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Jazz sometimes gets slagged as mainly grooves for dudes, but women have always contributed enormously to the genre, even if they’ve not received attention proportionate to their contributions. This Thursday, Aug. 13 at The Shedd, the Oregon Festival of American Music (OFAM) showcases three of the most popular female jazz singers of the 1920s. Continue reading
Hot damn, Eugene! Prepare your peepers for overstimulation by all the art (both dead and alive) happening this week, beginning with the Mayor’s Art Show opening reception 5:30 pm Friday, Aug. 14, at the Hult Center’s Jacobs Gallery. While this annual juried show tends to lean heavy on artists of the safe, expected and over-50 variety (i.e. expect pastel landscapes and Ansel Adams wannabes), it’s worth going down to ferret out the innovators and old masters — look for works from Lynda Lanker and Rogene Manas, to name a few. Continue reading
Chicago duo Zigtebra is comprised of vocalist Emily Rose and guitarist Joseph Dummitt, two half-siblings that weren’t close as children. Fate led the pair to the Chicago-based avant-garde dance troupe, True Magical Love. “We reconnected there,” Dummitt tells EW, explaining the Zigtebra project was born from the Windy City’s experimental performance art scene. “We started getting weird on stage,” Dummitt jokes, “did a lot of experimental theater, short open mics. We played wherever would have us. It eventually turned into us writing songs.” Continue reading
New releases: Hot off playing the mainstage at Oregon Country Fair, local blues-rock band Blue Lotus is gearing up for a six-state tour to promote its new album, Across the Canyon, recorded at Ninkasi Studios. The band’s fifth album is “a collaborative experiment that weaves elements of progressive rock, jazz and improvisational rock ‘n’ roll with hints of ’60s psychadelia,” the band says via press release. Catch them before they hit the road for a Grateful Dead set Saturday, Aug. 15, at Blairally Vintage Arcade, 245 Blair Blvd. Continue reading
Entering into the gloriously tattered tradition of strung-out criminal lit ranging from Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Seattle rocker turned author Danny Bland has written a novel that reads like a beastly scream into the dark mythology of ‘90s Seattle — a gilded wasteland where junkies reared on Iggy and Sabbath turned filthy power chords into gold and cosmonauts of the apocalypse pimped hip to the culture vultures. Continue reading
In the early ’90s, when Eugene’s Pride celebrations were first taking shape, David McCallum remembers telling a local news station, “Yes, some day gays and lesbians will be able to marry.” Back then, a prediction like that amounted to radical speculation. (Story continues below.) Continue reading
This year August is set up with a glorious week of stargazing. The Perseid meteor shower will send hundreds, maybe thousands, of shooting stars across the sky during the second week of August. Peak shower activity will be August 11-13. The best meteor watching will be in the hours before dawn, when the constellation Perseus rises from the northeastern horizon. What makes this year’s shower likely to be spectacular is that nearly moonless nights coincide with the peak streaking. Continue reading
I can’t think of a more queer place to spend my Friday night — save re-animating Liberace for a wild cavort on the Riviera — than Freek Nite at Cowfish in downtown Eugene. “Whatever Freek Nite means to you, go for it. There’s no wrong way,” says Rhea Della Vera, who produces and promotes the weekly dance party that runs 9 pm to close. Continue reading
Bisexuals don’t eat cheeseburgers. This thought had never crossed my mind in 20 years of advocating for LGBTQ people and issues. But having come out of the closet as a bisexual just a few days earlier, it seemed like this might be true. I came out at a high school staff meeting in 2014 after my fellow teachers had spent an hour debating the nature of LGBTQ students. Earnest but clueless, many of them were discussing something they knew nothing about. My favorite: “I don’t know why it’s such a big deal who you have sex with.” Continue reading