BY BRETT CAMPBELL
ESCAPE
Monday, July 21 at 7
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Tuesday, July 22 at 7
Jackson Browne, Keb
Keb’ Mo’, , Steve Earle
Sunday, July 27 at 6
Tori Amos with Ben Folds
Saturday, August 16 at 7:30
OFAM with Rita Moreno
Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Keb
Keb’ Mo’
Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 7
Drummers of West Africa
Mood Music
Unusual instruments and sounds
invade Eugene club scene.
Friday, Sept. 26 at 7
Widespread Panic (ON SALE 7/19)
Tuesday, Sept. 30 at 7
James Taylor (SOLD OUT)
Thank you, sponsors: The Register-Guard / Symphony One / KLCC / Oregon Arts Commission
WOU Regional Resource / Center on Deafness / UO Sign Language Club
22 JULY 17, 2003
M
ood Area 52 makes music that’s
as danceable as it is different from
the norm. The “classical” instru-
mentation (cello, accordion, bass, sometimes
violin, sax, and/or vocals), vintage-clothing
cool and choice of style — mostly tangos —
set this band apart from the usual jeans-clad,
guitar-bass-drums outfits. The sound will ap-
peal to fans of, say, Pink Martini, but like that
band, MA52 is more than just another neo-
lounge act. The members have played with
such local groups as the Visible Men, the
Daddies, Los Mex Pistols and more, and those
influences find their way into the music.
An hour or so of tangos can get old, so the
group is diversifying its repertoire, including
some nifty originals. For the show on July 25
at Sam Bond’s, the core trio will provide a live
soundtrack to one of the most atmospheric
films ever made, La Jette, a series of stills that
tells a harrowing speculative fiction story; it
was the basis for Terry Gilliam’s recent Twelve
Monkeys. The concert also features an off-
shoot called Scrambled Ape, a small brass
ensemble performing some of the delightful
music of the great animated film music com-
poser Raymond Scott and other cartoonish
jazz. MA52 is also playing on the patio at Taco
Loco most Saturdays this summer.
On Saturday, July 19 Sam Bond’s hosts
another great show featuring bodacious ban-
joist Danny Barnes. I used to marvel at his
group, the Bad Livers, at their wild punk/
bluegrass shows in Austin, and the guest stars
on his new album (Darol Anger, Tim
O’Brien, Bill Frisell, et al) attest to the high
regard he’s earned among musicians. He’s
added more jazz and art music streams to an
already teeming river of American roots
music influences. That same night, Celtic
music fans might want to head instead over to
Café Paradiso to catch Golden Bough.
Combining traditional and original music,
this veteran trio deploys Celtic harp, penny-
whistle, fiddle, mandolin, accordion, guitar,
harmonica, recorder and bodhran on gentle
ballads as well as upbeat jigs, reels, and more.
Jazzy electronica hits town on Friday, Aug.
1 when Portland’s Surrounded by Ninjas
comes to the Wild Duck, with Eugene’s own
Eleven Eyes opening. With Asher Fulero on
keyboards and DJ Joel Barber eschewing the
use of samples and sequences, Surrounded by
Ninjas is forced to rely on live improvisation
to create its danceable soundscapes, which
helps counter the mechanistic feel of too many
techno/laptop acts. Eleven Eyes leans a little
more to the jazz side, but with plenty of lively
turntable and electronica accents. This concert
shows how jazz and electronic music can
combine to produce a really entertaining hy-
brid 21st century sound.
One day, an eight-year-old Rachel
Trachtenburg picked up a cheap slide pro-
jector at a yard sale, brought it to her parents’
Seattle home and her dad, Jason, made up lit-
tle tongue-in-cheek ditties about the images
they found on those and other discarded
slides found at flea markets and garage sales.
The titles of these songs ranged from
“Fondue Friends in Switzerland,” and
“Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959.”
A gimmick and an act were born, and
newspapers and magazines around the coun-
try have picked up on the outsider-art appeal
of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow
Players, with Jason on keyboards and vocals,
wife Tina Piña Trachtenburg on vintage
carousel slide projector and Rachel on drums.
(For a taste of their act, check out NPR’s re-
cent “Morning Edition” feature online.)
Now based in New York, the family might
appeal to fans of They Might be Giants,
Jonathan Richman and other irony-inflected
faux naïf acts, and their anti-corporate angle
should go down well in Eugene. Should be a
fun show (Wed., 7/23, WOW Hall and so
should the next night’s WOW concert featur-
ing the Jazz Mandolin Project, the ambi-
tious Vermont trio that appeals to fans of
avant-garde jazz and fusion along with a jam
band audience.
ew