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Page 12, The Herald. Tuesday, March 24, 1961

Bavarlan costumes will be featured by —
these young skaters, representing Germany
in this year’s carnival. Seen here is solo
skater Alexis Chicoine with John Hall,
Crystal McKay, Nicole ‘Page, ’ Christine

Carlow, Dana Johansen, Katle Carlowe,
Natasha McAvoy, Lori Grimm, Aralyn -

Lutz, Jessica

Lambright,

Shetley

Shkuratoff, and Ryan McColeman. |

Anew, stylized snag of toy,
Ellen Foley emerges
second release, Spirit of het
Louls (Epic, JE 28904), but
the merits of her musical
facelift.are as questionable
aa they are curious.

On her debut album a little
more than a year ago, done
under the guidance of
veteran musicians lan
Hunter and Mick Ronson,
Foley showed promise as a
powerful rocker, the
strength of her energetic
delivery denying her bird-
like frame.

She’s lost none of that
power but it has been
channelled, misguldedly,
into material that’s way out
ol her Ieague — breathless
torch songs, dramatic, mei-
low ballads — all but
ignoring the belt-it-out rock
that stands her in best stead.

And that’s curicus,
because the new Foley has
been produced — and
presumably fashioned — by
current flame Mick Jones of
rock's premier punk band
The Clash. |

Spirit of St. Louis is
anything but punk: While
The Clash was very much
involved in the project — all
four members are reported
to have played backup; six of

the 12 tunes were written by
Jones and Clasher Joe
Strummer — the result
comes. as a heavily

Alberta

OTTAWA (CP) — When

Aritha van Herk was a plain
Alberta farm girl wearing
thick glasses she lived in a
fantasy world of books until
abe got fed up with goodie-
goodle children’s stories and
began writing her own more
spicy _ tales.

Now she teaches English

at University of British ©

Columbia, wears contact
lenses and her first book is
unofficially banned in her old
bome town.

It’s all In the pattern of the
love-hate relationships she
carries on with her native
province, condemning an oil-
wealthy government for
what she sees as a churlish
attitude toward the arts
while admitting that the
place still has a hold on her.

‘J won't say that I'll never
go back,” she says. “So often
artists and writers are
drawn back to their own
landscape,"

But she left in something of
a hoff after her firat great
success when she won the
$50,000 Seat Novel Award for
her first book, Judith, the
story of a girl on a pig farm.
TOOK THE CREDIT

No one there had helped or

encouraged her but suddenly

she was caught up in the
province’s smothering
embrace, she says. ‘The
government suddenly
claimed me as an Alberta
author.

te
pruce, pseudoadult-
| oriented album.

¥ ahd riot surprisingly The
Clash, whose large following
would pale at their work on
Spirit, remains anonymous
with the exception of writing
credits for Jones and
Strummer. Even the
production credit is. listed
merely witha coy “produced
by my boyfriend.”

Foley’s voice is pleasant,
but untrained. A rocker
doesn’t need absolutely
perfect pitch to carry the
tune; a chanteuse does, And
while Foley doles out plenty
of passion on such items ag
The . Shuttered Palace,
Theatre of Cruelty, Game of
a Man and In, the, Killing
Hour; * she: -slights - the fine.
melodic content with her
irritating tendency to cheat
the music by half a tone.

Leading off the album is
The Shuttered Palace, its
beautiful music and sexual
lyric — a Parisian hooker
extolling the sons of Europe
to follow her — suggesting
the kind of song Edith Piaf
might have handled. Foley
carries the tone further with
her cover of Piaf's My
Legionnaire — and does £0
badly. :

_ She fares better when she
rips into the album's two
rockers, M.P.H. and her own
composition, Phases of
Travel, Also good is her.

farm girl.is now

“fm a Canadian writer.
Artists are the voice of the
people and the point will.
come when Alberta needs its
artists badly."

In English culture “people
remember Shakespeare, not
Disraeli,”’ one of England's
more noteworthy prime
ministers. ‘

Where Alberta. has
provided money for the arts,
shesays, much of it haa gone
to im culture rather ~
than developing the native
product,

Now her reputation has

been enhanced by a second
wre The Tent Peg, which
chronictes the adventures of
agirl, temporarily mistaken
for a boy, who ends up as
cook to nine men prospecting
in the Yukon.

It is a catefully crafted

story of how the group In- i

feracts during the long
summer set amid the

beautiful but brooding Wer-

necke Mountains. .
EACH TELL TALE

Each, in turn, relates the
adventure from his
viewpoint — MacKenzie, the
amiable party leader;
Milton, the Mennonite boy
terrified of sex; Ivan, the
pilot in love with his
helicopter, and the gutsy
heroine who calls herself
JL.

Casting a long shadow
over them all Is Jerome,
filled with bitterness and

lilting delivery on the ‘light
pop tune Beautiful Waste of
Time, one of three strong
numbers written by Tymon

Dogg. -
As they've shown on Clash
products Jones. and

‘Strummer are good writers
with a tendency to go top

heavy on dark imagery. This
is best shown by the
surrealistic tone of The
Death of the Psychoanalyst
of Salvidore Dali (whewl),
whose symbols of despair
include crying gigolos, the
band on the Titanic and the
rusting cufflinks in the shirt
of late rocktb wine Vincent.

Nash the Slash, Canada’s
progressive rock spook,
doesn’t disgrace himself on
“ihe newly: ‘released Children
“ef the Nigh (Virgin, VIL,
2712), Nor does he totally do
himself justice.

The Toronto musician
sparked considerable in-

terest at concerts in Britain ©

last year, but it, was his
visual presentation as much
as his music that drew

notice.‘ For years. he has:

taken to the stage garbed in
white tux and top hat, his
-face swathed in bandages

and his ‘eyes, hidden by posed

shades, Equally visual is his
one-man shew, a carefully
orchestrated combination of
lighting, programmed
synthesizers and electric
violin and mandolin.

bent on destroying
MacKenzie and J.L., but ul
timately humiliated.

Van Herk wrote her first
story in grade 3. Her parents
encouraged her many trips

‘to the library, - largely un-

supervised, until at age nine

_a@ teacher discovered her

reading Lolita, the then-
sensational story of an over-
sexed, underage moppet and
an older man.

She's always liked spice in
ber stories and when Judith

. was iublished the home-town

folk around Camrose, Alta.,
flocked to enjoy her success,

But the first word in that
novel is a dirty one, and the
story rubbed some people
steeped in the Lutheran
tradition of the area the
wrong way, she says...
“There were complaints,”

Foley’ S style is now revealed.

Without the visuals, the
macabre quality of his work
threatens to lapse inte
tedium.

Nash has his moments on
the new album, opening with
an electrifying cut called
Wolf, its monotonous
galloping piano line giving
way toa searing violin that
screams, wails and steals a
chunk of Serge Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf.

He closes with the equally
impressive Danger. Zone.
Packed in between are eight
items with varying degrees

-of interest.

_ Nash provides a good
cover of sorts of the Deep

- Purple tune Smoke on the

Water (his comes as Dopes

_ on the Water}; a mechanical

rendering of the Stones’ 19th

“Nervous Breakdown, and &
commercially. viable,

and
surprisingly faithful,
adaptation of the early ‘60s
Jan and Dean hit Dead
Man's Curve.

Two others, Deep Forest

and Metropolis, are nothing .

more. than self-indulgent
synthesized filler. ;

To listeners just being ex-
ged to The Slash, Children
of the Night may find ac-

ceptance if only for its’

sardonic difference. From a
musical standpoint, his
longtime Canadian following
has had much better. ;

writer

she chuckles, “and some
people. wanted their money
back.

‘Later, I'm told, the book
was kept under the counter
in gome stores, available
only on request.”

LYNN LAKE, jman, (cP)
— Lynn Johnston's family
and friends sneak into homes

cities each . weekday,
disguised as. comic. strip
characters ‘in the daily:
newspaper.

Johnston is the creator of
For Better or For Worse, a
comic strip that records the
ups and downs of a-harried —
suburban housewlfé who,

ft like Johnston, is ralsing two.
' small children. =~

The strip, launched nearly

i three years ago from ber.
! Manitoba home, has spread

across the continent and
overseas to Japan’ ‘and

: Australia. It issyndicated by
. Universal Press, ‘a U.S.
« ,agency,
“\! most’ comic-page

‘and ,differs from
fare
because it presents: a
woman's point of view.

. Johnston, who like: her:
yeomle strip heroine. Elly
Patterson is“married to a
dentist, broke into
newspapers after producing
_three cartgon books —
" David, We're Pregnant!, Do

jthes EKVER Grow Up? and
van, Hi Dad — for three
different publishers. .

Universal Press had been
looking for someone to do a
contemporary family strip
and contacted Johnston, who
up to that point had only
drawn singleframe cartoon
pictures.

Johnsten did a month's
supply of sample strips and
shipped_off the results. A
red-carpet reception at the
agency's office in Kansas
City and the lucrative 10-
year contract that followed
gave her a great initial
feeling of elation. Then the
young cartoonist realized
just what she was faced with.

‘“] had not spent years
developing characters the
way a lot of cartooniats do,”
the 33-yearold artist ex-

in about 200 North American’.

"plained in a telephone. in-

terview. .“‘I was” really -

stuck, ” . .
The only people she knew
she could draw repeatedly
washer own family, said
Johnston, a native of Van;

couver whose, first book -

originated with a set of
” ¢arteons she'did to cover the
ceiling of her obstetriclan’s
examining room.

-So Johnston turned to the
subjects closest to hand, but

the people. she saw were

transformed: by her artist's
band and by her sense af

humor.

“The. characters were
always .us, but we felt we

were jeopardizing our -

privacy and we weren't
doing the kids any favor by
calling it the Johnstons and
using -everybody’s first

‘Dame, so we called it the

Pattersons and used
everybody's second name.
“| have models for every-

- body, even if they're con-

glomerates,” said Johnston,

who quickly adds that her |

reallife husband “is a much
nicer person than the fellow

_ in the strip.”

“He's not nearly as typical
mate. It's far more of a 50-50
role."

Johnston, who lived for 10
years in Hamilton, Ont,

before moving to Lynn Lake,

is married lo a man with
“muskeg in his boots"? who
took to dentistry as a4
profession that could be
practised
enabling him to live in his
native, north.

Johnston, who was always

interested in drawing, used
to féel that cartooning was a
“a cheap trick, an easy way
out and what you really
should be is a fine artist who

lived in a garret and ate -

boiled beans and sweated for
peanuts and everybody

would call you wonderful

“J ohnston’ a

anywhere, —

in 1 200 © American cities ~

. when you-died.”

However, once she got in-
volved in the actual art
production, sending batches
of drawings off to a helpful
editor in the United States,

-ghe came to appreciate the

craftsmanship and
imaginative effort that go
intoa daily newspaper comic
strip. -
comic-strip
family lives in an unnamed
suburban area that could be

Scarborough or Downsview,
Ont., in a house like one she
knew in Hamilton, But ihe
drawings are produced in a
remote northern Manitoba
town of about 2,500 people.

“[ think I get more in-
formation here than I would
inthe city, where maybe my
friends would have their kids
in day care and they would
be working, and you're far
less likely to be discussing
the confinement of being a
housewife.”

Will the fictional Patterson
family, with two youngsters,

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“

have any more children?

"Tt don't knew,” said John-
ston, adding that her own
family isn’t -set “up for-
nanother child. “rd ‘have to
live through a.’ whole
pregnancy, the. birth, the
changing of the diapers and
everything, in -the ‘past, I'd
have to dig up all this. I'm
just wondering. -I know 1
could do it,- “but Tm, saving
it. " .

When Johnston slgned up
for the strip, she insisted on
Canadian names and places.
So if the Patterson: family
goes on a vacation next
summer, “It will be ed the
Muskokas."’

"] really tried to stay in
Canada with my books, but I
have had go much more luck
with American publishers."

Like maby successful
people, Johnston gets letters

asking forradvice on almost
all subjects, although she is'
“certainly norauthority on:

_ anything, except what 1 do. om

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