Tibetan Freedom Concert June 13-14 RFK Stadium, Washington A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow New looks at Alexander Calder, Russian art Sharps & Flats Reviews of new CDs from Brian Wilson, Grant Lee Buffalo, Rod Stewart, John Fogerty and more (05/17/98) Y E S T E R D A Y The lost art of celebrity journalism By Charles Taylor Kenneth Tynan was the last great master of intelligent celebrity journalism (06/16/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor Women on the verge (06/16/98) R E C E N T_. M U S I C American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Uneasy rider (06/15/98) Back in the U.S.S.R. By Julia Barton After a brush with American fame, perestroika poster boy Boris Grebenshikov has returned to his Russian roots (06/10/98) Sharps & Flats Reviews of new music by Dwight Yoakam, the Smashing Pumpkins, Tuatara, Nicholas Payton and the Jesus and Mary Chain (06/10/98) Middle-age riot By Mark Athitakis Punk veterans Shellac and Sonic Youth play art-rock for art's sake (06/03/98) Sharps and Flats New CDs from Tricky, Natalie Merchant, Fugazi and the "Godzilla" soundtrack (06/03/98) BROWSE THE MUSIC ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

________Big trouble __- - - - - - - - - - - - - -_.I N_.L I T T L E_.T I B E T ________Lightning strikes fans, but the bands play on. BY GAVIN McNETT | There was a moment early Sunday when I found the crucial tableau, the event-in-miniature that would define Tibet '98. The main force of spectators was just pulling into the parking lot when some jokermobile started blasting "Jumpin' Jack Flash" at stun volume. A couple of horns went off, and kids leaned out of their car windows, laughing and flashing peace signs. "Woo!" the tableau would've been inscribed. "It's a gas, gas, gas!" I laughed, despite a twinge of pique at the nerve of it all -- 'cause Saturday was not a gas, nor, for that matter, was it much like the canned rock 'n' roll tragedy that appeared on the news. The facts as reported, in case you haven't already heard, are like this: A storm swept through the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday afternoon, uprooting trees and knocking down power lines. At the third annual Tibetan Freedom Concert in RFK Stadium, during a set by Herbie Hancock, lightning struck the crowd, throwing a spectator 20 feet in the air and injuring a total of 11 concertgoers -- four critically. The concert was then canceled and the audience removed from the arena, with no word as to whether the next day's tickets would be honored. So after all that, it was great to see high spirits reigning once again on Sunday, which came off beautifully, with ace performances by a huge spread of bands. Most of the canceled sets from Saturday were shoehorned in somehow, and the organizational side of things went even more smoothly than before. Let God try to kill Herbie Hancock some other day. We'll have a blast all on our own! But we're getting ahead of the story. Day One: Big trouble in Little Tibet. The day started off with a likable set of alt-rock by Money Mark and a stageburner by Mutabaruka. 'Baruka has a Kingston Prophet/Dub poet thing going, with his Ethiopian cape and ankh-shaped microphone. The band absolutely killed, with stop-on-a-dime style vamps and a ceaseless procession of showoff maneuvers, like the old play-with-your-teeth trick. It's amazing how tight and polychromatic any good reggae unit will be, compared with even the best rock bands. Take Live, for instance. After 'Baruka basically blew up the stage behind him, they came out in a great, tidal whoosh of guitars and bluster. It sounded like pavement -- not the band; I mean the flat, hard grayish stuff -- and the crowd made a perceptible start, like, "What's this terrible noise?" By the second song, "I Alone Love You," Live had found their footing, and the crowd was with them. But they're on the cusp of becoming a nostalgia act: The excitement they generated was of the reverent sort, not the gee-whiz variety that Mutabaruka managed to whip up. Chaksam-Pa, a trad-Tibetan act, came out after them. The audience here was gamer than last year. Then a crowd-scan would've yielded about a thousand dudes mocking the singer or aping the masked dancers, but this time there was peace in the arena -- and even a good bit of applause. Still, Chaksam-Pa -- or any unfamiliar, and therefore demanding, sort of music -- can be testy arena fare. The sound system this weekend was blurry and honky throughout much of the stadium, to the point where it was often difficult to know what you were hearing unless you could anticipate the changes (Sonic Youth's set would suffer because of that as well). It was great, once again, to see Chaksam-Pa sharing a bill with big-time rock acts, but you generally couldn't tell what they were up to. It must've just come off as a bunch of weird, nonsensical foreign mummery to the white ball-cap crowd, replete with shrill tonalities and voodoo dancing. Which is precisely the reason they should hear authentic music in the first place -- to get them to understand that it's real and interesting, and not just a multi-culti spectacle of the Other. Dave Matthews performed his spectacle of the familiar, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. It's not that Dave isn't good at what he does: He's got a great, tight band and a sort of blankish, glowering charisma that lends him considerable appeal. But why is he such a god-popular live act? I asked the guy standing next to me, and he said, "Dave's just ... The best sort of thing of the kind of thing he is, right now. Since Jerry's gone, I mean." Which I guess would mean that he's .38 Special in a world starved for Skynyrd. Fair 'nuff. They ended with the traditional closer, "All Along the Watchtower," and the gingery-looking guitarist reeled off a smoldering solo. Seemed like it would've been great in a small club. I forgot KRS-One, who came between Dave and Chaksam-Pa. He blew up the stage as well, with his old-school Bronx hip-hop revue. Hard beats, crazed break dancing and KRS-the-peacemaker presiding over the whole head-spinning carnival. It was the kind of performance that just leaves you gaping. "Hell, yeah," I thought. "I forgot: Hip-hop rules!" KRS reeled off a long quote from the Dalai Lama and boomed at the crowd, "Peace and Respect -- that's all hip-hop has to say to you today. Everything else is just that street shit." Behind him, a guy in a jumpsuit was spinning like a dervish with another guy splayed out on top of his head. For chrissakes, what are people doing buying Puff Daddy CDs while this giant walks the earth? After KRS and Dave, word had filtered out that Patti Smith had canceled. At that point I decided to skip Herbie Hancock and go check out the tent bazaar outside. N E X T__P A G E .|. Lightning crashes