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Luna
About to Eclipse Luna is the best band you've never heard of, and now they're breaking up. With the Oct. 26, 2004 release of Rendezvous on indie label Jetset Records, founder Dean Wareham is calling it quits.
New Zealand-native Wareham formed Luna in 1992 with Feelies drummer Stanley Demeski and Chills bassist Justin Harwood. Luna inevitably drew comparison to the Velvet Underground's minimalist mystique and Lou Reed's acerbic wordplay. Rightfully so, but Wareham notches down the smack-and-transvestite hookers references and ratchets up the late-night, urbane cool. "Cindy Tastes of Barbecue" is Wareham cloaked in his Velvety finest. His version of Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat" shimmers in a golden light. Rendezvous intersperses sloe-eyed tunes with up-tempo sparklers such as the album's opener "Malibu Love Nest" and "Astronaut" which has this silver-tongued couplet: "I wear a styling moustache, you wear a frozen smile. We'll run like Tamil tigers, we'll drink from poison vials." Bassist Britta Phillips, who joined in 2000 to replace Harwood, played pre-Luna bass in Ultrababyfat, jammed as the punky guitarist alongside Julia Roberts in the 1988 movie Satisfaction, and was the singing voice for cartoon character Jem. She said Wareham's decision to pull Luna's plug hasn't yet sunk in, though their last show is at NYC's Bowery Ballroom Feb. 27. "This definitely makes our shows more loaded, more poignant, and more exciting as well," said Phillips in a recent phone interview. Jetset's small potatoes budget doesn't pay the bills for four musicians living in the Big Apple "It's bittersweet, but I think everyone sort of knew that we couldn't go on," she said. But this won't be the last of Wareham and Phillips. The pair produced 2003's sexy L'Avventura and will collaborate again when Luna is laid to rest. "Maybe as early as spring we'll start working on that," she said. "And we're going to think more about how we'll present it live. With Luna it's so easy because it's such a great and tight band, but it's a lot harder when you have only two people." Doing their part to rid the world of sucky soundtracks, Wareham and Phillips recently scored a film called The Squid and the Whale, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, co-writer of The Life Aquatic. Luna will share the stage with Midnight Movies, a luscious psychedelic rock band with a female singer who channels the voice of Teutonic rock goddess Nico. Do not miss this show!
Coco
Montoya Rocks Coco Montoya ranks among the best blues/rock guitar players ever to grace magnetic tape. In a genre of music that cites genius far beyond the invention of recorded sound, Montoya's skilled guitar work and soulful vocals reflect his lifelong love for the blues, sharing a level of emotion and passion that only the greats ever achieved.
Montoya's 30-plus-year career on the stage started when the late Albert Collins, the legendary blues guitarist dubbed "The master of the Telecaster," offered Montoya a gig as his drummer. Montoya's friendship with Collins grew and on the road, Montoya learned to pour his emotion into his guitar by watching Collins and practicing with him. "Albert didn't know technically how to explain what he did," Montoya explained in a phone interview from Jamaica. "He always used to say, don't think about it, just feel it." In 1984 Montoya went on to perform with John Mayall and his latest incarnation of the Bluesbreakers. The band once included a young Eric Clapton (Yardbirds, Cream), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac), and Mick Taylor (The Rolling Stones). Montoya called it "guitar academy." With the blessings of both Collins and Mayall, Montoya started his own band in the early '90s, and has since released five albums. Since then, Montoya's blues guitar and vocals have reached legendary status worldwide. Staying true to the elements of blues style, Montoya also drops a heavy dose of rock in all his riffs. His "icy- hot" guitar licks and Herculean vocal abilities weigh heavy on the soul, while at the same time calling upon hope through catharsis. "A lot of people say it's depressing music," Montoya said about the blues. "They don't realize that if you don't give yourself the chance to have a good cry, the pain gets to you. It's really healing." Currently in Negril, Jamaica with Little Feat for their annual Little Feat Fan Excursion, Montoya will be making a quick turnaround for the Northwest leg of his current tour. He visits Eugene to perform at a benefit concert for tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. Faced with the level of death and destruction in the region, Montoya said, "It is a good opportunity to show these people that people all over the world care about them." Proceeds from ticket sales will go directly to Oxfam, a humanitarian confederation assisting victims of the tsunami disaster. For more information about the event or Oxfam's tsunami relief efforts, log on to www.eventfulproductions.com and www.oxfam.org
A
Month in the Shedd Music lovers might be advised to spend this month at The Shedd, the one-time church that the Oregon Festival of American Music has transformed into one of the best music venues in the West. On Saturday, Feb. 5, longtime OFAM and Eugene favorite Darol Anger brings his newest project, the American Fiddle Ensemble, to the Shedd. For three decades, Anger, who co-founded Montreux, Turtle Island String Quartet, Psychograss, David Grisman Quintet, and other innovative groups, has been one of America's most broad-minded and fascinating musicians. He describes his new multigenerational group as "a prodigy, phenom, a master, and a legendary weirdo" that plays "Afro Brazilian Scandinavian bluegrass," and even covers Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell. The quartet, which includes bluegrass guitar master Scott Nygaard and prodigies Rushad Eggleston (cello) and Brittany Haas (violin), merges the technical excellence and melodic development of the classical string quartet with the improvisational spirit of jazz and the rhythmic drive of the traditional string band, achieving a well-informed blend of traditions that appeals to fans of folk music, classical, and jazz. On Wednesday, Feb. 9, the Shedd hosts historian, musicologist and singer Don Edwards, who's keeping the cowboy song tradition alive. Fans of Western history, literature and music will appreciate his warm baritone's whoopee ti-yi-yos and yo-de-lay-e-hoos. Another traditional music master, the great Mississippi jazz and bluesman Mose Allison, returns to the Shedd on Friday, Feb. 11. Allison's pithy songwriting humor ("Your Mind is on Vacation and Your Mouth is Working Overtime," "Middle Class White Boy,") laconic Monkish pianistics, and blues cool have influenced songwriters such as The Who, Bonnie Raitt, and Van Morrison since the early 1960s, and continue to win converts through his relentless touring. The next evening, Feb. 12, the Shedd hosts one of today's finest jazzers, pianist Bill Charlap, who's been winning accolades in New York jazz circles for a decade, even though he's only 37. His trio's appearance at the Shedd last summer demonstrated Charlap and his colleagues' (drummer Kenny Washington and bassist Peter Washington) seemingly effortless virtuosity and almost telepathic interplay, which have lately won major-label releases and international acclaim. His 2004 CD of Leonard Bernstein songs was universally hailed as among the year's finest jazz albums; Lenny's music offers a richer-than-usual harmonic landscape for the trio's exploration in this concert. As with Charlap, the Shedd has often featured various incarnations of the great American popular songs that arose from Tin Pan Alley in the 1920s and '30s and blossomed through the 1960s. But that immensely fertile upsurge has tended to overshadow the pop music that preceded it, and next week, OFAM will help rectify that. On Wednesday, Feb. 16 longtime Eugene favorite Maria Jette, accompanied by pianist Sonja Thompson, will sing tunes that would have topped the pop charts (had they existed) in America before World War I — "After the Ball," "Danny Boy" and some Joplin rags are probably the most familiar fare on the bill. The next evening, the pair will be joined by singers Emily Lodine, David Gustafson, and Sandy Naishtat in music that resounded through the parlors of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, including works by Edward Elgar and a then-popular setting of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam called "In a Persian Garden." You can hear quite different music from approximately
the same period on Feb. 15-16, when the great clarinetist David Krakauer
brings his quintet, Klezmer Madness! to the Hult Center's Soreng Theater.
Krakauer has been one of the leaders in the revival and revitalization
of klezmer, the tangy sound that emerged from Russian Jewish communities
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Klezmer Madness! updates
the traditional stuff with rock, jazz, and even funk influences and
makes it all sound For some new American music, hear the Oregon/Vancouver based Knotty Ensemble accompany a new video by Eugene's Daniel Tapio Heila on Friday Feb. 11, and F.W. Murnau's classic film Sunset on Saturday, Feb. 12, part of a festival of improvised music and moving image art at DIVA. The UO features some fine American music at Beall Concert Hall on Feb. 16 when soprano Ann Crumb sings three early songs by her father, the great composer George Crumb, music by her brother, UO prof David Crumb, and jazz accompanied by a UO faculty jazz combo. It's part of the UO's terrific Music Today festival, which you can read more about here soon. Other intriguing UO concerts include faculty voice prof Charles Turley in music by Ravel, Lori Laitman's recent song cycle, "Men with Small Heads," and more on Feb. 8, the world premiere of a new piece by the young Puerto Rican composer Armando Bayolo at the Feb. 9 Oregon Wind Ensemble concert, and the Feb. 13 UO symphony concert that includes a piece commissioned by Marin Alsop for a young people's concert. The big UO show, though, is the Paris Piano Trio's appearance in the Chamber Music Series on Tuesday, Feb. 15, featuring one of Haydn's sparkling trios and equally intoxicating music by Schubert and Faure in one of the best classical concerts of the season.
AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR BLACK FOREST CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND All
Ages COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT DA HOUZE DOWNTOWN LOUNGE DUCK INN EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GOOD TIMES HiDEAWAY LOUNGE JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL JOHN HENRY'S THE JUNGLE LATITUDE 10 CAFE LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO
LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MONROE STREET CAFE
OREGON ELECTRIC STATION OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RAMADA INN
SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAMURAI DUCK SPIRITS STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS
WOW HALL All
Ages
CORVALLIS AJ'S BEANERY All Ages BOMBS AWAY CAFE FOX AND FIRKIN MURPHY'S TOM'S PEACOCK PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB
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