The Hult Lobby goes psychedelic and avant-garde
Arts: Page 344
She and Him
Spike Jonze’s Her takes place in a clearly futuristic Los Angeles, a spotless, sparse playground for disconnected souls, filmed as a place that is perpetually sunny and disconcertingly sad. Through this shiny, metal-and-glass metropolis march hundreds of humans having the sort of disconcerting earbud conversations we’re becoming accustomed to now. These folks aren’t talking to a friend on the other side of the country, though; they’re talking to their operating systems. Continue reading
Matt Knight Arena has booked Grammy-winning rock group Tool and pop king Bruno Mars
Matt Knight Arena has booked Grammy-winning rock group Tool for March 7 and pop king Bruno Mars for Aug. 11. We’re glad to see these big names in music coming to Eugene, but besides these two concerts, a handful of UO basketball games and monster truck rumbles, Matt Knight’s event calendar is glaringly empty for 2014. What happened to concerts being a crucial source of revenue? And why is one of the country’s most expensive basketball arenas ($200 million-plus) sitting empty most of the year when it could be booking bigger music acts? Continue reading
La Surf Rock
It feels great to be back on the road
Seattle surf rock revivalists La Luz are lucky to be alive. Just this past November, on the way home after a gig in Boise, the band was involved in a serious car wreck. Their van was totaled and their gear ruined. Luckily, the band members incurred relatively minor injuries. Undeterred, La Luz recouped and is now back out on the road. Continue reading
Reggae Brewhaha
For a town who voted Sol Seed EW’s Next Big Thing 2013, and whose big summer concerts included Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution and Matisyahu, the Passafire-Ballyhoo! double bill Feb. 6 at Cozmic is bound to be a big show. Continue reading
New Toads
Nowhere near obscurity
When people talk about the glory years of alternative music, most of the bands that get mentioned are from the alternative rock, Brit-rock or grunge strain — Pearl Jam, Oasis, Soundgarden, Nirvana. But the alternative pop bands who came in a shade before these guys made quite the impact on the Generation X music scene too; Toad the Wet Sprocket was among the most notable. Continue reading
Traditional Meets Contemporary
Mbaqanga, neuvo tango, slack key guitar and “The American South” welcome February
After joining and then replacing the great Thomas Mapfumo in the Zimbabwean band Wagon Wheels in the late 1970s, Oliver “Tuku” Mtukudzi became one of Southern Africa’s most popular singers, rasping his uplifting lyrics in his native Shona language, as well as in Ndebele and English, over a bubbling beat of compulsively danceable mbaqanga and other African rhythms and American R&B-influenced grooves. Continue reading
Patchy Sanders Has Eugene Roots
Patchy Sanders, a band that made its first appearance in Eugene at Sam Bond’s Garage a year ago, is returning to the same venue on Feb. 2 to showcase its first record, & The Wild Peach Forest. Continue reading
A Hairy Landscape
One reviewer, two plays: Hair and Landscape of the Body
Some things never change, especially in Eugene, where great pockets of time stop and drop into a sinkhole of self-fertilization. Look at our eternal perpetuation of hippie nostalgia, which has become a cottage industry in itself, for better and worse. Marx noted that all great historical moments — like the long-gone Age of Aquarius, for instance — occur twice, the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, and for those among us who forget that Easy Rider did not have a happy ending, a pair of plays currently in production carry a strong corrective message. Continue reading
Arts Hound
Oscar prep: Who has two hours for a movie anymore (or three hours, ahem, The Wolf of Wall Street)? Bijou Art Cinemas (on 13th) and the Bijou Metro (downtown) begin screening 2014 Oscar-nominated short films Jan. 31, including animated, live action and documentary films. EW picks: The Lady in Number 6 about Alice Herz Sommer, the world’s oldest pianist and Holocaust survivor at 109 years old; the Steampunk-inspired animated hijinx of Mr. Continue reading