Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 41

Section Austin American-Statesman Friday, May 16. 1986 Night life Patrick Duffy gallops back into 'Dallas' tonight By Diane Holloway American-Statesman Staff Despite what a spokesman for Lorimar Productions has described as "extra tight security" including eight different endings being filmed for tonight's episode sources ranging from the National Enquirer to TV Guide claim to know what's going to happen. If indeed there are eight endings the producers can choose from, nobody really knows. Starting with the most conservative information, the CBS press release says, "The happiness of Pam and Mark's wedding day soon fades as J.R.'s attempt to outwit Angelica may have come too late to save Jack's life and ultimately jeopardizes Sue Ellen's life as well." A couple of reporters insist CBS entertainment chief Donald "Bud" Grant let the cat out of the bag in a close-circuited chat with affiliates that Duffy will return as Bobby. A spokesman for Grant now says the boss was only speculating.

TV Guide, which has been wrong about soap opera cliffhangers more times than it's been right, says a man who looks like Bobby Ewing turns up at Pam and Mark's wedding. A safe and useless prediction. Meanwhile, the supermarket tabloids, quoting a multitude of anonymous sources, scream about "mass murder plots," "bomb scares" and "shocking developments." If you're a supermarket patron with an "inquiring mind," you know that the National Enquirer says Duffy returns as an evil character, "more evil than J.R." He reportedly will be another of Jock's illegitimate sons (Ray Krebbs is one, too). According to the Enquirer, he will be seen silently lurking in the background at Pam and Mark's wedding. Other tabloids claim Duffy will return as good old Bobby, but it is unclear how his death will be explained.

Tonight all the soapy questions will be raised, but don't expect any answers until fall. iVi "'r ilS A.o ji Yes, Patrick Duffy returns to Dallas tonight (at 8, KTBC-TV, Channel 7 Cable 2). No, we will not find out if he is playing Bobby Ew-ing or somebody else. This is a cliff-hanger, a season-end episode designed to keep viewers wondering all summer long. More specifically, the cliffhanger is designed to get viewers to return in September to tie up the dramatic threads that will be left dangling tonight.

As an extra incentive for keeping viewers' interest high, CBS just found out Dallas will compete with Miami Vice next season. Patrick Duffy returns tonight for a role on the Dallas cliffhanger. Killer talent Will Sexton takes fast track to the top 3t TV I' By John T. Davis American-Statesman Staff Night life is a guide to a variety of music available this weekend in Austin. Songwriters In an era of transient entertainment fads, Austin has always maintained an appreciation for the songwriter.

The men and women who labor in solitude to craft a coherent vision have always found the city receptive to their work. By happy coincidence, two of the city's best practitioners of the songwriter's art are releasing records this Saturday. The Calvin Russell Band will celebrate the release of its single, Eight Ball bw Baby I Love You at 10 p.m. at the Mid-City Roadhouse. There is a $2 cover.

Earlier in the day, Darden Smith will be taking over Scholz Garten to kick off the release of his first album on Redi-Mix Records, Native Soil. The party lasts from 5-9 p.m. Admission is free, and music will be provided by the Lost Gonzo Band. Writers, cont'd. Austin's not inbred, though.

Songwriters from other latitudes have found a welcome in River City, too. Ask Robert Earl Keen, who set the town on its ear two years ago with the release of his masterful album, No Kinda Dancer. Keen's moved on to Nashville now. But he gets back often enough to remind folks what the fuss was all about in the first place. He'll be joined by yet another fellow with an ability to turn a phrase, Richard Dobson.

At 9 p.m. Saturday. Cover is $3.50. Endangered species What do you think of when you think of honky-tonks these days? Spit-shined fern bars dishing out kumquat daiquiris and spineless urban cowboy ditties? How about family bands oh, yeah, the Osmonds, the Trapp Family Singers. Wimp City, right? How refreshing, then to find exceptions to both dreary rules in one place.

The Little Wheel is still a road house in the grand tradition, but still safe enough for the kids and grandma. The Supernatural Family Band specializes in industrial-strength fun, and that includes anything with a beat from Wipeout to Buddy Holly to Your Cheating Heart. At 9 p.m. tonight and Saturday. Cover is $3.

Meat me in St. Louis Sure, the Meat Puppets got their foot in the door with a hardcore debut. But lots of folks Lave done that. Hardcore is less a genre than a way to mark time while searching for direction. Judging by its new album, Out My Way, the Phoenix, trio has found that direction.

Not for purists, and that's a compliment. With Doctor's Mob and the Wild Seeds at 10 tonight at the Continental Club. Dish it out The Dishes are coming back to town. They will be accompanied by Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks, one of the brightest lights in Nashville's "new wave" of country rockers. Tonight at 10 at Liberty Lunch.

$5 cover. John T. Davis playing with a band called the Del Rays and waiting for a better offer. "Wichita was a layover for me," he said. "Sometimes landing in a place can be easier than getting out." Boaz heard about Austin from Johnny Reno's guitarist, who also gave him Napier's phone number.

Wichita had worn out its welcome. "I was absolutely moving to Austin, even though I didn't know anybody." Boaz arrived during a blizzard and hung in there until the Kill went into business. As for Napier himself, he has bass guitars older than Will Sexton, and a track record that includes tours of duty with the LeRoi Brothers, the Cobras, the Cannon Balls (Will's first band), Lou Ann Barton and the Flip Tops, W.C. Clark, and two bands (the Eager Beaver Boys and the Sextones) with Will's brother Charlie. Charlie is the 17-year-old fellow with the record on the charts and his mug on the cover of Spin magazine.

Both brothers seem to have been eerily predestined to become musicians. Their mother toted them around to nightclubs while most of their peers were sucking on Popsicles. When he was 8, Will got his first bass guitar "a little bitty one" a black Fender Music Master. His professional debut came the same year, with his 10-year old brother on guitar. "All the articles they write out of town talk about me trying to follow in his footsteps," said Will, with an air of resignation.

"But we started at exactly the same time. In a way, I started before him, because I was younger. "We played at the Scoot Inn and all these See Sexton, O10 Mf "Take it off, Will!" "Yeah, c'mon, take it all off!" What's it all coming to when a guy can play guitar and front a band and still can't get any respect? Will Sexton is posing for a photographer and studiously ignores the good-natured ribbing of the rest of the Kill. Finally, he slips off his floppy red shirt so the photographer can grab a couple of shots of him in an undershirt. He looks every inch the rock star self-assured, fashionably blase in black slimline pants, with an earring dangling under a shock of dark hair.

He is tall, and as thin as a banker's smile. He is a composer who plays several instruments. He is 15 years old. The Kill came together in March of last year, mostly by hook and crook. Serendipity seems too strong a word, but it's close.

Band member Thierry Le Coz said many musicians in his native France would like to live in America. He set his sights specifically on Austin, but, like a lot of folks, he didn't plan on staying. "I'd heard a lot of good things about Austin," he said, "I had some friends that were down here, so I came to visit, liked it and stayed." Le Coz, who cut three records in Europe, met Sexton "about a week after I moved to Austin." Although the group's biography notes that he "jumped onstage. An-tone's," the guitarist explained, "I was dragged on by Alex (Napier). I jumped off." Semantics aside, Le Coz and Sexton were soon collaborating as songwriters.

Drummer Jeff Boaz was stuck in Wichita, Staff Photo by Mario Villafuerte Will Sexton, top right, fronts the Austin rock band, the Kill. From bottom left, the other members are Thierry Le Coz, Alex Napier and Jeff Boaz. Fact mingles with legend in the story of Charlie Sexton By John T. Davis American-Statesman Staff whatever image-mongers haunt the smoggy towers of Universal City. The truth is probably pretty much as he claims: That he is more in control of his life and career than any 17-year-old rock star in recent memory.

"If I was Charlie, I'd be cocky too," said Joe Ely, who hired him to play in 1982 (Charlie was 13). Sure, he made some harsh and undiplomatic judgments about his mentors and his hometown to British reporters. And he's keeping a couple of hair mousse plants running at full production all by himself. But he has made inroads among a young audience that no other Austin performer has ever been able to reach. And, most in-triguingly, he is still growing and evolving.

Whatever one may think of Sexton's current incarnation, it's impossible not to wonder what the future will hold. Charlie Sexton and the True Believers will play at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Austin Opera House. cheekbones that Faye Dunaway would envy. Shortly thereafter, he made a Faustian pact with a Left Coast producer and began churning out mediagenic records and videos.

That, anyway, is the legend. The fact is that a lot of people around Austin watched Charlie being weaned on dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music. The fact is, those same people watched Sexton absorb all the music he could get his hands on while honing his own chops with the likes of W.C. Clark and Joe Ely. Later, with his own bands, the Eager Beaver Boys and the Sextones, he experimented with rockabilly, garage rock and hardcore, all the while moving toward a form he was genuinely enamored of.

Today, he says that form exists in the seamless, highly burnished pop music that he and producer Keith (Simple Minds, Psychedelic Furs, Billy Idol) Forsey crafted on Sexton's first album, Pictures For Pleasure. The legend is that Sexton is a pretty tool, manipulated by In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Jimmy Stewart returns to the scene of past glories a lot older and a lot wiser. In examining him, a reporter wonders what he ought to write. "When the fact becomes legend," he is told, "print the legend." Legend has it that Charlie Sexton came out of the clear blue, anointed with a Stratocaster nearly as big as he was and a set of 'Top Gun' has a slick look, but proves superficial Coming Saturday By Patrick Taggart American-Statesman Staff Review in v. I ft" 5 I that Maverick will be put through a crisis of confidence, that he will lose a buddy, and that his training will be put to the test in a combat situation.

We sort of expect such familiarities in a military action picture; what we don't expect, and what is so disappointing, is how the shortcomings of the story are so inadequately made up for on other fronts. For example, in spite of expensive reshoot-ing to correct the problem, the relationship between McGillis and Cruise remains thin to the point of transparency. That may have more to do with Cruise than anything else; while perfectly believable as a brash, young aviator he is out of his league as McGillis' lover, and he looks it. And for the most part the screenplay is a series of bland cliches, a notable example being the conversation between Cruise and the instructor played by Tom Skerritt. Skerritt is explaining how Maverick's father died in Vietnam: Maverick's father, also a military aviator, was flying a combat mission when he was fired on and hit.

Wounded and flying a crippled plane, Skerritt explains, the pilot still managed to shoot down three bogies (enemy planes) before going down himself. Good grief! The screenwriters seem to have overdosed on Sgt. Rock comic books. If anything besides the flight footage makes Top Gun worthwhile, it is the scene-stealing work of Anthony Edwards as Goose. Until now underused in movies like Revenge of the Nerds and Gotcha, Edwards boasts a spontaneous comic energy that is impossible to resist.

Underneath those cold, calculated, musically hyped exteriors, he gives the movie warmth. Top Gun, rated PG for mild profanity, at the Americana, Arbor, Aquarius, Westgate Top Gun, like two other films produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, is a movie that probably transcends criticism. It's not so much a movie as a shrewd marketing scheme, and if you don't think it works you weren't at one of Saturday night's sneak previews, which sold out theaters in cities everywhere. Simpson and Bruckheimer are the guys who gave us Flashdance, with its pretty women, glitzy photography and trendy musical score. They went on to produce Beverly Hills Cop, which made even more money.

Obviously, these men are onto something, and I have a hunch it's the pulse of the American movie-going public. Or at least the most forgiving sector of it. Top Gun is just the kind of movie you would expect from the two celebrated producers. Technically, it is state-of-the-art almost to a fault, from Jeffrey Kimball's crisp, ice-cold photography to sound engineering that captures the macho screams of an F-14 Tomcat and Harold Faltermeyer's musical score in all their ear-splitting glory. And also as one might expect of Simpson and Bruckheimer, the story is a joke, with no plot-turn too aged or worn to drag out one more time.

Like so many high-dollar movies these days, the values of Top Gun are all on the surface, and once it's over you can barely recall it. A disposable movie, if you will not art, but merchandise. Also in keeping with the recent tradition of expensive movies, Top Gun borrows freely from past successes. It's An Officer and a Gentleman on an aircraft carrier, with a ceastless musical accompaniment inspired 'Quiet Sun' full of unhappiness, D6 Lillian Gish on her 104th film, D8 'Sweet Liberty' a winsome romp, D9 by Miami Vice. So what's to like? Well, sometimes superficial characters and slick photography make for good viewing in spite of themselves, and there's no denying the simple, even primal pleasures of simply looking at this movie.

It's peopled by young, lean, charismatic men and one stunningly attractive woman. Most of the action occurs at a training school for the nation's best Navy pilots, a setting that provides endless opportunities for the F-14 to take off and land. If you think there's no such thing as a macho airplane, you haven't seen director Tony Scott (The Hunger) shoot F-14s performing carrier takeoffs and landings. At the center of all the fancy flying are a cocky young aviator named Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and his best friend Nick "Goose" Bradshaw. It soon becomes clear that Maverick, especially, has earned his nickname; in the great tradition of loner heroes.

Maverick operates on instinct rather than rules. Once at Top Gun, the nickname for the Navy's Fighter Weapon's School, Maverick wastes little time making advances to one of the instructors. It seems not at all unusual that the instructor is the stunningly beautiful Charlotte Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), who always dresses to the nines and is made up to Fiesta fun Kids find time to frolic at the Fiesta art festival at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum. Time Out Also. Jesse Ashlock is recognized as being the most influential fiddle player in Texas music.

Lady Liberty gets support in Austin with a bicycle ride, concert and festival at the Texas Heritage and Exposition Center. Lockhart remembers its origins with the Chisholm Trail Roundup, a celebration featuring food, dancing, arts and crafts and contests. Tom Cruise stars as cocky young aviator Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in Top Gun. look like the world's highest-paid fashion model. Right.

As written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps, there is never the slightest doubt that Charlie (like everyone else in the movie, Charlotte has a nickname) and Maverick will fall for each other, just as there is pever any doubt.