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The
Songwriter Never Sleeps The 2005 Bright Eyes press kit is 45 pages of mainstream adulation long. Many of the interviews included are by New York-based publications and take place in standard East Village hipster locations, like Life Café or Tomkins Square Park (oft-referenced in combination with those "new Dylan" comparisons Oberst used to garner). He's skinny, they say; he's vulnerable and incredibly talented, with a 250-song catalog, and he loves his new NYC stomping grounds, where this year's two disparate, beautiful and flawed albums, I'm Wide Awake It's Morning and Digital Ash in Digital Urn, were largely written.
New York features frequently in the lyrics of Morning, the stronger of the two, from the bittersweet, lovely first single, "Lua," to the tumbling "Train Under Water." It's part of Oberst's story now, the way the snowscape of his hometown of Omaha used to be. The strange — and probably unavoidable — trouble with this is that Oberst's only been there two years. While he had a young lifetime of experience in Omaha, he has a college sophomore's love for New York City, the kind of love that keeps you in downtown bars and off the trains that cross the East River. "I always get lost when I leave the Village," he murmurs, an excuse to a lover, "So I couldn't come meet you in Brooklyn last night." The songs are still outstanding, the delivery like dropping a curtain to the stage of Oberst's thoughts, but it's disappointing, too. We've heard about New York from songwriters, novelists, journalists the world over, and while Oberst turns a pretty phrase, it still feels a little like he's doing something familiar. He probably couldn't stay in Omaha forever, but Lifted, or the Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, his brilliant 2002 release, had a sense of being from elsewhere, of being a story that hadn't been told yet, both from Oberst's darkest corners and from a middle America no one really knew existed. Maybe in a few more years, he'll find that place in New York City.
Hybrid
Bluegrass It's after 5 pm and Alison Brown is still at her home away from home in Nashville, trying to sneak in an interview between making sure people are getting paid, getting the mail out and making sure things are generally on track. She and her husband, Garry West, founded Compass Records a decade ago and have built a remarkably successful label, releasing more than 200 roots-based albums by musicians people might never have heard of otherwise.
But Brown isn't best known for her business venture, where she's a behind-the-scenes player. It's by taking center stage — making her banjo sing with a feather-light touch, intertwining melodies and harmony in a sparkling waterfall of sound that hums and dances — that she's earned her reputation as one of the hottest, most innovative musicians in hybrid bluegrass. That and winning the title of Banjo Player of the Year in 1991 from the International Bluegrass Music Association and her 2001 Grammy for a duet with Bela Fleck, "Leaving Cottondale." Her first instrument was guitar but when she was 10, she heard Earl Scruggs (Flatt and Scruggs) playing "Foggy Mountain," fell in love with the sound of the banjo and started playing. After 33 years, she's developed a deft technical brilliance that allows her to add subtle nuance and inflection to the rapid, rolling melodies that cascade from her strings. While much of the music on her newest release, Stolen Moments, is based in traditional bluegrass, Brown has the magical touch of an alchemist as she swirls in Appalachian, Celtic, roots and even a hint of country. The name of the album is a nod to the challenge of balancing motherhood, work and life. So it seems oddly appropriate that she likes to write her songs in the bathroom. "We just moved but in our old house, the bathroom floor was heated," Brown says. "So I'd write a lot of my music sitting on the bathroom floor. I like the acoustics. It hides all the uglies." On Stolen Moments, each instrument supports the whole sound of each song the way tightrope walkers gracefully hold each other up, alternating with eye-catching flips and jumps, but always returning to a centered point. "I like to think of it as a more feminine way of organizing the music," Brown says. "I have never felt the need to hire a bunch of really great players and then just have them back me up. If you've got Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Sam Bush (mandolin) or John Doyle (piano), then let's hear them play."
Pre-
and Post-Classical Strings If it's strings you love, this is the week for you as two great cello players grace our fair city. On Nov. 8 guest artist Ronald Leonard (former principal cellist of the L.A. Philharmonic) joins the Oregon String Quartet in one of the greatest of all classical chamber works: Franz Schubert's magnificent C major String Quintet. And the UO's Victor Steinhardt will join Leonard on piano for a sonata by Brahms and a toccata by Frescobaldi.
On Nov. 5 and 6, Leonard will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky's lilting Variations on a Rococo Theme with the Oregon Mozart Players. The concert features one of the Mozart symphonies (K. 248 in D) you don't hear so often. Mozart drew the music from one of his great serenades, which is still, to my mind, the superior version, but the symphonic incarnation works just dandy as a symphony, too, and teems with the usual surfeit of memorable Mozartean melodies. The concert also includes a superficially unassuming orchestral suite that is in fact one of the most poignant of the 20th century: Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which started out as a tribute to one of the composer's celebrated predecessors (and French Baroque music in general) and wound up being a tribute to Ravel's friends who'd died during the first World War, which was raging while Ravel (who drove an ambulance during many battles) was writing it. With our own country embroiled in another senseless military folly, it's easy to hear this plangent masterpiece as an elegy to the latest victims of political arrogance and aggression. The Mozart Players perform another wartime classic on Oct. 29 and 30, when the they join the Eugene Concert Choir and a quartet of professional soloists in Joseph Haydn's Mass in Time of Tribulation (later nicknamed the "Lord Nelson" mass), which he composed while Napoleon's armies rampaged through Europe. The concert also includes a Baroque beauty: Vivaldi's most popular Gloria. Baroque fans should on no account miss the most important concert of the season: the English Concert's appearance at the UO's Beall Hall Oct. 30. Led by the greatest fiddler in classical music, Andrew Manze, this formidable period-instrument ensemble will play music by J.S. Bach, Heinrich Biber, Henry Purcell, and other Baroque masters. See our preview at http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2005/09/22/bravo.html and this issue's story, page 35.
It's
Halloweeeeen! Halloween is this weekend and there's fun to be had! Here's what's going down on the streets during the most funnest of holiday weekends. Friday, Oct. 28 Diablo's Four Nights of Halloween starts with the "Pimps and Hos" party Friday. Try not to be too typical at this one. We all know about the giant purple velvet hat you wear to the County Fair every year, but Diablo's is looking for a little more creativity. Women dress as men, men dress as garden tools … you know, shit like that. There's more than $10,000 in prizes and raffles to give away this weekend including trips to Aruba and Mexico. (Don't try to pass that thing off as a sombrero either.) Papa's Soul Kitchen, DJs Gen. Erik and Supa-J, 9 pm, $10 night/ $25 for all four nights through Halloween. Sam's Place promises high energy rock 'n' roll at this year's Halloween Bash. Grateful Diva, an all-women band, will perform during what should amount to a weekend warm up for Sam's Saturday night party. 9:30 pm, $5. Saturday, Oct. 29 For those looking for a little more "edgy" or "wild" Saturday night, look no further than Sam Bond's "Nightmare Alley" Halloween Party. Terpsichores Daughters, a burlesque performance troupe, will be on hand along with jazz/ tango/trip hop band Mood Area 52. Burlesque? Trip hop? Jazz? We're totally there. 9 pm, $7. Mac's Halloween Ball at the Vet's Club isn't the place to show up in that Harry Potter costume that you thought was cute last year. Ditch that garb and that stupid wand and start getting crazy. There's a $100 first prize at stake here. Last year's costume contest winner at Mac's was "The Head Waiter," a man dressed in a fancy tuxedo complete with a human head on a serving tray. That's right! Try sending that back to the kitchen, complainer! John Swan and the Revelators, costume prizes, 9:30 pm, $5/ $4 w/ costume. Sam's Place Tavern's VIP Halloween Party promises "ghoulish" drink specials all night. Bring a carved pumpkin and you can get two-for-one admission as long as both people are in costume. We heard that the onion/tomato couple's costumes are super cute. DJ Eclipse, cash giveaways, $5 adv/ $6 after 9 pm.
Halloween weekend wouldn't dare get in the way of Diablo's Fetish Night which this week welcomes nyotaimori — naked sushi. For $40 you can eat strategically placed sushi off the body of a naked woman. Stick around because Diablo's "The Future" party will be off the chains with robots and aliens and more. The Inversions, Djs The Vinyl Pimpz, 9 pm, $10. The Rock 'n' Roll Halloween Party at the WOW Hall will be a happening alternative to all the spookiness going on this weekend. The Eugene-born Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers will perform along with The Vacation, Blimp and Deleted Scenes. It's not a haunted corn maze but we think it will be "happening." Costume prizes, adult refreshments, 7:30 pm, $8 adv/ $10 dos. Sunday, Oct. 30 Diablo's welcomes a more traditionally fetishy theme Sunday at its All Hallows Eve Fetish Ball. "Intro to Bondage" class will begin a 9 pm free of charge for those new to the game. Rules of the night: Fetish wear or all black is required, and being a square is prohibited. Ether, Vampire Lezbos, DJ John Smith, 9 pm, $10. Monday, Oct. 31 If you want the most authentic Halloween experience of the weekend, the only place to be is at the 11th annual Witches' Ball at the WOW Hall. Sounds like a fitting theme for a Halloween gathering eh? Well, it's not so simple — this is the Witches' New Year gathering for the Pagan, Wiccan and Earth-worshipping communities. This year's ritual will be to evoke the Goddess Hecate and to honor our ancestors. We wouldn't want the ancient spirits to slip through the cracks of time, would we? Edgewalking Blind, 7 pm, $7-$11 sliding scale for adults, $4-$11 sliding scale for ages 12-17, 11-and-under free. Mood Area 52 returns to Sam Bond's Garage to perform an original score to the silent movie Nosferatu. Kids are welcome at the early show, and costume prizes will be awarded. Mood's unconventional tango soundtrack can't be any weirder than the Teletubbies you let your kids watch. 6 & 9 pm, $3. What better place to spend a raucous Monday night than "Halloween Hell" night at Diablo's? This event is always sold out and will feature The Hellbillies upstairs and DJ Sneakers on the main floor. If you get bored, walk next door to the Greyhound station and ask them to take your ass back to Corvallis. 8:30 pm, $10. Cozmic Pizza will welcome Eugene Weekly's "Best Local Blues Band," The Vipers featuring Deb Cleveland, for its Rainy Day Blues Society Halloween Party. After a long and successful solo career, Cleveland has found a match in The Vipers' soulful blues performance. Dressing up is encouraged. 8 pm, $5.
Emo Lite
For a band from Texas, where everything big is king, American Analog Set plays music that's subtle, at times even small. Lucky for them, the indie-pop world isn't so obsessed with size. But it's not crowd size, or wallet size, or shoe size I'm talking about, it's emotional resonance. AmAnSet, as the band persists in calling itself, aims squarely at the emotional middle register. The five very literate members of this 10-year-old outfit have grown accustomed to mining that Prozac-y area between highest joys and lowest sorrows. For this reason, the charm behind AmAnSet's music sometimes needs to be coaxed out of hiding by a patient listener. Their last album, Promise of Love, released in 2003, went over big, leading to a European tour with similarly understated Seattle foursome Death Cab For Cutie. So if you're into the subdued, post-grunge indie stuff, go see these guys at the WOW Hall. Have a few drinks, kick back, but please, leave the mood stabilizers at home; you won't need them where you're going. American Analog Set plays with Yeltsin and Vervein at 9 pm Friday, Oct. 28 at the WOW Hall. $8 adv/$10 dos. —Dave Constantin
Pioneers of Period Performance Performance of early and Baroque music often comes with a promise of historical authenticity, most ubiquitously the use of period instruments with strings made of non-synthetic material, no end pins on the cellos and other such timely details. While these details can add to the interest of the performance, the accuracy of the term "authentic" is somewhat suspect, at least according to Andrew Manze. The Baroque violinist and artistic director of the English Concert brings his 300-year-old gut-strung violin and some both controversial and fresh ideas about classical music performance to Beall Concert Hall on Oct. 30. Manze's career has been distiguished by a deep scholarly interest in the historical details of the pieces he plays and a willingness to question what others in the classical world have decided to make of those details. This has earned Manze positive and negative responses from both audiences and colleagues, which does not seem to concern him one bit. Manze has become a sought after conductor worldwide and has many successful recordings to his credit. His virtuosic violin playing is said to be skillfully controlled at times and bold and passionate at others; Manze says his improvisational flourishes were typical of 16th and 17th century classical performance. Manze is somewhat of a rebel in the classical music world, yet his gracious wit in interviews and performances helps him avoid self-righteousness, particularly as his renown grows. His ability to blaze new paths while acknowledging the value of more conventional approaches makes him likeable both as a scholar and presenter of early and Baroque music. Manze and the English Concert offer an intellectually intriguing approach to early and Baroque music that is mindful of the era in which the music was composed and the era in which it is now being performed. This Sunday's performance prominently features the music of Heinrich Biber, including the Sonata Representativa, in which instruments mimic the sounds of a nightingale, cuckoo, frog, hen, cock, cat and musketeer. A reconstructed Bach suite and other predominently Baroque pieces will also be performed. Andrew Manze and the English Concert play at 3 pm Sunday, Oct. 30 at Beall Concert Hall. $12-$29. —Jacob Baker
Discerning Ditties
The standard definition of indie rock usually doesn't include descriptions like "sea shanties," "ballads that include words with more syllables than arachnophobia" and "upbeat songs about the Civil War." But The Decemberists have an unusual ability to transform these descriptions into indie rock reality — and they're good at it. The Decemberists' frontman Colin Meloy — who holds a degree in creative writing (which explains much of the sophisticated wordplay in the band's catalogue) and has lectured on Morrissey, writes songs filled with exotic intrigue and metaphorical quirkiness reminiscent of the intelligent yet foot-tappable music of Belle & Sebastian. With an ensemble that includes the theremin, steel guitar and accordion along with the more standard rock instruments, the Decemberists put on a live show that can be enjoyed purely for the music — even if you don't understand what the hell Meloy is singing about (but seriously, you have to appreciate a songwriter who rhymes "civvies" with "dungarees"). And while it might seem strange to be at a rock show where the band's lyrics are about "chimbley" sweeps and gypsy lovers, its almost guaranteed that you'll be singing along by the end of the show. The Decemberists perform at 9 pm, Tuesday, Nov. 1 at the McDonald Theatre. $15 adv/$17 dos. — Emily Freeman
Crossing the Classical/Rock Divide Ever since the Beatles garnished some of their tunes with string quartets and Baroque trumpets, classically trained musicians have tried to enforce shotgun weddings between classical and rock music. Despite conscientious attempts by rockers like Elvis Costello, Roger Waters, Joe Jackson and Paul McCartney, the results have generally been disappointing. Still, art music types like Michael Daugherty, John Zorn, David Byrne, the Kronos Quartet and the late great Penguin Cafe Orchestra show that "chamber rock" can produce an original, compelling sound. On Nov. 3, the WOW Hall hosts two of today's most successful examples of classical-rock fusion: Invert and Rachel's. Invert is a New York based string quartet (but with two cellos rather than dueling violins) that uses the propulsive energy of rock rhythms and the melodic potential of classical strings to powerful effect, sort of like a slightly less jazzy Turtle Island String Quartet. TISQ and Kronos fans should definitely check out this fab foursome, which can cover an impressive range of moods and styles, including their sometimes bustling, sometimes haunting original compositions as well as covers like Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score and John Lennon's psychedelic classic "Tomorrow Never Knows." Rachel's, based in Louisville, KY, similarly transgresses genre boundaries, drawing audiences from punks to classical types. Their audience-friendly music can be so atmospheric that it sometimes veers near ambient — but then it might suddenly unleash vigorous percussion, piano, or voice (live and sampled). Fans of classical, post-classical, art rock and anyone who likes sounds that cross borders between musical genres should turn out for what looks to be one of the most interesting concerts of the year. The sellout crowds for cellist Matt Haimovitz's shows at Sam Bond's a couple years back proved that classical types are willing to venture beyond the traditional "classical" venues. Just as the musicians of Invert and Rachel's are willing to take chances, admirers of thoughtful new music should support the WOW Hall's commendable effort to create a space outside the expensive, often stodgy concert venues for music that refuses to be pigeonholed, and that embraces the best aspects of old and new sounds. Rachel's and Invert play at 9 pm Thursday, Nov. 3. $10 adv/$12 dos. — Brett Campbell
THURSDAY OCT.
27 FRIDAY OCT. 28 SATURDAY OCT. 29
ROCK 'N' RODEO DJs Jon-Michael & Tony T—9;
Country, rock, top 40 SUNDAY OCT. 30 MONDAY OCT. 31
DOWNTOWN LOUNGE Halloween in Hell w/ The Hellbillys,
DJ Sneakers—10 TUESDAY NOV. 1
JAXX [A~N~D: James Kane & DJ Red
Menace] XperiMen(i)al
WOW HALL Eric Johnson, Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell, Katy Bowser & Kenny Hutson, Julie Lee—7; Guitar rock, country folk WEDNESDAY NOV. 2 CORVALLIS
Club Guide AX BILLY GRILL & SPORTS BAR 999 Willamette
• 484-4011
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