REVIEWS

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Diamond’s
second LP
still tops

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH. Child-
ren’s songs by Charlotte Diamond.
LP or chrome cassette $9.95.

My two kids didn’t need the benefit
of the Juno award selection jury to tell
them that Charlotte Diamond’s first
record, 10 Carrot Diamond, was a
winner, even up against the top flight
competition of Fred Penner and
Sesame Street’s Bob McGrath. They
knew it from the time they first put it
on the turntable — and it’s lost none
of its appeal in the year that they’ve
been playing it.

But the Juno award that Diamond
won last month for best Canadian
children’s record was, without a
doubt, a welcome bonus. It suddenly
boosted record sales —although they
were already a substantial 8,000
through her own efforts — and it
forced the Toronto music establish-
ment, which had hardly given her a
passing glance before, to sit up and
take notice.

With an act like that the first time
out, it might have been diffcult to
come up with an encore. But Dia-
mond has done it. Her second album
Diamond In The Rough, just pressed
last month, is every bit the equal of the
first record, although it is a different
mix of material and has a different
emphasis. If 10 Carrot Diamond gave
her a solid place among Canadian
songwriters, this second record con-
firms it.

As with the first album, much of
the material is her own, including two
nicely-crafted “educational” songs,
“Goin’ Metric” and ““Metamorpho-
sis” as well as the engaging “Hug
Bug” which capitivated my two kids
from the start. It’s put together with a
selection of material from various wri-
ters including Pete Seeger (“The Fool-
ish Frog”), Oscar Brand (“When I
First Came to This Land”) and even
the unlikely source of [WW balladeer
Utah Phillips whose whimsical “Sing
in the Spring” Diamond adapts to a
calypso beat. There are again several
songs in French, among them the tra-
ditional Cajun tune “Collinda”’ which
alone is almost enough reason to buy
the LP.

As with the earlier album, the mus-
ical back-up involves considerable
orchestration but it’s well balanced
with the material. Paul Gitlitz’s violin
and banjo and Bob Wishinki’s piano
lead an extensive array of instruments
from, cello to marimba, all coupled
with some subtle sound effects. Four-
teen kids from L’Ecole Bilingue add
their voices in several of the songs.

The emphasis on Diamond In The
Rough is on melody and lyrics and
there aren’t the kind of story and play
songs that were on the earlier record.
For that reason, it will probably
appeal more to somewhat older
kids — say, five and up — than it
will to pre-schoolers. Then again, this
really is a family album with a wide
appeal to both adults and children. -

Just two final words: buy it — and
it might be wise to do it quickly. Now
that the rest of Canada has found out
about Charlotte Diamond, the pre-
Christmas sales are likely to be brisk.
It’s available at People’s Co-op Books
in LP or cassette.

— Sean Griffin

Jazz saxophonist Dale Turner (Dexter Gordon) plays in Paris’ Blue Note club in a scene from Round Midnight

Creating jazz out of poverty —

ROUND MIDNIGHT. Written By David
Rayfield and Bertrand Travernier. Directed
by Betrand Travernier. Staring Dexter
Gordon and Francois Cluzet. Based on
incidents in the lives of Francis Paudras
and Pud Powell. At the Royal Centre, Van-
couver.

It’s only a small slice of the Afro-
American musical experience, but Round
Midnight, a gently moving French-
American co-production, says a fair bit
about that experience in its slightly more
than two hours running time.

From this fine film, which takes its name
from the jazz-blues ballad used as its theme
music, emerges an image of jazz as a rose
growing from a pile of manure. Or possibly
a rose growing amidst thorns, since the
poverty and degradation of a decaying
America is in this film either the compost
that feeds the flower or the weed that finally
kills it.

Dexter Gordon, a real-life jazz saxapho-
nist of renown, plays the fictional Dale
Turner, a late-50s innovator who has grown
tired of life — but not, as he notes fre-
quently throughout the film “the music.”

“This looks just like the room Herschel

Pool hustlers an echo

THE COLOR OF MONEY. Directed by
Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Richard
Price. Based on the novel by Walter Tevis.
Starring Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Mary
Elizabeth Mastrantonio. At local theatres.

Paul Newman returns to The Color of
Money as Fast Eddie Felson, the young
untamed pool shark who, 25 years ago in
The Hustler, stood up aginst the economic
corruption dominating the game and lost.
Now older, more cynical and cultivated
master of deviousness himself, Fast Eddie
hustles whisky instead of pool.

But when he runs into Vincent, a stock-
boy by day and poolhall superstar by night
who plays only for love of the sport, Fast
Eddie swifly corners his prey as a promising
“investment.” With his ill-fated partnership
set in motion, both the game and the film
take off at a fast clip full of tension, intrigue,
and dizzling manoeuvres.

Fast Eddie plays on the romantic insecur-
ities of the young vulnerable Vincent and his
girlfriend, a part-time waitress and some-
time burglar, as a way of luring him into a

28 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 17, 1986

died in,” he tells an aging, dying friend in
remarking on the death of his long-time
performing partner. Rain splatters on the
dusty window of a gloomy hotel room
somewhere in the bowels of New York City,
as Turner tells the friend — who criticizes
him for playing “those weird chords so that
people can’t tell what the melody is” —. that
he’s leaving for Paris.

And Turner does find a new life, of sorts,
with other self-exiled musicians who play to
a small but dedicated audience of French
jazz aficionados. They pack the tiny base-
ment club called the “Blue Note” to wor-
ship people they regard as living legends.

But in other ways, life is the same for.
Turner. He still comes home to a lonely
room “round midnight” and, stricken by
chronic insomnia, sits on his bed until day-
break. And despite his friends’ precautions,
Turner finds ways to indulge the alcoholism
that is slowly eating away at his life.

Things begin to change for the better
when Turner meets Francois Cluzet (Fran-
cis Borier), a divorced single parent and a
graphic artist who is also down on his luck.
Francis is a devotee of jazz and particularly
of Turner, whom he’s known through
recordings, and their meeting seems some-
how predestined.

cross country tour from lower depths pool
halls of Chicago up to a glitzy champion-
ship tournament in Atlantic City.

For Fast Eddie, there is nothing that
takes precedence over the fast buck, and
pool is merely a means to a profitable end,
with scams, ploys, and psychological
manipulations serving as handy tools of the
trade. Yet there is in Fast Eddie’s frantically
obsessive zeal and overly strained business
bravado a suspicious, less than convincing
tone.

As he begins to recognize in his corrupt-
ing of Vincent the mirror image of his own
youthful loss of innocence, the way his own
skills were exploited and misused by other
poolhall predators flashes back to him like
a thunderbolt.

Emotions of disgust and remorse do bat-
tle within the aging hustler, jolting him into
a reawakened awareness of the needs that
take priority, in the values department, over
the all-pervasive but not invincible tyranny
of money that “colors” our society and our
everyday lives.

aii Vacs Se ae:

saat 3

The growing friendship works a subtle
magic on the fortunes of the two men, sO |
separated by language and culture but uni-_
ted in their love for the music, and, by
extension, their devotion to creating art. ~
Turner quits drinking and starts composing ~
again, while Francis’ fortunes as a graphic
artist change for the better and his relation~
ship with his daughter improves markedly:

Round Midnight does not preach and its
messages emerge from the warm, human”
interplay among the principal characters.
But the background to the music the
jazz players create — the racism, poverty A
and drugs in the America to which Turnef ©
eventually returns — are never far from the”
surface. :

Gordon, a large man with a congenial | __
face plays the jazzman Turner with al | T
aplomb that can only be described as the | Br
essence of cool. It is, Round Midnight lets us~
know; a hedge against life’s problems. 4

The film’s basic statement seems to b&
this: that whatever the wellsprings of the”
music, it functions best in an environment :
of love. And that triumphs over all the hin
drances a decaying society tries to put in ity i

way. ‘ sec
— Dan Keetoll | ,,

fa hoy

a) ach

of society <=

pla

Contending ideas about moral imper@ as

tives and money lust bombard off each” a

other with the same cinematically charge® | .
energies of the cue balls themselves, thanks — A

to the skilled camera eye which gave mag’ | ~

netism to what might otherwise be a visua#) ~ =

monotonous sport. i th
The Color of Money does have a number q 2
of weaknesses, including the choice of the =
game of pool, a comparatively undramatl | | ©
sport, as a theme through which to transmit ye
these kinds of ideas, as well as the conve?
tional treatment of female characters *

shadows of men, props with no seem" i

independent life of their own. a -

But the film, judging by audience rear R :
tion, appears to touch a raw collective ne ..
within U.S. society, that is, the deeply fi W y
trated yearning to achieve satisfaction the the

prestige in one’s work, unsullied by ©) Wh
opposing priorities of capitalism, an asp ihe,
tion evidently shared by filmmakers the! the
selves who are inevitably creatively co
trolled by the Hollywood money barons:"—
matter how acclaimed their reputation.
— Prairie, People’s Daily W®