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• , THE GAMECOCK ♦ Wednesday, October 15, 2003 S' CONTACT US HF MTY ' -HZ222Z Story ideas? Questions? Comments? I I I J I V I I / entry somewhere.” E-mailusatgamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com ——■-™^ ' —■ ®» Pawnshop refuses to close its doors ■HHMRnHH M W Jar PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Pawnshop added two members after its lead singer Ryan Beville passed away. Band regroups its artistic focus following death of lead vocalist f tY TRINA RAHMAN THE GAMECOCK The process of moving on after the death of a friend or family member can take an overwhelm ing amount of effort, incompre hensible to those who have never had to deal with the death of a loved one. The members of the local band Pawnshop have not only had to en dure such a loss during the past year, but they have had to regroup and reorganize their artistic focus following the death of their lead singer, Ryan Beville. The band is gearing up for a live show Friday at the New _Brookland Tavern with longtime riends Hot Lava Monster and Tinker’s Punishment. The found ing members of Pawnshop—Brad Owen on guitar, David Dixon on drums and Eric Dixon on guitar — met while attending Lugoff Elgin High School. Bassist Ryan Webber and vocalist Brent Wells have since joined the group. Their latest release, “Buy, Sell, Trade,” came out this year. Beville, who served as the band’s singer and lyricist, worked on the EP’s first track “Stories” with the other members. “The song ‘Stories’ was written with a new lineup came together a few months ago, and the band hopes to continue to play as much as possible. They performed an average of about 40 shows a year, having played around the Southeast in the past, but they plan to expand their touring as far west as Texas and as far north as New York in the coming months. uy rawnsnop a few months before Ryan Beville passed away. The rest of the songs we worked on as a new band,” Webber said. Today, the songwriting process is claarlv a If you’re going WHAT: Pawnshop with Hot Lava Monster and Tinker’s Punishment WHERE: The New Brookland Tavern WHEN: 9 p.m. Friday TICKETS: $5 2 land up, $8 under 21 rawnsnup le leased its latest EP, in part, to generate interest in the newly reformed band, hoping to at tract more fans to upcoming shows. “We just want ed to get some thing out there with the new line up so people could set a feel for what group effort: “A member will pre sent an idea to the band, and they will either work on it or throw it in the trash. If we decide to work on it, then we put a collective ef fort to the song as a whole band,” Owen said. The idea to actually perform direction we are going in. It just wasn’t possible to write a whole CD given the time frame. We plan on releasing a full-length CD by the summer of 2004,” Wells said. The group’s music has been previously described by the Free Times as influenced by Eve 6, Silverchair, Radish and Nirvana. Webber and David Dixon said Pawnshop is also influ enced by such bands as 311 and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Webber summed things up by saying, “We have many influ ences and try to incorporate many aspects of those influ ences into our music.” Hot Lava Monster — a band whose members are very close to the guys in Pawnshop — will be opening Friday’s show along with Tinker’s Punishment. The two bands first met each other when Hot Lava Monster beat Pawnshop in the Elbow Room Battle of the Bands. “I think the reason we get along so well is because we are both professional and feel strongly about what we do,” David Dixon said. “They are all great at polishing our gui tars before each show.” The band’s Web site, www.pawnshopmusic.com, now greets visitors with sooth ing scenes from Hawaii. This is a new layout for the site, said Webber, who has been do ing a lot of work on the site in preparation for the group’s first show with a new lineup. Although the original logo can still be found, this re vamping of the Web site serves as a testament to Pawnshop’s continued growth as well as its explo ration of new musical territo ry. This is a local band who refuses to quit — the group has even developed a “street team” to put up fliers for up coming shows. Although they have been faced with hardship, the boys are trying to make the best of their situation and move on as a band. Their upcoming show marks a milestone in that pro cess. As David Dixon says on the group’s Web site, “We are looking to the future to create something new with our mu sic while never forgetting who we are and where we came from.” Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockmbceditor @hotmail.com CD REVIEW * » Paloalto has pretty but expected sound I PALOALTO S heroes and v&arns “HEROES AND VILLAINS” Paloalto ★★★ out of ☆☆☆☆☆ BY MEG MOORE Til K (SAMKCOCK Paloalto is clearly not a prod uct of geography. The band’s songs recall a Brit-pop dreami ness, following in the musical foot steps of Coldplay and Travis. Yet it hails from Southern California, the home of surf and sun and bands like Sugar Ray. Although too late to fully cash in on the re cent popularity of moody music, Paloalto’s songs achieve the same lush ambiance as its predecessors from across the pond. The band’s sophomore album, “Heroes and Villains,” fails to make any singularly remarkable sonic statements, but it contains a worthy collection of ethereal tunes that are sure to win the band some fans. Its first single, “Breathe In,” received a positive reception on national radio, at tracting listeners with its melodi ous, guitar-driven sound. Drifting over the often wall-of sound choruses, singer James Grundler’s voice — like that of Coldplay’s Chris Martin — fre quently slips into a fragile falset to, both eerie and endearing. Despite his band’s ability to crank out heavy chords, Grundler’s delivery lacks the grit of the typical rock singer — the melody remains the music’s fo- . cal point. As evidenced on the album’s opening track, “The World Outside,” “Heroes and Villains” is a decidedly dark album, thread ed with minor chords and ag gressive instrumentals. The first track establishes Paloalto’s pen chant for intense orchestration. The group builds impenetrable walls of guitar chords on “The World Outside” that stand firm throughout much of the CD. Even tracks such as “Going Going Gone” and “Throwing Stones," which are slower to start, quickly evolve into multi-layered instru mental assaults. Paloalto also brings in strings on several of the tunes, reinforc ing its already complex chords. Often, when bands incorporate an orchestral layer, they end up turn ing a promising song into a power ballad — instead, tunes such as “Sleeping Citizens” seem effec tively strengthened by their sym phonic sides. The album is further accented by unexpected rhythms and some technically stellar drum work throughout. However, not even an electri fied orchestra can save a CD that is too late in coming. Fans of British pop will likely fall in love with Paloalto, but the rest of the music-listening world has moved on to edgier things. “Heroes and Villains” remains a solid debut from a band that is decidedly un SoCal. It takes a band that is de cidedly more than a Coldplay clone, however, to generate waves amid the of-the-moment music scene. Comments on this story?E-mail garrwcockmixeditor@hQtmail.com ' SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK From left, Florian Reinert, Tommy Black, James Grundler and Andy Blunda make up the Southern California band Paloalto. GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW Gaiman keeps Sandman alive “THE SANDMAN: ENDLESS NIGHTS” Neil Gaiman ★★★* out of BY GRAHAM CULBERTSON THE GAMECOCK ™ With “The Sandman: Endless /Rights,” Neil Gaiman tri ° °umphantly returns to the work of the Sandman — the work which made him famous almos 15 years ago. Although Gaimar has continued to write since 1996 which marked the end of the orig inal Sandman series, none of his work has quite equaled the excel lence, or commercial success, o those first compositions. In this new collection, the ac claimed author and his revolvinf cast of animators do some of thei] best work since the origina i series. Although none of the seven self-contained stories found in this volume matches the standard of excellence found in the best of the original Sandman series, Gaiman has certainly not lost his touch. Despite a few missteps, most of the stories in “Endless Nights" fully deserve to stand with the work Gaiman did in the early ’90s. For the uninitiated, the Sandman series follows the lives of the Endless, seven eternal be ings who embody and influence characteristics of the human con dition. The seven Endless are Death, Desire, Dream, Despair, Delirium, Destruction and Destiny. Although Dream, the Sandman, is the focus of the orig inal series, each one of the Endless has one story devoted to them in “Endless Nights.” For fans of the original series, this set up often provides interesting character development for the Endless we already know well and a few that we don’t. If you are not already familiar with the charac ters, this volume may be a bit con fusing at times, but mostly it serves as an excellent introduc tion to both Gaiman’s work and his phantasmagorical world. Not surprisingly, the best sto ry in this collection is “The Heart of the Star,” the story of Dream. Not only has Dream always been the most human and empathetic of Gaiman’s Endless, but this sto : ry takes place before anything else in the original series. The reader gets to see a time when the / Endless, constantly warring throughout “The Sandman,” still get along. Miguelanxo Prado pro vides the best artwork of the whole book, blending detailed backgrounds with faithful ren derings of familiar characters. Gaiman’s story is as passionate and heartrending as anything he has ever done before, and “The Heart of the Star” would almost be worth the price of the book by itself. Other highlights include the first two stories in the book, those of Death and Desire. Death’s story is a fable of a Renaissance island where no one dies and a man from our time who travels there after being haunted by an encounter with Death. The artwork initial ly appears to be simplistic, but its clear lines and simple color palette serve only to hide the sto ry’s greater complexity. Desire’s story belongs to an unnamed girl in a medieval village, a goatherd who desires the village prince, that gets everything she wants at a price she accepts. For those with the time to deci pher it, Delirium’s story might be the most substantial of the seven. Following a group of deranged travelers into the mind of trauma tized Delirium, this story takes place after the cataclysmic finale of the original series. Gaiman and artist Bill Sienkiewicz blend the minds of the would-be rescuers and their stories with the larger narra tive. The result is incoherent at ♦ SANDMAN, SEEPAGE 10 BOOK REVIEW ‘Lies’Questions conservatives “LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM” A1 Franken ★★★★★ out of BY BEN ANGSTADT TUB GAMECOCK America’s current political climate is anything but calm. With tension over the military situation in Iraq growing daily and the tone of Washington as negative as ever, it is only natu ral that political commentators and satirists have much to write about. As always, writer and co median A1 Franken has taken this opportunity to offer an anal ysis of the situation with his trademark humor. In “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” Franken’s lat est book, little is left sacred. His goal: to dispel the “whole liberal bias myth," specifically by call ing out conservative political commentator Ann Coulter and the entire Fox News operation, the self-appointed “Fair and Balanced” news source. After es tablishing the pro-right-wing na ture of the media, he uses it “as a jumping-off point to go after Bush.” Franken pulls no punches, and Coulter is his first target. In the chapter “Ann Coulter: Nutcase,” he discusses the irony of Coulter’s perspective on American politics. Though she says that the negative tone of Washington politics is “all the liberals’ fault,” she herself is an expert at making unfounded neg ative accusations. He then shifts into a commen tary on the mainstream media, beginning with the highly nega tive attitude taken toward A1 Gore in the 2000 Presidential race. Fox News is his next target, with its conservative-leaning personalities such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. From there, Franken begins to discuss national politics and the current presidential administra tion. In a series of chapters, he ex plores the history of the “tone,” saying negative politics neither began nor ended with liberals in the Clinton administration. He pays special attention to the South Carolina primaries in 2000, during which Republican strategists for then Gov. George W. Bush used negative push polling to discredit the reputa tion of Sen. John McCain. Fortunately, throughout his discussion of such serious top ics, Franken relies on his comedic talent and acerbic wit to lighten the mood. One of the book’s funnier moments is in the chapter “Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One.” Depicting a scene from a faux war novel, Franken fictional izes a situation in which con servatives such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh, who have no actual military experience, serve in the Vietnam War under Vietnam veteran and presiden tial hopeful Sen. John Kerry. But the main thrust of Franken’s book is what he sees as the preponderance of lies within the current presidential administration. He questions the administration’s claims that the poor will receive the majority of tax-cut benefits, its inconsistent commitment to environmental protection and its highly dis putable assertions concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruc tion, which led the United States into war. After a “standardized test” sat irizing the No Child Left Behind Act, Franken closes the book with a commentary on lies: “Anyone ... can make an inno cent mistake and say something that isn’t true. But lying is when you intentionally deceive.” ♦ FRANKEN, SEE PAGE 10