly
avoiding the bar after a harrowing
experience earlier that day when we
had been charged nine dollars for two
Beck's and a Coors.
We moved toward the front of the
stage as they cruised through "Let
My People Go-Go," a song that has
the curious line, spoken by God, of
"1 meant for you to love one another
and to get out and have a good time."
The people in the club seemed to be
doing just that.
Fifteen minutes after the Rain
makers finished, Earle came on.
Dressed in a white V-necked T-shirt
and faded blue jeans, his long,
straggly brown hair was already
plastered to his scalp by the heat of
the room. He sported an earring in
Varsity mona usa
LAST
40
OAV
"A triumph for both sexes.
Everyone comes out a winner."
-Jan Bra NEW YORK POST
Exclusive N.C. Engagement
TODAY AT 2:20 . 4:20 ONLY.
...A miracle."
-Katklm CaneU. N.Y. DAILY NEWS
'A TRIUMPH. STIRRING.
VIGOROUS AND FUNNY!
...Ivory produces the mott
consistently handsome and
exciting scenes of his career
- DM DMb NEW YORK MAGAZINE
ARoom
" """ A flti ky fart Barrfe H
is), ns
one ear and a necklace with a cross
around his neck and carried an
acoustic guitar in his left hand.
Another Springsteen Mellencamp
imitation, I immediately thought.
Earle introduced himself and then
launched into the loud, rocking
"Guitar Town," which also happens
to be the name of his first album.
His voice and music had a peculiar
country twang, something deeper
than mere rockabilly. His style and
his lyrics signaled a powerful respect
for the tradition of country music.
After crunching through two more
songs, he told us, "You folks don't
know what you've got yourselves
into. What you have here is a real
hillbilly. I've survived the full moon
in New York City (where he opened
for the Replacements) and the van
breaking down on the highway." He
then launched into "Hillbilly High
way," a sentimental and yet evocative
look at the road. It was this tune,
a clear tribute to the music of Hank
Williams and others like him, that
showed he wasn't kidding when he
said, "I'm really a country singer."
Halfway through his next song,
"Good Or Boy," as Earle sang, "Just
my luck I was born in the land of
plenty Now there ain't enough," it
dawned on me that something special
was on the stage that I couldn't afford
to miss.
With "My Old Friend The Blues,"
Earle captured magnificently, in a
slow, bluesy tone, the solace music
offers when loneliness overtakes us.
"Lovers leave and friends will let you
down But you're the only sure thing
that IVe found My old friend, the
blues."
In "Someday," he spoke of the
desire to escape from the doldrums
of smalltown life with the words, "I
got me a '67 Chevy, she's low and
sleek and black Someday IH put her
on that interstate and never look
back."
Earle 's lyrics vibrate with intensity,
with a real sense of life, more as it
is than as it should be. They were
autobiographical without being
maudlin or self-indulgent. His music
seemed to walk the tightrope between
country and rock with complete ease.
It bounced between the two extremes
but never strayed from his roots,
from the fusion of those two strains
of American music that began so
"the gay film of
this year..."
John Morrone
New York Native
Hunyl Ends Soon!
MY BHAUTIf UL
LAUNDRETTC
R
7 & 9 Nighty
Sat. & Sun. 3 5 7 9
THE CAROLINA THEATRE.
DOWNTOWN WRnfln McH333
at 9:30
close together and have drifted so far
apart.
It's wasn't just his songs, though.
There was something more, some
thing I had seen only when the Boss
played. Earle projected an indefina
ble sense of honesty. Maybe it was
the way he fixed on people in the
crowd. When he caught your gaze,
he held it, and it was obvious he
meant what he said.
Major league scouts, when they're
talking about a top prospect and
trying to explain why they think he
has a chance to make it, say he has
a "good face." What they mean is
he has guts and desire and all the
ingredients that make someone real.
Steve Earle had a good face. He had
integrity, and everyone in the club
knew it.
The song that made everything
come together was his magnificent
and fiery cover of Springsteen's
"State Trooper." Earle led into it by
saying, "This is a song by a pretty
good hillbilly singer from New Jersey
in his own right." He then delivered
a version that was, if anything,
superior to Springsteen's, a version
that at once was a tribute and at the
same time a means of liberating
himself from Springsteen's inevitable
shadow.
Earle's lead guitarist threw in
plaintive blues licks that contrasted
beautifully with the steady twang of
the acoustic guitar. Earle's voice
seemed ready to burst free of its
laryngeal constraints as he screamed
the lyrics "Radio jammed up to talk
show station just talk, talk, talk,
talk 'till you lose your patience." It
was a stunning performance.
From then on, he had the
audience. I thought his introduction
to the song "Fearless Heart" was
particularly revealing. "In a life as
tough as this one, you have two
choices. You can either get through
it or you can live it. And if you want
to live it you need two things," he
said. I was fully expecting him to say
something like you need a good
woman and a fast car, or you need
sex and rock and roll; and someone
in the back of the room kept yelling,
"Cocaine and cocaine!" But instead
he said, "You need an inquisitive
mind and a fearless heart." That was
right on the money.
Including the two songs Earle did
as an encore, 17 tunes comprised his
set. It should have been twice as long.
And as the last plaintive chords of
"Down the Road" died out, and he
wailed, "If it ain't here, it's down the
road Keep on looking down the
road," I realized I had gotten a sneak
preview of greatness. 1 just smiled.
BUY TRADE SELL
New & Used Records
Books, CD's & Tapes
THE FAIR EXCHANGE
302 E. Main St., Carrboro, NC
Open Everyday
Support CASH
TURTLE DIARY
7:00 9:00
STAND BY ME
7:30 . 9:30