Berkshire Sampler from Pittsfield, Massachusetts • 17

i can hear music Tjjcytos 1 by Ken Marks Bowies inviting nightmare THE BIST OF BOTH WORLDS Efficiency of a stove Charm of an open fire. The LEYDEN HEARTH was tested by a leading independent New England Callage Environmental Laboratory. Fuel Type: Red Oak Moistwra Content: 10 Average Sise: 1.5 lbs. NATURAL CONVICTION Maximum Output 50,000 BTUH Average Output: 35,000 BTUH 3 leg, Hour Burn: 83,400 BTU MICHANIZED CONVICTION (Quiet Blewer) Maximum Output: 59,000 BTUH Average Output: 4 1 ,500 BTUH 3 log, Hoyr Burn: BTU Come in and see a Leyden Hearth in use at: The Tire Place 1402 NORTH PITTSFIELD, MASS. Rt.

7 Across from Pontoosuc Lake Dam 442-S1 10 Hours: 10-5 10-6 10-8 Sat. Also come in and see uur new Stanley Cookstove. tr SUNDAY SPECIALS Oth 0.7LY mum JAOKiTS QR OFF All Men's, Ladies', Boys', Girls' Infants Jackets hie roar piuboll enr.1 theirs is the music of the 70s, of the future. In truth, theyre only a minor, updating footnote on a very old-fashioned story. It is Bowie who has given us the music of the 70s.

He was around when the decade began, and you can count on him to keep us ahead of date as we move deeper and deeper into the Orwellian age. As long as Ive mentioned their nasty music, I should tell you tlfat the Sex Pistols, leaders of the current wave of punk-dom, the scourge and scandal of proper Britain, X-rated, censored and banned from that nations airwaves and still Englands hottest recording group, have just released their first album in America, Never mind the bollocks, heres the Sex Pistols. With this debut, the Pistols live up to their advance billing as the best of the punks. What they are, simply, is a kick-ass rock roll band. They pack power in all the basic departments.

Drummer Paul Cook flails at his kit like a latter-day Keith Moon. Bassist Sid Vicious is right there with pounding rock underpinning. Guitarist Steve Jones slashes away at rhythm or rips off a tough lead as needed. And singer Johnny Rotten leads the band as compellingly and maniacally as anyone who ever tried the form. The arrangements are tight, and the energy is ceaseless.

The songs are peppered with profanity and are frequently intentionally funny in their crudeness. Like Don Rickies with a safety pin through his cheek. I cant really listen to a whole side of this stuff straight through, but I think Id like to see what these boys do in performance. Its the adventurer in me. Allow me to urge you modern music lovers who will be traveling to Boston-town this week to catch at all costs Jonathan Richmans performance at the Paradise.

He and the Modern Lovers band will be in their old home town for one show Thursday, Dec. 8. It should be a great reunion atmosphere in the city that spawned Jonathan Richman, who formed the Modern Lovers because I got lonely. Jonathan doesnt play in the East very often, although hes just returned from a smash European tour. Old fans from the impromptu free-concerts-on-the-Green days will hear the band electrified for the first time.

Electrified but not painful. So bring a kid along, even if its yourself. 0 PITTSFIELD IN ITS BROADEST outlines, David Bowies new album, Heroes, repeats the format he set earlier this year with his previous record. Low. Side 1 is again the thumping, invitingly nightmarish side, while Side 2 concentrates on music of a soothingly extraterrestrial nature.

But while it may be Volume 2 of Bowies most recent stylistic stop-over, Heroes is not just marking time. It displays growth in every aspect of the composer-performers facility for creating music as current as the day after tomorrow. Though every listener is sure to bring his or her own interpretation to'the proceedings, my impression of Side 1 is that it portrays a futuristic, 1984-type world. Silent conformity seems to be the rule, and the noisy, anarchic spectre of individuality is what haunts the consciences of the singers of these songs. Their quest for personal contact with another human soul their search for love is a desperate quest.

Sounds more like the present than any future possibility, you say? Well, the best science fiction will do that for you. In fact, the beauty of Bowies achievement on Heroes is that it encompasses the echoes of a distant, barbaric past, the reality of a shattering, uncertain present, and the ghoulish beckoning of an inescapable future all at once. This eerie effect comes about not only through the words but the sound of the music rock roll, yes, but of a queerly timeless sort and the sound of Bowies voice more impassioned than on Low but with that same chilling blankness at the center. According to one listeners admittedly iffy postulations, the musjc on Side 2 offers the alternative to the preceding bleakness. V-2 Schneider represents the escape from earth via space ship, followed by Sense of Doubt, Moss and Garden' and Neukoln, points of reference along the universal way.

These three instrumental pieces are connected by synthesized washes of rocket firings and cosmic waves and form as relaxing, hypnotic a section of anti-gravitational music as youre likely to hear until the tapes of the Sirens of Titan arrive. The album closes with The Secret Life of Arabia, a song with a vocal that implies the preceding trip may have been completely internal or that the escape was not from earth but to it in some pre-or post-historic time. In all his recordings, Bowie has managed to comment uniquely on aspects of our civilization. Some have claimed that the punk rockers are the new wave, that special Not Assembled. Was 5.95.

Action packed electric game with automatic scoring. As seen on TV. Charge it or layaway. ELECTRIC 8C30RB ORGAN Was 39.99 16 chord console organ. Learn to play quickly with easy to follow instructions.

The Berkshire Sampler, Sunday, Dec. 4, 1977 1 7 DOWNTOWN PITTSFIELD Open Sunday 12 to 5:30 Free Parking Downtown iit tr x' "1.