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The
11th Hour of a Dynamic Career Last time I caught Del tha Funkee Homosapien in concert, he was absolutely raving about the Sega Dreamcast. Fast forward about five years and little has changed for the Bay Area rapper who pretty much defined underground hip hop all through the '90s. Sega has bowed out of the game hardware arena (and word has it that Del recently got all his game consoles ripped off), but the man with possibly the slickest cadence in all of hip hop shows no signs of wear as he approaches his mid-30s.
Fresh off his first DVD release, The 11th Hour, Del's upcoming performance at the WOW Hall marks his first in Eugene in over two years. The DVD kind of encapsulates all that's been happening with Del during this virtual absence from the hip hop scene; it marks about three years since his last formal appearance with Hieroglyphics and nearly six since his last studio album as a solo artist. The DVD features live performances (including footage from Del's last performance at the McDonald Theatre) as well as a candid look into Del's personal life. It's kind of hard to envision Del actually changing or "growing up" in any fashion. Not to say that the man hasn't matured as an artist and as an individual; however, his music, at least since No Need For Alarm, seems eternally affixed to a very insouciant style or framework. It could be Del's über-smooth flow or his whimsical and sometimes sci-fi subject matter that lends to his overall dulcet demeanor. Whatever it is, even with some huge successes, including the ingenious Deltron 3030 project (which connected Del to the burgeoning indie-rocker cum indie-hip hopper market) as well as his contribution to the commercially auspicious Gorillaz projects, Del seems to perpetually ride the periphery of mainstream culture — fading in and out of the limelight, choosing rather to glean new disciples through a staunch DIY ethos. During his hiatus, as captured throughout the DVD, Del has been brushing up on his musical theory — reading, studying and perfecting new ideas and techniques including a full immersion into laptop composition. The most exciting news on the horizon is not only the forthcoming 11th Hour LP but also the sequel to the epic Deltron 3030 saga, which purportedly has been coming along well with all the original players — Dan the Automator, Kid Koala and Del (aka Deltron Zero) — wrapping up their parts. The rumors are false — Del isn't dead, and he hasn't taken up crack. The man just had to withdraw to the temple for a minute to meditate and train. Big things are about to happen.
Stage
Presence When Cindy Ingram began booking bands, she wanted to use her position to promote female musicianship in Eugene. "It's very symbolic for a woman to be on stage," she says. "It takes a lot of courage."
GRRRLZ Rock started off as a modest plan: get a line-up of bands featuring women in rock and book them monthly at the Wetlands. But once Ingram floated her idea, she was blown away by the ensuing buzz. "Within a matter of three weeks I had five venues and 20 sponsors. People were calling saying basically 'Can I give you money?'" Ingram began putting out feelers to a variety of acts; the response was so enthusiastic she found herself with more than 35 performers to fill five venues on five nights. "We actually had some big regional names that wanted to be a part of it, but the dates didn't work out. It has been a great lesson for me; it pays to ask. Just go out there and do it. It has been very encouraging and validating." With a lineup including big local names like Deb Cleveland Band, The Ovulators and Norma Fraser, Ingram knew GRRRLZ Rock had drawing power, but she wanted to make sure the bill reflected a diversity of female artists. Little Girl Big Spoon, Mary Ferris and The Subterranian Blackjacks are examples of teen or preteen musicians at the beginning of their careers. "There is a real generational element to these shows," Ingram says. Kyra Kelly of The Dead Americans says she was honored to be included in the line-up. The rock band's music often delves into personal struggles for individuality. Kelly feels GRRRLZ Rock fits perfectly with the Dead Americans' belief that society needs role models who choose to go against the grain. "We live in a warrior culture," Kelly says. "Men and women compete with each other. Women compete with each other. It is nice to be coming together as a community within a spirit of cooperation." Ingram agrees. "It really feels like this idea is connecting the women, creating this budding music 'scene,'" she says. The experience has inspired Ingram to coordinate with other female booking agents to put on an outdoor women's music festival this summer. "If this GRRRLZ Rock thing is any indication of how supported it will be, I have no doubt we can pull it off." The Dead Americans, The Ginger Hustlers and The Co-Stars play the Wetlands at 10 pm Saturday, Nov. 11. $5. See the complete GRRRLZ Rock lineup at www.myspace.com/cindyingram
New
Music from Near and Far For half a century, while ruled by Soviet forces, the people of Estonia turned to their folk music heritage to preserve their national identity. Inspired by composer-musicologists Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis collected and preserved tunes from various cultures in his homeland — some nearly extinct — and also made Estonian and other Eastern European music the basis for many of his original compositions. Although he hasn't achieved the renown of his countryman Arvo Pärt, the 76-year-old Tormis is regarded as one of the world's foremost composers, an inventive orchestrator of voices whose choral music is among the most colorful and intense of the 20th century. Next week, he's coming to Oregon to teach and attend concerts of his music at the UO's biennial Music Today Festival. On Nov. 18, in the most important Eugene musical event of the fall season, a bevy of vocal groups — Oregon Repertory Singers, Pacific Youth Choir, Unistus, University Singers and UO Chamber Choir — will perform a welcome variety of Tormis's sturdiest works, from muscular, vibrant men's songs to chant-influenced meditations to fervent, dramatic songs of nature, war and peace. The nearly 300 singers will be abetted by another Estonian visitor, acclaimed conductor Hirvo Surva, who directs two of Europe's finest male choral ensembles.
The festival also features the Oregon Wind Ensemble on Nov. 17, with music by Luciano Berio, Igor Stravinsky (his Octet, one of the turning points in 20th century music), Michael Daugherty (whose music highlighted the Eugene Symphony's previous season) and more. More Stravinsky (a suite from his breakthrough Firebird ballet) is on tap at the UO Symphony's Nov. 19 concert, and on Nov. 21 you can hear 21st century music from UO student composers in the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Oregon Composers Forum. It's appropriate that a new music festival features three new UO faculty members: hornist Lydia Van Dreel, oboist Amy Goeser Kolb and trumpeter Brian McWhorter. Fondly remembered for new music performances during his UO student days, McWhorter went on to Juilliard and gigs with New York new music ensembles and orchestras. Compelling 20th century music (Poulenc, Britten, Hindemith, Douglas Moore) also pervades the UO Opera Ensemble's Nov. 11 concert and the visiting Center City Brass Quintet's concert Nov. 12, which features music of Bernstein, Gershwin, Ingolf Dahl and more. All these UO shows happen at Beall Concert Hall. You can make Nov. 18 an all-new music evening by heading over to Tsunami Books at 5 pm (before the UO Tormis concert) for a free concert by local composers, poets and performance artists, including Shandi Sinnamon (best known hereabouts for her work at Willamette Rep), Paul Safar & Nancy Wood, Gary Noland, Brian Cutean, David Rhodes, Debra Mathis, Carter McKenzie, David Koteen and more. The show culminates in Peter Schickele's setting of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's classic "A Coney Island of the Mind." Props to Cherry Blossom productions and Tsunami for providing this much-needed showcase for local creative talents. Trombone master Roswell Rudd was one of the key figures in 1960s avant-garde jazz and then one of the pioneers of world music in jazz, recording with Toumani Diabate and creating several musical adventures in Mali. He also assisted the great folk song collector Alan Lomax for many years, so his experiments fusing jazz and world music resound with the kind of integrity often missing from gimmicky exotica. Rudd's latest project pairs him with the sublime singer Badma Khanda's Mongolian Buryat Band, melding American jazz and blues with Mongolian throat singing and folk music. On their 2005 CD, this combination sounds a lot more coherent than you might expect; sometimes it's just boogie accompanied by Central Asian instruments (flute, jaw harp, lute, fiddles), but more often the component elements combine elegantly to create moments of great beauty. Any show with the redoubtable Rudd is worth the price, but this special combo's Nov. 15 show at the Shedd is one of only nine US appearances. Jazz and world music fans alike should give this one a chance. A different world music fusion — with so-called New Age music — drives Jai Uttal's work. After the New York native moved to California to study with the great Indian master Ali Akbar Khan, his Indian-influenced recordings became favorites in yoga studios and incense-heavy gift shops. But his pop success shouldn't discourage you from attending the multi-instrumentalist/singer's Nov. 16 concert at First Christian Church; he can conjure a lustrous atmosphere. A pair of classical concerts at the Hult Center feature some of the 20th century's most popular orchestral music. The symphonic dances Leonard Bernstein arranged from his great West Side Story highlight the Eugene Symphony's Nov. 16 show, along with Samuel Barber's School for Scandal overture and Mozart's best-loved piano concerto, the 21st. And the Oregon Mozart Players and Eugene Concert Choir join Oregon Festival Choirs and the Eugene Ballet Nov. 11-12 in Carl Orff's dramatic Carmina Burana. Live music + dance = excitement; read more in Rachael Carnes' preview.
A Mid-November Night's Dream
Atmospheric, vaguely sinister and introspectively lovely, San Francisco-based Vetiver is one of those bands you want to know more about as soon as the first song starts. In the case of Vetiver's second album, To Find Me Gone, that song is the building, moody "Been So Long." Vetiver is the project of Andy Cabic, a singer-songwriter and compatriot of "freak folk" icon Devendra Banhart; the two take turns playing each other's songs, as Banhart appears on To Find Me Gone and Cabic tours with Banhart's band. Aside from Cabic, 20 people are credited with playing these often-melancholy tracks. From a moaning violin to a foot-stomping acoustic guitar, Vetiver's songs have a handmade feeling, almost collage-esque; perhaps it's the result of having so many players. But To Find Me Gone's tracks, though they can meander, resonate with a strange sense of certainty. It's a heady mix, and one well worth a listen. Sharing the bill with Vetiver is Eric Johnson, the main force behind The Fruit Bats, a distressingly underappreciated band that's something of a musical cousin (and Sub Pop labelmate) to The Shins. The Fruit Bats' crafty pop songs tend to the delicately upbeat and sweetly harmonized; though it's unclear whether Johnson will play known Fruit Bats tunes or something new, we can hope for some of the sunny catchiness last displayed on the Bats' second album, 2005's Spelled in Bones. Vetiver, Eric Johnson and Ponieheart play at 9 pm Thursday, Nov. 9 at Sam Bond's Garage. 21+ show. $8. — Molly Templeton
Ethereal Folk Rock If you were one of the lucky ones at the Indigo Girls concert in the summer of 2005 or the Dar Williams concert in Portland last fall, you probably remember the unearthly sounds coming from the opening act, Girlyman, at the beginning of "Son of a Preacher Man." And then you maybe went wild, rocking out with the band. Or maybe you recall the tears in your eyes when the musicians combined harmony and beauty in "Song for Peace," and you said to yourself, so that's what all my folk-geek buddies have been talking about! Girlyman. Freakin' WOW. Then you obtained their album Little Star and went gaga for songs like "I Know Where You Are" and "This is Me" and "Young James Dean." You lived a much, much happier life, toting the songs around everywhere on your iPod, playing them when you had copy to crank out and when you were cooking and when you were driving and sometimes when you were working out and sometimes when you were chilling, only wishing that the trio would move from Brooklyn to the West Coast so you could see them all the time the way your New York buds do. But now you rejoice greatly, for they're coming, and they're not an opening act. They're simply themselves, Ty and Nate and Doris, the trio of multitalented lyricists and harmonizers and, OK, fabulously queer hotties. And you are pleased. Extremely pleased. So pleased that you're planning to take your partner plus everyone else you know to the show and, afterwards, walk home in a dazed stupor of joy. You suddenly realize that if you had any sense, you wouldn't be sharing this information with thousands upon thousands of Weekly readers because the venue, after all, is not that big … Girlyman plays at 8 pm Saturday, Nov. 11 at Luna. 21+ show. $13.50 adv., $15 door. — Suzi Steffen
Vinyl Heaven
Heavenly Oceans' new LP is a soundtrack in search of a film — or maybe a video game — featuring skateboarders cruising SoCal oceanfront esplanades, breaking out in Spike Jonze-directed synchronized Lindy hop dance moves. Fittingly — and perhaps too obviously — the album is titled The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. With Jake Pavlak on guitar, Tony Figoli on drums and Shehan Nattar on melodica/pump organ, HO recall early '60s surf rock with poppy drums and finger-picked guitars. It's 24 minutes of retro pop mini-explosions that shift from motorcycle blitzes through Pasadena ("Brain Sturgeon") to easygoing boy-meets-girl love scenes ("Raenie Afternoon") to closing credits ("Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"). At three minutes, five seconds, "Capricorn One" is the longest and heartiest song on the album, combining space-dub drumbeats with resurgent melodica notes. Eerily reminiscent of a vocal-less McCoys' "Hang On Sloopy," Original Soundtrack is a mean celebration of good times and boogie nights. "Rinky Dink" has a Traveling Wilburys feel to it; the only thing missing is the raspy Tom Petty voice. And that's too bad; the right vocalist could elevate HO to a higher realm of heavenly. Luckily, Original Soundtrack will be released on vinyl, a perfect complement to their AM radio menagerie. Heavenly Oceans album release parties, with Los Mex Pistols del Norte, are at 6:30 pm (free, all-ages) and 9:30 pm ($5, 21+) Saturday, Nov. 11 at Sam Bond's Garage. — Chuck Adams
Belew Moon Over McDonald In a nation swarming with leaders who don't lead, perverted moralists and so-called "artists" who aren't, it's good to know a creative rhinoceros like Adrian Belew exists. Adrian Belew isn't the most recognizable name. Most people have never heard of him, even though they have heard his distinctive vocals and neck-wringing guitar plenty. Over the years, Belew's inspired talents have caused him to be snapped up by some of the top musicians around. Discovered by Frank Zappa in the early 1970s, Belew soon became a hot guitar property. While touring with Zappa, Belew was recruited by David Bowie for studio and tour work. Soon after, Belew was re-recruited by the Talking Heads, and then again by Robert Fripp of King Crimson. All in a ten year span. Since then, Belew has collaborated with Les Claypool (Primus), Laurie Anderson, Nine Inch Nails, Danny Carey (Tool), Peter Gabriel, Béla Fleck, Tori Amos, Henry Rollins and Ben Folds. He's also produced more than 20 solo albums. Taking his predecessors' hints, Belew recently conscripted the next generation of rock prodigies in the form of the Slicks, a brother/sister team, who make up the new Adrian Belew Power Trio. At 19 and 20, Eric (drums) and Julie (bass) Slick perform Belew's insane repertoire (even the twisted King Crimson stuff) flawlessly. Personally, I think Belew's drive comes from a self-induced "Boy Named Sue" complex, which began when he changed his name from Robert to Adrian in the 1970s. A man named Adrian always has something to prove. Even if he named himself. Adrian Belew and California Guitar Trio play at 7 pm Monday, Nov. 13 at the McDonald Theatre. $18 adv., $20 door. — John Dooley
Off the Road
Fans of popular cow-punk bluegrass band Split Lip Rayfield really mean "fare well," and most of the goodwill is directed towards guitarist/vocalist Kirk Rundstrom, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in February. Rundstrom's prognosis is uncertain, with his treatment being largely unsuccessful, and after the band's current tour he plans to retire from music to devote his energy to restoring his health. Rundstrom isn't letting cancer kick his ass, and he's found that playing music for packed houses is the best therapy. "I'm very grateful to be out of bed and able to play," Rundstrom says. "It's good that we get to play again. Since January I've been basically stuck in bed." Playing and singing each night takes its toll on him, but it's something he loves to do and doesn't want to give up. "I'm in a lot of pain and it doesn't come easy anymore, but I'm doing it," he says. "You got to get up and get out the front door. I could lay down and quit, but I don't feel like that today." Just because this is a farewell tour doesn't mean audiences can expect wimpy, sad sack shows. The band's as intense as ever, and no one is surrendering their aggro time changes, tight arrangements or dizzying picking and plucking. To make matters more interesting, mandolinist Wayne Gottstine is back on stage for these last shows. Fans can get updates or make monetary donations at the band's website, www.splitliprayfield.comSplit Lip Rayfield and Hillstomp play at 9 pm, Tuesday, Nov. 14 at John Henry's. 21+ show. $10 — Vanessa Salvia
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