Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 16, 2011)
rts.' Culture Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011 TheClackamas Print 5 ocals no longer ‘anonymous’ By Enk Andersen Co-Editor-in-Chief Nathan Sturgess Clackamas Print to right) Wesley Mason, Bryan Edmiston, Ryan Antoine and Paul a (not pictured) comprise the band called Known as Anonymous. Orleans is known for many gs: Hurricane Katrina, Mardi s and jazz, to name a few. Musicians such as Buddy Bolden, “Jelly Roll” Morton and Antoine “Fats” Domino paved the road for jazz in Louisiana, mak ing the state a national icon for the genre. But every once in a while, we see a shift in where talent is produced. Who would have thought that place was about 2,000 miles northwest of New Orleans, right here in Oregon City? It would appear that Mardi Gras came early with this band. Known as Anonymous is a band currently attending Lonnie Cline’s Vocal Jazz Ensemble class, adding the instru mentals to the talented group of Clackamas Community College students. Playing together for close to five years now, Ryan Antoine (drums), Wesley Mason (guitar), Paul Paresa (piano/vocals) and Bryan Edmiston (bass) perform outstanding rhythms that I can only describe as being the offspring of jazz and swing, should they get together and elope. Known as Anonymous puts together a mix of sounds so smooth and lively that not dancing to the music is hard to do. Paresa plays the piano with such perfection that the vibe is actually not much different from that of Jelly Roll Morton’s “Honky Tonk Blues.” Antoine drums like Bernard “Bunchy” Johnson, putting emphasis to the Southern-style jazz. Mason plays guitar with rhythms sounding shockingly like Little Freddie King, and Edmiston strums the bass and looks like a back-in-the-day beatnik, adding a flavor hard to find in mainstream music today. If this were a group of older, experienced performers I would not be that taken aback by their skill. The fact is, though, this band just graduated high school. That’s right; this is their first term at CCC, and they already have the sound of experienced musicians. At this point, the band tells me that they are still trying to perfect their recordings and sound and do not yet have anything other than their demo. You can hear one of their very, very early songs “We Don’t Play” by searching for Known as Anonymous at you- tube.com, but I must stress that the video does not do justice to the work you would witness today. “I have this mixer that I came across and we use that. It’s pretty decent for just a home place, amateur tiling. It gets the job done,” Antoine said. “We are working on a lot of recordings,” Mason said. Now although there is no easy way to listen to this group of reincarnated jazz/ blues/swing Louisiana musicians, you have a chance to hear them live at the Roseland Theater this Saturday, Feb. 19 at noon when they perform for the Next Big Thing Tour. So if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, make sure you stop by to sup port your fellow classmates by checking out Known as Anonymous. - 7/’ you or someone you know is in a band or performs any type of music in Clackamas County or at Clackamas Community College, Erik would love to get in touch with you. Feel free to e-mail him at chiefed@clackamas.edu. Show starts at noon at the Roseland Theater on Feb 19, located at 8 NW 6th Ave Portland, Ore. For more information go to www.roselandpdx.com +: Sake - discover appreciation for a long-lived favorite By Joshua Baird Its & Culture Editor Y Then you think of A/ sake, what do you IV imagine? Dragon bed men running down a lin a festival? Yakuza men [movies preparing to show Md of organized crime who pl bad mama j amas are? fatever it is that comes to [sake seems to be at the [of Japanese culture for the W western mind in more han sushi, karate or ninjas Fold be. fe is a referred to as a rice I though this is very much ■correct translation from fe. Sake is no more a wine ■¡s a beer. After all of the stuff I’ve seen on TV and in the movies, I have to admit I was kind of freaked out by the idea of drinking sake. I remember seeing Christopher “The Highlander” Lambert chok ing on it in “The Hunted,” and then groaning one word, “Sake?” The idea has always freaked me out to be honest. I poured a glass and, as I always do, I smelled it first, but there was no aroma to speak of. The cold sake looked like a goblet full of water at some fancy restaurant, like Olive Garden or anywhere that they don’t serve up your drink in a mason jar. I am starting to see how people get so easily fooled by the appearance. To make matters worse, I was told the brand I bought, Gekkeikan, was a horrible one and that it was good for nothing except cooking, like table wine but worse. Hesitantly, I lifted the glass to my lips and took my first taste. There was a surprising sweet and bitter flavor to it. .1 was impressed, so Lhad more. After the initial bout with my fear of sake, I have to say that for a cheaper bottle ($7) it wasn’t ter rible. In fact in some ways I would consider myself a fan. So after all of this I decided that if I am going to really learn to appreciate sake, I should prob ably try another brand. This time present aroma, almost floral in nature. The first sip was smooth and sweet with no bitter flavor at all. Saketini 2.5 parts gin 0.5 parts sake Shake or stir with ice in a cocktail shaker, then strain into a cock tail glass. Joshua Baird, Clackamas Print I went with Hakutsuru, which retails for $9 a bottle. I poured a glass and took a deep breath, this time there was a much more So mueh for sake being an acquired taste; this took me all of three sips of two different types to acquire a taste for it. Is it just me, or does every culture refer to the alcohol native to their homeland as either “The drink of the gods,” or as “water of life”? Sake is no different. Though sake can be traced back about 4,000 years to ancient China, the Japanese were the first to polish the grains of rice to create the refined sake we know today. According to' Asianartmall. com, “The earliest ‘polishing’ was done by a whole village: each person would chew rice and nuts and then spit the mixture into a communal tub — the sake produced was called ‘kuchika- mi no sake,’ which is Japanese for ‘chewing the mouth sake.’ According to me, that’s fieakin’ nasty. So now what do I do? I plan a trip to the sake distillery in Forest Grove to check out the facility (to read the web-exclusive story, go to twenty-lplus.com after Sunday, Feb. 20.) Disclaimer; Clackamas Print do not encour age drinking to excess or underage drinking of any kind. Remember to drink responsibly.
