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.