Arts: Page 239

The Original Super Group

Jukebox musical Million Dollar Quartet celebrates the 1956 session that brought together Cash, Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins

Theater

If we could time travel, rock-‘n’-roll fans might want to dial their wayback machines to Memphis’ Sun Records, Dec. 4, 1956, when legends Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash created an unforgettable musical session.    Perkins, already a powerhouse with hits like “Blue Suede Shoes,” had booked the studio that day and hired a little-known session player to back him up — a guy named Jerry Lee Lewis.  Continue reading →

Arts Hound

Visual Arts

Metamorphose is back, baby. The third annual upcycled fashion and art show hosted by St. Vincent de Paul April 23 is slated to become an Earth Day weekend favorite.  “It’s something that engages the community, honors our artists locally and people get to participate with voting for their favorite pieces,” says Mitra Chester, SVdP’s resident designer. Continue reading →

About a Boy

Film

It is a peculiarity of art that its failures are often more moving, more profoundly beautiful, than its successes, especially when the artist failing is a great one. Perfection has a monolithic aspect, airtight and intimidating; it can leave us cold. Better, sometimes, the flaw, the frayed end, which reveals the Icarus burn of lofty ambitions. Humanity, you might say, is never more humane than when it strives and crashes. Continue reading →

His Aim is True

Elvis Costello takes a ‘Detour’ to Eugene

Music
Elvis Costello

He descended on the Carter era of gas lines and bloody carpets and post-love funk like some infernal geek bastard child of Buddy Holly and Johnny Lydon, spitting out lyrical venom over gorgeous hooks and bellicose riffs that plumbed the deepest, darkest wells of pop music — billboard fuzz attacking itself with newborn impunity — all of it churned out with a churlish amphetamine sneer that belied his antediluvian genius for melodic universalism within the three-minute cliché of radio-radio rock. Continue reading →

Musicking Around

A plethora of early music performances hits Eugene

Music
Siri Vik

Eugene has long been one of the beacons of so-called early music, which includes basically anything composed (in Europe) before J.S. Bach died and Mozart was born in the mid-18th century. The Oregon Bach Festival has been the big kahuna, but the city boasts an indie early music scene consisting of historically informed performance practice musicians in outfits like the Oregon Bach Collegium, Vox Resonat and the University of Oregon’s splendid early music program. Continue reading →

Back Beat

Music

In music venue news, The Barn Light East (845 East 8th Ave.) has announced they will be hosting live music.  Barn Light co-owner Thomas Pettus-Czar tells KVAL-TV: “As opposed to other environments in which [music is] sort of in the background, this is an opportunity where folks can grab a beverage, sit down and really pay attention to the artists.” Look for show announcements soon.  Continue reading →