 |
  |
|
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
|
World
Fusion Pioneers Quick, how many people can you name who coined a term describing a popular musical genre? If the name Matthew Montfort didn't jump to mind, you've probably never heard of Ancient Future, a Bay Area-based band in their 27th year.
In 1978, Montfort called Ancient Future "world fusion music" to explain his motivation for combining ideas from many musical traditions. But Montfort would take umbrage at the word genre. "It is a process that actually creates tradition," he said. "When different cultures get together and learn from each other, each culture will have developed a certain musical knowledge kernel." The band's name, Ancient Future, illustrates Montfort's desire to take music from the past and bring it into the future. "The traditions are very old and the knowledge of these traditions needs to be a part of future traditions," he said. Ancient Future began as a quartet but has grown to include 25 masters of numerous musical traditions the world over. Montfort leads four touring versions of Ancient Future, with the arabic fusion version touring the Northwest during Spring 2005. "It's great music to dance to," he said. "People go to raves and all that, well this is organic dance music!" Montfort, who plays scalloped fretboard guitar (combining South Indian vina and steel-string guitar), is joined by Georges Lammam, a Palestinian from Lebanon who plays Arabic violin and sings, Azerbaijani percussion master Salah Takesh, and Doug McKeehan on keyboards. Ancient Future's 2003 CD Planet Passion is 12 tracks arranged in chapters chronicling a relationship's arc: Flirtation, courtship, sacred eros, the wedding, seduction and longing for the beloved. Nineteen masters of musical styles as diverse as Indian, Cuban Celtic, Jewish and Chinese converged to give life to lovely tracks like "Forest Frolic," I Mett Her in the Medowe" and "El Zaffa." The CD is rich with melodies and quiet moments in sound from around the globe; perfect for yoga, meditation, dancing, dinner or just plain listening!
Better
Together
It wasn't a table for outsiders. Even the conversation was tight, the stories bouncing back and forth as rhythmically as a four count. A group of guys you wouldn't normally see together — a businessman, a quiet guitarist who lets loose on stage, a boisterous Southern-born black singer and an Italian sax player — hanging out in the cool darkness of the Countryside Tavern, having lunch and talking about the thing that brings them together, the one thing that's been a constant for them throughout their lives: music. Peter Giri, Paul Biondi and JC Rico are arguably three of Eugene's finest musicians. They've gigged with each other more times than any of them can remember and when they're together, they banter back and forth shooting ideas, stories and all-in-fun insults across the table like machine gun rounds. "There's a language entertainers have that nobody understands but us," Rico said. "Normal people don't know what it's like to be on the road in some raggedy-ass motel with the couple in the next room pounding the bed against the wall and cockroaches in the bathroom. When we're together, that language we have makes us laugh." Along with half a dozen other local musicians, they form the nucleus of the Music Alliance, a loose-knit partnership between area musicians who play regular shows at The Countryside and Peabody's. Instead of competing with each other for gigs and publicity, they promote and play at each other's shows. It started at Peabody's as a jam every Saturday night. Even with no promotion, the show brought in a larger audience every week until Saturdays were standing room only. "But there was no vision for it," Jay Alderson said. "And no promotion at all." Alderson saw the potential for something bigger. "We were looking for a band that was a combination of all the great players in town," he said. "There hasn't been a blues, rock, gospel crossover in this town in decades and there is too much talent here for something big not to happen." The idea for a collective of musicians working and playing together in a way that supports and benefits everyone involved is nothing new. Back in the '70s and early '80s Eugene had a musician's union complete with dues and regular meetings. But the union eventually closed shop as the core blues/rock/gospel musicians moved away and the scene that had supported it disappeared. Alderson, who worked with Bill Graham and watched him put the Doobie Brothers together, was willing to throw in some of his own money to get the musicians he wanted together on the same stage. As word spreads the crowds get bigger — Peabody's is packed shoulder to shoulder on Saturdays and the Music Alliance added a Friday show at The Countryside in early 2005. "When I came into it I had just been playing gigs on my own," Rico said. "But when you get this group together, well, that's a lot of power on that stage. I wouldn't miss that for anything." With an onstage chemistry that's more explosion than slow simmer, the Music Alliance puts on a booty-shakin', jivin' thing that gets little old ladies out grooving on the dance floor next to swing dancing 30-somethings. This Saturday's show (4/22) brings together some of the Music Alliance's top players including Rico, Biondi, Giri, Kenny Reed (drums), Byron Case (bass), Mo'Fessor (keyboards) and Blue (harmonica) for what promises to be quite a show.
Sole
Seeker Sole's got too much to say about the real stuff to waste his words on bullshit about bling and bitches. This is hip hop for smart people, with big four-syllable words and bigger concepts and ideas.
He calls his most recent release, Live From Rome, on Anticon "the first album I've done that's political," but that's not exactly accurate. Sole has been political since he was just a kid growing up in Portland, Maine and putting out records on vinyl with the money he earned flipping burgers at McDonald's. What sets him so far apart is that he's humble and he's a seeker. On the phone, in person, in his music, everything is an exploration that starts with a question. "I've got further to learn than I've got to say / Furthermore, I'm never taking a step for granted / Nevertheless, I'm at odds with the fact that I'm just one character on a stage / Oddly enough, designed to make it to the next page," he says in "Furthermore" off Bottle of Humans. By his late teens/early 20s, he'd started traveling to New York regularly and the 1997 release of Live Poets 12 led to collaboration with other up-and-coming artists including doseone, Atmosphere and the Shapeshifters. His horizons got wider and his rap more political as he focused on societal paradigms, toppling each one like a house of cards with acerbic rhymes and wit. "I've always had my beliefs and my ideas," he said, talking on the phone from some parking lot in New England on his way to New York City. "But I can't put something on a record unless I'm 100 percent solid on it. I'm not going to talk about Israel unless I understand the conflict. I just try to be careful when I'm pointing the finger that I think I'm right." He doesn't read newspapers much any more, just books. The most recent was "some Marxist literary critique." And while Sole takes on the biggest issues facing us personally and globally, the sly humor and self-reflection in his songs keeps them from ever getting too dark. "There's so many times I thought I should write a philosophy book or make a documentary," he said. "But those things take time and it would just be more generic leftist fucking fodder that no one reads. As a rapper in this field, there's a lot of space to say what I want. Because not many people are approaching it this way."
Short
Stories, Renegade Songs Despite a brief residence in Portland awhile back, The Good Life (and Cursive) leader Tim Kasher hasn't been to Eugene since he was 10, when he visited a nearby relative. "I remember walking around a cute little downtown," he says. "And I had gone to the river to pick up crawdads."
That sounds about right. This week's visit might be a little different for Kasher, who's headed to town with The Good Life. Kasher's last three releases — Cursive's The Ugly Organ and The Good Life's Lovers Need Lawyers EP, a collection of "renegade songs," and Album of the Year — have a mountain of glowing reviews between them; The Ugly Organ appeared on more than a few best-of lists at the end of 2003. Following jaunts through Europe and Japan, The Good Life are on the brink of a second U.S. tour for last fall's Album of the Year, the band's third album. Album isn't exactly the self-aggrandizing title it might appear. Musically, it's a conscious shift to a stripped-down, acoustic guitar-based sound — a step away from the burbling synths, plinking keys, doubled vocals and electronic impulses of the band's previous album, Black Out, a remarkable, bipolar paean of self-analysis. Lyrically, Album is the story of a relationship, one year long, one song per month, laid out in the CD booklet as a small calendar. The year-long cycle was something Kasher had in mind for some time; he says Cursive's Domestica wanted to be this cycle, but it didn't work out. But he's not sure Album worked out either. "I thought I was writing this really linear, cohesive collection of music, but it came across to a lot of people as 12 vignettes, short stories with a similar subject. Some people got it. I wasn't accurate enough, or descriptive enough. But that's OK." Both with Cursive and The Good Life, Kasher's songs spark an intensely personal reaction among listeners, a reaction due in part to his confessional but saccharine-free lyrics. It's strange, then, to be in a room where people are pumping their fists in the air without a shred of irony as Kasher yells, "Cut it out/ Your self-inflicted pain/ Is getting too routine," in Cursive's "Art is Hard." "I think about that too much," he says. "I think about it enough that I bounce back and forth whether or not I want to keep playing and releasing music. It's a lot of internal conflict for me. I don't think it's wrong at all, it's just … I don't know." Kasher pauses, and adds, "That's really a whole different article."
Music
Shorts Trippy Techno It took long enough but the people with the power finally figured out that Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9) is not a jam band. For years STS9 was booked as the opening act for bands who spend most of their shows noodling away on their instruments, lost in a haze as the patchouli-scented crowd sways and does that flowy hand dance.
But they've graduated to more appropriate pairings — Tortoise, Mr. Lips, the Perceptionists and Blackalicious to name just a few more recent shows. And while publications such as Jambase still take an interest in STS9, possibly because they sometimes have a floating, ethereal feel, the word is finally out that this is a genre-bending, magical melting pot of sound. It's 2 pm somewhere in Texas and guitarist Hunter Brown is just rolling out of bed after staying up until 5 in the morning working loops and mixing beats on his laptop in the back of the tour bus. He's remixing songs off the band's most recent release, Artifact, and working on his own side projects. Back when Brown, keyboardist David Phipps, bassist David Murphy and percussionst Jeffree Lerner first started out, STS9 spent about 200 days a year on the road playing their vibey, free form, jazz-meets-electronic-meets-drum and bass-meets-hip hop to anyone who would listen. Now that they're established, they have a more sane touring schedule. But that hasn't changed their strange take on music, like someone never told them what it's supposed to sound like or how you're supposed to make it. Take Artifact for example — you can download one song, "Tokyo," off their website (www.sts9music.com).Check out the spooky loop at the beginning and the hip hop-inspired scratch-infused end. The full CD is packed with more amazing stuff. Listen carefully to "8 and a Extra" and "People's Part II." Hear anything that sounds like five guys "going completely ape shit on anything we could find," in an empty 8,000-square-foot warehouse with 10 microphones? Boxes of glass for recycling smashing against the wall. Cell phones feeding back. The whir of a vacuum cleaner. Metal striking metal. Crazy energy released then sampled and morphed into rhythmic music that moves. STS9 play 8 pm at the McDonald Theatre at Saturday, 4/23, $18 dos/adv. — Melissa Bearns
On the Yellow Brick Road to Hip Hop Holy Land The Living Legends' rise to stardom is nothing short of inspirational. It is a testament to the hip hop "dream," where a hip hop holy land promises success along with continued underground credibility. All you must do to get there is work hard and stay true to your craft and crew. Their tale is as follows: Between Oakland and LA, a group of small-time, like-minded MCs found each other and formed a crew. They debuted their live routine at loft parties, collecting other like-minded members along the way, steadying their roster at eight strong. Eventually the group released an album together, toured the country (then Europe), released solo albums (as well as inner-group collaborations — different Legends' MCs performing together), and got back together to release several more collaborative albums. Soon the group found themselves blowing up all over the world. Somewhere, somehow, the Living Legends have found that balance between fame and craft. Their new album Classic proves that it is possible to attain notoriety while still maintaining one's artistic integrity. The album blossoms with bouncy, straight-ahead hip hop beats that feature all the solid bumps and soulful samples that make up classic rap tracks. On "Brand New," the group tears through staccato rhymes and a wonderfully harmonized chorus all over an old school Slum Village-styled groove. "Blast Your Radio" features the man with the Midas touch, Madlib, on production duties. While hip hop offers an infinite space in which to grow and develop, from hustling mix tapes on the streets to playing at Eugene's McDonald Theatre, the Legends really have come a long way. Jedi Mind Tricks and Pigeon John are supporting the Legends for their highly anticipated return to Eugene. Living Legends, Jedi Mind Tricks and Pigeon John play 8 pm, Sunday, April 24 at the McDonald Theatre. $15 adv. — Steven Sawada
Chamber Pop Confessions The weakest moment on Over the Rhine's new album, Drunkard's Prayer, is easily pinpointed: the damn saxophone solo on "Little Did I Know." It's jarring, a strange switch to a sort of pop-jazz that seems to scribble all over an otherwise lovely tune. Up to that point, the album glides along sleepily, Karin Bergquist's breathy, unaffected voice resting lightly atop a simple piano or guitar line, the occasional harmony breaking in. There's an old-timey beauty to the first half-dozen songs, a set of classic-sounding melodies that smartly leave plenty of aural white space around Bergquist's voice. "Hush Now (Stella's Tarantella)" begins with a charming Tom Waits-ian piano bit, a hint of vaudeville. But two songs later, following the unfortunate sax solo, Drunkard's Prayer begins to take on a decidedly Dawson's Creek tone, relying too heavily on a back-and-forth between bland mid-tempo cheeriness and overwrought melancholy that brings to mind a montage from a teenage heartbreak. The good songs, though, make you want to give Over the Rhine a chance. They certainly do a decent piano ballad tinged with strings — probably the reason the band's been described as "confessional chamber pop." Over the Rhine has opened for Bob Dylan and been honorary members of the Cowboy Junkies. Their musicianship and the economy of sound on their better tracks, proves that they really do know what they're doing. Over the Rhine plays at 8:30 pm, Saturday, April 23 at the WOW Hall. $15. — Molly Templeton
Divine Kinnie Starr
Canadian diva Kinnie Starr returns to Eugene wrapping up her most recent tour in support of Sun Again, her newest release. If you missed her last time she breezed through town, don't make that same mistake again. A modern-day musical goddess, Starr has the poise of a swan, the grace of a panther, the gentleness of a cloud and the power of hurricane. She'll croon a love song one second then get up in your face, rapping and rhyming the next. She mixes gritty urban beats with sensual lyrics creating songs that bump and glide at the same time. Her themes range from feminism to food to earth worship and she infuses every song with an element of spirituality that's all about heart and staying real. The way she rampages across musical genres with blithe disregard makes her one of the most innovative and fresh voices to grace our fair city in months. Kinnie Starr plays with the Ovulators at 9 pm Friday, April 27 at Sam Bond's Garage. $5. — Melissa Bearns
eugene/spfd. ART OF EVERYTHING All
Ages AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR
BLACK FOREST
CAFÉ PARADISO CARROWS LOUNGE 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 GAME DAY SPORTS BAR GOOD TIMES JAXX LOUNGE@PREMIUM POUR 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 LONE STAR BAR & GRILL LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MCDONALD THEATRE All Ages MCSHANE'S BAR & GRILLE MONROE STREET CAFE All Ages MULLIGAN'S PUB THE O BAR & GRILL OREGON ELECTRIC STATION OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RAMADA INN RED LION INN
SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAM'S PLACE SPIRITS STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN TRACKSTIRS WETLANDS
WOW HALL All Ages CORVALLIS AJ'S BEANERY All Ages BOMBS AWAY CAFE HEADLINE CAFÉ IOVINO'S RISTORANTE MURPHY'S PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB TOMMY'S PEACOCK
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
