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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 1977)
Surface ai>d Symbol The Emerald’s weekly arts and entertainment supplement Thursday, January 6, 1977 Simultaneous concerts feature local bands A fund raising benefit spon sored by the Black Student Union is the reason for bringing together what will probably be one of the biggest, in terms of both quantity and quality, events of this term On Monday night, m two separate locations, no less than ten local and semi-local bands will get together for what promises to be a fine evening of music and mad ness An at-press-time (and by now there may well be more) listing or the groups and locations is as fol lows Arroyo, Pickin Delight, the Oregon Jazz Lab Band, Orion, Diamond Jackson, and the Macedonia Church Choir will per form a Contemporary Jazz and Buegrass Concert at Beall Con cert Hall from 6 to 1C p m n the meantime Scandal, Shmola. Sapphire, and Foxe and Weasel will stage a Current Rock Concert m the EMU Ballroom from 6 to 11.15. The individual groups may not necessarily perform m the order listed above Why, you may well ask. are this many local heavies freely donat ing their time and talents (along with the blessing of local Musi cians Union No 689)? The reason is the 2nd World Black and African Art and Cultural Fes tival to be held from January 15 to February 12 m the twin cities of Lagos and Kaunda, Nigeria Funds raised by the concerts ($2 at the door) will go toward sending a student representative from the University to the Festi val The representative s name (selected by a committee from applications open to all) will be announced at the concerts Over 7C countries were invited by Nigeria to bring examples of their various individual arts and crafts 1.2CC performers and per sonalities were also invited Two of the acceptances thus far are director-cinematographer-pho tographer-wnter Gordon Parks, Sr and poetess Mayo Angelou Grace Hampton of the University of Oregon art department was also invited and will bring along Sapphire's attraction will help fill the EMU Ballroom for this BSU sponsored event Monday night. Photo courtesy ot sapper© i Arroyo will be in Beall Hall on Monday night, contributing their music to aid in the drive to send a student representative to the Second World Black and African Cultural Festival, held in Nigeria. Photo courtesy ot Arroyo various pieces of her work to share The idea behind the Festival is to assimilate the various Black and African cultures under one roof, so to speak, with the goal of greater understanding and warmth for one another Below are some rough notes on as many of the groups as I could get hold of by press time The Oregon Jazz Lab Band, under the direction of Charles Dowd, has won very high acclaim both near and afar The progres sive jazz and rock group captured straight Superior awards at the Reno Jazz Festival in 1974 They repeated the rating in 1975 at the Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival in Berkeley, California Their local concerts are always well received Another well received group in town is Scandal Scandal was started by Steve Myers of Patter son Alley and Free & Easy fame and Richard Price, onetime member of the Archies and cur rent composer of the Williams Bread ads Myers and Price make no bones about the fact that Scandai is a copy-rock band In the beginning they sat down and made a list of all the material, the arrangements and the set lists and made tapes of every thing before they even picked the musicians. They knew exactly what they were going to do and By BOB WEBB Of the Emerald how it was going to sound Says Myers, "I wanted to design a band from the beginning that could play commercial music — Top 40 stuff — and do it as well as it could be done Scandal is Jeanne Ferguson, Laurie Tellock and Katie Hargreaves, vocals: Myers on lead guitar and pedal stell; Price on rhythm guitar and saxophone: Steve Larson on the keyboards: Tom McCauley does bass: and Jim Watson plays drums. Molly Scholz and Tom Greenough — the Foxe and the Weasel — are considered by many to be two of the most ver satile and entertaining performers in town. In one night they may change instruments as many as four times and intersperse their music (which ranges from Golden Oldies like Hang on Sloopy and "Superstition,' to more current hits like Steve Millers' "Rockin Me Baby and the disco "Get Down Tonight ") with comedy routines which range from ridiculous to hilarious. "People want to get loose and have a good time," says Greenough. "But sometimes they need a little help. This attitude may not be generally accepted by the music community, but it seems to work well for Foxe and Weasel Sapphire consists of Meredith Brooks on lead guitar: Janis Gaines, keyboard: Pam Johnson, bass; and Patti Claggett, drums. They have an ex-computer operator named Cindi Larsen who quit her job to mix the sound for them. Their music is primarily funk and soul but they have been known to throw in an occasional Gary White or Eagles tune They were formed fairly recently but have already begun to make a name for themselves on the funk-disco club circuit. Georges Bouhey and his group Diamond Jackson are a group of musicians who are also just be ginning to become known, al though they have been together for quite a while Raspberry Re cording uses them as their studio musicians for many projects, in cluding new releases, backing up other artists and advertising pro duction. According to Raspberry manager Richard Jenkins, Multi-track record-m is not an easy process, but the profes sionalism with which they attack it makes it a continual pleasure to work with them. Considering their abilities in the studio, it is no won der that their stage act is rapidly gaining in popularity. "Music has got to do more than make you feel good, says Shinola vocalist and keyboard player Bob Bailey, "it's got to say something. It's a very important medium and a lot of people mis Foxe and Weasel are one group in many donating their humor and music for this outrageous event. Photo courtesy of Fo*e and Weasel use it because they re either not talented or they're lazy.” The people that make up Shinola (Bailey Mark Spangler, lead guitar; Wayne Fuday, rhythm guitar; Randy Reese, saxophone; and Kip Richardson, drums) are very talented and are far from lazy. They don t put out a lot of advertising and hype because, says Bailey, “We have a humble attitude towards playing and we want our music to stand on its own. We could draw a larger crowd by advertising but we d rather play for people who are in tent on listening to us." Listening is also very important to the Macedonia Church Choir. They come from the Pentecostal Church in Portland and are under the direction of James Cook. Arroyo was born when Don Ross broke off from Wheatfield, a band whose sound he helped create, in order to find a new sound. He started with a jazz rock idea and built on it. He au ditioned and decided to use an energetic young singer named Tommy Smith who was already building up quite a following as a solo performer Ross also ac quired a bass player named Mark Schneider who used to be the sound engineer for Notary-Sojac. After much trial and error the line up became consistent with the addition of another ex-Notary Sojac player named Don Ness as drummer and Mark Simpson from Portland's Country Al and his Pals for the pedal-steel work Besides writing their own music (most of their act is original), the band does their own sound mix and their own lighting. Would that there was time to mention more, but this should give some indication of the caliber and diversity of style that will be making music Monday night. The concerts are produced and conceived by the Back Student Union. Adisa Gamba Oluwa, the coordinator and main mover be hind the project is quite possibly correct when he says. '‘You’re not gonna believe this!"
