Eugene Weekly : Calendar : 03.03.05

Billionaires for Bush gleefully welcome four more years of corporate favoritism with this weekend's auction of Social Security and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, set for Saturday morning at the 23rd Annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference. (For more on the PIELC, see page 10.) The Billionaires, a do-it-yourself street theater troupe and media campaign, use scathing humor to show how everyday Americans lose out under the Bush administration. See Saturday Calendar.

University Theatre has put on more than 40 fund-raising performances over the years, benefiting organizations including HIV Alliance, White Bird Clinic and Womenspace. This year they continue in the fund-raising tradition with four benefit performances of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. Audiences attending the play March 3-5 will be asked to make a donation to the Noah Smith Fund as they leave the play. Noah Smith, a former UO student who performed in the Robinson Theatre, was injured in a 2002 car accident that left him a paraplegic. Doctors told him he'd never walk again, but with extensive therapy, he's on his way to complete mobility. Sunday's performance is a benefit for tsunami victims in Asia: A significant portion of the ticket sales will be sent to relief agencies assisting with cleanup and relocation. See Thursday, March 3 Calendar.

This month's Lane Arts Council First Friday Artwalk is led by Miriam Jordan and Andrew Toney and features a totally unique stop: the unveiling of the new Lane Arts Council logo at Jacobs Gallery. After the unveiling, the Artwalk moves on to focus on the gallery's current exhibit, Drawing. From there the tour moves to White Lotus Gallery to view Sekino Jun'ichiro's woodblock prints (pictured). The third and final stop this month is Karin Clarke Gallery, where Kathleen Caprario's Presence: Absence and Annegret Disterheft's Ten Years of Monotypes are on display. Many downtown galleries will be open late, but not part of the guided tour, and Swing Shift will play an early show at John Henry's just about when the walk comes to an end. See Friday Calendar.

To the purist they're not bluegrass, or folk, or string, or rock or swing. Not quite. The music of Hot Buttered Rum is more than the sum of its influences — it's an all-out celebration of sound and the amazing things you can do when you bring five well-trained and inspired string players together. The band formed in 1999 after the members spent six weeks backpacking through the Sierras and playing music along the way. "We decided we were all going to commit to music and writing music that reflected the purity of that experience," said Erik Yates, who plays banjo, flutes, accordion, clarinet, vocals. "We wanted to join this High Sierra experience with bluegrass which is more of a rugged, rootsy, Appalachian thing." The result is an amalgam of styles that blend together so seamlessly you hardly notice the switch from the classic bluegrass tune to the Grateful Dead cover. See Tuesday Calendar.

It's probably not an exaggeration to say that Fugazi is one of the most important bands to emerge from the underground music scene in the late 1980s. Fiercely independent and politically minded, the band never allow tickets to their concerts (which must be all-ages) to cost more than five bucks, ask critics to buy their own copies of Fugazi albums, and release all their records (and many others) through their own Dischord Records label. In 1999, they released Instrument, a collaboration between the band and filmmaker Jem Cohen that covers the 10 years since Fugazi formed in 1987. Using 16mm, Super-8, video and archival formats, the film presents a collage-like look at the life of a band, including footage from tours, rehearsals, interviews — and from interviews with fans, whose opinions about Fugazi can be as sharp-edged as the tone singer Ian MacKaye sometimes takes with overly aggressive audience members. Instrument screens at DIVA this weekend. See Saturday Calendar.