 |
  |
|
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
World
Beat Guitar Remember when you were first discovering rock or blues guitar, and you'd hear a special solo — Clapton on "Crossroads," say, or Hendrix on just about anything? If you were like me, you'd just play that record over and over again, admiring the guitarist's spontaneous logic and beauty. Last year, at a trio show at Cozmic Pizza, I heard an extraordinary guitarist unleash just such a solo — upbeat, winding, exhilarating. As it wended its way to a natural conclusion after a couple of minutes, I relaxed, expecting the song to meander to its end. Then he fired off another supple guitar run. Then another. And another. The whole show was pretty much like that, one imaginative guitar excursion (accompanied by bass and drums) after another. Normally, I'm impatient with extended displays of virtuosity for its own sake, whether by a jazz drummer, classical violin prodigy or would-be rock guitar deity. But every one of those improvised modal riffs made musical sense, every one of them was different from the last, yet logically advanced the overall composition, and each drew on a much broader spectrum of melodic and especially rhythmic ideas (mostly African but also Hawaiian and Asian) than most musicians can muster. I was astonished at how fresh each idea sounded — but I shouldn't have been surprised: The guitarist, Paul Prince, is one of Oregon's finest musicians. He's spent years in deep study of various African musical forms as well as slack key guitar and Indonesian gamelan, won awards from Guitar Player magazine and earned airplay on public radio's "Afropop Worldwide" and other shows. Yet he's spent so much time on the road in recent years, mostly accompanying one of the world's greatest musicians, Zimbabwe's Thomas Mapfumo (another Eugene resident), that his local profile is too low for a musician of such skill and accomplishment. Eugene gets several chances to hear Prince in coming weeks, including solo sets on Aug. 20 at the Lane County Fair and Sept. 30 at Saturday Market, and in a duo setting at the market on Sept. 2. He's also playing with his world beat group, Chibuku, at Cozmic Pizza on Aug. 31 and at Sam Bond's on Sept. 20. Ever seeking new inspiration, Prince has drawn on the effervescent sound of the kora harp and Malian blues (one source of the American blues) in his new work with Chibuku, augmenting the quartet's deliriously danceable Congolese soukous sound. Mapfumo's influence appears in the mbira-like guitar lines and even some of his songs, with Prince improvising around the vocal melody. The group also features percussionist (drums, balafon, djembe) Ken Soko, who's studied with master drummers in Senegal and Mali; guitarist Ian Smith; and new bassist Dan Lorenz, who adds reggae wrinkles. Together they create a bubbling, high-spirited fusion of global styles whose authenticity and power transcend mere exoticism or slick solos. Another great Eugene guitarist, Don Latarski, joins pianist and UO music prof Steve Larson on Aug. 25 at the Oregon Wine Warehouse at 9th and Olive. Larson's been playing an enjoyable regular jazz gig there, often with various guest artists, all year. Latarski is well known hereabouts as a teacher and jazz virtuoso. They should make a dynamic duo.
Jazz fans who like their music on the bleeding edge should catch Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet at the WOW Hall on Aug. 27. Although the Seattle all-stars draw young audiences by seamlessly weaving funk and hip hop threads into their "punk jazz," real jazzheads will appreciate the group's debt to the polyphonic and polystylistic styles of New Orleans' proto-jazz brass bands, Duke Ellington's textured big band and John Zorn's eclecticism. Saxmen Skerik (tenor), Craig Flory (baritone) and Hans Teuber (alto and more) create an updated Mingus-style blare, bathed in organist Joe Doria's Hammond B3 washes. Skerik's audacious sound permits plenty of emotional expressivity — including anger on their new album's "Go to Hell, Mr. Bush" — and no doubt has Harry Anslinger (the late, hateful federal narcotics bureaucrat who decried the "syncopated taint" of jazz and cannabis on repressive American puritanism and thereby provided the band a memorable moniker) shuddering in his grave, while the rest of us are dancing on it.
Don
Caballero is Damon Che Fifteen years, five albums and three major line-up changes and Don Caballero is still standing. Well, Damon Che is still standing. And anyone who knows anything about the band knows that Damon Che is Don Caballero. While his eccentric musings and discordant relationships with fellow band members have evoked some animadversion from fans and critics over the years, the group has always found its impetus in Che's superhuman drumming.
Without a doubt, Ian Williams, the band's co-founder and original guitarist, is an incredibly gifted musician (his current band, Battles, has garnered nothing but praise over their first three releases). But on Worldwide Listening Problem, Don Caballero's first new album in six years, only the most discerning listener will miss Williams' daedal pickings. What everybody will hear and love, as they have for many years now, is the incredibly rococo percussive assault of Damon Che. Because of the complexity behind the unusual time signatures that are often employed in the group's music (as well as the masterful shifts in time signature, mid-song), people often refer to Don Caballero as the embodiment of math-rock, a genre tag which the band has abhorred since they were first hit with it. To bring everyone up to speed, math-rock consists primarily of instrumentals; melody takes second priority to abrasive percussion, intricate bass lines, crunchy riffs and very precise guitar plucking. With Worldwide Listening Problem, Che reassembles Don Cab, sans all its other original members. Pat Morris, the original bassist, left after For Respect, the group's first album. Mike Banfield, who shared guitar duties with Williams, dropped out after the band's third album. And in 2001, with the departure of Williams, whom Che has referred to in an artistic sense as his "natural born enemy," the group that fans came to know and love was no longer. But like any true indie-rock institution (Sonic Youth's longevity immediately comes to mind), Don Caballero just wouldn't die. Feeling as if the band's legacy was not quite ready for the history books, Che enlisted Creta Bourzia (another Pennsylvanian math-rock outfit) to help craft the new album, which happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to every Don Cab album preceding it. The fact is, although all the players are new, the band has never drifted very far from the original sound of For Respect. The distortion and epic chords may have slightly waned, but the band's penchant toward sonic annihilation has not diminished the slightest. Released on the notable metal label Relapse Records, Worldwide Listening Party marks the joyous return of the reliable but always dynamic and impressive Don Caballero.
Freaks, Fire and Fun
You can't keep a tramp on a leash. Some dogs were meant to roam free. So were train hoppers, fire dancers and sword swallowers. Eddy Joe Cotton and his fourteen-strong troupe, The Yard Dogs Road Show, bring with them an insatiable lust for travel and classic vaudeville and burlesque that is definitely not your grandparents' road show. "A lot of us were raised by very eccentric families and artists and strange communities!" Cotton said, laughing. Cotton is the author of 2003's Hobo: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America. The book is an autobiography of sorts, Cotton said. "I rode freight trains for about eight years off and on as a young man. It's really mostly a coming of age story revolving around the whole hobo culture and traveling culture in America." Cotton traveled alone for years, then got two friends together who also had the traveling bug. The road show started eight years ago as a three-piece jug band. "Me and a couple friends traveling around in my car playing music," Cotton said. "There wasn't too much intention behind it other than having a good time. Art and music seemed like a good way to share the experience. We're all travelers; it's as much a lifestyle as it is a show." And that show, which some lucky folks might have caught at this past Oregon Country Fair, fills the stage with skits and music for a night of performance you can hardly believe unless you've seen it. Sexy girls in thigh high stockings, top hats and not much else cavort to stanzas of hobo poetry about happy endings and surreal beginnings while the band threads it all together with a seamless soundtrack. The band "takes as much of the stage and trades as much on the energy as the performers do," Cotton said. He described the band as taking from gypsy traditions, circus music and rock and roll, "but it's our own sound." The Yard Dogs Road Show appears at 9 pm Friday, Aug. 18 at the WOW Hall. $12 adv., $15 dos. — Vanessa Salvia
Punky Politics from PDX I'd heard that Myshkin's work was political, so when I reached her by phone I was expecting prepared speeches, the standard facts and figures. But her songs, like our conversation, defy easy categorization.
Her songs are political, true, but driving most of them is not so much anger as a sweet, mournful outrage. Even in her song "Lied," a scathing attack on the current administration, her writing exhibits a dry, ironic humor that makes her barbs sharper; she goes for the death of a thousand cuts rather than a quick bludgeoning. But in conversation she is shy and circumspect, wanting to make sure her exact meaning is understood. It's like that when I ask her to explain the title of her new EP Sigh Semaphore. Is the sigh one of resignation? "I wouldn't say resignation is the word. It's more like a realization that politics, the political, is — I can't really explain it," she says. It may sound like a non-answer, but hearing it from her it made perfect sense to me. Whether we like it or not, politics is unavoidable. Myshkin is a self-described punk chanteuse, a singer and songwriter now living in Portland via New Orleans where she launched her career in 1993. "Where I lived, we would have been at least 9 feet underwater," she says. She doesn't say much more, but her silence reveals floodwaters of emotion. Myshkin's voice is lovely, but it is in her lyrics that she really shines. She excels in finding new angles of approach to old topics, and her words continually offer surprising and rather literary observations. Her band, Ruby Warblers, is adept at various styles, and the songs constantly dabble and borrow from many genres. Expect an evening of sly and surprising songcraft and politics. Myshkin's Ruby Warblers play with Luna Tart at 9 pm Saturday, Aug. 19 at Luna. 21+ show. $7. — John Ginn
Strangers No More
I imagine Hello Stranger's self-titled debut album will most often be filed in the pop music bin at your local record store, and this is probably the most fitting place for it. But somehow lumping this foursome in with a genre typically associated with the fluffier, less serious end of the music spectrum feels a little misleading. Yes, they're über-stylish and lean heavily on synthesized keyboards (Juliette Commagere is often pictured belting out her vocals from behind a massive "keytar" while wearing thigh high boots) and the majority of the songs on the album have that jaunty, toe-tapping, melody-driven quality that places it just shy of straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. But rather than a bubbly collection of dance tunes or love songs, Hello Stranger has produced an artful album that utilizes an appealing pop medium to explore the depths of tenuous human relationships and uncomfortable moments in life. A first listen reveals 13 original songs catchy enough to be immediately hummable but lyrically diverse enough to require familiarity with the rewind button on your CD player. The album has an effortless, almost perfectly un-produced quality, not surprising considering the band's collaboration with genius producer Ry Cooder, who also happens to be the father of founding member Joachim Cooder. Hello Stranger had the sense to extend their creative powers to their publicity photos, which feature band members Cooder, Commagere, Jared Smith and Ben Messelbeck posing as characters in bizarre and hilarious scenarios (see below). As a band, they present as a complete package; fun, hip, talented and likely to put on a visually interesting, provocative and musically enjoyable show. They even blow up a funky dance tune in Spanish for those who like a little international flair in their evening. Hello Stranger plays at 9 pm Wednesday, Aug. 23 at Sam Bond's Garage. 21+ show. $4. — Adrienne van der Valk
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
