Oregon Daily Emerald
Thursday, June 23, 2005
■ In my opinion
RYAN NYBURG
BUDGET RACK
Whirry music
fans make art
grow stagnant
Well, looks like I’m still here. Despite my grad
uation, I’ve come back to do the only thing I’ve
ever been any good at doing. Kind of pathetic, is
n’t it? Like those high school football champs
who end up hanging around the field, going bald
and developing beer bellies as they talk about the
passes they threw/caught back in ‘85. But let’s
move on to a slightly less depressing topic.
Here’s something that has recently gotten my
dander up. Two bands have recently released
albums remarkably different from anything
they have done before. The first is the White
Stripes’ “Get Behind Me Satan,” which is more
eclectic and fractured than anything else they
have ever released. The second is Sleater-Kin
ney’s “The Woods,” a sprawling, distorted, psy
chedelic mess of an album that completely
breaks away from their riot grrl past.
My problem is not with the albums, however,
but rather with the fans. Check out just about any
message board online and you will read die-hard
fans wailing about these albums and how
abysmally terrible they are. Adjectives such as
“pretentious,” “difficult,” “shallow,” even “sell
out” have been bandied all over the net.
WTF? There is nothing seriously wrong with
either of these albums. “GBMS” lacks the focus
of the Stripes’ earlier work, but makes up for it
with a sense of expansiveness that was lacking
in the blues/garage rock lockstep. It’s a transi
tional album, and a good one at that.
As for Sleater, they’ve gone and released a
bona fide Northwest psychedelic classic in the
traditional 1960s sense. The album is weird,
spooky, distorted and a hell of a lot of fun to
play really loud. Yet listening to some of these
fans and you would think the band sat around
farting into microphone and released the results
as an album.
Let me address these people directly: You all
are the worst sort of pop culture fascists. You
are the reason art grows stagnant. Your endless
demand for consistency suffocates everything
you praise. Frightened by what is new and dif
ferent, you howl and wail, act as if you have
been betrayed and demand that all artists con
tinually create variations on the same themes
you have grown comfortable with. You people
are sick and your opinions are like a pile of
steaming dog shit in my salad.
But sometimes it’s good for a band to lose its
popular fan base, or even popular critical sup
port, if it means the band will grow artistically.
Rolling Stone slammed Weezer’s “Pinkerton” as
one of the worst albums of the year when it came
out, for no reason other than it didn’t sound like
their first album. They did the same to the Liars
sophomore effort, once again unjustly. Both
bands were better off. Pearl Jam stopped making
hits when it stopped playing along with the rock
press and stopped being so anthemic, thus losing
favor with both fans and critics. Since then Pearl
Jam has released some of the best music of its ca
reer, not that anyone has noticed.
So leave these bands alone. You can’t expect
Sleater to release another version of “Dig Me
Out.” One was enough. And who would want
to listen to a dozen new copies of “Fell in Love
With a Girl”? There’s been enough of that al
ready. These albums might not be the best of ei
ther band’s career, but they’re not the worst ei
ther. Not by a long shot.
ryannybarg@dailyemerald.com
Oregon Bach Festival Artistic Director Helmuth Rilling ushers the festival into its 36th year with a wide range of performances.
Courtesy
The new face ofclassical
The 36th Oregon Bach Festival has crossover works to attract young
listeners as well as old classics from composers, such as Mendelssohn
BY RYAN NYBURG
PULSE EDITOR
The biggest music festival in Eugene does
n’t involve trippy-hippy jam bands or distort
ed post-modern rock angst, but rather the
more cerebral joys and symphonic excesses
of classical music.
The Oregon Bach Festival begins its 36th
year today, opening with a preview of “La
Pasion Segun San Marcos,” which translates
“The Passion of Christ According to St.
Mark” as a South American street festival.
The complete work will be performed tomor
row at 8 p.m.
“This is by far the biggest performance the
festival has ever done,” Bach Festival Execu
tive Director H. Royce Saltzman said. “We’re
bringing in the Schola Cantorum Choir of
Venezuela and the Brazilian jazz singer Lu
ciana Souza. This is an important work in
terms of cross-cultural art. One of the biggest
challenges we face is an aging audience. It is
through crossover works such as this that we
hope to attract younger listeners. Otherwise in
a few years we’re not going to have
an audience.”
“La Pasion” was composed by Osvaldo
Golijov on a commission from festival artistic
director Helmuth Rilling and was originally
performed in Stuttgart, Germany in 2000. This
will be its first, and probably only, perform
ance in the Northwest.
Another major event in this year’s festival is
a performance by the Kronos Quartet on July
1. One of the most influential and popular
quartets of its time, Kronos will be performing
a wide range of works, ranging from composi
tions by Alexandra du Bois to Sigur Ros. The
entire second half of the set will be devoted to
arrangements by Golijov
“Osvaldo Golijov is one of the quartets fa
vorite arrangers,” Bach Festival Director of
Communications George Evano said. “Which
is part of the reason we were able to get them
for the festival.”
Of course it wouldn’t be a Bach Festival
without an obscure work from one of the
classical composers. This year brings the
American premiere of Mendelssohn’s “The
Uncle From Boston,” a comic opera written
when the composer was 14 and performed
only once, in his home, on his 15th birthday.
The work was forgotten for 180 years until
Rilling uncovered it and premiered it in
Stuttgart. Rilling, when describing the work,
said it’s “the usual opera silliness, but the
music is fantastic.”
Other festival highlights include perform
ances of Bach’s “Sing Now of Triumph,” Han
del’s “L’Allegro” and a night devoted half to
various compositions by Mozart and half
to Mendelssohn.
Ticket and schedule information can be
found at www.oregonbachfestival.com. The
festival runs through July 10 and closes with
Haydn’s “Creation.”
ryannyburg@dailyemerald.com
■ CD review
A look back at the years most worthless CDs
BY RYAN NYBURG
PULSE EDITOR
Even the best years in music have their low
points. For every good album released, there
is always a slew of forgettable commercial mu
sic units. Here are a few of them from the past
month or so.
First up is a possible entry for the Most Use
less Album of the Year Award, Alanis Moris
sette’s acoustic re-recording of her 1995 break
through release, “Jagged Little Pill.” The
album doesn’t share all of the original work’s
merits but makes up for a few of its faults,
leading to an even sum game and a rather
pointless run-through of songs that has
“fan only” written all over it.
While the intervening 10 years have been
good to Ms. Morissette’s voice, she’s lost some
of the defiance and strength of her younger
years. The arrangements have been retooled
to fit the acoustic format, but they still manage
to feel a tad overdone, and often it seems as
though a more radical take on the material
would have led to a more interesting listen.
Not bad, just not worth the bother.
Here’s a common story: A young
singer/songwriter generates some buzz in the
mainstream music press and gets a few “artist
to watch” notices, then releases an album of
mildly folkish and/or smooth jazzish songs
with lyrics vague enough to be interpreted as
deep. The album gets a little press, goes on
heavy Starbucks rotation and maybe wins a
Grammy or two.
The singer/songwriter is then promptly for
gotten about, left on the wayside while the
press and the populace go after the next hot
young thing. The artist’s music disappears into
the cultural ether from which it came and we
all get on with our lives. This is the story into
which the debut from Missy Higgins, appro
priately entitled “The Sound of White,” fits
perfectly. Nothing more needs to be said.
The major label debut from Chicago’s
REVIEW, page 6