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Rooted
in History
In the late '70s, British punk legends The Clash infused
their music with a strong dub-reggae element that helped change the
history of punk rock. Not to say other bands between 1977 and 1980 Dread's foray into reggae music began at the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation where he DJ'd in the mid '70s. During this period, Dread also began producing and engineering reggae albums for labels such as the esteemed Trojan Records. His work eventually lead him to London where he connected with The Clash and produced their UK hit "Bank Robber." Dread also produced, performed, and co-wrote several songs on the album Sandinista. Since then, Dread has toured incessantly all over the world and produced a multitude of well-recognized musicians. He certified his applied knowledge of music and video engineering in 1996 when he graduated with honors from the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale with a degree in music/video production. Fans of roots reggae as well as students of popular music history will appreciate Dread's return to Oregon.
Hype
emo hip hop A few years ago, the emo-rap sound of the Northern California hip hop collective Anticon was hailed as the next big thing in hip hop. Stable artists such as Sage Francis, Sole and Subtle were applauded for adding a new dimension to hip hop through futuristic, lo-fi sounding rhythms and samples. But the emo-rap genre was also characterized by a plethora of extremely esoteric lyrics. Line such as, "The moles on my penis remind me of skulls," from the song "I Heart LA" off Subtle's album A New White were so strange and cryptic to hip hop traditionalists, that the style as a whole was written off as elitist, irreverent nonsense. This Friday, emo-rap neophytes will have an opportunity to witness the Anticon brand of abstract hip hop as the live hip hop group Subtle, which features DoseOne from cLOUDDED and Themselves returns to the WOW Hall for their second appearance. The group will perform with Eugene's own LaunchPad. Described as "Sun Ra goes digital," LaunchPad's improvisational sci-fi sound is both compelling and comical. Layers of digitized vocal samples and drum machine patterns are combined with live guitars, electronic toys, horns and flutes to create a Jackson Pollock-styled cacophony of sound. LaunchPad's members, Lelulaserlight, Mr. Random and Orbital Dave, never perform the same song in the same way more than once. Listening to their music is like listening to Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation on your home stereo while the sound from the movie Mars Attack blares loudly through the television speaker. Their peculiar live performances, which include homemade futuristic costumes and interactive props, are a refreshing addition to the Eugene music fringe, and definitely should not be missed. —Steve Sawada
Contemporary
Mosaic
The UO's biennial ear-opening Music Today festival is Eugene's best opportunity to experience a broad range of contemporary art music in a short time. This year's highlight is a performance by Pauline Oliveros, (see Jan. 6 EW archives for profile in Bravo!). Her concert on Friday, Feb. 18 at Beall Concert Hall features 1970s works inspired by meditation and improvisation. I hope Eugene's legions of meditators and improvisers, as well as fans of contemporary music, will turn out to hear one of America's greatest living composers. On Thursday, Feb. 17, the festival features a wide-ranging overview of new sounds by Oliveros and fellow distaff composers Libby Larsen, Elizabeth Vercoe, and Shulamit Ran, along with works by the great California maverick composer/teacher Henry Cowell, Lukas Foss, and the UO's own Robert Kyr. With UO faculty musicians on flute, clarinet, sax, piano, voice, and bassoon, as well as the Oregon Percussion Ensemble, this should be one of the year's most diverse and intriguing concerts of contemporary music. On Saturday, Feb. 19, the festival brings back Argentina's Santa Fe Guitar Quartet in music from the 20th century by Aaron Copland, tango master Astor Piazzolla, jazz great Paquito D'Rivera and more. On Sunday, Feb. 20, the festival sponsors the latest offerings from our own Eugene Composers Collective, whose last concert packed DIVA. Continuing their efforts to present contemporary music in a relaxed and fun setting, this show happens at Cozmic Pizza, and I urge everyone to invest $2 in the future of music made in Oregon. You can also hear new music from the next generation on Monday, Feb. 21, when the UO's Pacific Rim Gamelan presents original music by student composers written for the bronze percussion instruments of Bali. Three UO faculty members (Kathryn Lucktenberg, violin; Steven Pologe, cello; and Victor Steinhardt, piano) return on Feb. 22 in music by Steinhardt himself, Seattle native and ragtime master William Bolcom, and Beethoven. And new American music appears at the Feb. 24 concert of the Eugene Symphony, when composer in residence Philip Rothman is here for a performance of his "Morningside Run," inspired by his daily jog along Manhattan's Riverside Drive. The concert — maybe the symphony's most attractive this season — also includes the stirring cantata from Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, probably the greatest orchestral music ever composed for film. It's a great time for all this American music to be playing in town, because dozens of American music scholars will descend on Eugene Feb. 16-20 for the Society for American Music national conference, featuring discussions of music from avant-garde to African American, blues to Bernstein, country to Cage. The conference contains far too many discussions, performances, and events to list here, but you can find out more at www.american-music.orgor by contacting Prof. Anne Dhu McLucas at 346-5605. One of the SAM events is a Feb. 17 showing at DIVA of a documentary-in-progress on the great Oregon-born composer Lou Harrison. Last fall, mild mannered Benjamin Bagby was leading his renowned early music ensemble, Sequentia, through a sublime concert of medieval harper songs — when he suddenly transformed into a ferocious warrior and other characters from the Icelandic epic the Edda. On Wednesday, Feb. 23, Bagby closes the Music Today Festival by bringing the European ur-epic, Beowulf, to life at Beall. Along with his narration (which seems too tame a word for his riveting interpretation), this latter-day bard also improvises the accompaniment on the lyre, in a style suitable to the period. Anyone interested in dramatic storytelling as well as powerful music should check this out. Another example of what might be called "new old" music happens on Feb. 19 (Hult Center) and 20 (The Shedd), the Oregon Mozart Players play a fascinating new arrangement of one of Mahler's most moving creations, The Song of the Earth. Mahler based his German lyrics on Chinese poems, and OMP Music Director has rearranged the music to fit those original Chinese texts, and a chamber-sized orchestra. The concert also includes one of the OMP's namesake's most exciting works, Mozart's Symphony #35, The Shedd continues its remarkable run with a Feb. 19 concert by the hot young jazz singer Karrin Allyson, who's been reviving '70s soft rock (e.g. Joni Mitchell) as jazz ballads, and mixing it with older standards, bop, and bossa nova. On Saturday, Feb. 19, Café Paradiso celebrates the release of Richard Crandell's Mbira Magic CD, produced by the great New York avant-jazzer John Zorn. Crandell has played with everyone from Leo Kottke to Taj Mahal to John Fahey, and his multitracked mbiras (the beautifully zingy Zimbabwean so called thumb piano) weave mesmerizing patterns reminiscent of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich, so this should be a fascinating concert experience.
Still
the RealThing
Every now and then, if you're lucky and pay attention to your gut, you get to see something truly rare. You get to see a real artist up close. A little while back, I saw Steve Forbert, who has got to be the greatest underrated songwriting performer in America. It was just him, his guitar and harmonica, his nearly 30 years of writing, recording and performing, his talent and sincerity and some of the best lines in folk or rock or blues or whatever you want to call it. Just him and us — a genuine troubadour and a hundred nobodies putting in a couple hours at the WOW Hall. His harmonica work was as natural as breathing. A separate microphone pointed down where his truck-driver boots banged time. He played fast. He picked quiet and slow. He wailed. He whispered. He yodeled and talked a bit. Steve Forbert came out of Mississippi in the late 1970s, hailed as the next "new Dylan." He even had a hit song, "Romeo's Tune," a sweet rolling ballad that audiences still call for today. He followed with a couple albums in the '80s that didn't sell much. Then he was gone. But he kept playing. He played acoustic, solo, electric, anywhere and everywhere. He put out 20 recordings and built a fiercely loyal following who know that the size of a crowd doesn't dictate the quality of the artist. At the Eugene show, he knew we weren't going to rock 'til we dropped, but he didn't hold it against us. He called for requests and a guy shouted out, "Mexico! Mexico!" "OK, OK," he said. He picked through the intro and stepped up to the mic. In his raspy whisper he sang, "Sometimes I'm so weary, sometimes I'm so low. If not for your sweet love I think I'd move to Mexico ..." He sings lines like this all the time. Lines so simple that most of us wouldn't think of them, but they make perfect sense when we hear them. He sang old songs and news songs, then finished up and returned for his encore. "I'll be playing in Portland on Sunday night," he said. He peered through the lights at the half-empty room. "At the public library or something." People laughed. Forbert laughed. "I'll be reading some books." Then he kicked into an old favorite, a show-stopper, a night-closer — "You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play." It's a full-blown electric version on his first album, and he strummed it hard and fast on the acoustic. He stomped his foot. He banged his guitar. He worked the harmonica. He does it for us, he does it for himself, he does it because that's what he does. Every now and then, we get lucky. Steve Forbert's coming back to play old songs and new songs from his latest CD, Just Like There's Nothin' To It. Catch him at 8 pm Sunday, Feb. 20 at Café Paradiso. No library card required.
The
Punk Accordionist
It's not every week that you find a strange man standing on a tabletop — and a fairly small tabletop at that — at Sam Bond's, stomping his feet, pounding at his accordion and screaming a song at the people seated below him. The rest of the audience has risen to their feet, but one table would rather stay sitting. They didn't comply when Jason Webley hollered at them from the stage (in rather impolite terms) to get up or get out. So he took the show to their table. While other singer-songwriters might sit demurely on their stools and strum introspective ballads, Webley puts on puppet shows and stages his own death and resurrection yearly. Between tickle-fests and drinking sing-alongs, his audience rarely remains passive — sometimes with unexpected consequences. Webley got himself banned from Seattle's Bumbershoot festival when over-enthusiastic fans set him atop the Seattle Center fountain. It's not all raucous madness, though: His last show at Sam Bond's included a reading from Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories. All this could come off as a bit gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Webley's theatrical stage presence is more than justified by his talent. His songs, which range from boisterous drinking tunes to wrenching ballads, wouldn't seem out of place in a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film. With his accordion, Tom Waits-esque growl and maudlin imagery, Webley brings to mind scenes from The City of Lost Children. But with guitar or an echoey piano, his voice gone smooth and sad, he could find a spot on the soundtrack to Amelie. There's a timeless quality to Webley's songwriting, at its strongest when he's playing solo with a plastic vodka jug full of change at his feet for percussion. On his albums, the songs are filled out with horns, strings, bells and more; some are recorded with the hiss and scratch of vinyl, while others bring in a dozen voices for a rousing chorus. But just listening to Webley's records, good as they are, isn't going to give anyone the full experience. For that, you need the man himself on a small stage — or maybe on your table.
A
State of Zen Looking for a night of marathon sets of Grateful Dead, Dylan, Neil Young and Merle Saunders tunes? Then the Zen Tricksters is the show for you. This four-piece is in their third decade of a career spent jamming out the classic tunes Deadheads know and love, along with inspired originals, of course. The guys roll out Phil Lesh's "Pride of Cucamonga," follow it up with "Shakedown Street," bust out a heavy "The Other One," then rip into "Tore Up Over You." You never know what the Tricksters will pull out of their hat, all you have to do is keep smiling and keep dancing. During 2003, the band toured as an acoustic trio to support their third and most recent studio CD, Shaking Off The Weirdness. They're back to a foursome and their current lineup — Jeff Mattson (guitar/vocals), Klyph Black (bass/vocals), Tom Circosta (rhythm guitar/vocals) and Joe Ciarvella (drums) — may be their strongest yet. Mattson says what keeps him going is sharing his enthusiasm for music. In fact, he's never made his living any other way. On stage, the group dedicate themselves completely to the music, delivering that sustained outpouring of energy jam fans want and need. The Tricksters display the familiar, good vibes of past decades and enhance it with the meaty jam hooks fans today expect. They bring in friends to help them celebrate, as on Weirdness, when members of Phil Lesh and Friends, The Dead, and New Riders of the Purple Sage dropped by to lend a voice or two. As jam bands go, their legacy is indisputable. The Tricksters played New York's venerable venue Wetlands Preserve (now closed) more times than any other band, and they've shared the stage with so many jam bands it would be easier to name bands they haven't played with. The band is touring for tsunami relief, donating a percentage of profits to the Red Cross. Two nights before they leap onto Diablo's stage in downtown Eugene, they're playing an already-sold-out show in Zigzag, Ore. Locally-owned Siren Productions, who's putting on the Diablo's show, is donating their entire evening's profits to the Red Cross. Tsunami relief plus awesome dancing music equals clear-your- datebooks and become one with the Zen. Zen Tricksters play 8pm at Diablo's on Saturday. — Vanessa Salvia
AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR BLACK FOREST CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COFFEE GROVE COOPERATIVE COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT COUNTRYSIDE COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND All Ages DA HOUZE DANIS COFFEE & ESPRESSO All
Ages DOWNTOWN LOUNGE DUCK INN EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GAME DAY SPORTS BAR GOOD TIMES JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL JOHN HENRY'S LATITUDE 10 CAFE All Ages LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO
LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MCDONALD THEATRE MONROE STREET CAFE OREGON ELECTRIC STATION OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RAMADA INN RICK'S PUB
SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAM'S PLACE SAMURAI DUCK STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S
TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS
WOW HALL All Ages CORVALLIS AJ'S BOMBS AWAY CAFE FOX AND FIRKIN IOVINO'S RISTORANTE MURPHY'S PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB SQUIRREL'S TOM'S PEACOCK
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