page 8 - The Behrend College Collegian Thursday, November 13, 1997
Brownie Mary rocks
John Amorose
Collegian Staff
Last Friday, the Reed Commons
was the showplace for another stel
lar, soon-to-be-famous Pittsburgh
band, Brownie Mary. Along with
special guest Windfall, Behrenders
were treated to the best hour and a
half or so of music that two bucks
could buy.
The show opened with the middle
aged cover band Windfall, who per
formed to a less than enthusiastic
bunch of students. It was obvious
which musicians had influenced this
band, as their set consisted of cov
ers of popular oldies with more mod
ern selections. Initially, I was horri
fied by the performance. Windfall
opened with "Come To My Win
dow" by Melissa Ethridge, then
moved on to butcher completely the
Kink's classic "U Really Got Me"
and "What's Up?" by 4 Non
Blondes. The band then took a tre
mendous leap of faith when they at
tempted the Jimi Hendrix rock an
them "Purple Haze"— a song they
really had no business doing. The
added harmonized lyrics and acous
tic guitars, coupled with ridiculous,
screeching electric guitar solos
would have made Jimi spin in his
grave.
But the show did have its good
points. The band's cover of "Closer
to Fine" by the Indigo Girls and
Sting's "Message in a Bottle" were
masterfully done. Even "I Do Not
Know", the sole original song per
formed, was not bad. The two fe
male singers harmonized well to
gether, and the whining background
guitars made it a very listenable
track, but it was overshadowed by
the plethora of cover songs that
flooded the show. By far the most
ACROSS
1 The best
5 Throws, as dice
10 Catch sight of
14 Freshly
15 City in Nebraska
16 Wheel hub
17 Stratagem
18 Stratum
19 Sign on a door
20 Of the stars
22 Unwavering
24 Contended
26 Captain of fiction
27 Deviates
31 Overcharge for
tickets
34 Lennon's widow
35 Brown color
37 Relative to the
onion
39 Stage show part
41 Play a guitar
43 Path
44 Like a moray
45 Long-necked
bird
47 Way traveled:
abbr.
48 Station
51 Part of NLRB
53 Charles Lamb
55 Yearn
56 Parade fallout
60 Drizzled
64 Field
65 Sound
reasoning
67 Weathercock
68 Opp. of fem.
69 WW II plane,
Gay
70 School jacket
71 If not
72 Hinder
73 Scatters seed
DOWN
1 Scarlett
O'Hara's home
2 Burden
3 Nuisance
4 Veer
5 Places of
learning
6 Physicians' org.
7 Utters
impressive song of the show was
the closing cover of "Somebody
To Love", by Jefferson Airplane.
The singing was perfect, as was the
background music, and finally
whipped the meager crowd into a
Brownie Mary anticipatory lather.
After the initial shock, Windfall's
wide variety of music grew on me
like poison sumac. Many of the
songs that were performed took a
lot of guts, and I respected them for
taking that kind of risk. But a band
that limits their shows to cover
songs suggests that they have little
or no confidence in the original
music that they work so hard to pro
duce. On my classes I'd skip to go
see them scale, they receive a 1 out
of a possible 5, because I could hear
most of the songs that they per
formed on the radio by the original
artists.
Finally the time had come for Fri
day Night's main event— the long
awaited arrival of Brownie Mary,
one of Pittsburgh's most popular
and intriguing acts. The band is
fronted by charismatic, and might
I add extremely attractive, Kelsey
Barber, who's a cross between
Jewel, Janis Joplin, and the girl next
door. Kelsey is brilliantly
complimented by the talents of her
bandmates Ron Bissel on bass gui
tar, Rich Jacques, lead guitarist, and
Mark Rajakovic on drums.
The band formed in 1993 when
Barber and Jacques met at Bethany
College in Bethany, West Virginia.
It was in this little town that the two
decided to fuse Rich's songwriting
and guitar skills with Kelsey's
unique vocals and hypnotizing
stage presence.
The band's name was taken from
a woman by the name of Mary
Rathbun, a volunteer worker at the
©1997 Tribune Media Services,
All rights reserved.
8 Greek letter
9 Vaughan and
Purcell
10 Gain in size
11 Daddy
12 Finished
13 Pavilion
21 Affected
manners
23 Resinous
material
25 Profundity
27 Quantity of
medicine
28 Readied the
presses
29 Sheer fabric
30 Temptress
32 Memorize
33 Five: pref.
_36___Of hearing_
38 On - an even --
40 Bodoni, e.g.
42 Automobile
46 Ship of 1492
49 Bullfight cheer
50 Named
52 Pointed arches
Make amends
Approached
Spoken
Promontory
" plenty 0f..."
San Francisco General Hospital. Her
work there was exclusively with pa
tients in the cancer and AIDS wards.
Mrs. Rathbun was arrested numerous
times for distributing marijuana
brownies to her "kids" to help coun
teract some of the side effects of these
painful and debilitating diseases.
Members of the press soon nick
named her "Brownie" Mary. The
band contacted her and received her
permission to use the nickname.
After selling over 20,000 units of
their independent releases and pack
ing venues across the mid-Atlantic,
Brownie Mary decided to sign with
The Blackbird Recording Company,
a subsidiary of Elektra Records. The
band plans to release their debut al
bum under this new label in Febru-
Lead singer Kelsey Barber and the rest of Brownie Mary
Western alliance
Sufficiently,
archaically
Lairs
de France
Features
the Reed Commons
ary of 1998. Until then, the band is
enjoying its final swing around the
club and campus circuit, including
a stop at Behrend last Friday night.
Barber and company quickly won
over the crowd, and invited the au
dience to take a few steps forward
and fill the gap between them and
the stage. Countering a somewhat
paltry turnout early in the evening
with intimacy and sheer energy, Bar
ber quickly became the center of at
tention as the band laid down infec
tiously danceable rhythms to which
the crowd could not help but re
spond. The band ripped through
tracks from their upcoming release,
as well as driving crowd favorites
like "Bitch" and "Good-bye". The
funky bass riffs and pumping drum
Three Tall Women
a waste of time
The Roadhouse Theatre for Con
temporary Art is attempting to pro
duce Edward Albee's 1994 Pulitzer
Prize-winning play, Three Tall
Women and is failing miserably at
it.
Directed by Michael Weiss, this
production is a torturously long and
dry rendition of what could have
been a fabulous production. The
written script is engaging; it is the
actors' lack of ability to play against
and with one another that ruined it.
Three Tall Women is a long, long
session of storytelling in which the
audience learns about the life of a
ninety-one year-old character
known only as "A." This wealthy
woman is slowly losing her
memory and is no longer able to
recall important details in the sto
ries of her life which she loves to
tell. "A" is played by Mina
Eisenberg who is the only element
of this particular production that
saves it from being downright hor
rible.
Eisenberg is sufficiently annoy
ing (as her character should be) with
her telling and retelling the same
stories, along with her hilarious
tales of her early sex life. She plays
her part wonderfully as the nagging
yet needy old woman for whom "B"
and "C" must care. "A" illustrates
her personality with temper tan
trums and violent mood swings.
"B" and "C" are the two women
by Nadine Cross
Collegian staff
beats provided the backbone for the
whirlwind of stellar songs that
Brownie Mary performed with little
or no pause between. Barber's
incredible voice, gliding from howls
to growls to sweet harmonies with
guitarist Rick Jacques, had no
trouble filling the Reed Commons.
Jacques' guitar solos were fit pre
cisely into each song, which added
a more polished sound to the music.
The best part of the show, and
Brownie Mary's music, is the fluc
tuating tempo in all of their music;
most would start out slowly, but all
of the songs would end up rocking.
Brownie Mary showed their best
side with their fine musicianship,
solid songwriting ability, and furi
ous intensity on stage. Between
who take care of the older "A." "B"
is her official caretaker, aiding her
in daily tasks and seeing to the
maintenance of her broken arm.
"B" is a kind-hearted character who
listens patiently to the old woman's
tireless storytelling and suffers
through her periods of mean-spir
ited yelling and throwing things.
"C" is a very young woman who
works for "A's" law firm and takes
care of the old woman's finances.
"C" visits "A" often because she
refuses to pay her bills, as she is
The written script is
engaging; it is the
actors' lack of ability
to play against and
with one another
that ruined it
certain that the bank is stealing from
her. While "B" (Judith Green) is a
tolerable character, Green's acting
is impersonal and dry. She seems
incapable of interacting with the
other characters and is robotic in her
role. "C" (Victoria Kalberlein),
however, is insufferable. While the
character is intended to be whining
and complaining at a young age,
who wants to be around a sick old
woman? Kalberlein doesn't cut
it. Her complaining voice is
screeching like fingernails on a
chalk board while her acting is
Barber's convulsing and cavorting
around the spacious stage and
Jacques' seamless blending of rhyth
mic sensibilities and vicious sonic
attacks, the band offered no quarter
to its captive audience, and the
crowd clearly loved every minute of
it. Top to bottom, Brownie Mary are
a formidable rock and roll outfit, and
they were in peak form Friday night.
On my classes I'd skip to go see
them scale, Brownie Mary gets an
impressive 4 1/2 out of a possible 5.
If you missed them on Friday, or
just want to take them in again,
Brownie Mary will be at the Crow
bar in State College tonight, at
Calimari's in Erie on November 21
and December 2, and at Metropol in
Pittsburgh on November 26.
also forced
The set is constructed of a double
bed and lavishly decorated chairs
surrounded
with bright pink and white wallpa
per. Developed by Scott
McClellend and Dan Pruyn, it
is a believable recreation of a
wealthy woman's home. It is suffi
ciently over-done. The lighting
seems a bit too bright; it hurts the
eyes as it reflects off of the bright
wallpaper.
The main problem of this produc
tion is trying to maintain audience
interest and characters' lively inter
action throughout what is essen
tially a two-and-a-half-hour long
conversation. Presenting Albee's
work is a formidable task for the
Roadhouse's amateur actors, and
Green and Kalberlein do not have
the energy to compete with and
compliment Eisenberg's consider
able talent. The play is intended to
be a story about the nature of time
and aging, but this challenging ef
fort can only be realized with ac
tors who can pull the dialogue into
a true conversation—not three sepa
rate sets of lines. In other words, the
actors must be able to work with
each other and play off each other
extremely well.
While the majority of the plot is
given in Act II of the production,
the audience still must suffer
through Act I. In my opinion, it is
simply too torturous a wait.