The String Cheese Incident will occur at Hult
■ Nearingtheendoftheir
Winter Carnival Tour, The
StringCheese Incident will
drop in on Eugene Monday
By Rebecca Wilson
Oregon Daily Emerald
The sun is shining, daffodils are
blooming and the umbrellas are lan
guishing in the closet. Mother Nature
is surely just playing a nasty trick on
Eugene’s light-deprived citizens, but
one thing is certain: Winter is almost
over. And so is The StringCheese In
cident’s Winter Carnival Tour.
The String Cheese Incident will
bring its bright-eyed jam rock to the
Hult Center Monday after playing
three nights of sold-out shows at The
Warfield in San Francisco. The Winter
Carnival Tour ends March 18 in
Whistler, British Columbia — just in
time to give the band a short break be
fore it begins touring April 12 in
Austin, Texas, for Spring Cheese 2001.
Busy? You bet. The String Cheese
Incident has often been compared to
the likes of the Grateful Dead, Phish
and Dave Matthews Band for its gru
eling tour schedule and an insatiable
enthusiasm for live performances.
“From the very beginning,”
bassist Keith Moseley told West
word magazine, “we’ve looked at
this as a long-term project, some
thing we wanted to be doing 10 or
15 years down the road. And we re
alized that to do that, we had to
push ourselves creatively.”
And like those aforementioned
bands, The String Cheese Incident
goes beyond the basic band setup of
drums, bass, lead and rhythm gui
tars. Kyle Hollingsworth plays keys,
Rhodes and accordion; Michael
Kang plays electric guitar, acoustic
mandolin and violin; Keith Mosely
plays bass; Bill Nershi, acoustic gui
tar; and Michael Travis, percussion.
The five hail from Crested Butte,
Colo., and joined their musical
forces in 1993.
“There’s a lot of clubs around here,”
Kang told the music magazine Pollstar
“The Colorado music scene is pretty
supportive of bands. So we just kind of
built up a following doing that.”
Evidently, the band has acquired
support outside of Colorado. The
String Cheese Incident is beginning
to acquire the same sort of hardcore
fan base characteristic of Phish and
the Grateful Dead. According to the
band’s publicist at Madison House
Publicity, “The fusion of music,
spirit and community is at the heart
of The String Cheese Incident and
as their circle grows larger, it be
comes more unique to them.”
Part of the band’s unique culture
is its anti-technology lifestyle. (“I
Courtesy
The String Cheese Incident will perform one of its final shows of the tour at the Hult Center before finishing off in Whistler, B.C.
don’t have a computer,” Kang told
Yahoo’s Internet magazine.) The
band also avoids the commercial
ization that has become all-too fa
miliar in modern music.
“They can’t stuff us in a package
and market us in the same way as
Britney Spears,” Kang said.
While nobody would confuse
The String Cheese Incident with
Britney Spears, the band manages
to attract a diverse cross-section oi
the music-listening population
even without the fancy packaging.
The band’s diverse concert style
is part of the reason they have ac
quired such a devoted following in
a relatively short amount of time.
“You can go to four different shows
and hear four different set lists,” said
one of the band’s staff members Reis
Baron. “Fans crave the participator
experience of it. It’s not the band
shoving this music onto the crowd.
It’s musical communication and a
collective recycling of the crowd’s
energy and the music that spawns it. ”
The energetic music atmosphere is
an ideal cure for winter term blues—
whether or not the sun is shining.
The band won’t be stopping in Eu
gene for the spring tour, so this will
be the last chance for Eugene resi
dents to hear the band for at least a
year. The Hult Center doors open for
Monday’s show at 7 p.m. and die mu
sic begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $23.50
and are available at the Hult Center
or online at www.sciticketing.com.
Yet another vibe of urgency sent from Down Under
■Though only mildly
original, Powderfinger still
provides better listening
than mainstream pop
Powderfinger ‘Odyssey
Number Five’
Universal Records
By Dave Depper
for the Emerald
Why are Australian bands so
damn urgent? Just look at some past
Aussie superstars: Midnight Oil,
Silverchair, INXS — not subtle folk.
These are people who are trying to
get their point across with a sledge
hammer. Maybe it's something in
the water down there. Or maybe it's
the fact that they're tired of being
thought of as that cute little country
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Powderfinger is the latest band
from Down Under trying to make it
big over here in the States. These
guys are HUGE in their home coun
try: “Odyssey Number Five,” their
fourth album, was released in Aus
tralia last year and it has already
been certified quintuple-platinum.
Not bad for five guys from Brisbane.
Why should you care about Pow
derfinger? If you were lucky enough
to attend the recent “Coldplay”
show up in Portland, then you
would have seen Powderfinger's
high-energy opening set. If you've
seen “Mission: Impossible 2,” then
you've heard them: “My Kind of
Scene” (included on “Odyssey
Number Five”) was featured on the
soundtrack album.
So, what does Powderfinger sound
like? Listening to this album gives me
a mental image of the band in the
recording studio, lights off, candles
lit, with singer Bernard Fanning
singing in the corner with tightly
closed eyes and clenched fists. As far
as sonic architecture goes, Pow
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derfinger doesn't stray far from the
early Radiohead approach: vocals
high up in the mix, prominent
acoustic guitar, abrasive electric gui
tar and solid rhythm section. In fact,
many of these songs would fit very
comfortably on “Pablo Honey.”
Fanning has a very nice voice,
somewhat high, fragile and expres
sive. It’s a good vehicle for the un
abashedly emotional, personal songs
contained on “Odyssey Number
Five.” In fact, the greatest missteps
on “Odyssey Number Five” occur
when Powderfinger tries too hard to
assert its “rawk n’ roll” side. “Like A
Dog” chugs along over a sludgy
glam-rock riff, while Fanning uncon
vincingly growls, “If you treat me
like a dog and keep me locked in a
cage/I'm not relaxed or comfort
able/I'm aggravation and rage.”
Scary stuff, man. The first time I
heard this song I couldn't help but
chuckle at how silly it sounded.
Thankfully, moments like this are
rather scarce on “Odyssey Number
Five. ” In fact, a great many of the tracks
are the kind of grade-A, guitar-driven
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power ballads that give you goose
bumps when they come on over your
car radio. In particular, the first three
songs on “Odyssey Number Five” are
a tour de force of catchy riffage, deli
cate singing and unbelievably catchy
melodies. “Waiting For The Sun”
kicks things on with some monstrous
ly chunky guitar playing and the kind
of intense singing that will make you
either love or hate Powderfinger. The
second song, “My Happiness,” boasts
a chorus that will be stuck in your
head for hours and hours whether you
want it to be or not. Track 3, “The Me
tre,” manages to add an aggressive
string section without sounding over
ly bombastic, and its chorus may ac
tually be catchier than the one belong
ing to the previous song.
All in all, “Odyssey Number Five”
is an undeniably solid effort. There
is nary a second on this album that is
not filled with a well-written,
straight-faced piece of fine pop writ
ing. Perhaps I am damning “Odyssey
Number Five” with faint praise, but I
assure you that it is faint praise of the
highest order.
Courtesy
The Australian rock group Powderfinger
delivers several emotional, guitar-driven
power ballads on its latest album.
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