“Whole Love” performed by Wilco at the Hult Center February 3, 2012
"Whole Love" performed by Wilco at the Hult Center February 3, 2012. Full download available at http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=552321 Continue reading
Whats-Happening: Page 704
Preserving Sacred Cultures
Ancient Jun is modern delicious
Jerry Smith’s quiet corner of the universe lies down Willamette Street between Cappella Market and Tsunami Books. Like many Eugene hippie-folk, Smith is a private man; he doesn’t reveal much and, until now, has never granted an interview. Even now he tells me he’s been having second thoughts about this. Continue reading
Red Eared Slider
How many times do I get reminded that every year is different from the year before? This year is proving to be a strange one, leap year and politics aside. Momentous times are heralded as we enter the Year of the Water Dragon. Here we are in rainfall recovery, finally catching up on years of below average rainfall. But now we gripe because so much fell all at once that our streams and rivers overflow their banks. Continue reading
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
Kurt Vonnegut biography reads like a nasty tweet
Behind every great writer hides an asshole. Dostoyevsky was a religious freak with a gambling problem. William Burroughs plinked a slug through his wife’s forehead. Faulkner guzzled a half-gallon of rye every day before noon. Shakespeare only willed his wife the spare bed. I’m far from a great writer, but I sure can be an asshole sometimes. It’s true. Maybe you should stop reading this. Continue reading
Wines & Causes
Area wine people have a generous streak
Beer Can be Beautiful
Several years ago, entrepreneur Ginger Johnson said to herself, “Self, it’s time to find out what beer is about.” Now, after delving into the intricacies of the beer industry, Johnson owns and operates Women Enjoying Beer, a business that works to help breweries market to the female craft beer enthusiast. Women Enjoying Beer is based in Ashland, but Johnson is excited to appear in Eugene this week for Brew Fest, KLCC’s annual beer-tasting benefit. Continue reading
America’s Greatest Rock Band, via Chicago
Wilco bassist discusses touring, playing and recording its best album yet
With R.E.M. having disbanded last year, it would appear that Wilco now stands pretty well unchallenged as the greatest American rock band. Since rising from the ashes of seminal post-punk country/folk/rock pioneers Uncle Tupelo in 1994, this Chicago-based band has released a series of albums that continues, with each successive drop, to challenge, confound, frustrate, mystify and amuse its fans. Continue reading
Breathe It In
There are a lot of reasons I shouldn’t like Breathe Owl Breathe. They sound a bit like Jack Johnson meets Feist in a hookah lounge. They have all the hallmarks of easy-goin’ adult contemporary indie-folk. But there are things going on beneath the surface that set Breathe Owl Breathe apart from the “tailor-made-for-Starbucks” scene. Continue reading
International Sweat Fest
Like an international sweat fest of nostalgic pleasure, Dengue Fever is better suited as a warmer-upper than a cold. With a gruff, garage-rock spangle slathered in funk, this L.A.-based band welds ’60s Cambodian pop to a surfboard and floats it out to sea. Founded in 2001 after a trip to Cambodia, Ethan and Zac Holtzman met a Cambodian-native lounge singer named Chhom Nimol, a star in her home country, who could sing and write songs in Khmer. Continue reading
A Certain Sense of Weightlessness
A talk with The Jayhawks’ Mark Olson
Like that one ramshackle, half-collapsed barn you pass on the highway year after year, the music created by veteran Minneapolis band The Jayhawks is timeless — in a fragile, verdigised, sepia-toned, windblown, authentically American melancholia sort of way. Their sweetly bittersweet sound, all honeyed harmonies and landlocked blues and melodic rustic reverie, is like a soundtrack caught gorgeously between a hymn to our better selves and an elegy to how we’ve fallen short. Continue reading