Arts: Page 331
Blood Proxy
In 1984, a pair of shaggy Jewish brothers from a suburb of Minneapolis released a low-budget neo-noir crime thriller that, with its hard edges and bold style, would do for independent cinema what Nirvana, a few years later, would do for indie music. Continue reading
Post-Pop-Punk Madness
When the Thermals began in 2002, lead singer Hutch Harris never imagined that the band would tour more than a dozen countries in the subsequent decade. Harris, also the songwriter and lead guitarist for the band, founded the Thermals as a project when he began recording all instruments himself on a 4-track cassette recorder from his kitchen in Portland. Along with fellow bandmember Kathy Foster, Harris moved from Northern California to Portland in 1996, jamming to Northwest bands like Built to Spill and Nirvana along the way. Continue reading
Get Hip to Juan Wauters
Juan Wauters makes serious work of playful things. From his 2014 release N.A.P. North American Poetry, “Let Me Hip You To Something” features goofy anachronistic slang, and “Woke Up Feeling Sleepy” includes a kitschy Spanish spoken-word middle bit. Elsewhere, “Breathing (Feat. Carmelle)” lifts the tune of Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to be With You,” adding a New York, anti-folk twist. Continue reading
Bathstime
I had my first beer at a Baths show in high school circa 2007. I was at my friend’s birthday party, and it was also the night Will Wiesenfeld made his debut as that now-famous moniker. Seven years later, the electronic musician is making his debut performance in Eugene. Since that 2007 house show, Baths has racked up gigs like Sasquatch Music Festival and has become a bit of a viral celebrity after receiving multiple “Best New Music” nods from Pitchfork. Continue reading
Rapper YG only just released his debut album
Rapper YG only just released his debut album, My Krazy Life, in March. In the summer of 2013, however, he garnered more than 75 million views on YouTube with his single “My Nigga.” You could say he has a following. For someone who’s not even old enough to rent a car, YG has already worked with quite the hip-hop roster: Jeezy, Rich Homie Quan, Ty Dolla $ign and Drake. YG brings his My Krazy Life Tour to Dusk nightclub (44 E. 7th) 9 pm Thursday, May 15. Continue reading
Home is Where the Hate Is
Oregon Contemporary Theatre explores racism and real estate in Clybourne Park
A witty, often biting examination of neighborhood integration, white flight, gentrification and just how far we have not come in the last half century, Clybourne Park is playwright Bruce Norris’ 21st-century response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, in which a black family plans to move into a white neighborhood. Norris’ play, now at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, takes Hansberry’s tale of balancing assimilation and heritage full circle as white professionals return with grand plans to the neighborhoods their grandparents fled. Continue reading
Arts Hound
Pierre Daura doggedly searched for his “self” through painting, in a time of revolution and evolution. Continue reading
Preserving the Underground
Eugene Underground Music Archive collects the past and builds for the future
“I was born in 1984,” says Nicole Anne Colbath. “For me that Clash show wasn’t gonna happen.” Colbath is referring to the legendary British punk band’s early ’80s concert at the UO’s McArthur Court. A flyer for that show is now safely housed by the Eugene Underground Music Archive, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to the collection of flyers and ephemera,” filed with 3,000 other Eugene-area concert flyers mostly from the late ’70s through the ’90s. “It is sort of nostalgia,” Colbath adds. “I get bummed about shows I missed.” Continue reading
Lafa Taylor’s “Eugene”
After an eight-year break, Lafa Taylor (who now resides in a "bus/solar-powered mobile studio" in Oakland, Calif.) recently released Not One Thing with a special valentine to his hometown: "Eugene (feat. Marv Ellis)." Continue reading