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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 12, 1973)
weekend preview All of this cockamamey controversy over the price of meat has never hit closer to home as it did last year — when U.S. Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz im plemented controls on broiler chickens. The White House obviously didn’t give a damn about Springfield’s “Day of the Chicken,” called more ap propriately “The Springfield Broiler Festival,” or that annual parade of fowl which attracts close to 40,000 people and disposes of some 15,000 chicken halves. And to hell with Nixon’s Phase IV — Chicken dinners for the 17th annual Festival Saturday and Sunday are going for $2 adult, $1.50 children, and $1.50 take-home. For two days. Colonel Sanders is a second-class citizen in the Emerald Valley. The first Festival — an event to promote “Oregon Grown Fryers” — was staged in 1957 and local Jaycees that year planned for 5,000 people, shrugged their shoulders apprehensively and bought chicken to feed 2.000. They ran out in a couple of hours and haven’t made the same mistake since. Serving times at Willamalane Park are from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days, and in conjunction, a full schedule of events ranging from a “Timberama” to a children’s puppet show begin Saturday morning at 10. Along the same lines, the second performance of the Emerald Empire Roundup is tonight at Lane County Fairgrounds at 7:45 p.m. Shows Friday and Saturday are at the same time and Sunday’s finale is at 1:45 in the afternoon. It’ll run you $3.50, $2.75 and $1.50 to see 250 cowboys compete for $25,000 in prize money. There’s a bar on the Fairgrounds this year, the “Stockade Tavern,” and nightly “Stonewall Jackson and the Minutemen,” play from 10-12:30. Cover charge is a buck. A drastically cut-down version of a County Fair carnival is another attraction. Rides average 45 cents. A friend took in the Carnival last weekend and tells me you could throw baseballs and darts till your arm fell off and not win a stuffed animal. (He also warns against scarfing down com dogs before riding either the Rock-O Plane or Hammer. Yeech!) Today the ASUO Cultural Forum presents a free performance of Eugene’s own New Mime Circus on the lawn between the Graduate School and the Museum at 12:30. The local troupe began a year ago with a show spoofing sports and competition for the athletes com peting at the Olympic Trials. If you miss it today, they’ll be at Saturday Market for performances at 11 and 2. Musically, the next 24 hours are loaded. Stan Fink’s modem jazz group plays tonight at the Wesley Center (1236 Kincaid) once again. Show begins at 8 and ad mission is 50 cents. The University’s summer music series features “Chuck” Ruff as guest artist tonight and he’ll pound out some ragtime stuff beginning at 8 at the School of Music. Ron Gold’s new Thursday night show on KWAX (“The City”) features two hours of Paul Simon begin ning at midnight. Photo by David McCollum • Judith Barker and John Aden perform in a skit about a girl and her dog, as part of today’s New Mime Circus performance at 12:30 p.m. on campus. Which brings us to Portland, and some first-class entertainment in the form of the Peking Opera, per formed by the Hong Kong Troupe at Civic Auditorium. Shows are tonight and Saturday at 8:30 and Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $6.50 to $4.50. On the same night, the Portland Summer Concert series at Portland State features Spohr, Brahms, Ravel and Mozart. That’s a lot of class for Portland, and in case you’re getting the wrong impression of the Rose City, just remember Friday’s Donny Hathaway concert. (Saturday Seals and Crofts will also do a concert at the Paramount, 1037 SW Broadway.) And, next Tuesday, Led Zepplin is in Seattle, sponsored by Concerts West. Back to Eugene now and some of the best theater of the year, beginning tonight with “Inferno,” an original rock opera performed on the Carnival Theater Stage at 8:30. Tickets are $2.50 and all seats first come, first served. A biggie. At 11 this morning, Children’s Theater presented “Land of the Dragon,” and Friday and Saturday Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” will be staged at the Car nival Theater. “Mousetrap” tickets are $2, $2.50 and $3 and shows begin at 8:30. Also take note of Ashland’s weekend offerings, “The Alchemist,” and “Henry the Fifth” Friday and “Othello” and “As You Like It” Saturday. Tickets are from $6 to $3, matinees begin at 2 p.m. and evening performances are at 8:45. Tickets are now available for the “West Side Story” Champagne Ball, whereby the Eugene Hotel’s Nat King Cole Room will be transformed into New York’s Lower West Side for a Ball on opening night. “West Side Story” begins July 27 and tickets for the Ball are $6. We’re back to music in Eugene now and the Scar borough Faire’s Summer Concert series, this week featuring Willy and The Egyptians and the Goodwill Band. KWAX’s Tim Sellard will be on hand as host and tickets for Friday and Saturday night’s 8:30 shows are a buck. Notary Sojac will play with Drippy Moon Friday the 13th at the Westmoreland Center, doors open at 8:30, and admission is $1.50. For $1.50 less than that you can listen to James “Birdman” Rymeski on KWAX. His “East Coast Story” show changes pace this time and features an acoustical music show by a Portland group called “Portland.” It begins at midnight and rims two hours. A Democratic fundraising picnic and softball tournament provides a stage for the always-good “Livewood String Band” Saturday. There’ll be plenty of food and drink beginning at noon and softball starts at 1:30 with State Treasurer James Redden, House Speaker Richard Eymann, and Senate President Jason Boe acting as special team captains. Cost is $5 per person, a maximum of $10 per family and it all happens at the EWEB park beside the EWEB reservoir near Leaburg. My God! We’ve got to cram six movies, Maude Kerns, and the Museum of Art into the rest of the space. So be it. “Help” by the Beatles, 150 Science on Friday, 7 and 9 p.m. for a buck; Acme-Bijou presents “The Palm Beach Story,” and “Sullivan’s Travels,” tonight in 180 PLC for a buck, and “The Failure” on Friday, all directed by Preston Sturges; Ananda Marga Yoga Society continues with “Potemkin” and “Doctor Mabuse” on Sunday, 180 PLC, 7 and 9:30 p.m. for a buck. Don’t forget Charlene Yogi’s photgraphic exhibition “Reflections,” now on display in the Erb, and the Museum of Art displays — graphite drawings by Tom Guyot from Newport and mixed drawings, paintings, and prints by Gregory Hawkins in the Focus Gallery. Final note — because of the Broiler Festival, the per capita chicken consumption in the Eugene-Springfield area is twice as high as anywhere in the state. Take that, Earl Butz. Paul Bilker, Terry Sotta music Chuck Ruffs ragtime set for tonight Charles “Chuck” Ruff Photo bv Nick Lacy Ragtime, that “ole piana thump’n,” comes to the School of Music Recital Hall where Charles “Chuck Ruff will present a lecture-recital tonight on the historical and musical development of ragtime from its post Civil War birth as “jig (Black) piano” music to its demise at the death of Scott Joplin in 1917. Although the first rag published in 1897 was written by white Chicago bandleader, William Krell, ragtime, like New Orleans jazz, is Black music composed by such men as Thomas Turpin, Scott Joplin, and James Scott. Unlike brass band jazz, however, ragtime is a product of the American Midwest, mainly the upper Mississippi River Valley, and is not really a part of the New Orleans movement, ac cording to Chuck Ruff. Scott Joplin, who, incidentally, did not hail from Joplin, Missouri, but, rather, from Texarkana, Texas, was the undisputed king of ragtime composers. And composers they were, for there was little room for improvisation in a forest of syncopated rhythms. They called it “ragging the time” and their published works left little doubt about just what they intended. Ruff says he plays it pretty straight, and, in fact, he doesn’t have much chance to do anything else but that. Like New Orleans jazz, ragtime is basically two-step and march music. Rag waltzes seldom appear. The tempos are always moderate to very slow. Despite that, however, Ruff admits that rag pieces produce very “busy” textures. The left hand sets up the rhythm and harmonic framework in an almost pedestrian “oom-pah” fashion (after all, ragtime was dance music) over which the right hand spins out the most outrageous syncopated melodies of rather disjunct contours with occasional counter melodies—structurally very simple, aurally fascinating. In the last several years we have witnessed a rag revival. The .music of the dance halls and saloons, if you will, Gay 90’s Muzaak (of much higher quality than today’s), has come into the recital hall. Ruff, a local dance band and jam musician and former University professor, has been in on it long before the revival began. He is a fine musician and pianist and possessed of a most delightful sense of humor. Tonight promises to be most rewarding. The lecture-recital takes place at 8 p.m. at the School of Music Recital Hall. Admission is free. Randy Bourne At the Music School Recital Hall: Tonight, 8 p.m., guest artist, ragtime music, "Chuck" Ruff. Friday, 8 p m., master's cello recital, Marla De Rungs. Sunday, 8 p.m., master's voice recital, James Kempster in coming weeks, a special concert by the summer session band on Thursday, July 28, featuring Karel Husa as guest conductor, and the "Summer Festival of Music" from Friday, July 20, through Sunday, July 29.
