Look. I'll be quite frank with you. I really tried for a snappy, clever lead this week. First I thought empathy was the angle, and I ended up with "OhgodgodgodgodPeteSeegergodfivepapersgodfivepapersgodfivepapersohgodgodgod...," which I found reminiscent of the Grove Press|edition of Rupert Murdoch's|autobiography. Then I went for the|lighthearted and lyric. I rang up,
Take your pills, forget your symptoms,
Spring has sprung at 14 Plympton
Break the crutch, take off the poultice
Summer comes but once a solstice
before deciding my lengthy battle with athlete's foot and root rot left my sole too scarred for a frisky chase through the thorny maze of iamb, anapest and trochee.
Enough of this self-indulgent drek. Tonight at 8:30 pm Pete Seeger will play a benefit concert for the Clamshell Alliance, Vocations for Social Change and the B.U. Student Union, in Kresge Auditorium at MIT. Tickets are $5. The Clamshell Alliance organized the demonstration two weeks ago against the Seabrook nuclear power plant, MIT is an institution downriver, and Kresge runs a chain of five-and-dime stores. If you don't know who Pete Seeger is, you should not read this column unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. Suffice it to say you'll hear moving songs on banjo and guitar, played by one of the original contemporary folkies.
Jade and Sasparilla, two feminist performers who play piano and sing, will give a benefit concert for the Mass. Feminist Credit Union Friday the 13th at 8 pm in Sanders Theater. Tickets, on sale at the Radcliffe-Harvard Women's Center, are $4; free child care provided.
Then on Saturday at 8 pm, Wallflower Order, a group which bills itself as "a women's dance collective from Oregon," plays a benefit for the Cambridge Women's Community Health Center in Agassiz Ballroom. Tickets for $3; child care provided.
In short, it looks like a good weekend for lefties of various shapes and sizes. Those of you who can't get enough of them Georgia peaches (they say they're mighty sweet, but hell, I never even knew they grew anything but Coca-Cola bushes and presidential timber until I heard the song) can catch James Talley, Bob McCarthy and Beverly Rush this weekend at Passim. Shows tonight through Saturday at 8:30 and 10:30 pm. Admission is $3.50. Next week: Jaime Brockett plays folk guitar and Lew London, the "eastern king of western swing," holds court; same days, same time, same place, same admission. In fact, Talley and Brockett are the same person, which explains why they are never seen together.
Harry Gallanty '79 is writing a book entitled The Cosmic Explorer. The protagonist is an extraterrestrial anthropologist who decides to study human culture of the 70s. Gallanty, a mathematics concentrator who left Harvard in the fall of 1975 to address the World Food Conference at the U.N., now travels around schools in the east and south, collecting material for his book. Gallanty is insightful and clear-thinking--not one of your fried-on-dope types. To the best of my knowledge, Gallanty plays no instruments, though he might hum and probably whistles. He is in Cambridge for three weeks; meet him if you can.
Friday and Saturday at Inn Square Men's Bar you got Papa Bear and the Second Live, who play "New Orleans boogie." Don't ask me what this is--I have never been to New Orleans, and my well-coordinated friends describe my boogie ability as "marginal, at best." Sunday through Tuesday, Mistral and Randy Roos play; Wednesday through Saturday, May 21, it's the Isaacs Brothers.
Why is this week like every other week? Because country rock bands are playing almost every night at Jonathan Swifts. Tonight through Saturday you got Chuck McDermott and Wheatstraw, Fat on Sunday, the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet on Monday and Tuesday, and John Lincoln Wright and the Sour Cream Boys on Wednesday. Music starts around 9 pm; cover varies.
I wish I could tell you more, but Rob, Amy, Jeremy and Steffie will throw me off Mather tower if I don't stop asking them to supply me with jokes; Warren, Jim and Phil will put an airlock in the entrance to my room if I don't clean it up soon; Stanley and Martha will doubt my intellectual integrity if I don't cough up ten pages on Hume by the end of the week; and Lippy and Emily don't read the Crimson and therefore do not care if their names are omitted from this list. Incidentally, Harry and I switched columns this week, so read the Rock Caps. Later,
