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Not
Starting to Suck Eddie Spaghetti, lead singer of the Supersuckers, is irreverent, funny, obnoxious and he doesn't have a "motherfucking tan." We were talking about mega-tours like Lollapalooza and the Vans Warped Tour.
"It seems to be good for some people, but I would find it an incredible pain in the ass to do it," he said. "To go show up in a parking lot, find out what time you're going to play that day in the morning and playing out in the daylight, in the sun. Yuck!" The Supersuckers are one of those classic bands that's just a little too fringe, a little too hard-edged, a little too in-your-face for the mainstream. They really like the word "fuck" and all its variations, at least in their music, and sing about the good old classics like breaking stuff, drinking and women. To their thousands of fans, they're goddamn heroes. With lyrics like, "Let's go!/Go and get trashed/ We'll get the bruises to prove it," the Supersuckers are the perfect bar band. That's even taking into account their severely split musical personality. These hardcore rockers are also shit-kickin', bad ass country singin' motherfuckers. The first time I saw the Supersuckers, I had only heard their country album Must've Been High, a fine piece of musical craftsmanship. I went to the show at some dive bar in Chicago mentally unprepared for an earsplitting, sonic bombardment. But I got over it — quickly. Their most recent CD (more sweet, rock goodness) is called Motherfuckers Be Trippin' and was recorded and produced by the band members themselves. Spaghetti called it their "crowning achievement to date." You have to listen to it, rock out to it, sing along as they scream "Fight, fight, fight," to really get how much sarcasm is dripping off that title. "You don't find a rock band making their eighth or ninth album stepping out and calling it something that stupid," Spaghetti said. But anyone who's ever cranked the Supersuckers up to the top of the dial gets it. These are guys who look on the industry with utter disdain and just keep doing what they love to do. Hell, it works for them. They're one step up from the punk scene where having the whole audience scream obscenities and flip off the band is the highest compliment. "The industry does not deserve my attention," Spaghetti said shortly. "Look, we're always about quality instead of crap. Most people are average. Most people are boring morons." And their fans? "Well, I'm cynically optimistic," he said. "Our fans are exceptional people. They're part of the rare minority of people with impeccable taste." Spaghetti, Dan "Thunder" Bolton (guitar), Rontrose Heathman (guitar) and Dancing Eagle (drums) grew up together in Tucson, Ariz. and formed the band in 1988. Spaghetti said they haven't practiced since 1994 and calls their songwriting "making shit up." "I think it's pretentious for rock bands to say they're songwriters," he said, intoning the word songwriter with a faux, art fart accent. "Give me a break. Maybe you write your words down. Maybe. But is that really songwriting? No. At its best it's poetry. I prefer to call it song makeruppering, song upmaking." On Motherfuckers Be Trippin' they do some darn good song upmaking. "Fight, Fight, Fight," is going to make it onto a movie soundtrack. It just has to. It's too angry, too funny, too contagious, to allow you to sit still. My overall favorite is "Pretty Fucked Up." See? There's the "F" word again. It's got these really simple lyrics: "She's got a man on the side/ Yeah, she's with him today/ And I probably won't die/ But it sure feels that way." But when Spaghetti croons them, it's like he's singing some universal truth. Some of the songs, "The Nowhere Special" for example, have hints of pop punk, a hard-edged Green Day, a gritty NOFX. But overall, Motherfuckers Be Trippin' is just more of the consistent, hard, obnoxious rock that makes Supersuckers fans keep coming back for more and more and more. "I hate bands that grow or mature," Spaghetti said. "To me all that's saying is, read between the lines, it's saying we're really starting to suck. I can only work one way and I like it. We have a great thing going on." You'll often see the Supersuckers teamed up with the king of sexy sleaze, the Reverend Horton Heat, and this weekend at the Jungle is no exception. It's a perfect pairing really. Obnoxious, melodic rock. In your face, the-devil-made-me-do-it, hardcore rockabilly. What more could you ask for? Well how's about we throw in some good ol' boys with a sick twist on Southern rock, I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch In the House? Should be quite a threesome. Supersuckers, Reverend Horton Heat, I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House. The Jungle, 8pm. Sunday 3/27, $20. www.mcdonaldtheatre.com
Roll
Over, Johann Sebastian Next Friday, April 1, is the 263rd or 198th birthday of the off-est of the offspring of J.S. Bach — PDQ Bach (1807-1742). The Oregon Mozart Players are selling out — er, celebrating — with a Hult Center performance of his long lost and tragically rediscovered flopera, The Abduction of Figaro. The concert will be narrated by PDQ's amanuensis and fellow composer, radio show host ("Schickele Mix"), popularizer of classical music and puncturer of its pretensions — Professor Peter Schickele of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Although the Mozart Players have performed at least one of Shickele's excellent compositions here, it's been at least a decade since Eugene has been mistreated to the extinguished sounds of the decomposer defamed the world over as a "pimple on the face of music," "the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals," "the most dangerous musician since Nero." Of his many keisterpieces (Oedipus Tex, The Magic Bassoon, The Short-Tempered Clavier, Hansel & Gretel & Ted & Alice: An Opera in One Unnatural Act), perhaps the most alarming is Figaro, with its inexcusable characters (Figaro; his wife, Susanna Susannadanna; her servant, Pecadillo; Count Alma Mater, Schlepporello and the rest), indefensible plot (involving a bed hijacked to Cuba, pirate adventure, harem girls, the Maltese Falcon, and who cares what else), and unforgivable songs, such as "Fish Gotta Swim," "You Can Beat Me" and "I Am a Swineherd." Alas, health regulations and a plea bargain prohibit the use of PDQ's own invention, the loudest instrument ever created, the pandemonium. This concert dispenses with usual frippery (silly dances, tedious recitatives, props, musical quality, etc.), and gives us a Figaro on the Madkins diet: the songs and mal-arias, deformed by local vocal yokels such as Marc Siegel and Sandy Naishtat as well as young veterans of the national opera scene — all bound, gagged, and duct-taped together by the professor's narration. Recommended to everyone who loves or laughs at classical music.
Magic
Ingredients Just a second, let me turn down the James Taylor," says Ben Lee when he answers his cell phone somewhere in Los Angeles. With five days off before his tour begins, Lee opts to spend his time where the air is warm and dry. These days he's without a permanent home. "I think of it as, I'm for the world now, you know?" he says. "At different times of your life you have different responsibilities and right now my responsibility is to everyone, everywhere."
It's an interesting perspective for a young man who's been a public figure of sorts for more than 10 years. As a teenager in Sydney, Australia, his band Noise Addict caught the ears of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and the Beastie Boys' Mike D, who both released Noise Addict material in the U.S. As Noise Addict wound down, Lee turned to solo work, releasing Grandpaw Would at 18. Three more albums and a move to New York (his home for four years) followed before Awake Is the New Sleep came out last month. The album debuted in the Australian top 10. "Ahead of J. Lo!" Lee says with amazement. Apparently it took his homeland a little while to catch on to Lee's charms: "Around Breathing Tornados" — his third album — "they started really getting what I was doing. It was the same time I left," he adds with a laugh. Awake is a striking record, treading an unusual path between sharp introspection and a determinedly sunny outlook. From the heart-on-sleeve "Gamble Everything for Love" to "Light," a nine-minute existential opus, Lee's new songs are undeniably poppy. Simple repeating guitar lines are layered with keyboard melodies (from his longtime collaborator Lara Meyerratken) and Lee's conversational vocals; quiet, reflective lyrics alternate with jovial singalongs, which feature backing vocals by tourmate Har Mar Superstar and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis (among others). "The thing about this record," Lee says, "is I put so much of my faith and heart into it, and it seems that is the magic ingredient for making a piece of art powerful. So there's been amazing things. People cry a lot at the shows. There was a kid who wrote an e-mail saying he'd never heard of me but he has a chronic heart condition and when the song comes on the radio the pain goes away." Clearly Lee's tapped into something, though he's reluctant to take too much credit for its power. "I couldn't even put my name on the front cover because I honestly don't feel like it's my record," he explains. "When art is pure, it doesn't feel like it's ours, it doesn't have that much ego in it." Ben Lee with Har Mar Superstar and Zykos. John Henry's, 8 pm. Saturday 3/25 $10. TicketsWest 800-992-8499
Enigmatic, Engaging Music of Testface A Japanese print of a dog with numerous faces inspired Dave Snider's band name, Testface. That and a propensity to create music that lives in a shadowland of possibilities, born from experimentation. "I've always tried out different styles and feels for the music so it's always evolving," said Snider, who began Testface 15 years ago in New Hampshire as a "dark folk project" akin to Palace or Smog. After moving here eight years ago, Snider morphed Testface into a full band, drawing in diverse area musicians, most of whom live in Portland. Other than Snider, only Testface bassist Dori Prange, who also glams it up with The Ovulators, calls Eugene home. Since practices are often reduced to online mp3-trading, energy is on high when the band does get together to play a show. Testface is releasing a brand new CD, Doctor Won't You Get Us To Dawn. It's a strong collection of lo-fi, sweetly melancholic and electronica-tinged tunes. The CD opens with a subtle hip-shaking tune called "All The Glass Prayers" that keeps its face turned to the sun even while Snider stands in the shadows, rhyming lipstick with ballistic and crooning about wrestling with tigers. While Snider's lyrics are often inscrutable, they contribute to an atmosphere that feels like a musical snowdrift, subject to the whiteouts of his emotional tableau. Testface has previously released music on Eugene's Schapendoes Records, with Doctor coming out of the Sleepsound recording studio, a co-release on Sleepsound and Broken Sparrow Records. Sleepsound's engineers George Ayres and Jake Baker, who also contribute musically to Testface, have given life to some amazing local music in their short existence, and Doctor Won't You Get Us To Dawn is another one to be proud of. — Vanessa Salvia Testface CD Release, Saltlick, Armored Frog. Sam Bond's, 9:30 pm Friday 3/25, $4. 431-6603 www.sambonds.com
The Mammals' Generation-Hopping Bluegrass Taking influences from more than four generations of musical history isn't an easy musical feat. Most ordinary musicians would crack under the pressure. But the members of The Mammals, a bluegrass band with a penchant for crossing genres, are an eclectic mix of string veterans and expert rock musicians. Tao Rodriguez-Seeger is the grandson of Pete Seeger. Ruth Ungar is the daughter of Lyn Hardy and Grammy-award winning fiddler Jay Ungar. The other three members, Chris Merenda, Dan Rose and Michael Merenda, were all previously members of the band SKArotum. With a solid foundation in bluegrass and folk, The Mammals switch gears from pop rock politics to Spanish ballads and back again. Rock That Babe, the Mammals' newest release, features everything from acoustic guitars and fiddles to ukuleles and banjos. Combining haunting vocals, intricate string harmonies, simple lyrics and of course some bluegrass twang, their songs are deceptively simple in their excellence. Frequent comparisons to the Soggy Bottom Boys or Alison Krauss, artists brought into the mainstream by the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, are appropriate. Many of the Mammals' cross-genre experiments involve the use of rock and roll influences to create modern protest songs. Electric cars, President Bush and the stock market are all fodder for the Mammals' political sermonizing. Some of these tunes are successful, combining rock, bluegrass and folk to create foot-stomping melodies mixed with Bush-bashing. Some aren't. Sometimes the incredible musicianship is put on the back burner in the interest of preaching to what is most likely the political choir. "The Bush Boys" mixes bluegrass and folk to create a different kind of protest song — one that apes a traditional lullaby to mock the Bush family. Either way, you have to admire a band with a social conscience. — Sara Brickner The Mammals. Café Paradiso, 8 pm Friday 3/25, $12/adv $15/door. www.cafeparadiso.com
Jamie Laval Puts a Spin On Celtic Music. Emmy-nominated violinist and champion fiddler Jamie Laval captures the sentiment, yearning, and melancholy of the ancient people of Ireland, Scotland and Brittany with amazing realism and emotion. You don't need to know what transpired in history to give birth to this branch of folk music. Through Laval's heartfelt playing, you can close your eyes and experience it. Laval's career as a violinist took shape after he left high school early to study at Victoria's Conservatory of Music. While in school Laval was selected to perform at a reception for the Queen of England. An intimate gathering of 300, including the Queen herself, listened intently as he brought his violin to life. Initially educated as a professional symphony player, Laval recently dedicated himself to performing traditional Celtic songs. "It wasn't until seven or eight years ago that I decided I wasn't going to do another classical gig," Laval says. By arranging extremely old melodies with new harmonies, more danceable aggressive beats and added melodic improvisation, he puts a modern spin on this old-world style. "The basic core is there with its old rustic sound. But I don't have to feel like I'm sticking with the old thing," he says. In addition to his live performances, Laval has also compiled an impressive resumé of recorded work. He recorded television soundtracks forWild America as well as the WB network's family drama Everwood (which garnered him an Emmy nomination). Laval also performed string parts with Dave Matthews on his album Some Devil. Laval will play with his Seattle-based trio consisting of Hans York on guitar and Jon Hamar on acoustic bass. Jasmine Anderson, an Irish step dance champion from Portland, will perform traditional Celtic dance in time with his music. — Steven Sawada Jamie Laval Trio w/ Jasmine Anderson. Café Paradiso, 8 pm Thursday 3/31, $12 gen, $7 stu/low income. www.cafeparadiso.com
BLACK FOREST
CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COFFEE GROVE COOPERATIVE COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT COUNTRYSIDE COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND All Ages DA HOUZE DOWNTOWN LOUNGE DUCK INN EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GOOD TIMES JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL JOHN HENRY'S
THE JUNGLE THE KEG LATITUDE 10 CAFE All Ages LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO LION'S DEN LOUNGE LONE STAR BAR & GRILL LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MONROE STREET CAFE THE O BAR & GRILL 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 YUKON JACK'S CORVALLIS BOMBS AWAY CAFE IOVINO'S RISTORANTE MURPHY'S NEW MORNING BAKERY All
Ages PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB TOMMY'S PEACOCK
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