- Laura Lundberg

Most senior citizens would be relaxing and enjoying their golden years. Perusing farmer’s markets and learning a new hobby seem to be the thing to do when you’re of retiring age. Not all lead the simple, stereotypical retired lifestyle, however. Meet Ruth Flowers. Equipped with silver, sparkly headphones, she has been Deejaying at various clubs in London and Paris for the past few years, and she goes by the name of Mamy Rock. Called one of the hippest DJs of our time, she mixes a variety of songs that many would have never thought could flow so well together. Smart, eccentric, and energizing, Mamy Rock has all the characteristics of many other DJs – except one. She’ll be seventy years old this year.

She first got the idea to become a DJ when she was invited to her grandson’s birthday party at a local club. Upon entering the club and seeing how happy and energized the crowd was, she decided that she wanted to take on the challenge of becoming a DJ. She wanted to cater to the young members of society while enjoying the electric atmosphere of the clubs. She put out her first single entitled “Still Rocking” and plans to release her electro-rock album in 2011. With the trendiest clubs booking her, she’ll be making some major appearances across the US and worldwide. Mamy Rock explains on her website that the decision to become a DJ was a challenge for her, though it has become an increasingly rewarding one, “I went to clubs and had been practicing a lot with the new machines. It was really fun!! Now I know I can make everybody move their ass on the dance floor.”

We think that says it all.

Check out this video featuring Mamy Rock below and tell us what you think!

Ruth Flowers Mamy Rock Still Rocking Live

- Mike Munoz

For years the Eugene Hilton has been one of the top places to stay amidst the colorful art district of downtown Eugene. But on Sunday Morning, hundreds of music enthusiasts from around the city flocked to the Hilton looking to buy a piece of music history at the Record Collectors Show.

As I walked into the Eugene O’Neill Hall, I was immediately overwhelmed by the thousands of records, CDs and tapes on display. Not knowing where to begin, I walked over to a table of records run by an older couple. As I thumbed through their boxes of records, I came across Led Zeppelin’s sixth album, Physical Graffiti.

I grabbed the record in excitement until I noticed a small sticker on the sleeve that said “Slightly Scratched.” I asked the man about the label and he assured me the record played fine. “Do you want to take a listen?” he asked, seeing I wasn’t convinced. The man pulled out a small turntable from under his desk and played the opening track, “Custard Pie” without any hiccups or scratches. Sold.

About thirty minutes into the show, the number of people at the convention had easily doubled, and customers began to get more aggressive in their quest to find the album of their choice. Some began to form lines and wait for their chance to browse through the “R” section, in hopes to still find a Rolling Stones record. Other sat on the floor next to a piles of records, making the difficult decision on which albums to purchase and which ones to leave behind.

The convention featured hundreds of rare albums by various classic bands, such as Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Who’s Tommy. However, there seemed to be one question on everyone’s mind: “Do you have any Beatles Records?” While most vendors featured records from high profile artists such as Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, there is no doubt that Beatles albums were a prize catch at the convention.

While some record stores and radio stations such as KRVM had booths at the convention, most tables were run by local collectors who were looking to make some money off of their old records. But the convention was not just limited to records and CDs. Some booths sold audio equipment, such as turntables and speakers, while other sold books and vintage tour t-shirts and lunch pails.

As I was leaving the Hilton, I overhear a conversation at one of the record booths. The man working the table wearing a Chess Records t-shirt is talking to a customer who is frantically scanning through hundreds of albums. “Yeah I don’t really like selling my records online,” says the worker. “It’s much better to do it here, where you guys get the chance to see and touch the records for yourselves.” The customer pauses for a second and sighs in disappointment. “Too bad it only happens once a year.”

- Mike Munoz

As I walk into Musique Gormet next to Bradford’s in downtown Eugene, there’s a jukebox playing hits by The Taliband and the Loud Fast fools, while the walls are covered with records and album artwork from bands such as Hank Champion and Wayward Youth. If you haven’t heard of these bands, it’s not because your music history is rusty. It’s because none of them are real.

The music and artwork is part of an exhibition called “Sonny Smith’s 100 Records,” which came to Eugene through the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts.  The idea began a few years ago when artist and musician Sonny Smith decided he wanted to create his own chapter in music history. He started by inventing dozens of bands that spanned many different genres from psychedelic folk rock to pop supernaturalism.

The next task was hiring artists to create album artwork for these fictitious bands. The exhibit shows the work of a handful of various artists, such as Alika Cooper and well known pop artist Ed Ruscha. The final step was creating the music. Using his own band, The Sunsets and contributions from other artists such as The Kelley Stoltz Band and The Sandwitches, Smith created the soundtrack to his fictitious underground pop scene.

While some of the album artwork is pristine and high quality, others look like they were created in a preschool arts and crafts class. Gallery curator Bernie Brooks said he is excited about having a show that is so stylistically different than others in the area, describing the exhibit as having a “scotch tape aesthetic.” The exhibit focuses more on the music and back story of each individual band, rather than the quality of the artwork itself.

The time and thought that was put into the history of these bands really come through in their biographies. For example, the Cabezas Cortadas are a band out of Tijuana who rose to fame while touring with Suicidal Tendencies in Los Angeles and included maps of the safest routes across the Mexican border in their album sleeves. There’s also Hazel Shepp, who began his singing career during a stay at the Warm Springs Foundation Hospital in Texas as a mental patient as well as folk singer Earthgirl Helen Brown, whose drug abuse and wild antics during live shows led to her eventual downfall.

Initially, there was some concern about where the exhibit would be shown when DIVA started closing down their galleries. “We weren’t sure if it was actually going to happen,” explains Brooks. “Sonny contacted me at the end of October, right around when the galleries were closing.” With help from the art department at the University of Oregon, Bernie scrambled to find a space to show the exhibit. Luckily just around the corner from DIVA, Bradford’s home entertainment store donated some of their space for the show.

While there is no plan to release any of the music commercially, the exhibition certainly shows the talent and creativity of Sonny Smith as both an artist and musician. With good music and extensive tales of drug use and bands of misfits, the exhibit is surely one to see for music fans in Eugene.

-Jacob O’Gara

It’s tragic, really. Way back in 2002, the year Hans Blix inspected for weapons in Iraq and Pierce Brosnan played James Bond for the last time in Die Another Day, Lil Jon and his East Side Boyz were on top of the universe, titans of the music industry, and the genre that they midwifed into existence, crunk, was king. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that lewd club banger of theirs, “Get Low.” Not even the pristine and squeaky-clean confines of a Catholic grade-school dance were safe. Flash-forward: After eight years of work as a ubiquitous featured artist, always willing to lend a helpful “Yeah!” or “Okay!”, Lil Jon releases his debut solo album Crunk Rock, and…nothing. You could throw a chunk of Styrofoam into a pond and you’d get a bigger reaction.

This was supposed to be Lil Jon’s big triumph; he was supposed to be greeted like a Roman general who returns to the city after years of campaigns. Instead, hardly anybody showed up. Sure, some did, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands who pushed Kings of Crunk up the charts. This lackluster comeback might give inquiring minds cause to ask, What happened to Lil Jon? Nothing. Nothing happened to him; the better question is: What happened to hip-hop?

Right now I’m reading Hitch-22, a memoir by Christopher Hitchens, perhaps my favorite journalist working today. In it, Hitchens describes the malaise felt by his father and his father’s generation: they had served Britain in the Second World War (Hitchens pere was in the Royal Navy) but instead of glory, the Britain they once knew shriveled up. They were Tories to the core, stalwart and old-school, and they felt slightly betrayed that the Britain they loved and thrived in fell away right before their eyes.

This is what Lil Jon went through, or, more accurately, is currently going through. In his heyday, hip-hop was all about the parties in the clubs with the girls and the Cristal and the weed and going to said parties in your Escalade with spinning rims. That kind of hip-hop is still around, but the mainstream is dominated by introspective sorts like Kid Cudi, Drake, Kanye West, and B.o.B. They have transformed the genre so dramatically that Lil Jon’s exclamations of “Yeah!”, “Okay!”, or “Who wants to get fucked up?!” are now almost quaint. Once upon a time, Lil Jon was the talk of the town but now, like the British veterans of World War Two, he’s discontent, streets behind everyone else, and worst of all, nobody is grateful for his service. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but our veterans deserve better.

           When “Just Dance” first hit the scene, Lady Gaga appeared to be nothing more than your average, blonde, party-pop tart, albeit one with a little more glam inspiration. Two albums, several music videos (including a couple that clock-in at almost ten minutes), and one Kermit-pelt dress later, it is apparent that she’s something far crazier.

            Or brilliant, depending on where you think she falls on that line between genius and insanity. Perhaps no other musical artist in recent history, besides maybe Michael Jackson, has sparked as much discussion regarding her mental state. When talking about Lady Gaga, somebody inevitably asks, is she crazy or is she faking it? She’s neither. “Lady Gaga” is definitely an act, a calculated and postmodern put-on, but it’s a very real one.

            The music video for “Alejandro,” (from The Fame Monster) doesn’t do much to disprove the theory that she’s absolutely out of her mind. However, it follows the same formula that the video for “Telephone,” the previous single from the same album, laid out: take a song that is rather simple and straightforward in a lyrical sense, and stretch it over a nine-minute music video that bears no resemblance to what the song purports to be about. According to the video, “Telephone” isn’t a poppy track about ignoring your boyfriend’s endless text messages while getting your dance on with a bottle of Hennessy in hand, it’s about lesbian lovers/mass murderers on the lam, with allusions to Kill Bill and women-in-prison flicks thrown in for good measure.

Lady Gaga in her most recent music video, "Alejandro."

                      Likewise, “Alejandro” isn’t about this mysterious Alejandro, (or Fernando or Roberto) at all. Unlike “Telephone,” the video lacks an apparent narrative; instead, it’s a collection of sequences that evoke Brazil, surrealism, Weimer-era cabaret numbers, bondage fetishes worthy of 1970s Times Square, fascism (it’s more Francisco Franco than “Alejandro”), and Madonna circa Black Jesus. The whole affair is sensory overload and a bit of a mess.

            Even though my days as a Catholic are over, the imagery of Lady Gaga dressed as a latex-clad nun swallowing a rosary, then getting “raped” (via choreography) by a gang of thugs with “Simple Jack” haircuts is jarring. However, all this baiting of Catholic outrage by a pop star has been done before; Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video includes burning crosses, the former Mrs. Guy Ritchie experiencing stigmata, and a sequence where she kisses a black version of Jesus Christ.

            Of course, criticizing Gaga for being derivative of Madonna misses the whole point of her being. Everything Lady Gaga is doing has been done before. Her desire is to be the culmination of pop music, to murder the genre she obviously adores by cannibalizing from its history.

            In that regard, Lady Gaga has more in common with the fascist regimes of the past than just the simple aping of their uniform and architecture styles in her video. Fascists like Benito Mussolini saw their ideology as the endpoint of human development, and sought to tear down civilization as they knew it, and rebuild on the rubble. Fascists drew from nationalism, allegedly ancient paganism and mysticism, anti-Enlightenment thinkers, and modern scientific progressivism in the formation of their belief system.

            Replace the relevant words and phrases with “pop music,” “David Bowie,” “Madonna,” “Queen,” and “Andy Warhol” and you have Lady Gaga and her struggle—her kampf.

Noah Brenner plays his Celtic harp in a cramped practice space in the University of Oregon's MarAbel B. Frohnmayer Music Building.

You can learn a lot about a musician when you watch him carry his instrument. Flute or tuba, violin or bass, a musician who looks comfortable with his instrument is comfortable with his instrument. When Noah Brenner travels long distances on foot, he uses a homemade backpack to carry his Celtic harp—an instrument that’s almost as tall as he is. The metal skeleton of the pack is fashioned from the remains of two separate external-frame hiking packs. The shoulder straps are attached to the frame, which rests on his back. A second metal rectangle is attached to the bottom like a shelf. This is where the harp rests, wrapped safely in a green cloth case. Once secured to the frame, the heart-shaped instrument leans flat against his back. “Everyone thinks they are very clever and that they’re the first one to think that it looks like wings,” he says. Others have asked if the bulky pack was a tent or a surfboard. He’s even been asked if the bundle on his back was a kayak. “Usually people ask me about it, which is kind of cool.”

Noah is the first University of Oregon student to major in Celtic harp performance. There are other harpists in the music department, but Noah, who also plays viola and sings, is the only student whose primary instrument is Celtic harp. The major was fashioned for him by his university teacher and mentor, Laura Zaerr. A harpist herself, Zaerr worked with the department to approve Noah’s specialization in this area of music performance, which Noah had to petition for during his junior year—when all music majors declare their specializations—before the administration would consent. He started the program in fall 2005 and graduates this spring. “So, I am officially a Celtic harp performance major: the first and hopefully not the last,” he says. “To say that I could do it means that there’s a possibility that somebody else could do it.”

Noah Brenner loves playing Celtic harp because it sounds homier and more imperfect than a concert harp.

He has close-cropped facial hair and a full head of brown curls. He is passionate about his music but doesn’t let his music define him—it is just one piece of his personality. In a small office in the music building, he talks about his harp and his career as a solo harpist. He is sociable, well-spoken and rather jittery. While he talks he reaches out to his harp, as if to start playing, but then thinks better of it. He sits in a tiny first-floor office in the music building, a room barely larger than the average prison cell, which serves as a practice room for UO harpists. Along one wall there is an upright piano; along another there is a bookshelf; and in the corner by the door is a desk littered with miscellaneous office supplies and papers. But most of the floor space is reserved for the harps. In total, there are five harps in the room, and among them is Noah Brenner’s own Celtic harp.

Brenner started playing the harp when he was five, but his first harp was purchased before he was born. His mother was visiting the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, and there, amidst the fossils and museum displays, a harpist named Sylvia Woods was performing. Noah’s mother was captivated by the sound. She decided that someday she would buy a harp of her own and learn to play it. Shortly after Noah was born, his grandmother passed away and his mother inherited his grandmother’s earthly possessions. With this inheritance, his mother purchased a lap harp and a plot of land in Crestone, a 90-person town in South Central Colorado.

Here, in this Rocky Mountain town, Noah’s mother tried to teach herself how to play her lap harp. She used an instructional book written by Sylvia Woods—the woman whom she’d heard at the Tar Pits. But she kept her hobby a secret. “She just didn’t want to play for anyone,” Noah says, “She just enjoyed playing for herself.” When Noah was five he asked his mom if he could take piano lessons. They didn’t own a piano and their budget didn’t give them much room to purchase such an expensive instrument. “But it was really important to my mom that I do something,” he says. She went in her closet, pulled out her lap harp and her Sylvia Woods book, and entrusted them to Noah. Stick with this instrument for one year, she said, and then we can find some way to teach you how to play piano. “So I did that,” he says, “and then I didn’t want to play the piano.”

Noah was hooked. The harp felt natural for him, so his desire to learn piano was overpowered by his connection with the harp. Soon he was performing his music for others. In terms of technique, he is self-taught because no one else in Crestone knew how to play harp. While he continued to teach himself, eventually switching from a lap harp to a floor-size instrument, he also studied music theory and viola with music teachers. When he reached the end of his high school years, he searched for a university where he could study Celtic harp. “For one thing, harp in general is not terribly common but not too hard to find,” he says, “But Celtic harp: Where am I going to be able to actually study that?”

Though it's sometimes difficult to walk around with a six-foot-tall instrument, Noah is glad he stuck with the Celtic harp.

Noah explains that many musicians might view the Celtic harp as a starter instrument, training wheels for the concert harp. This mentality irks him. “It’s not a lesser instrument, it’s not a stepping stone and it’s not the half-way harp. It is a different instrument.” The harps are different sizes: the concert harp is much larger and looks more ornate. The frame is more than five feet tall and generally has 47 strings. At the base of the concert harp there are seven adjustable pedals that alter the pitch of the strings. Unlike the Celtic harp, the concert harp has a substantial repertoire of music, and large-scale music performance opportunities are more available for concert harp players. “I have to clarify when I say I play the harp; that I mean this one because the assumption is not this one.” Since attending the UO, Noah’s learned how to play the concert harp, but he still prefers his Celtic harp.

Thirty-eight strings stretch from the base of his Celtic harp’s chocolate-brown frame. The taut lines span across the open center and pass through a metal sharpening lever which is the size of a child’s pinky finger. At the top frame, small metal pegs secure each string to the frame. Like keys on a piano, the strings are grouped into octaves. All the red strings are the same note but are part of a different octave; the same goes for all the blue strings. The rest of the strings are either white or clear. The metal levers and pegs are just part of the assemblage which not only keeps the harp strings attached to the frame but also influences the strings’ pitches.

A tweak here and a turn there adjust the sting’s tension and thus its pitch. With the flip of the sharpening lever an F note becomes an F sharp. For some songs, he adjusts the levers then ignores them for the duration of the piece, but for other songs he needs to flip the levers to change keys as often as every few seconds.

In the UO practice room filled with harps, Noah demonstrates the differences between the Celtic and concert harps. He takes a seat on a small bench and tips the harp back towards his torso. The harp balances on the back two legs of its stool and the edge of the harp’s frame rests on his right shoulder. With his left hand on one side of the strings and his right hand on the other side, his fingers skim across octaves then pluck the desired strings. A captivating tune floats from the harp’s hollow sound-box and fills the small room. On the Celtic harp, the song gives the room a different sense of place; it feels more warm and comfortable, as if the room is filled with friends and family. When the piece is done he skims his palm across the strings to mute the melody’s final echoes. “Something, to me, in the sound is more subtle with the Celtic harp. It’s not just a note,” he says. “Sometimes concert harp, to me, can sound impersonal and distant. This harp sounds like it’s right here with you.”

While the warm glow continues to drift around the room, Noah steps over to a concert harp and prepares to play the melody again. He adjusts some of the pedals located at the base of the harp to turn natural tones into a sharp note or a flat note. He sits on a different bench, but this time the harp stays flat on the ground. Once more, he places his right hand on the back of the strings and his left hand on the front. His hands play the same melody but the sound is different. The music is beautiful, yet the notes sound fixed and make the space feel more formal. “The concert harp is more consistent over its whole range—all the notes are the same,” he says at the end of his demonstration. While some people may prefer the concert harp for this very reason, he prefers the Celtic harp because its sound is different. “I don’t know why, necessarily, I would want inconsistency, but it makes it more real. It makes it more human,” he says. The Celtic harp also feels more personal to Noah because he can repair and maintain his harp without much assistance—the pedal mechanisms of the concert harp are harder to repair without help from an expert. “I feel like I am less scared of messing with my instrument,” he says. “It’s mine; we can actually interact.”

Noah says more than one person has joked that his harp case, which he made himself, looks like a pair of wings when he wears it on his back.

Noah Brenner spent a year establishing residency in Oregon before he started school. During this time, he earned his income as a solo harpist. At first he played at a cafe. Then he decided to showcase his talent at the Saturday Market. Eventually, his name was circulating around Eugene and he started getting gigs for weddings and parties and cultural festivals. Though he didn’t make much money at some of these events, it was positive publicity. He says that people began to call him to offer performance opportunities, and now that Eugene knows who he is, he has an easier time fitting performances in his already hectic academic schedule. “While I’ve been in school I’ve had time, though not a lot, to do gigs,” he says. “But I certainly don’t have time to chase them.” School has helped him expand his skills and learn to play better, and this pursuit for knowledge is what drives his studies. “I don’t need the piece of paper that I’m going to get in the end. I’ll be happy to get it; it’s a sense of completion,” he says. “But that’s not my motivation.” While many undergraduates need their degree to get a job, Noah is already performing and implementing his talents. His academic motivation is different because he is already a paid harpist.

After he graduates he’ll have more time to perform and teach others about the Celtic harp. Many of his past gigs presented his talent as background music—his music created atmosphere but wasn’t the main event. “Something that’s always important to me is showing the different sounds that the harp can make,” he says. Brenner emphasizes that the harp can do more than whimsical arpeggios and grand crescendos. He combines storytelling and music to create a more personal experience with the audience. Sometimes he’ll play a song which is accompanied by a story, but sometimes he tells the story just to teach the audience about his instrument and the music he plays. “I really like engaging an audience and creating a world they get to come into for a little while,” he says. When he is done with school, he plans to create a solo performance line-up featuring a wide variety of music, from classic Celtic melodies to arrangements fit for Tango. “Pretty soon I’m going to plan on creating a really good show,” he says, “Getting visible so that I have a name that exists outside of the music building and those who organize events.” With a pluck of luck and some self-promotion, he and his Celtic harp will draw crowds to a solo concert. Background music is a good gig, but, as the first Celtic harp performance major, Noah Brenner looks forward to preparing and organizing performances that will showcase his musicianship. “When I graduate I will actually have more time to actually be a musician,” he says.

Eagle Park Slim performs at the Saturday Market in Eugene, Oregon.

After the band finishes their set, a swarm of women hop up from their cocktails and skip over to the bespectacled Ben Rice, who sounds forty-years old onstage, looks eighteen offstage, and is actually twenty-one. But his youth does not deter the ladies, who were all over fifty-years old, from dishing out kudos to the young blues singer and guitarist as though they were trying to fatten the stocky college senior on compliments alone. “You have to come back, please,” begs one frizzy haired, big bosomed fan. “Oh yes, of course,” agrees the flock of likely grandmothers.

In a small city where blues talents are abundant but aged- it is something to talk about when a young person is spotted at a blues event. Tim Volem, Secretary for the Rainy Day Blues Society in Eugene, is trying to change that. Enthusiasts like Volem are concerned that without their elders’ help, young people won’t care enough about the blues to preserve them. Some of these people are working to eliminate this concern, but it’s unclear whether or not their efforts are working.

The Rainy Day Blues Society has become particularly proactive in getting young people interested in the blues. Musicians founded the organization to do just that– provide the blues to local youth. Just before the death of deejay “Rooster,” the society was founded to preserve and promote the culture of the blues. Given that in the last decade the Eugene blues scene has lost both blues deejay Gavin “Rooster” Fox in 1999 and avid harmonica player Ted “Papa Soul” Lee in 2009, blues fans have come to realize that sooner is better than later.

“I think it’s undeniable that kids aren’t going to have much exposure unless we give it to them,” says Volem.

In addition to his guitar, Slim uses a kazoo in some of his songs. Kazoos are a popular accompaniment in blues, especially for individual performers, due to its ability to imitate larger instruments like the clarinet or trumpet.

For instance, take Rice, the young guitarist surrounded by women twice his age. When he started college in Eugene, the society immediately booked him. Rice, whose vocals and impressive guitar work compare to rocker Jonny Lang’s, is one of the organization’s most successful connections to younger crowds. But it’s a wonder that Rice, a smokey-voiced prodigy who played at almost every bar in Portland and Seattle by the time he was eleven, seems to be the only one in the bar who would not be considered over the hill. “Ben Rice is a great example—in fact, he is the example of a young person who’s taken the initiative to get involved with the blues,” says Volem.

And that’s exactly why silver-haired members are doing their part to capture the attention of more youth. Many society members volunteer in the growing Blues in the Schools program that lets any Lane County school book local musicians for a day. The musicians, all members of the Rainy Day Society, volunteer their time to conduct classes and workshops, allowing kids and young adults to write their own songs, play the instruments, and meet mentors. These volunteers have played with the likes of Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and many more great blues musicians.

Granted, veteran musicians have noticed kids don’t always adopt to the blues readily. “A lot of them just want to listen to hip hop. They’re not always interested in hearing the stuff that has influenced it,” says Volem. But by the end of the day, the kids have written their own songs and often share them with their peers. Rainy Day Blues Society director Josh Coen hopes that someday students will share these songs at a public venue. “It’s just planting a small seed, and our hope is that it will encourage the kids to explore on their own,” says Volem.

Other ambitions of the society are to get college students more involved by offering credits for aspiring musicians at the universities, and encouraging students to perform in the community and off-campus. “I contacted three different people in the music department at the University of Oregon, but I got nowhere,” says Volem. “I think the University people are just so busy that they just don’t have time for one more thing.”

David Gross, a local musician and craftsman believes that if the radio played the blues more, young people would start to care. “It’s been stomped out,” he says. Volem agrees to an extent, and as a retired English teacher, he knows exactly what Gross means. “It’s like the zeitgeist—the spirit of the ages takes over,” Volem says.

In another song Slim adds bells for rhythmic accompaniment.

However, some young people believe that the older blues musicians in the community have been talking to the wrong people. “If local blues musicians contacted campus radio, we’d be more than happy to play their stuff,” says Lex Chase, a deejay and events coordinator at KWVA, the University of Oregon’s campus radio. “It’s just that we get Indie-Alternative music from promoters, but we never get any blues.”

Though KWVA does not list one single blues station on its website, she says they play what blues they can. Few musicians contact the station with new music or ideas. According to Chase, there needs to be a greater effort on musicians’ parts to offer something of interest. She recognized that blues does lend itself towards the digital sound of recent popular tunes, but innovation needs to happen. “People either want the original or an alternative of it. Like my friends–they love Miles Davis. But they want to hear the original Miles Davis, not just someone else singing his songs,” she says. “If people do variations and twists on the old music, that might work. If you mixed in blues with electronic mash-ups that would be so cool.”

At one time, the blues held a lively role in the lives of Eugene youths (local legend Curtis Salgado inspired John Belushi’s character in the 1980 film “The Blues Brothers”). Perhaps the traditional style of blues does not resonate with young people, but more of the reason seems to be that there are not enough blues sources marketed to young crowds.

Students at the University of Oregon used to enjoy the presence of Eagle Park Slim, who has played in Eugene for thirty years and was recently awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rainy Day Blues Society. Slim played with the greatest: Muddy Waters, James Brown, Joe Cocker, Ike Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Percy Mayfield. After his brushes with fame though, he played mostly for students. “A lot of kids knew me,” he says. One day a young man was stopped from robbing his friend, just because he heard Slim playing. “Your music is something. I was going to rip off my friend, but your songs made me stop. I’m glad I ran into you,” Slim recalls the strayed youth saying. One student wrote his thesis on Slim, and another volunteered Slim to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers when they played at the EMU ballroom (And he indeed opened for them.). But now, Slim can’t make it far from his home downtown and doesn’t often get to see campus. He plays the kazoo and his cherry-stained guitar at the back of the farmers’ market for little kids passing by with spare nickels for a tip.

“Blues is the basis for jazz, country, and rock-n-roll. We teach this music because it moves us,” says Volem.

And it is his hope, along with many others, that the blues continues to be taught. No matter the age, everyone can enjoy a good blues session. Rice, who plays for the old, and Slim, who plays for the young, can attest to that.

There is no better example of, as Volem calls it, the “spirit of the ages.”

Listening to the music of your youth is something only the brave and self-confident can do without cringing. And even after you steel yourself, it’s hard not to greet such music with the exclamation, “I listened to that?!”

Red Hot Chili Peppers and A.F.I. receive such a response. Of course, there is the exception here and there; I used to listen to Nirvana a lot back in the day, and they’re still good.

Then there’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day, a song I loved, then hated, then just ignored when I shifted my listening tastes from alt/rock/generally guitar-based music to hip-hop. Recently, I listened to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” again and was surprised.

It’s not bad; in fact, it’s actually good. Not good for a song from the American Idiot album; not good for a Green Day song or a song of that type; just straight good. Sure it shares the same poppy structure that every other alt ballad has, but you can’t expect bands to reinvent the wheel with every song.

What struck me about the song after re-listening to it are the lyrics; at first I thought, “All this guy does is say ‘walk alone’ over and over.”

And in the context of Green Day’s American Idiot-era image, and the music video, those lyrics are run-of-the-mill emo jive. But if you just read them, and replace Billie Joe Armstrong’s nasal with Johnny Cash’s slow drawl, then “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is a masterpiece of Biblical economy and poetry.

Make no mistake, America’s Next Top Model is all about Tyra Banks and the goofy-ass bit of theater she’s been pulling with her co-hosts/conspirators for the last five cycles or so; the contestants and their trials and tribulations are just background noise.

The show, which purports to shoot ordinary girls with a dream into the stratosphere of the modeling world, shifted focus from those “in the running to be America’s Next Top Model” to the skits Tyra & Company do to fill the time between photo shoots, judging, and house drama at around cycle eight or nine. It was then that the participants became less like aspiring models and more like fans of the show and members of the Cult of Tyra who wanted their 15 minutes of fame.

Accordingly, the producers became determined not to let the real stars of the show–Tyra, Ms. Jay, Nigel, the other Jay, and whichever washed-up ex-supermodel they happened to lure onto the judging panel for that cycle–get upstaged by the houseful of fame whores.

The result is a gifted bit of lunacy, manic street theater in the low-culture realm of reality television. The last several cycles have given us Super Smize, a superhero character played by Tyra who teaches the contestants how to “smile with your eyes”; ambiguous words of wisdom such as “look like a cheetah with a secret”; and photo shoot director Jay Manuel dressed like a vampire.

All of this begs the question: Has Tyra Banks lost her mind?

Or is she a genius, streets ahead of everyone else in the business?  Since I am a fan of her work (her turn in Halloween: Resurrection was sublime), I tend to think the latter.

She’s part of the new school of pop persona, along with Lady Gaga, characterized by outlandish behavior tempered with a sense of self-awareness. Both Gaga and Tyra know that their acts are ludicrous, like the backstories and drama that “enrich” the world of WWE wrestling, known as kayfabe.

The kayfabe of the WWE, along with its equivalents in music and reality TV (Gaga’s act and Tyra’s  ANTM), is modern Greek theater. All three present a heightened, pop-saturated version of reality, and wrap us up in the trashy grandeur of it all.

One admirer of kayfabe was Andy Kaufman, one of the original post-modern  celebrities, who called himself a “song-and-dance  man.” When Tyra Banks dons her Super Smize get-up, she’s dancing to his tune.

[podcast]http://www.fluxstories.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast/zioni1.2.mp3[/podcast]

In a night of Reggae, Zion I’s hip-hop was a refreshing opening. The duo of DJ AmpLive and MC Zumbi hail from Oakland, California. Zumbi’s high-energy performance combined with AmpLive’s beats and samples transformed a sluggish crowd into a bouncing, cheering mob.

S.O.J.A.

[podcast]http://www.fluxstories.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast/Soja1.mp3[/podcast]

Bringing their distinct sound all the way from Arlington, Virginia Soldiers of Jah Army put an interesting spin on Reggae music with its 80′s hair metal guitar solos. The seven-member band includes a saxophone and trumpet that make for some great interludes during their otherwise very Reggae songs.

Rebelution

[podcast]http://www.fluxstories.com/wp-content/uploads/podcast/Rebeultion1.mp3[/podcast]

They may look like frat boys, but don’t let that fool you. Rebelution has a laid-back style that mellows you out and promotes socially conscious ideals. The Santa Barbara-based band has already garnered radio play and seems well on their way to a mass following.