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Modern
Rock's Modern Lover Jonathan Richman is a rock and roll god. Maybe he's not on the level of say, an Iggy Pop or a Lou Reed (one of Richman's early influences). But he definitely sits nicely with the likes of Tom Verlaine, Bob Mould and even a less volatile Mark E. Smith. And although Richman has tailored a highly acclaimed solo career, his fame blossomed from one fateful record from 1976, The Modern Lovers.
According to a self-penned 1983 press biography, Richman's impetus for starting his own band came when he first heard the music of The Velvet Underground. The story continues that when Richman was 18, he left home for New York to hang with the Velvets. After a brief, transient affair on the couch of the band's manager, Steve Sesnick, Richman relocated to the notorious Hotel Albert, where he first hashed out some early versions of Modern Lovers classics such as "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso." Jaded with his lack of success at getting anything solid going musically, Richman returned to Boston, where he connected with his old friend John Felice, who was 15 at the time, and The Modern Lovers name was coined. Soon after, Richman and Felice picked up drummer David Robinson and keyboard player Jerry Harrison. Between 1971 and 1972, Felice left the group to eventually form punk progenitors the Real Kids, and Richman, Robinson, Harrison and bass player Ernie Brooks went on to record the first few songs of their one and only LP, the posthumously released The Modern Lovers. This album was originally intended to be released by Warner Bros. records; the label had offered up producers like John Cale and Kim Fowley to record the band. However, after some growing dissatisfaction led Richman to disband the group, Warner Bros. and Richman went their separate ways. It wasn't until 1976, when Beserkley Records, the label Richman would record for until 1981, bought the album that it actually saw the light of day. After the band's break up, Robinson went on to co-found The Cars and Harrison connected with David Byrne and the Talking Heads. The band's mastermind, Richman, went on to reform The Modern Lovers under several different lineups and also forged a solo career replete with nearly a dozen albums. But it was the early, three-chord, Velvet Underground-influenced, proto-punk sounds of that first Modern Lovers album, with its seminal "Roadrunner," "Pablo Picasso" and "Girlfriend," that truly entrenched Richman's reputation in rock history. Don't miss this chance to catch a modern rock god.
The
Art of Listening Way back in the mid-20th century, when abstract art was just beginning to smear and squiggle its way onto canvases in New York and Paris, a common response to, say, a Jackson Pollock dripsterpiece went something like, "Geez, my kid could do that!" Now, in our less Philistine, more enlightened times, it's "What! A million bucks?! My kid could do that!" Some listeners new to free jazz and other improvisational music might have a similar reaction. How hard can it be to just make up sounds? And why would anyone want to listen to them? "I believe that free improv is an essential expression of a group's collective talent," says Daniel Heila, who directs the annual Festival of Improvised Music and Moving Image. "The best of everyone emerges in unusually satisfying forms." Heila, who also co-founded the ear-tingling Hundredth Monkey ensemble at the UO music school, is a multitalented musician (flutist, composer, blues guitarist) and filmmaker who created IMMI Fest to showcase free improv music and experimental video. This weekend, Dec. 8 and 9, the third edition brings two of the West Coast's most accomplished free improv groups to DIVA. The Oregon/British Columbia based Knotty Ensemble and the Bay Area's Three Pipes will be accompanying classic silent films (Friday, F.W. Murnau's 1931 Tabu; Saturday, Yasujjiro Ozu's 1934 A Story of Floating Weeds). IMMI Fest also includes short videos by local media artists. Your kid couldn't do this. In the hands of experienced players, free improv is no more random splashes of notes than Pollock's paintings were of colors. At IMMI Fest, "everyone will be working hard to follow the group's intuitive responses to each other and to the moving image," Heila says. Sounds will range "from melodic soloing to group noisemaking to intense harmonic exploration, all done with an ear to form, phrasing and color." Heila distinguishes jazz , in which musicians strive for transcendence by starting from rigorously defined forms, from free improv, in which the players "seek the forms to hold the sounds together." More experienced improvisers display "a sensitivity and willingness to defer to the emerging form," Heila says. "Listening is the key to quality improvisation of all types," Heila explains. And the players' success also depends on the audience's willingness to "strive to recognize the form the musicians are conjuring." It can be like staring at one of those colored-dot puzzles and finally seeing the hitherto hidden picture come into focus. Far from the chaotic screech fest you might expect (and which, admittedly, plagues too much self-indulgent improvising), IMMI Fest performances are often more about mood and texture and can be surprisingly gentle and moving. They can also get pretty fierce, but, with players as insightful and experienced as the Knotty Ensemble, never boring. Free improv works particularly well in accompanying classic silent films, which has become a staple of vanguard music groups in many major cities. "Early silent film was free of some of the filmic clichés that hinder modern efforts," Heila says. "In a way, these old dramas are closer to our subconscious view of the world than recent work. Given the primal quality of our aural memory reservoir, I think that audience members have a heightened response to the moving image when the music being created at the same time is unique to the time and place. It will never sound the same way again."
Improvisation has a history as long as that of music itself; Bach and Beethoven and many other classical composers were renowned improvisers. But the art reached its pinnacle in American jazz, and jazzers are still improvising new ways to make it up as they go. In recent years, jazz and jam band music have been edging toward each other in variously fruitful ways, with Medeski Martin & Wood being among the most prominent fusioneers. One of the finest jazzy jammers hails from the birthplace of jazz itself. New Orleans drummer Stanton Moore joined jam-funk pioneers Galactic in the early 1990s and has worked with masters such as Charlie Hunter, Skerik, the Meters, John Scofield and more. His groovy trio plays the WOW Hall on Dec. 12. For more than seven centuries, the members of the Mevlevi order, a mystical Turkish Islamic sect, have frequently celebrated the Sema ceremony to become vessels for divine blessings. Silently chanting the name of Allah, dozens of these white-clad semazens — better known here as Whirling Dervishes — continuously spin counterclockwise, their long skirts billowing around them. The dancers are accompanied by musical settings of the poetry of their spiritual ancestor, the great 13th century Mevlevi mystic poet, Rumi. The Sema ceremony can be one of the most ineffably magical experiences you'll ever witness, and on Tuesday, Dec. 12, you can see and even participate when the Mevlevi Order of America sponsors one at the UO's EMU Ballroom. This is a rare treat for Eugene and features master musicians from Turkey as well as local semazens, all directed by Postneshin Jelaluddin Loras.
Beauty, Bittersweet
It's a little rough writing about a band when you have only an EP's worth of music to dicuss. Not that Denver's DeVotchKa has only one EP; the band has three albums and a good chunk of the soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine under their collective belts. I'm just deprived. But their most recent release, Curse Your Little Heart, is worth the many, many listens I've put it through over the last week. The six tracks are largely covers, including Siouxie and the Banshees' "The Last Beat of My Heart," an ominous version of Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" and the made-famous-by-Sinatra (unless you're a fan of the Robbie Williams/Nicole Kidman version) "Somethin' Stupid." But these sound nothing like the songs' better-known versions. DeVotchKa's core members play theremin, guitar, bouzouki, piano, trumpet, violin, accordion, sousaphone, double bass, glockenspiel and percussion — and probably other things as well. Their sound is a swirling mix of international folk, swoony cabaret and something you'd have to call rock because that's such a general term it covers nearly everything else DeVotchKa does. There's a certain theatrical streak through the whole thing: Hope dances with loneliness, quirkiness sits neatly with beauty, and the resulting melancholy sings with urgency. "How It Ends" (listen to it at www.myspace.com/devotchkamusic), from Sunshine and the band's 2004 album, is a perfectly compelling track, repeatedly building with piano and strings and easing back with frontman Nick Urata's smooth, heartbroken vocals (reminiscent of one of 2004's critical darlings, Arcade Fire) until the two join for a bittersweet close so gorgeous it should appear on lovelorn mix CDs for years to come. DeVotchKa plays with Eric Bachmann (of Crooked Fingers) at 9 pm Wednesday, Dec. 13 at the WOW Hall. $12 adv., $14 door. — Molly Templeton
Watch the "Joy"
The Eugene Symphony has been offering up one big hit of the classical music world after another this year, and this fest-of-the-greats continues with one of the most recognizable pieces in the canon: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, from which comes the "Ode to Joy." I'm partial to the second movement of the symphony (it's superb for climbing Mount Pisgah, say), but everyone knows that "Ode to Joy" bit of the fourth movement (and if you don't, check out the clawhammer banjo version on YouTube). EW has sniffed out some exciting pieces of info for our readers. Fun fact number one: The "Ode to Joy" part is the official music of the European Union. Who knew? Fun fact number two: Friedrich Schiller, author of the prose used as lyrics by Beethoven, is about as famous as Shakespeare (just not in the U.S.). The Eugene Symphony Chorus — 120 people, including UO students who are staying after finals week is over, under the direction of Sharon Paul — will knock your socks off. Fun fact number two: You can leave your binocs at home, for the symphony is providing one of those rock-concert live video screens on each side of the stage. That's right: Watch the sweat dripping from conductor Giancarlo Guerrero's face! Watch the cheeks of the horn players grow red! Watch the singers' mouths contort around those umlauted vowels! Other attractions include the beauty of Bruckner's Psalm 150 and the Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music, which chorus director Sharon Paul explains "is a great contrast to the Schiller" because the lyrics come from The Merchant of Venice. Tickets start as low as the price of a week's worth of eggnog lattes (and don't worry: The video screens mean even the nosebleed seats have a view), so pony up the cash and relax into the huge, gorgeous music. The Eugene Symphony performs at 8 pm Saturday, Dec. 9 at the Hult Center. $15-$51.— Suzi Steffen
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