THEATER

Growing up as an only child in a musical family, Michael Veres knew Beethoven and Bach before he happened on to Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd.  His father is a retired Orchestra Director, Laslo Veres, and his mother a former singer with the Tucson Opera Company; now a voice teacher.  One would think that Michael’s passion would be in performing arts, but instead he loves to cook and started doing so as a child.  

MOVIES

Side two opens with "Opus Insert" and the harmonies within the song are truly what makes the song great. This is one of my favorite tracks on the record and it is a musical journey from start to finish by steering past typical song structure. The songs message is a powerful one, and the music conveys it perfectly with the lyrics. Lyrically, the song deals with social relationships between people as the artist associates each person with a book, each one having stories to tell and lessons to learn from their individual lives. The words also show that there is so much more to each person beyond just what we hear from them in normal conversation as shown in the verse "between all the lines, so much that you can find." The song encourages us as individuals to use this information to speak with and learn from others, going on to say that though there are so many people with so many stories to tell, many of them are living "empty lives" where so much information never gets the opportunity to be shared.

Side two begins with the "ching" of a cash register. In an almost robotic form, money is taken and dispensed into the register repeatedly creating an interesting beginning to the second half of "The Darkside of the Moon." The track "Money," (the other single off of the record other than "Time") introduces the listener into the working world. For us in the west, the accumulation and distribution of currency is a key element of survival. Have enough and you're okay, have too little and life could get very challenging for you. We as humans have adapted to this form of accumulation to the point of having adverse effects towards the well-being of society. The fact is that often times the desire to obtain money takes over the individual's personality and thoughts. Money creates a sense of security within the individual, a security that is necessary to be able to function properly in this world. No matter how you go about obtaining that sense of security, money is a prime method. This is why money is compared to a gas, as it induces a numbing affect on the person that has the potential to affect better judgment.

Released March 1 1971, English Progressive Rock band Pink Floyd have pushed the boundaries of music to uncharted waters. Just passing the album's 40 year anniversary, the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon lives on interestingly enough in much of today's youth and modern culture. The way that the band ties the concept and the music together in unison makes for a mesmerizing hypnotic effect that sends the listener into a whirlpool of emotions. Never before has a band been able to send such a clear message to the listener depicting the reality of life as we know it. Darkside asks the questions that we all face, and documents the lifecycle of the human being from life till death. The clarity of the lyrics is striking, but at the same time vague enough for the listener to come to his own interpretations and tie it to his own life. In this week's feature of Music Landscape, I will be reviewing one of progressive rock's finest masterpieces, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.

MOVIES

MOVIES

Kathleen Madigan, who has been deemed by her peers as “the funniest woman comic in America,” didn’t disappoint when she visited The Rialto Theater on Feb. 17. The stop was one of many in her nationwide tour lasting through Oct. 13, when Madigan returns to her hometown of St. Louis for a final act.

Old Tucson Studios and Voltage Entertainment present Wild Wild West Con, Arizona’s first Steampunk convention and festival March 4-6 at Old Tucson Studios, 201 S. Kinney Road in south Tucson.

If you've been to the Starbucks on the southwest corner of Ina and Oracle roads on weekday mornings, chances are you've seen Jason Staves. At a coffee shop that has a service line six or seven people deep each day - and a drive-through backup that can cause delays in southbound traffic - Staves stands out. People dash in for coffee and dash out for work and the 29-year-old ex-musician, one-time computer geek and current Pima County Community College student sits quietly at his regular table on the patio, observing the mad rush of people from behind his dark sunglasses.