Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 39

Arts Section Austin American-Statesman Friday, January 16, 1987 Night lifo 'Platoon' penetrates heart, soul of war 1 Roview By Patrick Taggart American-Statesman Staff Perhaps one of the reasons a Vietnam movie from the soldier's point of view has been so long in coming is that nobody really wants to see the war that way. Why bother with the truth when you can have antic characters like Robert Duvall running around shouting about the joys of surfing as shells fall, or helicopters firing rockets to the strains of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries? If Oliver Stone's Platoon accomplishes nothing else, it shames the recent macho-fantasy glorifications of war and the revisionist wishful-thinking of such movies as Missing in Action and Rambo. Even Apocalypse Now, the film that Platoon is most like, seems a romanticized dream compared with Stone's powerful memoir. And memoir is the correct word, because Stone is the first Vietnam combat veteran to have written and directed a film about the war there. That he is a veteran does not give him exclusive right to the truth or filmmaking skills that anyone else can't acquire.

But Stone's film is moving and powerful in a lean, honest way. There's no self-conscious artistry here, no metaphorical trips up a river into a thickening jungle. Platoon is a clean, direct narrative that may not go to the heart of darkness but does get to the heart of the matter which is fighting, fear and death. That said, you may not believe me when I say that the movie is far from a downer. Tragic it is, as tragedy in one form or another befalls all the characters.

But like all good tragedy, Platoon is graced with feelings of uplift and hope, and few will leave the theater not grateful for having seen it. The action opens as Charlie Sheen's character, a raw Marine recruit named Chris, arrives at the front in the land halfway around the world from his home. His company consists of several other men his age kids, really many of whom give evidence of already having seen too much death and despair. As he gradually incorporates himself into the fabric of the outfit, Chris finds himself in Oliver Stone's Platoon is more about combat than Vietnam. Honky-tonk visions an emotional crossfire between two experienced sergeants with wildly differing attitudes toward survival.

Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) is a good soldier, not a hardened killer. Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) is seemingly the tougher man, but it is he who has been driven around the bend by the frustrations of fighting an unseen enemy. Their conflict becomes central to Chris's experience and to the movie.

On another level, their conflict represents what was happening politically and socially on the homefront as the war cruelly raged on. Days after seeing this film you may find, as I do now, that it's difficult to sort out all the feelings it stirs. In terms of pace and performance, it is not the equal of Salvador, Stone's last film and a kind of mini-masterpiece. But the gonzo, bad-trip tone of Salvador seems almost capricious compared with the level of emotional intensity of the newer film. Stone has gone for bigger game, and while it is overselling the movie to say it is the ultimate statement on Vietnam, it is clearly one of the most moving war films ever made.

Platoon, rated for violence, profanity, at the Arbor and Southpark. where, as one writer put it, "the sky determines so much." The show not only chronicles some of the leading figures in Panhandle music history, but also attempts to explain the mysterious wellspring that gave rise to so much music from such an unlikely place. One of the motivating factors, beyond a doubt, was unalloyed boredom. The original title of "Honky Tonk Visions," when it opened at the Texas Tech University Museum in Lubbock in 1984, was "Nothin Else To Do." And that was about the size of it. Butch Hancock is ostensibly a songwriter, but his selection of black-and-white photos in the show reveals the genesis for his best songs: There is the cyclist motoring toward a distant horizon; a stark collection of right angles masquerading as a farmhouse out in the wil- 8m Honky-tonk, D4 Night life is a guide to selected musical entertainment available in Austin this weekend.

Cactus comeback The Cactus Cafe, the club at the University of Texas, has been closed for nearly a month. It swings back into action tonight with B.W. Stevenson, the gentle bear of the 1970s progressive country movement. Stevenson, whose tunes made millions for an assortment of pop acts, is a first class songwriterstoryteller with a friendly stage presence and a personable delivery. He performs at 9:30 tonight; admission is $4.50.

The music continues Saturday with a tasty acoustic double bill of Eliza Gilkyson and David Halley, two superb songwriters who are no slouches at singing. The show begins at 9 p.m. Admission is $4.50. Bayou beat It's Day 2 of Mardi Gras on Town Lake as the Neville Brothers continue to tell it like it is with a smoking session of New Orleans funk. The Nevilles are the best the bayous have to offer, premium party music with a spicy gumbo mix of influences.

The group already has a 30-year collection of material, ranging from soul classics to house rocking stompers, but has recently been expanding its repertoire still wider, infusing reggae and African sounds. The resulting sound is arguably the hottest roots rhythm 'n' blues. At 9 tonight at Liberty Lunch. Tickets are $8.50 advance, $10 at the door. Trumpet tones Trumpetercomposer Bill Averbach is generally seen leading Trained Ants, one of Austin's most experimental jazz units.

Occasionally he steps outside that musical identity, but he never loses the adventurous edge to his playing. Averbach is one of the city's most versatile jazz players, familiar with the music's past while still plotting its future. His trumpet work is fluid and creative and his choice of accompanists is unfailingly on target. At 8 p.m. Sunday at Maggie Mae's Lime Street Station.

Admission is free. Metal mania It's headbanging rock roll time again on Sixth Street. If you're a fern bar fan, then be advised that Watchtower doesn't play conversational easy listening music or recycled oldies. The band's visceral rock attack features screaming guitars and intense vocalizing over a crunching metallic foundation. It's not for the timid nor easily shocked, but if you're tough enough Watchtower will ring your bells.

At 9 tonight at the Ritz Theatre. Admission is $5. Invincible Vince Bell has bounced back from all manner of physical tragedies to resume his career. The veteran entertainer will serve as host of a new series, Live Music in the Lobby, that the State Theatre is inaugurating. Steve Fromholz and other guests will share their talents at 8 tonight at the State Theatre.

Admission is $2. MichMl Point Coming Saturday Merching on Austin remembers the late civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. Time Out Also. a AliM Austin Adams' record comments on Central America and the Rio Grande border. I 0 i Luis Jimenez's Honky Tonk offers the slightly seedy saloon atmosphere that spawned all those drinkin' and cheatin' songs.

'mm Roviow Art misses connection with theme By Mel McCombie Special to the American-Statesman The arid plains of West Texas have produced several generations of wonderful musicians, from Bob Wills to Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. It's not clear, however, that the dusty soil is as fertile for the visual arts, judging by the sampling on view in the small "Honky Tonk Visions: On West Texas Music 1936-1986." "Honky Tonk Visions" is the If jt of the Sesquicentennial exhibitions to arrive in town (better late than never), and was organized by the museum at Texas Tech University in Lubbock to explore the develop- ment of popular music in West Texas. Its place in an art museum, however, is murky. "Honky Tonk Visions" is really two shows: One is a small group of works of art dealing in some way with the notion of the honky-tonk, and the other is a musical history exhibition complete with videotapes, recordings and memorabilia. The term "honky-tonk" was derived from the Southern black slang that labeled a beer joint a "tonk." In rural towns, one had to create one's own entertainment hence, the rise and proliferation of beer and dancing bars in which local musicians played.

"Honky Tonk" bespeaks both a place and a state of mind, a little on the seedy side, but a heck of a good time. It is this notion of both place and state of mind that fueled the visual artists and musicians in the show. The show gets off to a strong start as the viewer enters a dark opening and discovers Luis Jimenez's life-size tableau Honky Tonk, a bar interior complete with red neon sign and lazy dog. The figures, some of which are cut out and standing like giant paper dolls, are deliniated in Jimenez's loose and voluptuous drawing style. Each figure is fleshy, with exaggerated curves and muscles; their faces have that slightly pinched look that comes from spending a lot of time under the sun.

There is a sexual charge underlying the tableau as the figures dance and drink, their buttocks and breasts evident under cheap T-shirts and jeans, hips locked in dance. Jimenez succeeds in capturing not only the look of the country saloon, but the slightly seedy atmosphere that spawned all those drinkin' and cheatin' songs. He includes himself among the revelers the standup figure on the end wearing the "Jimenez Signs" shirt is a self-portrait. Ed Blackburn of Fort Worth is 8m Visions, D4 Musician Terry Allen's Them 01' Love Songs Just Keep Comin' On is part of 'Honky Tonk an exhibition at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum. Music gives 'nowhere' an identity flatter the land oh yes the flatter land but of course the flatter the land and the sea is as flat as the land oh yes the flatter the land the more yes the more it has may have to do with the human mind.

Gertrude Stein By John T. Davis American-Statesman Staff There is a school of thought that says art should never be harmless. Sometimes you can stick art out in the yard, or hang it on the walls of a cafeteria. But beyond a function as simple ornamentation, art ought to evoke a visceral response: a poke in the snoot, a kiss in the night, another round of drinks. Something.

In Lubbock and West Texas as a whole music has been the artistic medium of choice since the High Plains were first settled, and as such it has seldom been harmless. The idea that all the kinds of music to spill off the Caprock could be officially codified as "Art," via "Honky Tonk Visions: On West Texas Music 1936-1986," an exhibition at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, must strike many of its practitioners as a highly unlikely turn of events. "They used to throw us in jail just for walking down the street," singer and songwriter Jim-mie Gilmore once said of his Lubbock tenure in 1960s and '70s. Today, two of those jailbirds, mu- sicians Butch Hancock and Terry Allen, have artwork hanging in Laguna Gloria. Ah, respectability.

Gilmore and his musical contemporaries Hancock and Allen, Joe Ely, the Supernatural Family Band, David Halley, Delbert McClinton, Angela Strehli, the Maines Brothers, the Nelsons are the inheritors of a West Texas popular musical tradition that stretches from Bob Wills' revolutionary Western Swing fusion in the 1930s to the rock 'n' roll of Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison in the '50s to the continuing country and pop of Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Dean, Mac Davis, the Gatlin Brothers and others. Rock, blues, ranchero, big-band jazz, retrograde rockabilly, singing cowboy movie soundtracks, rhythm and blues beamed in from Mexican border stations. It all got mixed up in the wind and the long, straight highways in a singular landscape.