Course of Empire: Having fun at the brink


Guitarist Mike Graff wants to stress one thing about he and his bandmates in 
Course of Empire, despite a debut album about death, violence, blind traditions,
uncertainty and pending doom - hey, they're not a depressing group of guys, on
stage or off.

"We're definitely serious," Graff said earlier this week, speaking by phone from
an inn just outside of Kansas City, "but in order to survive, you have to keep a
sense of play.  You have to have fun."

Course of Empire released its debut album on the Dallas-based Carpe Diem Records
back in November 1990, where it garnered strong local sales and college radio
attention.  The album, now digitally edited and remastered, has a new lease on
life thanks to Zoo Entertainment which has just released it in nation-wide
distribution.  Out on the road in support of the re-release, Course of Empire
pulls into Vino's in Little Rock on Saturday.  Doors open at 9 p.m.

Though Course of Empire's numbers speak to man's violence against his fellow man
and his world in the name of religion, greed, or technology, they also contain a 
message of resolve to do better, a hope for a better day, even as they question
whether the world is balancing at the brink.

"It's like a wake up call - for our audience and for the band," Graff says.  
"Music and art - that's pretty much the part it's supposed to play in society,
to look at things.  Most people are just trying to survive."  Graff's not sure
Course of Empire can change the course of the world, but he wants the band to be
part of the attempt to try.

"I'm not saying we're going to create some kind of great unity, but we hope to 
be helpful," he said.

Graff was a co-founder of the band as a student in the film department of 
Southern Methodist University at Dallas back in 1984 with since-departed drummer
Anthony Headley.  The two advertised in local stores for a vocalist "with an 
interest in vegetarianism and ideas concerning the mass consciousness."  The ads
caught the eye of North Carolina native Vaughn Stevenson, recently relocated to
Dallas from California.  Soon added were bassist Paul Semrad and second drummer
Chad Lovell.

The sound created by Course of Empire can be described as thunderous, like a 
storm of reckoning.  Graff, Lovell, and Semrad pack a powerful punch over which
Stevenson rages, mixing a guitar crunch and an alternative atmosphere that is
immediately unique and intriguing.  One of the album's strking songs is "God's
Jig," the number which initially brought the band the recognition of Carpe Diem.
The song describes the torture man does to others in the name of religion, and
that sense of culture that they pass to their young.  Graff said, though, that
the song is not an indictment against a deity, but against man's self-serving
interpretations.

"It's really 'Man's Jig,'" Graff explained.  "We all grow up in our own 
traditions and there's this idea that we have the inside track to the truth
with a capital 'T.'"  "God's Jig" offers a look at how other cultures, specif-
ically in the Middle East, hold the same beliefs about their religions and 
drive their children toward the same traditions.

"It's just a frustration with that type of thing," Graff said.  "Religion is 
supposedly about love and all these people are slashing each other."

Graff said it is particularly members of their generation and younger people
who the band hopes to reach with their songs.

"I think we're pretty much lacking a vision from our elders," he said.  "Our
leadership, these people aren't looking at things in the long-term."