DJs, step off: New Deal always play it live
■The Canadian trio brings
dance music to Taylor’s—but
they play instruments
By Rebecca Wilson
Oregon Daily Emerald
Live musicians seldom appear in
the spinning, throbbing world that
candy ravers call home. At raves,
dance mixes pound from speakers
and occasionally a DJ spins and
samples from a set of turntables.
Dance lovers have reconciled them
selves to never seeing a drum set or
a guitar. Instrument-playing musi
cians and dancers travel in separate
worlds, and never the twain shall
meet.
Until now.
On Tuesday, Taylor’s Bar and
Grill will host the New Deal, a
group that plays for the dancer
lurking within the live-music lover.
The New Deal are a trio of exclu
sively live musicians who create
energetic music without the aid of
turntables or samples. They de
scribe their music as “live progres
sive breakbeat house,” explained
keyboard player Jamie Shields.
Bass player Dan Kurtz, drummer
v Darren Shearer and keyboard play
er Shields formed the New Deal at
a 1999 impromptu show in their
home city of Toronto, Ontario.
“Darren was playing in all these
really boring, bad, acid-jazz bands
in these really bad clubs in Toron
to,” Shields said. “One night, we
figured since no one was listening
anyway, we might as well make it
up.”
By chance, someone taped the
show.
“We basically had a CD before we
had a band,” Shields said.
The band has been on tour ever
since, said Mark Alghini, the band’s
manager. Alghini has managed the
New Deal since September 2000.
“It is all about the boys,” Alghini
said. “They are wonderful people
... very fun to work with. ”
Currently, the New Deal have
three live albums and are at work
on a studio-quality LP. “But the
new album will still be live,”
Shields said.
The New Deal are always met
with a great deal of audience enthu
siasm, Shields said. The music “is
not always dance. But for sure it’s
improvised, and for sure it’s live.”
The band has something to offer
everyone, Alghini said from his of
fice at Nettwerk Management in
New York City.
“Some people come and just
dance, some people listen to
melodies, and some people are just
interested in what we do,” Shields
said.
Shields attributes the band’s
eclectic, hybrid sound to the fact
that the band members don’t like
the same types of music. In fact,
they rarely listen to dance music.
“Darren listens to contemporary
music, R & B; he’s interested in the
chart world,” said Shields. “I listen
to jazz funk ... Frank Zappa. I really
like Ween. The three of us like mu
sic that is so different that you
would never think that we could be
in a band and make music togeth
er.”
The Canadian group was fea
tured in Village Voice and Spin
Magazine — recognition that rarely
comes to live jam bands.
In the August 2000 issue of Spin,
DJ Logic called the New Deal “the
Kraftwerk of the new millennium.”
On the New Deal’s EP “Guelph
on Can,” complex bass riffs weave
beneath twangy, fluid keyboard
melodies and catchy beats.
The New Deal will be playing in
Eugene on Tuesday at Taylor’s Bar
and Grill on East 13th Avenue,
across the street from the Universi
ty of Oregon Bookstore.
I_« - a_aJL~
Courtesy
The New Deal (Dan Kurtz, Darren Shearer and Jamie Shields) hail from Toronto, Canada.
The trio uses a bass, keys and drums to create new beats the old-fashioned way.
Jagger journeys into film producing with ‘Enigma’
By David Germain
The Associated Press
PARK CITY, Utah — Mick Jagger,
independent filmmaker, sounds like
any other producer at the Sundance
Film Festival when he talks about
the obstacles to capturing his story
on celluloid.
There are the problems of raising
the cash, securing the film rights,
lining up suitable talent to direct
and act.
“I wanted to spend five years of
my life producing one independent
movie,” Jagger jokes when asked
why he tried his hand at making
films with the spy thriller “Enigma,”
which premiered Monday night at
Sundance.
“We had to spend lots of time get
ting the script right and raising the
money, everything else that goes
with making a film,” the Rolling
Stones singer said in an interview
before the premiere.
- “Enigma” stars Dougray Scott,
Kate Winslet, Jeremy North am and
Saffron Burrows in a tale of roman
tic intrigue set among British code
breakers trying to unravel German
U-boat ciphers during World War II.
Directed by Michael Apted (“The
World Is Not Enough”), the movie is
a thinking man’s cousin to last year’s
“U-571.” It’s based on the novel by
Robert Harris, with a screenplay by
Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in
Love”).
This is the first finished movie by
Jagged Films, the company Jagger
and his producing partner, Victoria
Pearman, formed in the mid-1990s.
“Saturday Night Live” producer
Lome Michaels joined them on
“Enigma” and worked with Jagger to
secure the rights to the book.
While the project began as a stu
dio film, the producers said they re
alized they needed to produce it in
dependently to keep it true to its
roots. Unlike “U-571,” which made
American sailors the heroes of Al
lied efforts to crack the U-boat codes,
“Enigma” sticks to historical facts,
with the British leading the deci
phering effort.
“This was not an easy sell,” said
Jagger, who has acted in such
movies as “Freejack.” “It’s an Eng
lish movie without American actors
and actresses. It’s a difficult subject,
and it’s a relatively difficult ride.”
Despite his and Michaels’ fame,
Jagger said “Enigma” came into
Sundance much like any other in
dependently financed film, with
the producers hoping they could
land a distribution deal.
“I figure that in a way, Sundance
is sort of changing,” lagger said.
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“It’s not only unknown filmmakers
anymore who bring films up here.
Ours has got big-name people in it,
but it’s still an independent
movie.”
Jagger’s company plans to pro
duce a romantic drama about au
thor-poet Dylan Thomas and his
wife, as well as a film Jagger co
wrote with Martin Scorsese about
two music-business partners whose
careers span the 1960s to the pres
ent.
The singer also said he plans to
act in his film company’s movies.
He co-stars with Andy Garcia in
“Elysian Fields,” due out this year.
“Enigma” entered Sundance as
one of the hottest films available for
acquisition. Jagger and Michaels
said they were confident they
would leave the festival with a
distribution deal.
“We think obviously we’re go
ing to have a buyer, but it’s inter
esting to see who in the movie in
dustry thinks this is an interesting
film and who says, ‘Oh, we can’t
deal with it,”’ Jagger said. “This is
an intellectual film."
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