The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 21

problems 21 Also Inside TV and Radio 29 Partisan Analyzing the TV analysts: The knotty issue of party ties. Page 23. Ms THE BOSTON GLOBE SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1992 U2 tries to keep scalpers at bay for Mass. dates By Susan Bickelhaupt GLOBE STAFF you dial and dial and dial the phone tomorrow, and still get shut out of tickets for the U2 concert next month at Boston Garden, you can blame U2. vY I r- i If, i 1 1 If you do get to order tickets, without paying premium prices or a scalper's fee, you can give U2 credit.

That's because the band and its promotion staff may be the first in the country to invoke a tighter-than-ever system aimed at driving out ticket scalpers. Different cities have different ways of selling tickets, said U2 spokesman Paul Wasserman. But Boston, with a notoriously high rate of illegal scalpers, has one of the strictest. "The whole purpose is to make sales as fair as they can be to everyone and to discourage scalpers," Wasserman said. In anticipation of the Boston Garden concert on March 17, there are no lines of people camped out at the ticket office.

Instead, ticket-seekers have to be poised at 10 a.m. tomorrow to dial an 800 number and reserve no more than two tickets. You can pay for them with your credit card number, or you can get a confirmation number so a voucher will be mailed out to you. You then send back a money order for the amount of $25 for U2, Page 22 GLOBE PHOTO GREGORY MARTIN Some members of the lifers Group, from left: Maxwell MeMns, Amazing Rocky and Goldie Bloom. n.

Music Review rz IT I Awareness program for kids earns Lifers a Grammy nomination Ma Jazz Quartet outclasses 1 By Colum Lynch SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AHWAY, N.J. Since he was sentenced to life in prison for murder in 1980, Maxwell Melvins has dreamed of many things from the cramped interior of his cell: redemption for his crime, a night alone with his wife, a shorter prison sentence. He never dreamed he would win a Grammy ride to the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which awards the Grammy, turned down a request by Melvins to have the band's longtime liaison Lt. Alan August or two recently paroled rappers accept the award on his behalf.

Inside the domed prison complex at Rahway, beyond a half-dozen sliding gates and a 400-pound prison guard named Topoleski, the controversy over the Grammy is only the most recent aggravation that notoriety has heaped upon Melvins. Hammering out the details of royalties and record, video and book contracts has turned him into a nervous wreck. During a recent visit, Melvins was chain-smoking as he paced the prison floor, anxiously orchestrating press interviews, a photo shoot and one of two daily prison tours by troubled youths. The Lifers Group rap band is the brainchild of Melvins, the president of the 15-year-old Lifers Group Juvenile Awareness Program. The program, which invites students to spend a day in prison, is best known as the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary "Scared Straight." The aim of the Lifers Group is to de-mythologize the romanticizing of prison that often informs rap music and to so terrify potential young criminals with horrific tales of prison rape, physical brutality and mental torture that they will walk a straight line through life.

Melvins saw rap music as the best way to convey that message, and last year he persuaded a Los Angeles record company to come to the prison and make a record and video. The 30-minute video-documentary, directed by Penelope Spheeris ('Wayne's who is also named on the nomination, provides abundant testimony of prison hardships and brutality. Shot in black and white 16mm film and color video, it depicts a cramped and dispiriting universe, filled with tiled walls, fences, metal bars and men with huge muscles. The main tracks, "Real Deal" and "Belly of the Beast," are gritty and unsparing. The lyrics, which are written by the inmates, deal in a direct LIFERS, Page 24 By Anthony Tommasini SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE The esteemed Modern Jazz Quartet shared a program with the Handel Haydn Society last night.

And something happened that had never happened in 38 years: MJQ drummer Connie Kay missed a gig. Kay, who has been with the MJQ for 38 of its 40 years, was ill. So the quartet became a trio for their portion of the program called "Bach Variations." Before the concert proper, the quartet's anniversary was commemorated with the reading of proclamations from the offices of Gov. Weld and Mayor Flynn. There was also a tribute by way of explanation from director Christopher Hogwood.

"Read into it what you like," Hogwood said, but the idea of mixing the "completely authentic Bach" of the Society and the "transmuted Bach" of JAZZ, Page 28 Award. But Melvins and 12 inmates from the prison rap band, the Lifers Group, at the East New Jersey maximum security penitentiary in Rahway, N.J., have been nominated in the long-form video category for the music industry's most prestigious prize. None of the singers, however, will be on hand to receive the award Tuesday night if they win. Prison authorities won't allow Melvins, the band's creator who is named on the nomination, to take the 20-minute bus a a a Weekend Maternity wear that works in the office Cordis Adventures in art and music Fashion ROBABLY THE LAST thing you'd expect a pregnant woman to wear is a sarong. That sexy skirt originally from the South I I I A v.

few umA. -4' A i i iii ijjfi .,,,,11 ii i' ii. ft 1. 1' i THE Movie Section Jay Carr on Marcel Carne's timeless love story, 'Paradise' John Cassavetes, the classic US independent filmmaker THE Book Section Geoffrey Wolff on a memoir by Jeff Giles John Pike on 1 William J. Broad's Teller's War' By Charles E.Claffey GLOBE STAFF If you're feeling the need for artistic stimulation, you can't do better than drop in at the Museum of Fine Arts, where the exhibition "European American Impressionism: Crosscurrents" will be on view today and Sunday between 10 a.m.

and 5 p.m. The show features the work of artists as divergent as Renoir and Robinson, and Sargent and Sisley. If you can't make it this weekend there's plenty of time left; the exhibit continues through May 17. For more information, call the Museum at 267-9300. The 1992 Boston Festival offers Uncommon Cross-Couritry Skiing on Boston Common today between 10 a.m.

and 5 p.m., free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by Eastern Mountain Sports, with snowmaking provided by Wachusetts Mountain. Participants should go to the EMS tent on Boston Common. The day will also feature a 2-kilometer race for novices at noon, and a 5-kilometer race for advanced skiers at 2 WEEKEND, Page 28 Seas is basically a scarf that wraps around the hips and legs and uses no other fasteners except the tight knotting and tying of the fabric around the waist. It emphasizes the small-ness of the waist and the curves of the body underneath.

Yet there it was, a brown print sarong, in the fallwinter catalog of Pea in the Pod, the Dallas-based maternity-wear chain with a new store in the Atrium in Chestnut Hill. The sarong was shown on a pregnant model, and it was knotted and tied just under the bustline and worn with dark brown stockings and a brown topjt-wasri't hiding the pregnancy fnor was it emphasizing it. It was simply allowing the pregnant FASHION, Page 23 GLOBE STAFF PHOTOS TOM LANDERS Pea in the Pod's cotton top, tights. A colorful pnlka-dot dress. A bright spring floral dress.

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