Rock Music

Mention Woodstock to John Sappington, and the guy will start rhapsodizing so righteously that you'd swear it was the summer of '69 all over again, with electric music in the air and oceans of mud on the ground. No doubt about it - to really understand why Sappington believes that rock- and-roll can help save the soul, you've got to go back to Woodstock, to the heavy happening that lives in his mind like a scene shot in Cinemascope - "an overwhelming experience," he exclaims, "the crucial turning point in my life.

In his Sunday sermon, New York Cardinal John O'Connor called some rock music "pornography in sound," warned against its Satanic enticements and revealed that two exorcisms were performed in the last year in the New York archdiocese. "Some music is a help to the devil," said Cardinal O'Connor, who mentioned Ozzy Osbourne's album Suicide Solution. "(It) can help trap people, especially teenagers" into devil worship. He added that "diabolically instigated violence is on the rise," giving abortion and divorce as examples of such violence.

Formed by young theater people, Crescendo Theatre Company aims to create work that will interest and attract what it describes as "a new generation of theatergoer. " To that end, it previously presented a hip-hop-driven version of the little-performed Woyzeck and has now come up with a rock-musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart. " Presented at the Willow Theatre, a long block down Seventh Street from the house Poe lived in when he wrote the story in 1843, A Tell-Tale Heart (as Crescendo titles it)

About 100 New Jersey teenagers and parents last night burned dozens of rock-album covers and tapes in a church ceremony in Linwood to protest what organizers called the evil influence of rock music on adolescents. Popular hits by such rockers as Madonna, Kiss, Tina Turner and Boy George - along with at least one collection of hits from the 1950s, and an exercise program by Jane Fonda - went up in flames in the fireplace at the Mainland Assembly of God in Linwood. The group objected to what it said were lyrics promoting adultery, incest, masturbation, child abuse, suicide and homosexuality.

Rock and roll, graying? Toothless? Dead? Make of this what you will, but consider the evidence: "RockRoots: The History of Rock From Folk to Frantic" is one in a series of live performances for children, part of the Central Library's "Sundays on Stage" program. Interwoven with the once-outlaw music, can you expect guitar-smashing, heads bitten off live chickens? We think not. But we bet your family can expect to get up and shake their booties Sunday, which is what it's all about anyway - movin' and groovin'.

After years of listening hard to rock music - and puzzling over evil influences that might rot a child's mind or turn him from God - the Rev. Don Kimball has a simple message for parents: Don't worry. There has "always been the cry that rock is destroying our youth, but less than 1 percent of popular rock is blatantly satanic," the Catholic priest said before meeting with a Yardley group of 75 last weekend. A radio host in Santa Rosa, Calif., Father Kimball told the group at St. Ignatius Church, "I play everything.

On stage at a Frank Zappa tribute festival in Germany before a crowd of at least 3,000 this summer, 13-year-old heavy-metal guitarist C.J. Tywoniak ripped into "St. Alphonzo's Pancake Breakfast. " The guitarist and other students from the Paul Green School of Rock Music showed their musical prowess, giving their all before an appreciative crowd. "I signed about three autographs there," said Tywoniak, who admits that he hadn't even heard of Zappa before enrolling at the rock school in Philadelphia two years ago. Tywoniak was a bit intimidated when he first walked into the school.

Minard Smith doesn't grade his students, assign them homework or keep them after school. He wants them to learn, have fun and, most of all, be careful. "Don't hurt yourself," he told a girl holding up a piece of rough-cut glass. Smith tipped his eyeglasses to the edge of his nose and scrutinized her work. "What you want to do is trace a straight line at a 45-degree angle here," he said, helping her cut a flower petal. Smith, 76, has been a stained-glass artist for more than 40 years.

For a writer, there is nothing more embarrassing than reading about the overuse of a word you haven't yet used. When this happened to me not long ago, it made me feel the way I felt when the management of a magazine I was working for put up a notice telling the staff to ignore all rumors, and I hadn't heard any. It made me feel the way I felt when I read that red neckties were no longer considered "power ties" - the first inkling I had that red...

HE WAS VOTED "Most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" by his high-school classmates. But Dick Clark did much more than that. He sold America on a kit bag of rowdy trouble and seductive pleasures. And he did so fordecades —from those lurid "Great Balls of Fire" goosed by Jerry Lee Lewis and the hip, grinding come-ons to do "The Twist" evoked by Chubby Checker, to the coded drug-'n'-revolution messages he let fly on national TV from the Jefferson Airplane, and the totally tarty aura of Madonna that became America's obsession.

Kevin Ayers, 68, an influential singer-songwriter who cofounded the band Soft Machine, has died in France, his record label said Thursday. Mr. Ayers was an important figure in the British psychedelic movement spearheaded by the Beatles in the late 1960s. He did not achieve sustained commercial success, but his work is treasured by musicians and many fans. Jack McLean, assistant to the managing director of Lo-Max Records in London, said Thursday that Mr. Ayers' body had been discovered in his bed at his home in the medieval village Montolieu in the south of France.

On Thursday at the Merriam Theater, Sweet Honey in the Rock will be bringing it - and then some. "We have everything," says longtime (and retiring) member Ysaye Maria Barnwell, "from African to spiritual to doo-wop to folk to jazz to civil-rights music - we have it all. " This year is the group's 40th anniversary. Since 1973, Sweet Honey - present lineup Barnwell, Louise Robinson, Aisha Kahlil, Nitanju Bolade Casel, Carol Maillard, and impassioned signer Shirley Childress Saxton - has crisscrossed the world, with song-and-dance performances that combine musical journey, dance, spoken-word, political statement, and ecstatic exploration of the human voice.

THE CONCEPT of a Broadway musical scored with rock music is hardly a radical one. After all, "Hair" debuted when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. But a punk-rock musical? Now that's a horse of a different decibel level. On the surface, punk seems like the genre least-suited to musical theater, having been forged in the mid-to-late-1970s as a response to safe, mass-market mainstream pop, whose own roots can be traced, in large part, to the Great White Way. Sonically, the two genres are worlds apart.

Ravi Shankar, 92, the sitar player and composer described as the "godfather of world music" by Beatles guitarist George Harrison, has died. Mr. Shankar, who first performed internationally as a child, devoted his adult life to Indian classical music. His audience widened after Harrison, who introduced the sitar into rock music by playing the instrument on the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)," sought out Mr. Shankar's tutelage. "It's with a very heavy heart that I confirm this sad news," his manager, Earl Blackburn, said in an e-mail Wednesday.

HE WAS VOTED "Most likely to sell the Brooklyn Bridge" by his high-school classmates. But Dick Clark did much more than that. He sold America on a kit bag of rowdy trouble and seductive pleasures. And he did so fordecades —from those lurid "Great Balls of Fire" goosed by Jerry Lee Lewis and the hip, grinding come-ons to do "The Twist" evoked by Chubby Checker, to the coded drug-'n'-revolution messages he let fly on national TV from the Jefferson Airplane, and the totally tarty aura of Madonna that became America's obsession.

THEATER AGAIN AND AGAIN At the end of Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano," a one-hour absurdist comedy about the ridiculous nature of British social conventions and language, the play dictates that the actors start again from the beginning. The reliably-wacky Brat Productions - which staged a fantastically camped-out musical version of "Carrie" last year - takes that prompt literally. Beginning tonight, they'll perform the play for a full 24 hours, with the actors taking nary a break to catch their breath.

SEOUL, South Korea - Kang Hyun-Min remembers the first time he slid an album from its cardboard jacket and delicately, almost reverently, placed it on the turntable. It was 1979, and Kang's father had ruled the record player off-limits to the 10-year-old. But home alone one day, the young Kang gave in to his curiosity; he flipped through his brother's album collection, thinking he might for once take control of that magical music player. Unable to read English, he knew musicians only by their album-cover art. He knew he had to hurry because someone could arrive home at any minute.

Can the Grammys do anything right? This month, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, responding to years of criticism that the Grammy Awards were hopelessly out of touch, decided to do something about it. Academy president Neil Portnow announced that instead of giving out 109 golden gramophones at next year's 54th annual awards, it would give out 78. The Grammys have been widely mocked - by this critic, among others - for being...

WHEN YOU look at what Chubby Checker has accomplished in his half-century as an entertainer, it's impossible not to be impressed. His recordings - including "The Twist," "Let's Twist Again," "The Fly," "Pony Time" and "The Limbo Rock" - have sold millions of copies worldwide and made him one of the most recognizable figures of the rock era. "Let's Twist Again" was the first recipient of a Best Rock 'n' Roll Recording Grammy (in 1962)....