Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 11:12:49 -0400
Subject: Creepy, Sexual, Sadistic, A Joke 


   The New York Times, August 15, 1995, pp. C15, C18.


   A Gift To Help Preserve Cultural Sites

   By William Grimes


   The World Monuments Fund has received a $5 million grant
   from American Express to identify the 100 cultural sites
   most in need of preservation or restoration. As part of an
   initiative called the World Monuments Watch, the fund will
   draw up the list next Spring and update it annually, with
   $4.5 million of the grant money to be channeled to selected
   sites or works over a period of five years. The "monuments"
   can be works of art, buildings, archeological sites,
   examples of vernacular architecture or man-made landscapes.

   This cultural version of an endangered-species list is
   intended to raise awareness of artworks and structures in
   immediate peril, and to entice potential donors to support
   restoration projects. It will also allow the fund to gather
   information more systematically, to move into new
   countries, particularly in Latin America and Asia, and to
   step up its role as an advocate for preservation.

   "We need to know more about what's out there," said John H.
   Stubbs, the director of programs at the fund. "We really
   worry all the time that we might be picking something
   that's not the highest priority. This will help
   considerably."

   Mr. Stubbs said: "Removal from danger could be something as
   simple as a lightning rod put on a wooden church in
   northern Russia so it doesn't catch fire in the next
   thunderstorm. It could be something as vast and complex as
   saving the ancient buildings along the Yangtze."

   Inclusion on the Monument Watch cannot guarantee salvation.
   But Ms. Burnham likes to point out that even lost causes
   are not necessarily lost. "If it was built in the first
   place by human beings," she said, "it can be conserved."

   [End]

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   The New York Times, August 15, 1995, p. C18.


   Pope Review: Creepy, Sexual, Sadistic And a Joke

      [Photo] Ruth McArdle as Lady Galore of the Lords of Acid
      at Roseland.

   By Neil Strauss


   It was a joke, an art project, a rave, a sex club and a
   shallow gimmick all rolled into one leather-clad lump when
   two electronic dance-music bands, Lords of Acid and My Life
   With the Thrill Kill Kult, performed on Thursday night at
   Roseland. Billed as the Sextasy Ball, the concert explored
   the dark side of Lollapalooza, with slide shows of art that
   Senator Jesse Helms doesn't like, topless dancers, S-and-M
   shows, videos of violent films, a body-piercing booth and
   stalls selling everything from industrial-music records to
   rubber brassieres.

   Not surprisingly, the tour has been plagued by trouble
   since it began in June. Slides of artwork by Andres Serrano
   and others have been confiscated as pornography and dancers
   have been arrested for indecent exposure. On Thursday,
   however, the Sextasy Ball took place without a noticeable
   hitch.

   Other than speeding up their music and adding guitars to
   their sound, Lords of Acid haven't changed much since they
   released their first single "I Sit on Acid," in 1989.
   Probably the best-known song of the Belgian dance music
   known as new beat (a precursor to techno), "I Sit on Acid"
   is simple but effective, a flurry of pumping keyboards and
   shifting pitches locked into a loop of a female voice
   singing lascivious one-liners. On Thursday, the group's
   one-line lady was Ruth McArdle, or Lady Galore, who
   Performed as if she were a doll with a pull-cord that made
   her speak recorded come-ons.

   The key to the Lords of Acid performance was the set of
   devil's horns that Lady Galore and all the female dancers
   on the stage wore. The message was clear: in the band's
   musical world, women exist only as tempting portals to sin.
   It is this same B-movie female ideal that informed the
   music of My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, a
   seven-year-old Chicago band that has one important thing in
   common with Lords of Acid: both bands released a concept
   album about sex in 1991.

   On record, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult is one of
   industrial dance music's more interesting bands, with
   evocative film and television samples tucked strategically
   into a bed of disco beats, funky bass lines and growling
   vocals. But live, the group failed to convey its
   originality. Three female back-up singers and three male
   musicians played along with muddy backing tapes as Groovie
   Mann let his chest muscles ripple and snarled and rapped
   his way through trashy topics like stray teenagers, wild
   road trips, devil worship and "sex on wheels." By the end
   of the night the word sex had been stripped of all its
   meaning, conjuring as much concupiscence as a court
   summons.

   [End]









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