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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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EDITORIAL Managing News Editor Henry Stern Arts & Culture Editor Kelly Clarke Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, James Pitkin, Beth Slovic Copy Chief Kat Merck Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Peggy Perdue, Sarah Smith Special Sections Editor Ben Waterhouse Screen Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Assistant Music Editor Michael Mannheimer Editorial Interns Ailin Darling, Kevin Davis, Rachael DeWitt, Nathan Gilles, Tiffany Stubbert. Nikki Volpicelli CONTRIBUTORS Stage Ben Waterhouse Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Visual Arts Richard Speer
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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INBOX WWEEK.COM READERS COMMENT ON “ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL,” WW, MARCH 16, 2011
“So, was a citation issued? Careless driving, reckless driving? He was the only one driving. He should have received a citation. Or, do elected Democrats enjoy diplomatic immunity in Portland?” —Mairez Calderon “Your story shows a curious dichotomy in its implications about the credibility of the parties involved in this accident. The accounts of socalled ‘witnesses’ (who did not witness the accident) seem to be accepted at face value. Hence, ‘One witness says the Democratic congressman smelled of alcohol. That witness and a second one say Wu appeared impaired.’ Yet the investigating police officers detected no odor of alcohol, and Wu passed a field sobriety test. You then feel the need to add some slant by saying of the officers, ‘Neither Worthington nor Hunzeker is a state-certified drug recognition expert.’ Which may be factually true. But it’s a good bet that they’ve had far more training and experience in detecting and evaluating impairment than the two bystanders.…” Jim G
CAMPFIRECOLUMBIA.ORG
“…When I read the line ‘Neither Worthington nor Hunzeker is a state-certified drug recognition expert,’ my first reaction was: So the bystander—who was also the victim of the accident, so she just might have some bias—is a “statecertified drug recognition expert”? Because unless she is, I’m not really sure why her comments are being presented as more accurate than
If a monster earthquake strikes off the Oregon Coast, could the resulting tsunami come all the way up the Columbia River and flatten downtown Portland? —Seismic Citizen This is a popular misconception, possibly due to confusion in the public’s mind between “a tsunami” and “Godzilla.” Luckily, this is one of the relatively few things Portlanders won’t have to worry about when we finally get our promised magnitude 9 superquake. While tsunami waters may raise the level of the lower Columbia—no picnic for folks in, say, Astoria—the standard earthquake scenarios don’t include a Poseidon Adventure-type wall of seawater coming to wash Portland proper into the sea. That said, if you want to ruin your next trip to the coast, have a look at the tsunami hazard map for whatever seaside town you happen to be visiting—the one for Cannon Beach is particularly grim—and ponder the likelihood that you could 4
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
the police. The police that deal with car accidents routinely. And if he didn’t smell like alcohol to them, and passed the sobriety test, why would they give him a Breathalyzer? I’ve been in car accidents, caused some as a teen. I got in trouble, but not once was I given a Breathalyzer. It’s not a routine thing to do in a car accident. And while, again, the woman whose car was totaled doesn’t think Wu falling asleep “added up,” it sounds like it did to the cops. I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t trust the police, or think they will cover things up.... But I don’t see how one person’s version of a story is grounds for a political cover-up and inability to effectively serve in government. It doesn’t sound like the person writing this article made any effort to present the fact that this event just might have occurred the way Wu explained it, and the way the police agreed and reported it. As opposed to the way a pissed off woman whose car had just been totaled decided to tell it.” —Nine “I love that two commenters wrote lengthy opuses trying to get past the fact that a guy hit a parked car while driving on the wrong side of the road and two people felt he was impaired. And he asked them not to call the cops.... —Read the Lines LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Fax: (503) 243-1115, Email: mzusman@wweek.com
get yourself and your beer cooler 100 feet above sea level (or 2 miles inland) in the 15 minutes coastal dwellers are projected to have between “first tremor” and “watery annihilation.” Thank God we live here in the Rose City, where the only liquid death we have to worry about is the melting of the very ground beneath our feet. Say again? Well, it turns out that earthquakes can raise our underground water pressure in such a way that formerly solid ground will flow like a liquid. (Quicksand works the same way.) It’s called “liquefaction,” and as you might imagine, it’s not good news for your favorite bridge, skyscraper or freeway overpass. Couple this with the unique soup-sloshingin-a-bowl effect of Portland geology (see Dr. Know No. 1, Sept. 23, 2009) and you can see that, even without a tsunami, we’ll still have lots to brag about. Now, if only we had a nuclear power plant…. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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CITY HALL: The “try-stormer”-in-chief. BAR BUSINESS: Fighting the weekend warriors. ROGUE: The real cloud coming out of Japan. WWEEK.COM: Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio’s Obama criticism.
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Marijuana activist Paul Stanford is hitting back at the Oregon Department of Justice, which arrested Stanford this month on charges of failing to pay taxes for two years (see Murmurs, WW, March 9, 2011). In a March 21 court motion to dismiss the charges, Stanford accuses the DOJ of a politically motivated hit job and a public smear campaign to hamper Stanford’s efforts to legalize marijuana. Stanford further alleges he was prevented from paying taxes because a bookkeeper he believes was also a clandestine law-enforcement agent destroyed records from his chain of medical-marijuana clinics. “I will definitely be pleading not guilty, and I’m very confident that I will be exonerated,” Stanford says. DOJ spokesman Tony Green declined to comment.
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At least one candidate in the May 17 election for Portland School Board opposes the $548 million school construction bond voters will also consider on that same ballot. Larry Lawson, a network security manager who wants to unseat incumbent Ruth Adkins, called the Portland Public Schools bond proposal “a joke of a levy on taxpayers.” Lawson’s comment on a Listserv for parents concerned about Portland schools wasn’t all he had to say. He also suggested that students should help renovate the district’s 85 buildings. “God forbid the ‘entitled’ generation should actually have to do manual labor.” Bond campaign spokesman Ben Unger responded: “Our problems—asbestos pipes, heavy oil boilers and structural water leaks—need attention from construction experts to keep our kids safe.”
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One of Oregon’s most prolific debt-collection lawyers has been shut down by the state. Derrick McGavic, who faced multiple lawsuits for alleged violations of the 1978 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (see “The Debt Effect,” WW, Feb. 6, 2008), was under investigation by the Department of Justice after the state agency got more than 90 consumer complaints against him. McGavic agreed to resign from the bar, dissolve his Eugene law firm and pay $70,000 to cover the costs of the investigation. The DOJ found he falsified affidavits, arbitrarily increased fees, repeatedly called debtors who had requested not to be called and purposely confused the identity of creditors in documentation to delay consumers’ response.
Get 15 months of OMSI membership for the price of 12 and win a 16GB iPad 2! We’ll select a winner from every 100 new members until April 15! Enjoy premiere exhibitions Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science and Game On 2.0! For complete rules and membership benefits, visit www.omsi.edu/willamette-week. Offer ends April 15, 2011.
While Basic Rights Oregon readies to launch a statewide TV ad campaign next week for same-sex marriage rights, First Unitarian Church of Portland this weekend will mark the seventh anniversary of the brief time in 2004 when Multnomah County granted 3,000-plus marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The so-called “Politics of Love” celebration March 25-27 at 1034 SW 13th Ave. will include a viewing Saturday of Gen Silent, a documentary about aging same-sex couples’ struggles. The church’s Sunday-morning services will include anniversary receptions for those married in 2004 and other same-sex couples. For more details, go to firstunitarianportland.org/our-programs/social-justice. CORRECTION: Last week’s cover story about environmental activist Stiv Wilson gave an incorrect name for one of the co-founders of Wend magazine. His name is Ian Marshall. WW regrets the error.
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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LAUNCH PAD THE MAYOR PLAYS “WILL IT FLOAT?” WITH A PROPOSAL TO TAKE CONTROL OF MULTNOMAH COUNTY’S RIVER PATROL UNIT. BY BE T H S LOV I C
bslovic@wweek.com
Late in Mayor Sam Adams’ third annual State of the City address last month, he proposed a change to give Multnomah County extra cash it badly needs for social services. But as reported on wweek.com March 18 and 21, Adams’ idea to have the City of Portland take over the county sheriff’s River Patrol Unit faces multiple hurdles. Sheriff Dan Staton has not approved the switch, which Adams said would save the county more than $1 million. Neither has the Oregon State Marine Board, which funds about a third of the unit’s $2 million annual budget. The Multnomah County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, whose 90 members include the 15 officers who police the waterways, also has expressed skepticism. Adams says their concerns mask a more basic instinct; the agencies are territorial, he says. So is this just a turf war? At his Feb. 18 State of the City speech, Adams called his proposal to take over the River Patrol Unit a “controversial but common sense” idea. He also characterized it as an opportunity for Multnomah County to save money that elected leaders can instead earmark for the prosecution of misdemeanor drug crimes and mental health services. Multnomah County, which gets most of its funding from the state, faces a far grimmer budget forecast than the
City of Portland, whose revenues are comparatively stable. But it’s not at all clear that Adams’ plan is realistic. The county’s river patrol polices the portion of the Willamette River that runs through Portland. But the county unit also covers the Sandy and Columbia rivers far outside Portland’s jurisdiction. If the proposal were adopted, Adams says, Portland would shoulder river-patrol activities outside its city borders. That would require extra steps, since state law now says county sheriffs take responsibility for search and rescue efforts. “When you take on hard issues you’re not always going to announce it and get it perfect [at the announcement],” Adams says. Others see in Adams’ proposal a hint of one of the mayor’s biggest weakness heading into the 2012 election season in which Adams is expected to seek re-election. When Adams isn’t drowning Portlanders in months-long bouts of public process, he’s hastily trying to float ideas that sometimes sink under their own weight. Tim Boyle, president and CEO of Columbia Sportswear and a financial backer of the second failed attempt to recall Adams, in 2010, considers this political “pandering” to win points. Even if it’s not pandering, it may not be effective. “If you really want to make it happen, announcing it’s going to happen without consulting others isn’t necessarily going to make it happen,” says Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who previously served on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. The other most recent example of Adams’ propensity for hurried policy changes involves parking around the newly renamed PGE Park, now called Jeld-Wen Field.
Three business days before a scheduled City Council vote on the topic last week—as the Portland Timbers prepared for their April 14 Major League Soccer home opener—Adams introduced a plan that would extend the hours for paid parking and more than double the existing parking-meter rates for select spots around the stadium on game nights. The Goose Hollow Foothills League, which represents the stadium’s surrounding businesses and residents, called initial response among its members to the plan “overwhelmingly negative.” At least two of Adams’ fellow city commissioners had similarly strong feelings against the plan. After hearing objections from Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman, Adams scuttled the vote and agreed to further tweaks. Other examples of Adams’ rushed decision-making abound. A new policy in 2010 to charge residents and businesses in certain “leaf districts” for street clean-up also backfired. After public outcry, Adams admitted he’d made the change too quickly and without sufficient public outreach. In February 2010, Adams experienced a similar whiplash after announcing a plan to spend $20 million in “contract savings” from the Bureau of Environmental Services capital budget to help pay for the city’s bike infrastructure. That plan, which called for building new bioswales that slow car traffic and support bike boulevards, did not go before BES’s director or commissioner-in-charge before Adams introduced the idea at a packed City Council hearing. On March 16, talking about his parking plan for JeldWen Field, Adams used a revealing phrase to describe his approach: “try-storming.” The phrase, which Adams says he borrowed from former Multnomah County Chairwoman Bev Stein, speaks to Adams’ willingness to try out new ideas before they’re fully formed. “These are difficult issues that have been ignored for a long time,” Adams says. “The easy stuff has mostly been done.” Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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THE BAR BUSINESS DARRYL JAMES
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Dustin Knox’s bar on Southwest Ankeny Street has seven rules posted at the door. Find a seat or leave. No hitting on strangers. No fights. No drunks served. One at a time in the bathroom. Don’t yell. And lastly, “no name dropping, star fucking or excessive whining.” Call his seven rules a tribute to the recent past when, Knox recalls, this neighborhood was a place to enjoy a low-key night—not get trashed at the meat markets that now dominate Old Town. “There’s not a lot of places left that aren’t overwhelmed with douchebaggery,” Knox laments. You’ve seen them waiting in line outside Dixie Tavern, brawling outside Dirty and puking at Barracuda: punch-throwing, Axe body-spraying dudes from Beaverton and their Grey Gooseguzzling girlfriends who can’t walk in heels. But Knox struck a blow against overinflated egos and suburban trash culture with Central, the bar he opened last year next to Dan & Louis Oyster Bar. Last November, The Oregonian ran a frontpage story about the fact that Central has no sign. But more than being what the daily dubbed a “secret bar,” Central is ground zero in a fight to liberate this part of downtown from the weekend warriors. “They see downtown as a place to go and raise hell,” Knox says. “I’m completely sure that I want to alienate a certain culture of behavior.” John Papaioannou, co-owner of Berbati’s, says he’s on Knox’s side in this battle over the mix of downtown night life. Across the street from Central, Papaioannou owns the former music club Berbati’s Pan. Inside, now, is a construction zone Papaioannou aims to reopen in June as Ted’s—a downsized
venue for cabaret and burlesque, named after Papaioannou’s recently deceased brother and business partner. Berbati’s Pan was a pioneer venue when it opened in 1994. It closed on New Year’s Eve this year due to competition from new clubs on the east side, Papaioannou says. When Ted’s opens on the corner of Southwest 3rd Avenue, along with a newly expanded Voodoo Doughnut next door, Papaioannou hopes it will help revitalize the street where he’s been doing business for 24 years. (The Papaioannous opened Berbati’s bar on the other side of the block, at Southwest 2nd Avenue and Ankeny Street, in 1987.) “Dustin and I are on the same page,” Papaioannou says. “We could create a lot of traffic.” But first, Papaioannou says, they need the city to get out of their way. The narrow block lined with brick (and also home to the venerable bar Valentine’s) offers more Old Town charm than most stretches of the city center. Knox and Papaioannou want the option of setting up tables to serve their respective specialties—crêpes and gyros. But the sidewalks are too narrow. So long as the city continues allowing auto traffic, the car-free promenade Knox and Papaioannou picture is just a dream. “We have been fighting to close this alley for 20 years,” Papaioannou says. “Why won’t the city do it?” Papaioannou suspects revenue from on-street parking is the answer. But Kevin Brake, senior project manager for the Portland Development Commission, says there was no money to redesign Ankeny when the city recently redeveloped the area around Saturday Market. “It’s been discussed on and off for quite a while,” Brake says of making Ankeny foot traffic only. “It is not closed as an opportunity, but the business owners need to take the lead.” Brake suggests they begin by contacting the city transportation bureau. Papaioannou says he may do so. He pictures a European-style block with lighting strung overhead and the paving ripped out to expose the original cobblestones. Knox says he’ll continue fighting the douchebags his own way at Central. “I could make twice as much money if I changed my business plan, but I’m more interested in bringing change and culture,” Knox says. “I really want to take back the alley.”
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
9
ROGUE
W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N
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ROGUE OF THE WEEK
THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT A PUBLIC-INFORMATION MELTDOWN. The Rogue Desk doesn’t have a heart of stone. Our profound good wishes go out to the people of Japan as they mourn the deaths of at least 9,000 people in the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear crisis. Unfortunately, the same best wishes can’t be extended to the beleaguered Japanese government. We normally reserve our wrath for Rogues much closer to home. But for failing to talk straight at a time when West Coast residents and others are living in legitimate fear of radiation, we’re naming the government of Japan as this week’s Rogue. As noted in a March 16 story in The New York Times, the obfuscation began the day after the March 11 quake, when explosions first rocked the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. But authorities reported only “a big sound and white smoke,” saying the matter was “under investigation.” More detailed assessments were not soon forthcoming. Instead, the government relied on the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., to provide updates, which the government passed on in an evasive, mealy-mouthed fashion. “We’ve been having to force information out of them,” the mayor of the Japanese town of Minamisoma told Reuters. Hiro Ito, an economics professor at Portland State University, was on sabbatical in Tokyo when the earthquake hit. He says long-standing mistrust of the government fueled the panic in Japan. “Even if the government were 100 percent clear about the information, people wouldn’t trust the government anyway,” he says. While the Japanese government played coy, frightened Oregonians were cowering on our shores waiting for a radioactive cloud to cross the Pacific. True, leaders in this country initially disseminated contradictory information as well. Oregon health officials gave the allclear, while the U.S. surgeon general urged investing in iodine. The latest prognosis, from Energy Secretary Steven Chu, on March 20, was that the United States faced no danger. A little more candor from the Land of the Rising Sun would have allayed anxiety, rather than create uncertainty whether citizens could believe anyone at all. And just to show we’re not entirely hard-hearted, we’d like to suggest one way you can help the people of Japan—attend one of the From Oregon, With Love benefit concerts (co-sponsored by WW) at the Aladdin Theater at 2 and 7 pm on Sunday, March 27, featuring Pink Martini and others. For info, go to wweek.com.
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M AT T W O N G
Someday soon, Gov. John Kitzhaber will sit across a conference table from Richard Sanders, the little-known man behind the biggest bankroll in Oregon politics. Together, the two will shape Oregon’s fiscal future for years to come. CONT. on page 14
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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YOUR TEACHER IS F’D
CONT.
S O U R C E S : N AT I O N A L I N S T I T U T E O N M O N E Y I N S TAT E P O L I T I C S , D I G E S T O F E D U C AT I O N S TAT I S T I C S , 2 0 0 9
Sanders, 62, an erudite, high-energy union leader, is “I don’t think [people] understand the relationship in savings through some combination of teacher layoffs, new to Oregon. Bearded and bookish, he arrived from between labor and the governor,” says Oregon Republican shortening the school year and cutting compensation. Massachusetts two months ago to run the Oregon Educa- Party Chairman Allen Alley. “They don’t understand the Historically, Salem has shipped cash to local districts tion Association, the statewide teachers union. level of donations—and that those donations can make with little or no guidance as to how it is spent. Kitzhaber He takes OEA’s helm at a time when public employees driving real change really difficult.” wants to end that practice. are under heavy fire nationally. “The governor has been clear about what he sees as Kitzhaber, 64, a Democrat and the son of teachers, will Oregon’s financial problem is simple. In the words of for- the post-Measure 5 [the 1990 ballot measure that shifted not seek to strip public employees of collective bargaining mer Gov. Ted Kulongoski, “we cannot afford the govern- school funding from the local to state level] disconnect rights as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently did. ment we have.” between what is bargained for at the local level and the “This state will not go down the road that Wisconsin Here’s the clearest representation of that shortfall: At the actual fiscal condition of the state,” says Kitzhaber’s has chosen,” Kitzhaber told a Portland City Club audience end of 2009, lawmakers projected they would spend $18.3 spokesman, Tim Raphael. “That disconnect is one of the March 4. billion in the 2011-13 biennium. Today, Kitzhaber’s budget elements that creates instability in school funding.” But he will seek to wring concessions from OEA to save projects the state will have only $14.8 billion available. Kitzhaber has floated a couple of ideas so far. He’s made a state budget that is in far worse shape than Wisconsin’s— There are various explanations for the deficit. Tax it clear that teachers will be losing jobs next year. But he in fact, fifth worst in the nation, according to a March receipts plummeted in the recession; Oregonians’ median has said he’d be willing to agree to a floor—say, 38 percent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. income is only about 90 percent of median income nation- of the general fund to K-12—in exchange for OEA agreeOregon’s teachers did not cause the state’s fiscal cri- wide; the state’s cumulative tax rates are low, about 40th ing not to ask for total compensation that increases faster sis, but because so much of their compensation comes in the country. And the cost of government keeps rising. than inflation. directly from the general fund, Kitzhaber and lawmakers Where does the money go? State figures show that Kitzhaber also wants teachers to absorb more of the will balance the budget on costs of their health care and their backs. pensions. There are other large (About half of teachers in public-employee unions in Oregon contribute to their Oregon, but none gets as large own pension, whereas the a chunk of the state’s general districts pick up the the rest fund as teachers. of the tab. Kitzhaber wants to Due to Oregon’s unusual reduce that cost.) tax structure, teachers here If teachers go along with are more closely tied to the his financial proposals, Kitgeneral fund—the pot of zahaber has said he would money over which Kitzhaber consider releasing $200 miland lawmakers have the lion in one-time money from greatest discretion—than the Education Stability Fund, anywhere else in the country. a savings account funded by S a n d e r s i s n ’t e x a c t l y Lottery dollars. sweating, however. He knows But, Kitzhaber is also Oregonians love their schools pushing OEA to accept and their teachers. reforms, aimed at more effiSanders also knows that cient spending and better money talks, and that the educational outcomes. OEA contributes more money Kitzhaber ’s proposals to elected officials—including include collapsing all state Kitzhaber—than any group in educational boards into one Oregon. K-20 board, shifting the state In fact, no teachers union superintendent of public in the country gives more geninstruction to an appointed erously. Those donations give rather than elected position, OEA extraordinary access to consolidating some school dislawmakers and the governor tricts and allowing them to opt and help them preserve the out of co-ops called Education status quo. Service Districts, and increas“OEA would cut off at ing online learning. the knees any Democrat There is also discussion who really wanted to reform about changing the way teacheducation,” says former twoers get laid off. Oregon is one REPORT CARD: Contributions to state and federal campaigns, political parties and ballot measure term Portland School Board of only 15 states in which committees in 2007 and 2008 by teachers unions, their affiliates, employees and PACs, divided by member Steve Griffith. “The teacher layoffs must be done the number of teachers in that state (in 2007). effect of OEA’s bank account by seniority, an approach critis to silence a discussion ics refer to as “quality blind.” about accountability that needs to be had.” about three out of four general-fund dollars end up in Such a policy removes principals’ discretion, and accelThen again, the landscape has shifted in Salem. During public-employee salaries and benefits. erates the increase in Oregon’s student-teacher ratios, his campaign, Kitzhaber told teachers he would take their The biggest component in the state general-fund bud- which in 2008 NEA figures pegged at 18.9-to-1, the fifth money but would not be their errand boy. get is K-12 education, which accounts for 38 percent of highest in the country. “I am not willing to make promises I can’t keep just to expenditures. The student-teacher ratio goes up faster because a beginget your endorsement. And I am not willing to sugarcoat “The governor and the Legislature don’t have a lot of ning teacher makes about half of a senior teacher’s pay. That the extraordinarily difficult fiscal environment that lies choice about reducing the K-12 budget, because that’s means districts must lay off twice as many younger teachers ahead of us,” Kitzhaber told the OEA convention last where the money is,” says Oregon State University politi- to save the same amount of money, thereby increasing the year. “The fact is that we need to make some fundamental cal science professor Bill Lunch. student-teacher ratio twice as fast. changes…some ‘reforms,’ if you will, if we hope to secure Teachers are not overpaid, at least in salary terms Merit-based rather than seniority-based layoffs would the future and the funding on which that future rests.” (comparative data on benefits is difficult to find). National be a major threat to the status quo—as would another KitDespite that message, the OEA still spent more than Education Association statistics for 2008-09 pegged the zhaber priority: ending the practice of allocating money $1.1 million to get Kitzhaber elected in the general elec- average Oregon teacher’s salary at $54,320. That is 17th in without regard to performance. tion. That funding was about 12 percent of what it cost him the country and right at the national average. “Generally, the governor believes the state should be to win last November. In February, Kitzhaber released a budget that allocates moving away from funding based on enrollment and toward As a lawmaker and two-term governor from 1995 to $5.56 billion to K-12 for the next two years. That’s $1 billion funding based on outcomes,” Raphael says. 2003, Kitzhaber earned a reputation for independence, less than the projected cost of maintaining the status quo. Now, all Kitzhaber has to do is sell that package to OEA. but the OEA is about as central to Democratic politics as K-12 funding is allocated across 197 Oregon school any group in this state. districts. So local school boards will have to find $1 billion CONT. on page 17 14
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YOUR TEACHER IS F’D SOURCE: GOVERNOR JOHN KITZHABER’S OFFICE
CONT.
When Richard Sanders came this year to Oregon after 30 years of union organizing in the East, he took over a colossus. “It’s an honor to lead what is widely known as one of the top two or three teachers unions in the country,” Sanders says. Sanders is being modest. Since Jan. 1, 2008, OEA has contributed more than $8.5 million to political campaigns. That’s more than the state’s other two largest public-employee unions combined and more than six times the amount spent by the top business lobby group, Associated Oregon Industries. A 2009 comparison of teachers union campaign spending per member put OEA in the top spot nationally—by a substantial margin. OEA is in a fundamentally different position from private-sector unions such as the United Auto Workers. The UAW, for example, does not select Ford’s chief executive or the company’s board. But in Oregon, one of only five states that does not limit the size of political contributions, OEA plays an outsized role in electing the very people who decide the K-12 budget. Perhaps because unions usually support Democratic candidates, the relationship between public-employee unions and elected officials has mostly troubled Republicans. But historically it has also been a concern for some Democrats. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1937. Roosevelt worried that the financial interests of public employees conflicted with the public interest, making the unions’ position untenable. Sanders scoffs at that idea. But he acknowledges OEA is formidable. The group says it represents more than 48,000 members—a number higher than the populations of all but 10 Oregon cities. (Unlike other large public-sector unions in Oregon, such
as the Service Employees International Union, OEA does not report precise membership numbers, or officers’ compensation or other financial details, thanks to a successful 2003 lawsuit teachers unions filed against the federal Department of Labor. OEA was willing to disclose Sanders’ salary—$160,000.) “They are extremely powerful and they are very proud of it,” says former state Sen. Rick Metsger (D-Welches). “On a regular basis they can and will spend as much as they need to, which makes opposing them very difficult.” Sanders is a Stanford- and Princeton-educated scholar whose desk is covered with books such as Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, a cautionary tale about the mortgage meltdown. Sanders argues there’s a strong link between excessive financial speculation and union bashing. “What we’re seeing is nothing less than a concerted attack on the middle class,” he says. Sanders is also a sports junkie who keeps a teddy bear sporting a Boston Red Sox jersey on his credenza. But while the athletic contests he loves are all about competition, ranking and sorting, he has no time for such concepts when it comes to his members. When the subject turns to looming teacher layoffs, Sanders defends the seniority-based system of last hired, first fired with a rapid-fire argument worthy of a high-priced trial lawyer. Sanders bristles at the notion principals should be allowed to assess teachers in the absence of a teacher-designed evaluation methodology. “Quality is very subjective,” he says. “There is no fair way in the current system for principals CONT. on page 18 Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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CONT. VIVIANJOHNSON.COM
YOUR TEACHER IS F’D
RICHARD SANDERS: The OEA head says financial speculators and tax policies favoring the rich are the real problem. “People are lashing out at a false enemy—public-employee unions,” he says.
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or a district to decide which teachers are better than others.” OEA is also hostile to another form of competition—charter schools. Sanders says they are ineffective and a thinly disguised effort to destroy public education and undermine unions. “I’m not sure the corporate class as a whole wants an educated society,” Sanders says. “They are looking for a foot in the door to overthrow democracy.” Sanders says he’s aware OEA has a reputation for being “the party of no” in Salem, and pledges to be more open to change. That transformation is happening slowly. On March 14, for instance, OEA called in chits from two House Republicans to kill a high-profile bill that would have lengthened from three years to five years the initial contract term for a charter. The defeat incensed House Education Committee Co-Chairman Matt Wingard (R-Wilsonville), the bill’s sponsor, in part because OEA lobbyists had sat silently through a committee hearing on the bill, never publicly announcing their position. “They [OEA] didn’t say anything,” Wingard said on the House floor. “We didn’t hear from the opposition, so I was left to conclude there was no opposition.” That is OEA’s style. When the SEIU opposes legislation, its members storm the Capitol in purple T-shirts and its lobbyists raise hell. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees sends in an army in green T-shirts and also states its positions publicly. OEA is stealthier. Dressed in business attire, staff lobbyists for OEA and its allies gather in a pack at the rear of committee hearing rooms. They save their opposition for closed-door meetings. “I call them the ‘panel of no,’” Wingard says of the OEA-led public education lobby. OEA can be tough on Democrats as well. In the February 2010 special legislative session, Rep. Ben Cannon (D-Portland) introduced a modest school-reform bill. OEA did not like the bill, which died quietly. When the union made its 2010 election picks, Cannon was the only incumbent Portland lawmaker not to get OEA’s endorsement. “I was disappointed,” Cannon says. “I have been one of the most outspoken advocates for increasing the level of investment in education. My wife is an OEA member and I am a teacher myself.” If Kitzhaber had to face down Richard Sanders alone, he’d probably be outgunned. But the 30-30 party split in the House gives Kitzhaber some unlikely GOP allies: Wingard, who works for an online charter school when not legislating, and Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-Central Point), co-chairman of the budget-writing Joint Ways and Means Committee who makes Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker look like a moderate. In the Senate, Education Committee Chairman Mark Hass (D-Raleigh Hills) is mostly in lockstep with Kitzhaber. And unlike in previous legislative sessions, the union faces an organized coalition of advocacy groups also aligned with Kitzhaber. Those groups, which represent thousands of parents, many of the state’s largest employers, and influential foundations, can help Kitzhaber bring pressure to bear on OEA. CONT. on page 21
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There’s perhaps no better example of the new face of K-12 advocacy in Salem than Sue Levin, executive director of Stand for Children. Elfin, with a mop of black curly hair, the 47-year-old Levin hardly looks like a threat to the country’s strongest teacher’s union. A co-founder of the women’s clothing company Lucy Activewear and adviser to startups, Levin brings a tough, bottom-line focus. She’s good at what unions excel at—organizing. Last year, Levin sat down with representatives from the Oregon Business Association, several big-district superintendents and the Chalkboard Project. The groups agreed on a common, one-page agenda, which dovetails with Kitzhaber’s and is aimed at improving schools rather than just asking for more money. “Stand [for Children] believes Oregon schools should be well funded and high functioning,” Levin says. “Well funded does not guarantee high functioning.” Part of what galvanized advocates was Oregon’s showing in the federal “Race to the Top” process in 2010. The Obama administration dangled billions of dollars for states that could demonstrate they were aggressively pursuing effective new approaches. Oregon placed 33rd out of 40 states that applied for the money. Sue Hildick, Chalkboard’s president, says that debacle opened people’s eyes. “Oregon is at the bottom in terms of having progressive conversations on how to move the bar on student achievement,” Hildick says. “Race to the Top exposed that. In the past, we have focused so much on the number, it has been hard to move the debate beyond that.” The upshot is this: When Kitzhaber sits down with Sanders and OEA to talk money, the weight of groups that used to simply push for more dollars will be with Kitzhaber, not OEA. That’s a big difference. “In the past, the debate usually started and pretty much
LEAHNASH.COM
CONT.
KITZHABER: “I have been clear from Day 1 that changing the funding and governance systems for public education in Oregon is a heavy lift.”
ended with ‘the [K-12 fund] number,’” says OBA president Ryan Deckert, a Democratic former state senator. “Now we’re talking about governance and achievement and how to spend what we have more efficiently.” Kitzhaber and Sanders have met a few times so far, without coming to any resolution. Sanders says his members are listening and open to change, but “want some hope” from Kitzhaber. That could
YOUR TEACHER IS F’D
take the form of promises to seek future new taxes on the rich, to reform the “kicker” law, or to reduce the number and value of tax breaks corporations get. “Our members have made sacrifices,” Sanders says. “If people focus on the wrong problem and want to make the union the enemy, that’s really hard.” Given OEA’s power and Kitzhaber’s tendency to get frustrated, it’s worth looking for clues as to how serious he is. Two of the personnel choices he’s made so far show education insiders he’s taking an independent approach. First, he selected former Portland School Board member and two-time GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton to lead his K-12 “budget work team.” Now an executive at Jeld-Wen, the Klamath Falls housing-products manufacturer, Saxton is no union sympathizer. As his staff education adviser, Kitzhaber chose former Springfield Superintendent Nancy Golden. That’s a big shift. Kitzhaber’s Democratic predecessor, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, named OEA president James Sager his education adviser and later made OEA lobbyist Chip Terhune his chief of staff. Kitzhaber has said he is willing to “burn all his political capital in six months.” “I have been clear from Day 1 that changing the funding and governance systems for public education in Oregon is a heavy lift,” Kitzhaber told WW. “I have discussed the need for change and specific proposals with a wide range of stakeholders, including school districts, teachers, parents, legislators and the OEA,” he said. “Although we don’t always agree, their input is critical to ensuring we design a workable system that delivers better results.” Advocates are eager for him to strap on his weight belt and start lifting today. “I think what he does in the next six months will tell the tale of his entire term,” Chalkboard’s Hildick says. “The governor needs to use his political capital now.”
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK: Giving French food the bird. MUSIC: Akron/Family, the new Grateful Dead. THEATER: Todd Van Voris goes boating. MOVIES: Urned emotion.
Live Music, Music, Cabaret, Cabaret, Burlesque Burlesque & & Rock-n-Roll Rock-n-Roll Live Live Music, Cabaret, Burlesque & Rock-n-Roll
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Burlesque, Firedancers Best &Show DJs, Magic Debauchery! AY27“The DCH In Town!” SUMNAR
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SCOOP …AND SUNDAY COMES AFTERWARD. ESCAPE TO NEW YORK: Portland movie directors James Westby and Ian McCluskey both have invites to premiere their latest projects in Manhattan next month. Westby’s breakup horror-comedy Rid of Me and McCluskey’s skinny-dipping short documentary Summer Snapshot have both been selected to compete at the Tribeca Film Festival April 20 through May 1.
FromHellHell Karaoke From SINFERNO Karaoke So You Wanna Be A ROCK STAR ?
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3/23 Jedi Mindf#ck 3/24 LA Guns 3/25 She Wants Revenge 3/26 The Slants 3/27 Electric Six + Sinferno 3/28 Karaoke From Hell 3/29 The Ed Forman Show 3/30 Steel Tigers Of Death 3/31 Japan Benefit 4/1 The Confidentials 4/2 Ellie Darling Burlesque 4/3 Sinferno + Witchburn 4/7 Severed Halo 4/8 Zepparella 4/9 Death Angel 4/10 Black Joe Lewis + Sinferno 4/12 WIRE 4/14 Noir City + Oxcart 4/15 Breakestra 4/17 Holy Grail + Sinferno 4/20 Sign Of The Beast Burlesque 4/22 Dengue Fever 4/23 Hell’s Belles 4/24 James Angell + Sinferno 4/29 Afroman 4/30 J Mascis & Black Heart Procession 5/5 Eddie & The Hot Rods 5/6 Cash’d Out 5/7 Loudness 5/8 Sinferno + Mark Growden 5/11 Adler’s Appetite 5/13 Smoochknob 5/18 The Greenhornes 5/19 Kristine Levine & Richie Stratton 5/20 Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers 5/21 Captured! By Robots 5/22 Danny Harvey’s All-Star Band 5/26 Guitar Wolf 5/27 Aloe Blacc 5/28 The Undertones
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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BIG BREAKS: Artists Rep SUMMER SNAPSHOT announced its 29th season last Friday, and it looks like we’re in for some very artistically ambitious productions: Beginning with Yasmina Reza’s hit God of Carnage in September, the company will cram in a classic Pinter (No Man’s Land) before the obligatory holiday comedy (Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol). Next year brings an adaptation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi by former Portland playwright Joseph Fisher; Annie Baker’s Obie-winning acting-class drama, Circle Mirror Transformation; the terrific musical Next to Normal and David Mamet’s latest, Race.
Willamette Week
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Let Us Help! Publishes March 30 and April 6
Call Jennifer Lee
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EAT THE RICH: Foodies, food-industry folk and old rich people packed into the Multnomah Athletic Club on Sunday for the second-best finger-food event of the year (after WW’s own Eat Mobile, naturally; see below), James Beard in Oregon. The fundraiser saw some of Oregon’s top chefs serving up small bites of their signature dishes to raise money for the Oregon Culinary Institute. Crowd-pleasers included Le Pigeon’s smoked eel pot-au-feu, Nostrana’s lasagne with truffles and prosciutto, and Park Kitchen’s boudin blanc burger. But the unanimous favorite was the free-flowing local wine and cocktails, resulting in a very sorry-looking crowd at the next morning’s JBF Awards Nominees announcement, which are basically the Oscars of the culinary world. Portlanders gaining a nomination nod were baker Kim Boyce, Pok Pok’s Andy Ricker, Nostrana’s Cathy Whims, Grüner’s Chris Israel, “selmelier” Mark Bitterman and Le Pigeon’s Gabriel Rucker. EAT MOBILE IS BACK: Prepare yourself for greasy, spicy, fried and wood-fired glory. WW’s fourth annual Eat Mobile food cart festival is happening Saturday, April 23, under the east end of the Morrison Bridge, and we’ve got the full lineup of 40 food carts and trucks right now. This year, you’ll be able to sample the wares of newbies such as 808 Grinds, Crème de la Crème, Emame’s Ethiopian Cuisine, EuroTrash, Fifty Licks Ice Cream, Slice Brick Oven Pizza and Robb’s Really Good Food, as well as old faves like FlavourSpot, Garden State, Koi Fusion, Sawasdee Thai, Whiffies and more. Tickets are $15 (there are a very limited number of early entry tickets, which cost $45) and go on sale today, Wednesday, March 23, at our office (2220 NW Quimby St.) and wweek.com/eatmobile. Proceeds benefit Mercy Corps Northwest.
N J F I L M F E S T. C O M
DNESDAAYY WECH 23 AR CH 23
LOOK FOR THE STAR THEATER OPENING THIS SUMMER AT 13 NW 6TH AVE. WITH LIVE MUSIC
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HEADOUT
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
[MUSIC] ESBEN AND THE WITCH Did you hear, kids? Goth is cool again. Esben and the Witch makes music that’s danceable and a little bit creepy. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY MARCH 25 [MUSIC] SIC ALPS Like a lo-fi Guided By Voices for the tone deaf, San Francisco’s Sic Alps plays noisy garage rock that’s actually enhanced by the shitty audio quality. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056. 9 pm. $8. 21+. [MOVIES] SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS A study in seasonal affective disorder openly influenced by the early work of David Gordon Green, Matt McCormick’s debut feature gets moving if uneven performances from James Mercer and pre-Portlandia Carrie Brownstein, but it’s more than an indie-rock mood ring. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 493-1128. Multiple showtimes. $5-$7. [THREADS] BRIDGETOWN FASHION REVUE What’s better than eyeballing clothes from local designers? Watching models and burlesque dancers strut the same threads in a series of “performance vignettes” set to live world music. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 7196055. 7 pm. $10. 21+.
PORTLAND NOIR
[MOVIES] OF GODS AND MEN A movie so serious that Ingmar Bergman would tell it to lighten up, Xavier Beauvois’ Grand Prix-winning study of devotion and doubt fixes its patient gaze on a brotherhood of French monks whose quiet lives of faithful service are threatened by the Algerian Civil War. Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515. Multiple showtimes. $6-$9.
SATURDAY MARCH 26 [MUSIC] DAN BERN You probably heard his songs during Get Him to the Greek, but Dan Bern is no joke songwriter. His political savvy, personal honesty and fantastic songs make him one of the better youngish folk singers around. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
GREG RUCKA AND MATTHEW SOUTHWORTH GIVE PDX THE PRIVATE-DICK TREATMENT.
GO: Stumptown release party at Bridge City Comics, 3725 N Mississippi Ave., 282-5484. 6-8 pm, Friday March 25. Free.
SUNDAY MARCH 27
COURTESY OF ONI PRESS
Dex is a female private investigator with a gambling problem. Her business slogan is “Taking a beating so you don’t have to,” and she’s inches away from some serious punches if she doesn’t come up with $18,000. That’s the premise of local comic man Greg Rucka’s modern noir series Stumptown, which is set in the grittier pockets of Portland (from underneath the St. Johns bridge to, oddly enough, the RingSide) and illustrated with moody verve by Seattleite Matthew Southworth. Portland’s Oni Press has just published the four installments of the miniseries together in one pretty hardcover volume and is throwing a release party at Bridge City Comics to celebrate. Southworth and Rucka will sign the books, which will be on sale, along with brand-new Stumptown illustrations. Leave your brass knuckles at home. RACHAEL DEWITT.
[JAPAN RELIEF] FROM OREGON, WITH LOVE Local event maven Stephen Marc Beaudoin and friends launch a giant benefit concert for the Mercy Corps Oregon Japan Relief Fund starring Pink Martini, Holcombe Waller, Storm Large, Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers and more. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 7 pm. $38 advance, $40 door. Tickets at aladdin-theater.com.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Now serving Free-Range Wings! Lunch Special Mon. – Fri.
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Stimulate your taste buds! Succulent steaks, mouth-watering burgers, delicious sandwiches ... and so much more! 12434 SW Broadway St., Old Town Beaverton 503-641-7474 I www.broadwaysaloon.com Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Celebrate our 3rd year on Glisan! 7 - 10pm Fri., March 25
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Drag Show (on Glisan) 6pm Th - Sat • Happy Hour 5 -6:30 pm daily 1639 NW Glisan • 503-473-8758 • sweetbasilor.com
FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
seared pork belly and local artisan cheeses—sure to pair perfectly with the vineyard’s pinot. NV. Heathman Hotel, 1001 SW Broadway, 241-4100. 6:30 pm. $75. Call for reservations. All ages.
Grow Your Own Cocktails Class
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23 Holi at East India Co.
Holi—the Hindu festival of colors— marks the beginning of spring and the end of winter. The celebration consists of colored dyes and powders splashed about throughout ’hoods, as well as lots of dancing and bonfires. East India Co. contributes to the mayhem with colorful dishes inspired by spring—think tandoori grilled peppers and saffron basmati rice. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. East India Co., 821 SW 11th Ave., 227-8815. Dinner SaturdaySaturday, March 19-26. $22.50. Call for reservations.
Foster & Dobbs Cheese 101 Class
Get schooled in the art of curds and cheese classification during this Foster & Dobbs crash course, which includes eating, discussing, taking notes and asking questions about the stinky stuff. NV. Foster & Dobbs, 2518 NE 15th Ave., 284-1157. 7:15 pm. $20. Reservations required by phone.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 Bar Cristom Wine Dinner
Heathman chef Michael Stanton welcomes Cristom Vineyards for a fivecourse night of poached grouper,
If you are what you eat, then you are what you drink—so be sure to add some leafy-greens to your vodka cocktail. This class focuses on making drinks with ingredients straight from your own garden. John Pazera of Hood River Distillers will be on hand to field questions about the spirits used during class, including Pendleton Whisky and Yazi Ginger Vodka. NV. Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave., 295-6542. 6-7:30 pm. $10. Reservations by phone. 21+.
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 Clyde Common ’80s Throwback
Dinner Party
It’s hard to remember that there were chefs paving the way for gourmet cuisine in a decade memorialized by late-night coke parties and spandex tights. Clyde Common presents a series of “Throwback” dinner parties the last Sunday of every month with a tribute to the finest foods of the ’80s; think foie gras ravioli and “Death by Chocolate” cake. NV. Clyde Common, 1014 SW Stark St., 228-3333. 6:30 pm the last Sunday of each month. $50-$65. Call for reservations or email info@clydecommon.com.
Third Annual Walk for Water
If you think getting out of bed in the middle of the night for a glass of H2O is hard, imagine walking three miles for a drink. This Sunday, Portland Global Initiatives hosts a three-mile walk (that’s the average distance traveled in subSaharan Africa to obtain water) beside the Willamette River to help raise funds to combat Africa’s growing water crisis.
Registration fees and donations will go toward the $14,000 needed to build a water pump in Kenya. NV. World Trade Center Plaza, 25 SW Salmon St. 1 pm. $20 donation. All ages.
TUESDAY, MARCH 29 Dine for Japan Relief
Chef Gabe Rosen at ramen central Biwa and Broder’s Peter Bro have enlisted the help of more than 50 local restaurants to ante up a portion of their Tuesdaynight dinner proceeds for Mercy Corps Japan Relief. Slurp, chew and chow everywhere from Biwa, Bluehour, Por Que No and Little Bird to Gilt Club, both Bunk locations and all Stumptown locations and help tsunami victims in the process. KELLY CLARKE. Find a full list of participating restaurants at mercycorps.org/fundraising/portlandrestaurantrelief.
LEAHNASH.COM
REVIEW
noise, forcing servers to shout. I felt badgered. Chef de cuisine Erik Van Kley’s absolutely perfect duck confit ($20) goes a long way toward making up for the discomfort—as with Peking duck, the skin pulls away from the moist flesh, becoming crisp as a potato chip. It’s almost too rich and salty to finish on one’s own, but is saved by a bed of lentils, with parsley and charred green onion, which offers a bitter contrast to the duck. The coq au vin ($17), served with big chunks of bacon and capped with a generous smear of chicken liver on toast, is also excellent. It’s so juicy as to be almost creamy, a chickeny perfume practically gusting off the plate. Other hits include the mussels ($13) in a saffron-scented broth, the “crispy beef tongue” ($10)—essentially a beef McNugget with the texture of a 3 Musketeers and the flavor of a top-notch pot roast—and all of the sides. The potato puree with truffles and chives ($6) is a hedonist’s take on mashed potatoes, and the fennel au gratin ($9) tastes like a greasy onion pizza in the best possible way. While the kitchen’s hits are flawless, the menu has its share of misses: the gnocchi parisienne is disappointingly chewy and overwhelmingly buttery, dotted with winey mushrooms and white cheese that add richness but not interest. The escargot ($12) are served with very good savory gougères—eggy pastry puffs—in a garlic cream sauce, with a coiffure of frisée in a spicy vinaigrette, but the snails themselves seem like a bland afterthought, and the dish does not make a coherent whole. Even more confusing are the frog legs ($11), breaded, fried and served along orange segments in a sweet-and-sour sauce like an amphibious HUNGRY, HUNGRY YUPPIES: Lunchtime diners jawing and gorging at Little Bird. version of General Tso. Even fried, they do not taste good, and their inclusion on the menu seems like a stunt. The restaurant opens at 11:30 am, and it’s already the It is possible to have an entirely satisfying dinner for hottest power lunch downtown. The clubby decor suits two at Little Bird. Sit at the bar, which is quieter than the bankers and lawyers who fill the place the moment the dining room, and order modestly: split the duck conthe doors are unlocked, but the suits swarm down from fit, the mussels and two or three sides. Have a couple of Big Pink less for atmosphere than for cheap foie gras ($11), glasses of wine (there are several choices, most of them $4 half-martinis and Rucker’s wonderful reasonably priced). Then go completely mess of a burger. Coveted by customers of Order this: The heavenly berserk on two, or maybe even three desLe Pigeon, which serves only five a night, the duck confit, $20. serts. Pastry chef Lauren Fortgang, formerly 7-ounce patty is slathered in slaw and grilled Best deal: The enormous of Paley’s Place, has avoided the missteps of BY BE N WAT E R H O U SE bwaterhouse@wweek.com Le Pigeon burger, $12. onions and stuffed into a ciabatta roll from the dinner menu. The hazelnut-milk chocoI’ll pass: Sorry, vegetarThe menu at Little Bird Bistro, the new French restaurant Ken’s Artisan Bakery. It is an exceptional wad ians—your only entree is late financier (essentially a large hazelnut gnocchi, and it’s not good. opened in December by Le Pigeon chef Gabe Rucker, takes of beef, and, at $12, not a bad deal. chocolate-chip cookie with praline ice a page from Larousse Gastronomique, the authoritative While the burger will hog the spotlight, it’s cream and candied kumquats, $8), croquant encyclopedia of Gallic eating. I mean that literally: The not the best sandwich on the lunch menu. That honor goes marmelade (alternately crisp and foamy layers of chocodinner menu has, printed on its backside, a photocopy of to the fried cod sandwich ($12), which hides crisp, moist late and caramel, served with bits of preserved orange, page 662 (beef offal, oxtail en hochepot to tripe), as if to chunks of fish under a slaw of celery root, carrot and mayon- $8) and coconut cake with passionfruit sorbet (a winning naise. If the slaw were available on its own, I would order it combination of moist cake and shockingly bright fruit, proclaim, “Ere, we do singz by ze book!” This is not entirely the case. Little Bird, with its faux as an entree. $7) are all impressive enough to abruptly end conversatin-tile ceiling, copper bar, red leather booths and clichéd Lunchtime’s boisterous bonhomie gives way to a less tion until the plates are clean. Forget Larousse; at Little tourist-food offerings—escargot, frog legs, coq au vin—is a congenial atmosphere at dinner. The tables are a little Bird, Fortgang gets the last word. sort of Frenchy theme restaurant, heavy on liver and but- too wide and the banquettes a little too deep for intimate ter, with antlers and dead birds here and there to remind conversation, and the dining room’s tables are jammed so EAT: Little Bird, 219 SW 6th Ave., 688-5952, littlebirdbistro.com. Lunch and dinner 11:30 am-midnight Mondayus where we’re eating. (Portland, city of taxidermy!) But close together that elbowing one’s neighbors is a real risk. Friday, dinner 5 pm-midnight Saturday-Sunday. $$-$$$ the cuisine is hardly textbook fare. The two-story space and hard ceiling add up to a lot of Moderate-expensive.
PIGEON PALACE GABE RUCKER’S LITTLE BIRD BOTH SINGS AND SQUAWKS.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Soul’d out MuSic FeStival – all oN Sale NoW – WWW.SouldoutFeStival.coM
SATURDAY APRIL 16Th • RoSeLAnD • 8Pm • ALL AgeS
FRIDAY APRIL 15Th DAnTe’S • 9Pm • 21+
RONNIE LAWS
8pm
Marlon (The Magician) McClain Performing material from ‘Fever’ & ‘Pressure Senstive’ FRI APRIL 8Th • jImmY mAk’S ALL AgeS - 7Pm; 21 + 9:30
PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND
march fourth marching band
april 7th • crystal Ballroom • 8pm • 21+
THOSE DARLINS april 10th • daNte’S • 8pM • 21+
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
arr son
Sat april 9th • JiMMY MaK’S 7pM: all aGeS; 9:30: 21+
FraNciS & the liGhtS
Of Buena Vista sOcial cluB
APRIL 10Th • wonDeR BALLRoom • 7Pm • 21+
DONALD H i
Sat april 16th • 7pM • 21+ aladdiN theater
APRIL 13Th • BRAnX • 9Pm • ALL AgeS
W/ KEVIN KINSELLA
april 12th • 8pM •all aGeS peter’S rooM @ roSelaNd
APRIL 7Th • mISSISSIPPI STUDIoS • 9Pm • 21+
APRIL 14Th • mISSISSIPPI STUDIoS • 9Pm • 21+
april 11th • jimmy mak’s • 8pm • 21+
SXSW DIARY
MUSIC PHOTOS: SCOTT OSETH
ROAD TRIP TAKING THE LONG WAY DOWN TO SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST. BY C AS E Y JA R M A N
cjarman@wweek.com
What’s that old cliché? That it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters? This year I wanted to do more than just hop a plane to South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, so I rounded up a posse, got my driver’s permit (I’m 30 and I’ve never had a license) and hit the road in a minivan, twisting through the American West en route to the biggest music industry meet-and-greet in the U.S. And you know what? Sometimes the journey is amazing... and sometimes the journey is just an all-night drive with a warbly Misfits cassette tape to keep you awake. 7 pm Friday, March 11: Portland The plan is to get to Austin for SXSW with my friends Henry and Scott. But first, Vegas. Saturday we’re due to see Cee Lo Green and the Ting Tings at the Red Bull Soundclash. If this sounds suspect, it is. If we were willing to drive nonstop from PDX to Sin City, the folks at Red Bull agreed to put us up at the MGM Grand for the show. Why my editors agreed to let me do this, I don’t know. Eighteen hours or so later we get to the Grand and a look of horror crosses all our faces. “Spring break,” Henry says grimly. And they’re everywhere—rosy-cheeked college freshman boys with spiky hair and flip-flops; girls wearing bikinis and miniskirts. They all seem to know each other. They all giggle and give shoulder-only hugs. 9 pm Saturday, March 12: Vegas As Cee Lo plays “Fuck You” with the Ting Tings to end the Soundclash, it hit me: Everything about this moment is insane. When he’s singing the song decked out in diamond-encrusted jewelry, you start to question his assertion that he can’t afford a Ferrari. I see a thousandplus screaming fans sing along to every word, and I about lose my shit. Here we were in Las Vegas, a town where the quest for riches isn’t just accepted but encouraged as the sole purpose of life—and this crowd seems wholeheartedly behind a narrative that demonizes women who choose cash over personality. They sing along because the song is huge. And in Las Vegas, being huge is everything. 7 pm Monday, March 14: Just past the Texas border I wake up in the passenger seat to flashing lights. All I can think of is the empty beer can at the back of the van. Henry is stone-cold sober in the driver’s seat, but Scott and I celebrated our arrival in the Lone Star State by drinking a pair of Tecates in the back seat. Stupid, stupid, stupid. After 20 minutes of interrogation, we’re back on our way. Thank you, Texas. Sorry for breaking your laws. 4:45 pm Wednesday, March 16: Thirsty Nickel in Austin, Texas Luck-One is playing to a mostly empty room. “Turn me up all the way,” he tells the soundman while peering out at street musicians who’ve gathered a huge crowd outside. “I’m competing with a guy playing a giant harmonica.” 5:30 pm Wednesday: Virgin Mobile Live House The kids from Typhoon are lined up outside the venue, all 12 of them packing huge instruments or carrying amps. A stubby dude with a Bluetooth headset walks up. “OK, are you guys artists or are you press?” he asks, oblivious. “Artists, obviously,” Devin Gallagher replies. “Well it’s not obvious to me, and I’m the stage manager,” the guy shoots back. “What I’m gonna need is for you to send a representative from your squad in to talk to our staff.” After the madness is sorted out, a band starts playing inside. It’s totally the
AUSTIN SCRAPBOOK: (counter-clockwise) Typhoon’s Tyler Ferrin and Toby Tanabe with John Popper, sax man Sergio Flores and Portland’s Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside.
dude from Blues Traveler. Later we accost John Popper and force him to take pictures with members of Typhoon. “This will finally legitimize my music career to my family,” Tyler Ferrin says. I laugh. His face goes slack. “No, really.” 10 pm Wednesday: The Flamingo Room Seattle’s Astronautalis begins his normal freestyle session, where he asks the crowd for topics, then combines them in a single narrative. Someone yells “Nate Dogg!” Astro launches into one of the more beautiful skateboardingand-gangster-rap freestyles I’ve ever heard. 8:15 pm Thursday, March 17: Auditorium Shores If you’ve heard one Strokes song, you’ve heard them all, so I stick around the gigantic outdoor amphitheater just long enough to eat some free blueberry yogurt. I walk across the river and say hi to Gabe Hascall, the ex-Impossibles frontman who grew up here. His show is at Shiner’s Saloon, a loud-as-hell cowboy bar packed with meatheads. There’s a college basketball game playing on a TV…on the stage. I feel for Hascall, but he’s got a small, dedicated group of sensitive types crammed around the stage. They smile nervously, as if enjoying Hascall’s set is something they could get beat up for on the other side of the room. 3 am Friday, March 18: East Austin Walking to our van, we hear a siren saxophone playing the opening lick from George Michael’s “Careless Whisper.” As we walk closer to the sound, we find a whole gaggle of revelers singing and clapping along to the sax player, who is gyrating wildly on a front porch. “That’s Sergio Flores!” the party’s excitable host announces. “He can play anything! Anything at all! Just give him a request!” We request “Baker Street” and “Yakety Sax.” Mr. Flores thinks on it a moment, scratching his chin. “I think I’ve got it,” he says, raising the sax to his mouth. He explodes back into “Careless Whisper” again, running down the steps and humping each of us with his instrument. 6:45 pm Friday: Near Fader Fort The kids from Odd Future, perhaps SXSW’s most hyped act, are skateboarding between cars from venue to venue. They’re not wearing any badges or wristbands—the only indication that they’re anything but troublemaking Austin high-schoolers is a slightly stressed-looking manager
who’s walking swiftly behind them, trying to catch up. 7:40 pm Friday: Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop You wouldn’t know that Maritime’s Davey von Bohlen was an elder statesman of indie rock by his frenetic onstage energy. But the ex-Promise Ring frontman does, however, show his age in idle banter: “I know you’re thinking, like me, that you want to get in bed by like 9:30,” he says. “It’s cool. We totally respect that.” 1:15 am Saturday, March 19: Central Presbyterian Church There’s something funny about seeing Menomena in a church, but I’m into it. The band lets the pew-seated crowd know it’s OK to stand up, and they swarm the area in front of the stage. When Menomena—playing with new keyboardist Paul Alcott and fill-in guitarist Matt Dabrowiak—goes into “Dirty Cartoons,” with a huge cross behind the band’s sweaty, long-haired members, it feels exactly like a Christian Rock concert. “You’re all forgiven,” Danny Seim says. 12:21 pm Saturday: The Pedernales Lofts We’re hanging out in the courtyard of a condo complex, drinking blood-orange soda with vodka. Portland’s AgesandAges and Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside both pull off flawless-sounding sets, a feat that seems impossible given all the wind and all the little kids running around. 10 pm Saturday: Central Presbyterian Church Typhoon opens with the epic “CPR/Claws Part 2,” and the whole church claps along when Kyle Morton sings, “You’ve got to piss and moan/ You let the devil in your home.” Typhoon fills the stage, and its explosive sound fills the room. “I’ve been saving a little bit of myself for this show,” Morton says. You can see it—all these kids are beaming and laughing their way through the set. They know that these memories are going to stick with them forever. And I’ve never been so happy to see the good guys win. 11:45 am Monday, March 21: Starbucks en route to the UFO museum in Roswell, N.M. While I’m typing about Typhoon, the barista asks where we’re from. “Portland looks cool!” she says. “Have you ever been to that doughnut place? I want to go and get the bacon doughnut.” We tell her we’ll bring some next time. Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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MARCH 23 - 29 PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
IAN MCNEIL
MUSIC
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editors: CASEY JARMAN, MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek.com/submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com, mmannheimer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23 What Hearts, Ah Holly Fam’ly, The Clampitt Family Band
[HEARTFELT FAMILY FOLK] This summer, What Hearts released a decidedly un-summer album. Songs for Marjorie was soft, majestic and comfortably woolen, lilting effortlessly between its three-part, all-girl harmonies and fiddle breaks that were the stylistic equivalent of a warm, hearty soup. Now that we’re in the murky middle of spring, What Hearts makes a little more sense. The group’s predilection for crisp, unavoidable melancholy makes it a perfect companion to the Doug Fir’s Stygian basement. Let’s go ahead and add Ah Holly Fam’ly to this bill so long as we’re packing our spring season with outstanding local folk acts who are ready to remind us that hibernation has its perks—though, sadly, singer Jeremy Faulkner informs us this will be the last show under the Fam’ly moniker before he switches to playing as Jeremy Lee Faulkner. SHANE DANAHER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Andy Combs and the Moth, Scrimshander, Justin Power
[ROBO-FOLK] When Dylan took folk electric, the world scoffed, then the world listened. When Andy Furgeson and Peter Valois of sadly defunct folkrock quartet Bark, Hide and Horn went electronic, things got epic—and the world is advised to take heed. The duo’s Scrimshander project hammers home folksy pop highlighted by playful call-and-response melodies punctuated with synthy orchestral swells, ample robotic bleeps and operatic climaxes. The laid-back folksiness is still there, but Scrimshander has evolved its sound into a beast all its own, one that’s sure to turn heads as the group storms more stages. AP KRYZA. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 2397639. 8:30 pm. $5. 21+.
Katie Sawicki’s Cabin Project, Mike & Ruthy, Huck Notari
[FOLK] The debut disc from Mike & Ruthy might be called the first postRaising Sand folk duo album. Like that surprise 2009 hit by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Million to One features roots and pop savvy wedded to clean but moody production, in service of solid songs, all delivered with a dis-
armingly laid-back yet tensile feel. It’s the ideal vehicle to launch the next stage of the careers of Michael Merenda and Ruth Ungar, late of the Mammals, a leading folk group of the aughts that excelled at freshening up folk tropes for a younger audience. The married couple’s voices blend smoothly while retaining individual character, as does their reliable instrumental interplay. State-of-the-art folk music starts—well, continues—here. JEFF ROSENBERG. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 8 pm. $8. 21+.
Men, Lovers, Macromantics, Silver Interior, Mr. Charming
[FEMINIST FATALE] Gaining on the word “Wolf” for most overused trope in indie band names is ironic sexual designations, i.e. a group of dudes posing as females, à la Girls and Women. At least with Men there’s a statement of purpose behind the misnomer. As the solo project of Le Tigre’s JD Samson—not a man, it should be noted—the main thrust of its appropriately named debut, Talk About Body, is screwing with gender roles and the politics of sex. And, because of Samson’s affiliation with her main band, it cloaks its polemics in a Technicolor disco-punk explosion, all bouncy synthesized energy and joyful, catchy choruses. Just don’t make the mistake of interpreting a song like “Take Your Shirt Off” as a stripper anthem. MATTHEW SINGER. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 Esben and the Witch, Julianna Barwick, Lost Lockets
[CREEP SHOW] Want to feel seriously unsettled? Check out the video for Esben and the Witch’s “Marching Song.” It’s basically Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” clip meets Fight Club. Over the song’s throbbing drums and ominous guitars, the members of the goth-damaged British trio stare into the camera, appearing increasingly more bruised and bloodied until it ends by lingering a few seconds too long on the face of singer Rachael Davies, her eye blackened and face terribly swollen. As disturbing as it is, it serves as a perfect introduction to the band’s aesthetic. Named after a
TOP FIVE
BY C AS EY JAR MA N
TOP FIVE MEATY MEALS TO EAT IN AUSTIN, TEXAS. 5. Whataburger
If one could cross-pollinate a Whataburger with a Burgerville burger and an In-N-Out burger, every other fast-food burger would just kill itself out of shame.
4. Carne guisada
Tender beef tips drenched in cheese and enchilada sauce.
3. Pulled-pork sandwiches
You haven’t really had pulled pork until you’ve had a disgustingly huge helping of wet Texas pork and coleslaw on a fragile little bun.
2. Ribs
They’re pretty tasty, but I’m too lazy to get obsessed with them. I need an intern.
1. Chorizo!
Especially on a migas breakfast taco, where tortilla strips, eggs and jalapeños combine to totally reinvent breakfast for the better. 28
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COSMIC WARRIORS AKRON/FAMILY ENTERS THE VOID. BY MICHAEL MANNHEIMER
mmannheimer@wweek.com
When it was time for Akron/Family to send out copies of its new album, the experimental-folk rock band abandoned the usual channels of distribution—giving promo copies to the press, streaming the record online a week before its official release— and cut out the middleman. Instead of mailing S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT to Pitchfork, the band sent it out to kids on its mailing list and told them to host listening parties. “Someone had it in their garage behind a Kinko’s in Washington, D.C., for 12 people, and some other kid hosted it at a yoga studio in Connecticut,” says singer and guitarist Seth Olinksy. “We didn’t want it to leak online, so we included instructions to send
to feel like an environment or an imaginary place someone could go to,” Olinsky says. “We brainstormed about how we wanted to make a record and what we wanted people to be feeling when they hear it.” In doing so, Akron/Family returns to a sparse, naked sound it had mostly abandoned in the past five years. The band used to cram hundreds of ideas into every song, but here it sounds relaxed and confident in separating the light from the dark. Opener “Silly Bears” sputters with a distorted loop and a raging, compressed guitar solo, like if Sleigh Bells celebrated 4/20 by covering a Jerry Garcia B-side. But it’s the following song that sets the template for things to come: “Island” relaxes the fury with a gorgeous, slow-burning guitar drifting over chirping insects, bashed percussion and synthesized strings that are neither schmaltzy nor overwrought. Akron/Family finally sounds comfortable in its own skin, free to indulge in all its weird obsessions without coming off as another trite psychedelic band.
“WE WANTED IT TO FEEL LIKE AN ENVIRONMENT OR AN IMAGINARY PLACE SOMEONE COULD GO TO.” —SETH OLINSKY a picture of a burning CD after it had been played. I think it was a very personal event for everyone involved.” Akron/Family has always been built on destruction. Since forming in 2002, the band—Olinsky, bassist Miles Seaton and drummer Dana Janssen— has set a flame to the boundaries of folk and experimental-rock music, creating loud, ecstatic and communal music that riffs off free jazz just as much as your dad’s Grateful Dead records. S/T II is the band’s second record as a trio (founding member Ryan Vanderhoof left in 2007 to live in a Buddhist dharma center) and the first recorded since Olinsky and Janssen relocated to Portland from Brooklyn. Unlike the band’s past two records, which saw it condensing its sound into an accessible classic-rock mix of rambunctious energy and positive hippie vibrations, S/T II embraces abrasiveness and a commitment to open space. “On the last record we were really interested in a lot of rhythmic stuff, and on this one we were more focused on texture and sonic space. We wanted it
It wasn’t easy to get to that level. Olinsky mentions that S/T II is the first record created without a lot of advanced planning, and the first where he had no songs finished before entering the studio. Though S/T II was mostly recorded in Detroit, it was started from scratch with the trio trying to “dream from the same point of view” and created in part from the band’s 2009 Japanese tour, where it witnessed legendary experimental-noise outfit Boredoms for the first time. “Seeing the Boredoms play was amazing,” Olinsky says. “They are just really pure and soulful in a way I find inspiring. Sometimes I struggle with the idea of band culture: I love being in a band and making records, but it can feel a little shallow. It’s like, did we peak out when we were 26? Seeing people in their 50s still opening boundaries and moving forward is truly inspirational.” SEE IT: Akron/Family plays Saturday, March 26, at Wonder Ballroom with Delicate Steve, Au, Brainstorm and Why I Must Be Careful. 9 pm. $15. All ages.
THURSDAY - FRIDAY PROFILE
ELIZA SOHN
Danish fairy tale, the group’s music evokes the kind of slow, encroaching eeriness of the Brothers Grimm, with songs that, like the video, start out unassuming enough, then gradually crawl beneath your skin and eventually into your nightmares. MATTHEW SINGER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
MUSIC
Gold Panda, Dam Mantle, Graintable
[ESSEX ELECTRONIC BANGERS] London-based producer Gold Panda didn’t release his debut LP until he was 30, and if you think he spent any percentage of those three decades slacking, then I would like to direct your attention to Lucky, the album Gold Panda unleashed this past October. Arriving on the tail of a minor flood of remixes and EPs, Lucky showcases Gold Panda’s love of the sample and his talent for its precise, brash deployment. At its most abrasive, like on the overthe-top “Quitter’s Raga,” Lucky takes the aesthetic of Four Tet and roughens up its edges with a buzz saw. But even in his comparatively milder moments, Gold Panda is a dance machine that’s about to blow up. SHANE DANAHER. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY, MARCH 25 Boy Eats Drum Machine, No-Fi Soul Rebellion, D’S’R’
[BIG BRAINY BEATS] Jon Ragel shouldn’t need an introduction anymore. In fact, the Portland polyinstrumentalist should be playing the clubs of Paris, not the the taverns of Pocatello. His streetsmart sampling and rubber-necking beats bring to mind the likes of DJ Shadow and Four Tet. Relentless onstage and in the studio, Ragel is coming off his noisiest year to date, with instrumental collage 20 Beats and Hoop & Wire to prove it. You’ll find him onstage, one hand on a mixer, the other holding a drumstick, wearing a sax and looking for a mic to sing into. And make sure to show up early for opener No-Fi Soul Rebellion, the husband-andwife duo from Bellingham, Wash., that is touring behind new maxisingle “Glass Eyes.” MARK STOCK. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 2482900. 9 pm. $5. All ages.
Zion I & The Grouch, Blu, Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Tope, Destro & L Pro, Gepetto, Verbz
[TOP-SHELF HIP-HOP] There’s no getting around the fact that Zion I & the Grouch’s new single, “Rockit Man,” is easily one of the most innovative hip-hop beats released in 2011. Backed by a bubbly, gurgling, futuristic head-spinner of a beat, “Rockit Man” sets the template for the duo’s new record, Heroes in the Healing of the Nation. Collaborating for the first time since 2006, the two MCs share the spotlight with a killer list of guests (Freeway, Fashawn, Eligh) on a set of songs about, as Zion I puts it, “ascension and becoming a higher version of one’s self.” Whatever the concept, the chance to see these two West Coast titans on the same stage—especially with so much Portland talent opening—is one high you shouldn’t pass up. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Branx, 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683. 8 pm. $16. All ages.
She Wants Revenge, The Californian
[ALL THAT YOU CAN LEAVE BEHIND] With a name like She Wants Revenge and a sculpted model pedigree that could only come out of Los Angeles, it’s easy for the snide hipster to find things to hate about Justin Warfield and Adam Bravin’s darkwave duo. But She Wants Revenge’s first two albums were surprisingly palatable Interpol rip-offs, filled with anthemic rock music for back alleys and lonely hearts. So it’s sad to see
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HOLY SONS SATURDAY, MARCH 26 [THERAPY FOLK] You can be forgiven for never having heard of Emil Amos. If you haven’t, it’s his own fault, frankly. Although he’s been recording under the alias Holy Sons since the mid-’90s, his name is associated more with his drumming for groups like the Bay Area doom-metal outfit Om and Portland post-rockers Grails. As a solo artist, Amos’ complete aversion to the trappings of the music industry—namely publicity, signing to a label and live performance—has kept his exploratory, genre-mangled albums from reaching all but the smallest of cult audiences. Lately, though, Amos has begun to open up more to the idea of promoting himself. He is giving interviews. He’s touring. And he put out his latest record, 2010’s Survivalist Tales!, on Partisan, home to such buzzed-about acts as Middle Brother and Deer Tick. But don’t interpret this change of practice for a change of heart. “It’s solely an experimental state of mind,” Amos says via telephone while en route to the grandest of music biz soirées, South By Southwest. “I think once you have created enough songs in your basement or whatever, you can feel secure, in that you’ve developed and refined some autonomy from the world of music as it’s sold.” Amos was born in Miami, right at the crux of the city’s shift from slow-paced retirement village to the blood-splattered cocaine capital of the United States. He didn’t start making his home tapes until relocating to North Carolina as a young adult, but those songs— compiled on 2001’s The Lost Decade—were greatly informed by his coming of age just in time to witness the last remnants of ’60s idealism flame out in a hail of drugs and bullets. “I don’t want to paint the same old picture of harmony in the universe,” he says. And he hasn’t. Over the course of the six albums he’s released since moving to Portland in 1999, the music has flowed from lo-fi indie rock to weary and haunted folk, but the connective thread is Amos’ desire to root around in the most damaged parts of his psyche. “In therapy...you’re supposed to expose the worst sides of yourself,” he says. “If you do that in song, it’s purely helping you process these chemicals that come out of your brain that are poisons, and just doing it helps you.” Of course, sharing the worst sides of yourself with the rest of the world is a frightening proposition. But as Amos has gradually emerged from his self-imposed basement exile, he’s found that his “vile, spitting therapy process” helps other people deal with their own existential search. That’s part of the reason he’s now experimenting with the concept of operating like a typical musician. Just don’t expect it to last forever. “I want to flirt with the industry as long as I can stand it,” he says, “and I hope I can go back and regain whatever innocence I can maintain about the beauty of making a record.” MATTHEW SINGER. Emil Amos isn’t hiding anymore.
SEE IT: Holy Sons plays Saturday, March 26, at Mississippi Studios with Castanets and Dolorean. 9 pm. $10. 21+. Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FRIDAY
the band completely jump the Bono shark and go the U2 route on “Must Be the One,” the first single from upcoming self-produced full-length Valleyheart. The song is so bad that it elicits indifference more than hate; yes, it apes “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and yes, it reeks of a commercial shot in the dark. But, um, meh? Where’s Echo & the Bunnymen when you really need it? MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 2266630. 9 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
Toro y Moi, Braids, Cloud Nothings
[NEW WAVES] Goodbye chillwave, it was nice, uh, chilling with you last year. In 2010, bloggers fell in love with the hazy, lo-fi dream beats of producers like Washed Out and Neon Indian. Going forward, however, it’s important for these guys to emerge from the haze before it obscures them altogether. And with his second album, Underneath the Pine, South Carolina multi-instrumentalist Chaz Bundick, a.k.a. Toro y Moi, is doing just that. In contrast to his gauzy debut, Causers of This, the new record is more playful, less fuzzy and much more dance floor-friendly. That isn’t to say he’s completely abandoned his bedroom roots—Bundick still sings in a hushed, breathy voice, as if his girlfriend were asleep next to him as he recorded—he just sounds like he’s actually awake now. MATTHEW SINGER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
bands of the ’90s, Mongoloid Village knows how to mix overwhelming noise with complicated time signatures, creating one of the most unique sounds to come out of the local metal scene. Bring earplugs and extra cash for a few tallboys. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Saratoga, 6910 N Interstate Ave., 719-5924. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
tra, the result might sound a lot like Portland quartet Tall as Rasputin. An odd combo? You bet your ass, but Rasputin mixes it well, with off-kilter vocals drifting over stripped-down compositions that milk early ’90s disaffection with the finesse of a tuneful and agitated doomsday prophet. AP KRYZA. Slabtown, 1033 NW 16th Ave., 223-0099. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Tall as Rasputin, Old North, The Dirty Words
Uh Huh Her, Diamonds Under Fire
[MOROSE MUTANT ROCK] If Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah singer Alec Ounsworth combined DNA (a gross thought, though not unlikely) and the resulting creature formed a supergroup with members of the Bad Seeds, Explosions in the Sky, the Pixies, Nada Surf and rejects from a morose chamber orches-
[SHO-GIRLS] Any act featuring Leisha Hailey—k.d. lang ex; blond, beautiful, breakout star of The L Word—and equally lovely brunette co-vocalist Camila Grey might not actually need to do anything onstage to win the undying support of a stalwart fan base, and Uh Huh
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PROFILE N ATA S H A T Y L E A
MUSIC
Sic Alps, Orca Team, Guantanamo Baywatch, The Whines
[LO-FI FOR LIFE] Let’s hope Sic Alps never changes. Though the San Francisco garage-rock band released the (relatively) accessible Napa Asylum in January, it still sounds worse than just about any demo your dad’s secret rock band recorded and trashed in 1982. But that’s the main appeal with these guys: The lo-fi recording techniques, cut-and-paste songs, and barely there hooks all contribute to the overall feel of the record, which is loose, wild and far more enjoyable than the current wave (Wavves?) of “scuzzy” rock cluttering Altered Zones’ inbox. Some of that credit goes to new member Noel Von Harmonson (formally of the rad Comets on Fire), but you also can’t discount singer Mike Donovan, whose detached vocals keep things interesting no matter how noisy and weird things get. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
Foster the People, The Steelwells
[FUNK UP THE JAMS] L.A. indiepop band Foster the People is big on the Internet. The band got a lot of buzz for its catchy summer anthem “Pumped Up Kicks” last year. The other tracks off the band’s 2011 debut EP are actually a lot more electronica-heavy, leaning more to MGMT than the Peter, Bjorn and John sound of its big hit, full of synths and funky beats. Those looking for more jangly, whistlealong jams may be disappointed, but the band’s other material is equally earwormy and eminently more dance floor-friendly. RUTH BROWN. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. SOLD OUT. 21+.
Mongoloid Village, Lozen, Dog Shredder
[REAL HEAVY METAL] Now here’s a novel idea: Get three scuzzy, noisy, Melvins-worshiping acts on one bill at a really awesome dive bar. The first of Carly Henry’s monthly metal nights at Saratoga, this is a showcase for Mongoloid Village, one of Portland’s wilder guitar bands and probably the only one to mix slow, grinding rhythms with titanic riffs and a tight math-rock sensibility. Unlike a lot of other heavy-rock acts that garner comparisons to Big Black and the other “pigfuck”
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WYE OAK TUESDAY, MARCH 29 [SELF-HELP INDIE ROCK] It’s often said that the best music comes in the wake of personal tragedy. The history of gut-wrenching breakup albums—from Bob Dylan’s scathing Blood on the Tracks to Blur’s noisy, disjointed 13—has been documented in countless best-of lists, but there’s also a different kind of transition record that deals with letting go more than moving on. For Jenn Wasner, Wye Oak’s singer and guitarist, it took a self-imposed exile to find the strength to finish Civilian, an album centered on death, romantic discomfort and personal growth. “I wrote Civilian in my room, during a time when I pretty much holed up and didn’t do anything or see anyone,” Wasner admits. “The first song I finished was the title track, and that song was kind of the breaking point. This record represents a year of my life when I learned to be less dependent on others and more self-sufficient for my own happiness.” If that sounds like a total downer, then you’re not familiar with Wye Oak. Since the band’s genesis in Baltimore, Md., in 2006, Wasner and Andy Stack (drummer, keyboardist and arranger) have made the dreary sound exuberant, with a stripped-down aesthetic that emphasizes Wasner’s husky, alluring voice, ferocious blasts of shoegaze rock guitar, and full arrangements that could come from a band twice its size. Civilian is easily the band’s most confident record: Instead of relying on the sheer joy of a shift from a quiet verse to a super-loud chorus, these songs have room to breathe and grow, from the buoyant, poppy “The Altar” to the lumbering early Modest Mouse stomp of “Dogs Eyes.” Wasner credits Civilian’s intricate sound to finally learning how to delegate responsibility. For the first time the band brought in an outside mixer (John Congleton, who’s worked with St. Vincent) and, while the record was finished quickly, it’s also a relief to have her internal demons out in the open. “I made a lot of really intense changes in my life during a short period of time, but getting past that I feel like I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” she says. “And this record is a documentation of that struggle.” MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Jenn Wasner writes 21st-century folk music for the brokenhearted.
SEE IT: Wye Oak plays Tuesday, March 29, at Mississippi Studios with Callers and Aan. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
BEST BREAKFAST
BURRITOS in PDX! Sundays 9:30-2:30 Our drinks are pretty awesome too.
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We met our revenue goals for the concert, and the Doug Fir was nearly at capacity. Many of the attendees were new faces — folks who don’t go to our regular performances at the Newmark, which means our ads in WW worked. Many people specifically mentioned the WW ad. Our commissioners couldn’t stop talking about the event, and were impressed that we’re not the musty, “serious” institution they had thought.
We are so thankful for Willamette Week’s support!” Patricia Price, Executive Director Portland Piano International
C RU Z RO OM NE 24th & Alberta • cruzroom.com
“WE HELD A CONCERT AT THE DOUG FIR AND ARE HAPPY TO REPORT THE EVENT WAS A SUCCESS!
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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FRIDAY - SATURDAY A R M E N T E R TA I N M E N T. C O M
MUSIC
MÖTLEY WHO?: L.A. Guns plays Thursday, March 24, at Dante’s. Her’s dully stylish synth pop luxuriates in lowered expectations. The watered-down New Wave and bloodless indie of their 2008 fulllength debut, Common Reaction, asks too much from admittedly affecting harmonies that still have nothing to say; well-behaved women rarely make decent club tracks. JAY HORTON. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 2848686. 9 pm. $15 advance, $17 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, MARCH 26 Dan Bern, Ari Hest
UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES ZION I & THE GROUCH FRIDAY 3/25 @ 5:30PM
West Coast hip-hop stalwarts Zion I & The Grouch return with their sophomore collaborative effort, ‘Heroes in the Healing of the Nation.’ This time around Z&G raise the stakes to expand the playing field from City to Nation, inviting listeners everywhere to join them on their quest in channeling their highest selves. Amp Live provides the bulk of the banging backdrops as Zumbi and The Grouch consciously kill it with a well-versed ease.
ABIGAIL WASHBURN
TUESDAY 3/29 @ 7PM
If American old-time music is about taking earlier, simpler ways of life and music-making as one’s model, Abigail Washburn has proven herself to be a bracing revelation to that tradition. She—a singing, songwriting, Illinois-born, Nashville-based clawhammer banjo player—is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past, and every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local. She pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. ‘City of Refuge’ is her latest release. Win a gift card up to $150
1 in 10 wins!
Text: Record to 27299
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
KASEY ANDERSON TUESDAY 3/29 @ 5:30PM
With his world-weary voice and gritty, narrative-driven songs, Kasey Anderson has drawn comparisons to Americana and alt-country artists like Steve Earle, Tom Waits, Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen, and Ryan Adams. Bouncing between the folk scenes of Bellingham, WA, and Portland, OR, Anderson has become a regional favorite and has attracted some national press attention for his six albums including 2011’s ‘Heart Of A Dog.’
THE REFUGEES FRIDAY 4/1 @ 6PM
The trio of women that is The Refugees emerged on the music scene as a verifiably unmatched force of talent, diversity, and experience. Each successful in her own right as a solo artist, Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland and Wendy Waldman formed their unique and innovative group in 2007, and since that time have been wowing audiences, radio DJs, and music critics alike with their soaring harmonies, indelible musicianship, and unforgettably humorous stage presence. On their debut release, ‘Unbound,’ the talented trio plays all of the instruments on the recording including guitars, dobro, bass, mandolin, harmonica, accordion, and percussion. The Refugees will also be performing at the Alberta Rose Theatre at 8:00 PM on April 1st.
[SINGER-SONGWRITER] Slowly but surely the secret’s getting out. That being the fact that Dan Bern’s the most reliable, compelling singer-songwriter of his generation. Bubbling under broad recognition since his 1996 debut, Bern has nevertheless plugged away at a prolific song-a-day pace, with fearless personal honesty and political savvy, powerhouse performances, and the sort of emotional acuity that makes listeners simultaneously laugh and weep at the same song—sometimes at the same line. His contributions to Judd Apatow-stable films Get Him to the Greek and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story may have finally broken the ice, though other recent songs like “Osama in Obamaland”— in which the titular fugitive seeks refuge at a certain Crawford, Texas, ranch—ensure that the broadest mainstream success will (thankfully) continue to elude him. JEFF ROSENBERG. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 7196055. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
Bobby Bare Jr., Kelly Blair Bauman
[A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC] It could just as easily have been a midlife meltdown, but Bobby Bare Jr. is built of sturdy Tennessee poplar. Death, divorce and a career that never exploded like most predicted only shoved the Nashville native into a frenzy of activity. Over the past three years, he’s produced a tribute to colossal influence Shel Silverstein and a pair of backwoods rock-inspired records. The latest— A Storm, A Tree, My Mother’s Head—captures his natural, sportive spin on the sound his father, Kris Kristofferson, and others made famous. MARK STOCK. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. 10 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry (ReBirth Brass Band)
[BOUILLABASS] While there’s always the whiff of theme-park street performance surrounding whiteboy funk archivists—not least the size and shamelessness of their followers—Galactic’s brass-fueled jams at least had the good fortune to re-create a N’awlins musical legacy so dizzyingly varied that the most fervent attempts at authenticity can’t help but still seem theatrical, and the Louisiana quintet has ever had the good taste to underplay instrument facility to better serve song and singer. The
band is currently touring with Cyril Neville, and latest release Ya-KaMay passes the mic from R&B legends to transgendered Bounce MCs ’mid a gleefully incoherent mélange of every musical strain to pass through Bourbon Street. JAY HORTON. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 9 pm. $22 advance, $25 day of show. All ages.
Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers
[WILD ABANDON] It’s hard to know what to expect with Acid Mothers Temple. The Japanese drone-psych outfit does many things well: spaced-out, whoneeds-the-drugs progressive rock; free-form, amorphous instrumental pieces; loud-as-fuck psychedelic dirges. And though the band has gone through hundreds (I’m only slightly exaggerating) of different lineups during its 16-year career, the current quartet known as Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. is probably the most engaging live entity, a beast of wild solos and unwieldy LPs, including this spring’s Pink Lady Lemonade—You’re From Inner Space. Come for the trip, but stay for the insane album title. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
Strange Boys, Natural Child, Blood Beach
[DRUNK PUNK] Fusing punk and classic R&B, six-piece Austin outfit the Strange Boys slurs out twangy, fuzzy garage rock that sounds like a messy collision between the Trashmen and the Black Lips. The band’s 2010 sophomore LP, Be Brave, gave new dimension to its ramshackle rock, adding some wacked-out saxophone and several rootsy, more soulful tracks to the mix. It feels odd calling a band that still sounds like a prepubescent Bob Dylan “more mature,” but it’s impossible to deny how far it has come since its 2009 debut LP. Joining the Strange Boys is Nashville’s Natural Child, slinging much more straightforward garage punk, but with a similarly looseygoosey sound, and Portland’s amazing Blood Beach, which plays garage rock with a theremin. RUTH BROWN. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056. 8 pm. $8. 21+.
Ben Darwish’s Commotion
[FUNKJAZZPARTY] Pianist Ben Darwish is best known for his scintillating jazz, but his Afrobeat funk freak alter ego has enlisted nine other closet funksters amid Portland’s jazz community, including guitarist Dan Duval and saxophonist John Nastos, moonlighting members of Trio Subtonic, Curtis Salgado’s band, Blue Cranes and more. For this dance party, the revamped lineup, with simpatico guests, including singer Jans Ingber and veterans of the Motet and Mingus Big Band, may unleash some of its popular Afrobeat Michael Jackson tunes and other pop-funk-jazz mash-ups, but whatever it plays is certain to live
CONT. on page 35
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Thursday March 24th
Curtis Salgado / Alan Hager Duo 8pm Friday March 25th
Terry Robb Electric Band 9pm
Saturday March 26th
David Ornette Cherry 9pm
Sunday March 27th
Tim Paxton Quintet 730pm
Monday March 28th
Renato Caranto’s funk band 8pm
every wed - Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm
Now serving home made NY pizza!
music 7 nights a week
Portland’s best happy hour
5 - 7 pm and all day sunday 3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC ARTHURMAG.COM
SATURDAY - TUESDAY
CRUSH WITH EYELINER: Men plays Wednesday, March 23, at Rotture. up to the group’s name. BRETT CAMPBELL. Goodfoot Lounge, 2845 SE Stark St., 503-239-9292. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
Castanets, Holy Sons, Dolorean
See profile, page 29. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Boom!, Pelican Ossman, Braincloud
[PARTY LIKE YOU’RE 16] Boom! is a delightfully straightforward punk band, all skateparks and silly lyrics. The band’s latest online-only release, DOS!, is full of high-energy house-party drumming, screamalong lyrics and scrappy guitar solos, with very few tunes that clock in over two minutes. Tracks like “Runaway,” “Killer Party” and “What’s It All About” are thrashing throwbacks to ’80s garage punk, while standout “The Ballad of Ricky Rick” heads into slightly more tuneful proto-grunge territory. It’s probably best not to overanalyze this kind of stuff, though. This is music to get stupid to, plain and simple. RUTH BROWN. Mudai, 801 NE Broadway, 287-5433. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Akron/Family, Delicate Steve, AU, Brainstorm, Why I Must Be Careful
See music feature, page 28. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 9 pm. $15. All ages.
SUNDAY, MARCH 27 Michelle Shocked
[RIGHTEOUS BABE] Michelle Shocked never really fit in with the ’80s feminist folk scene she came up around. Whether it’s because of the punky portmanteau she adopted for a name or the fact she once considered appearing in blackface on the cover of an album inspired by minstrel shows, the Texas songwriter has always come across as more subversive—and simply quirkier—than many of her peers. She’s certainly always done things her way: Her debut, 1986’s The Texas Campfire Tapes, was literally recorded around a campfire on a Sony Walkman. From there, she just did more to continue confounding the mainstream music industry, putting out albums that have bounded from rootsy Americana to big-band swing to gospel. Her last record, 2009’s Soul of My Soul, was a collection of trimmed-down pop rock attacking George W. Bush (a bit late, admittedly). No wonder she titled one album Artists Make Lousy Slaves. MATTHEW SINGER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 8 pm. $25. 21+.
MONDAY, MARCH 28 Liam Finn, The Luyas
[THERE AND BACK AGAIN] While father Neil somehow fronted both the naff (Split Enz) and twee (Crowded House) poles of ’80s pop before embracing his destiny as living embodiment of New
Zealand (by which, yes, we assume him to be a Hobbit), Liam Finn may have sprung from the womb a fully grown adult contemporary. Past albums—his third, strangely, will be released after this brief tour— prove he’s inherited the melodic chorus instantly familiar and immediately forgettable, and his live performances are reportedly captivating if dependent on that peculiarly antipodean gift for wringing a suggestion of rawk from the most dully pleasant tunes through overly sincere facial gyrations. But if beard and showily looped guitar lines solely distinguish his work from the old man’s coffeehouse period, we rather wish he’d received the daft New Wave genes. JAY HORTON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
TUESDAY, MARCH 29 Ha Ha Tonka, Hoots and the Hellmouth, Kasey Anderson
[ROOTS ROCK] Ozarks roots-rock outfit Ha Ha Tonka—not named after mirthfully playing with a toy truck, but rather a Missouri state park—doesn’t have the most original components to its sound (country, folk, rock, pop), but the aggressive confidence with which it combines those elements in surprising ways definitely turns heads. Tonka’s songs are replete with tempo shifts, even stylistic shifts, yet retain a definite band sound and identity: original Americana with brains, brawn and feeling. Blitzen Trapper, Shmitzen Shmapper— here’s a rootsy group with substance, character and, in Friday Night Lights parlance, clear eyes and full hearts. Can’t lose! JEFF ROSENBERG. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
Miniature Tigers, Pepper Rabbit, And And And
[STANDARD DEVIATION] While you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find folk revival on a venue’s list of offerings, Los Angeles twosome Pepper Rabbit add citrus and soda to this much-ordered drink. Ukuleles and clarinets replace standard fodder, and though there’s nothing intricate about what they’re building, Xander Singh and Luc Laurent construct flavorful, melodious downtempo with significant shelf life. Pepper Rabbit recorded its auspicious debut, Beauregard, in New Orleans with support from label Kanine Records (Surfer Blood, BRAIDS). Wisdom says stick around for Miniature Tigers, responsible for the heavily praised 2010 record Fortress, and rambunctious local rabble-rousers And And And. MARK STOCK. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 7:30 pm. $9 advance, $11 day of show. 21+.
Wye Oak, Callers, Aan
See profile, page 30. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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New Spring Arrivals
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC CALENDAR = WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Michael Mannheimer. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents or (if you book a specific venue) enter your events at dbmonkey.com/wweek. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. lease include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: mmannheimer@wweek.com. Find more music: reviews 28 | clublist 38 For more listings, check out wweek.com/music_calendar
WED. MARCH 23 Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Suck My Open Mic With Tamara J. Brown
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Prick and the Burn, Feral Pigs, X’s for I’s
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Abandon Kansas, Swimming With Dolphins, From Indian Lakes, The Study
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Buffalo Bandstand
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Jedi Mindf*ck
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. What Hearts, Ah Holly Fam’ly, The Clampitt Family Band
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); Chris Olson’s High Flyers (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club
Beaterville Cafe
714 SW 20th Place Marlo Eggplant, Moodring, Larold Will, Tres Gone
Beauty Bar
Good Neighbor Pizzeria
2201 N Killingsworth St. Lowell John Mitchell 111 SW Ash St. Baby Ketten Karaoke
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Fairweather (9 pm); Little Sue (6 pm)
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Arabsque Bellydance
800 NE Dekum St. Open Mic
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott Law, Tye North and Tony Furtado
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Laura Ivancie
[MARCH 23-29] Pub at the End of the Universe 4107 SE 28th Ave. Music on Mars Acoustic Showcase: Worlds Finest, Nicole McCarthy, JeremyBriggs, Justina Grace, Car
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Rockstar Karaoke
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Andy Combs and the Moth, Scrimshander, Justin Power
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Lindsay Clark, Carley Baer and Becky
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Tierney
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Renegade Minstrels
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. City Squirrel, Jon Garcia, Emily Logan (9 pm); Mike Midlo, Duover (6 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside St. The David Mayfield Parade
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Tigress
Mississippi Studios
206 SW Morrison St. Beth Willis
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. MEN, Lovers, Macromantics, Silver Interior, Mr. Charming
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Katie Sawicki’s Cabin Project, Mike & Ruthy, Huck Notari (8 pm)
TeaZone and Camellia Lounge
Mississippi Studios
The Globe
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Linda Draper, John Heart Jackie, Kelly McFarling (10:30 pm)
Mt. Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Chicharones, Hives Inquiry Squad, Lytics
O’Connor’s Vault
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte on guitar
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Billy Kennedy
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Avalerion, The Silent Numbers, The Quiets
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
510 NW 11th Ave. Delaney and Paris
2045 SE Belmont St. Melz, Prigodich, Erskine Group
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Key of Dreams
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Alabama Black Snake, Heaven Generation
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave. Catherine Olson and Barbara Strozzi
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Hair Assault
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Michael Curtis Jazz Project
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Slutty Hearts, Grand Atlantic, Evrim
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. 6bq9
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Oh My Mys, Dan and Isabelle
THU. MARCH 24 Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. John Craig, Michael Sherry
All I Ask, Brace the Fall, A Blinding Silence, A Darker Grey
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave Sorta Bison Trio
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. LA Guns, Prophets of Addiction
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Portland Playboys
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Soft Tags, Autopilot Is for Lover, Benoit Pioulard, Shenandoah Davis
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Trio Subtonic, Gretchen Mitchell Band
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Joystick
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Merrill Lite
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Breath Kid Breath, Masonic Weird, Focus! Focus!
CONT. on page 38
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Borikuas
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Ghost Motor, Luna’s Ceiling, Destination: Oblivion
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Gejius, Staller, Profcal, Kid Goes Mental
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Chad Lee Williams
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Redwood Son (9 pm); The Old Yellers (6 pm)
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Curtis Salgado, Alan Hager Duo
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave.
WATCH YOUR STEP: Bobby Bare Jr. plays Saturday, March 26, at Bunk Bar.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
37
MUSIC
CALENDAR
SPOTLIGHT
Clyde’s Prime Rib
VIVIANJOHNSON.COM
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. On-Q Band
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. She Wants Revenge, The Californian
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Toro Y Moi, Braids, Cloud Nothings
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. The Insomniacs (9 pm); Joy and Her Sentimental Gentlemen (6 pm)
East Burn
1800 E. Burnside Jon Taubman Trio
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Sic Alps, Orca Team, Guantanamo Baywatch, The Whines
Ella Street Social Club
THE SPORTING LIFE: When new owners remade Scoreboard Sports Bar (4822 SE Division St., 233-2971) a few years ago, they left a couple of relics from the past: a series of old-school NBA pennants so dated that the purple one says “New Orleans” over the Jazz logo and the Sonics are still in Seattle. In the search for Portland’s most hospitable sports bar, Scoreboard falls somewhere in the middle class—the beer is cheap ($1.25 pints of Hamm’s), the french fries crisp and hot, and there are enough TVs to satisfy that perfect March Madness intersection where watching four basketball games simultaneously on a Sunday afternoon is a reality. Still, when someone asked about watching—gasp—a hockey game, a few regulars got heated, and then tried to put 20 bucks on the Notre Dame-Florida State game. I guess some things never change. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Tierney
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Adam Sweeney Band
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Disco Organica (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St. Ian McFeron Trio
McMenamins Grand Lodge 3505 Pacific Ave. SLA Duo
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road Billy Kennedy
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Jackalope Saints
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Esben and the Witch, Julianna Barwick, Lost Lockets
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 7th Planet Picture Show
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Gold Panda, Dam Mantle, Graintable
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Animal R&R
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Song Writers in the Round Hosted by Mike Midlo: Michael Apinyakul, Leonard Mynx, Barry Brusseau, Mike Midlo
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Old Junior (members of Old Growth), You
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Baby Ketten Karaoke
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Evan Churchill
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Heaven Generation, The Weak Kness, The Ol’ Devils
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Rabbits, Vaz
Twilight Café and Bar
Muddy Rudder Public House
1420 SE Powell Blvd. Hairspray Blues, The Warshers, Hawthorne, Dinosaur Daycare
Plan B
1530 SE 7th Ave. Los Gallos
8105 SE 7th Ave. Lauren Sheehan
1305 SE 8th Ave. Lost Coves, Guardians
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. David Duffee’s Birthday Bash
Refectory Restaurant & Lounge 1618 NE 122nd Ave. The Bumpin Nastys
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery 206 SW Morrison St. Tony Smiley
38
Vie de Boheme
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Blind Bartimaeus, Michael the Blind (8:30 pm); Will West and the Friendly Cover Up (5:30 pm)
FRI. MARCH 25 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Paul & Storm, Hank Green, Mike Phirman
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
Bridgetown Fashion Revue Rag Trade NW - Negara, DJ Global Ruckus, DJ Anjali
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Covalo Blue
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Dan Diresta Quartet
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Paper Airport, Rob Stroup and the Blame, Listen Like Thieves
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Boy Eats Drum Machine, No-Fi Soul Rebellion, D’S’R’
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. D.C. Malone and the Jones
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. NMDZ Presents Fast Life: Lionsden, Nathaniel Knows
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Funk Shui (9 pm); Billy Kennedy and Jimmy Boyer (6 pm)
Bipartisan Cafe
7901 SE Stark St. The New Five Cents
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Terry Robb Electric Band
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Zion I and the Grouch, Blu, Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Tope, Destro & L Pro, Gepetto, Verbz
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Deanna Walton with Sean Garcia
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. Brian Harrison, Brad Grossen
Canvas Art Bar & Bistro
1800 NW Upshur St. Acoustic Open Mic with host Steve Huber
714 SW 20th Place Yarn Owl, Hello Electric, Porches
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill
5421 N. Greeley Ave. Cement Season and Spirit Lake
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. River Twain
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Ron Rodgers
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Potbelly, Chase the Shakes, Mills Lane, Ramblin’ Rods Bastard Children, Progeria and the Feline Aids
Saratoga
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Rebel Row Spring Fling Fashion Expo: Raise the Bridges, Assisted Living, Joint Venture
Backspace
6910 N Interstate Ave. Mongoloid Village, Lozen, Dog Shredder
115 NW 5th Ave. Adventure, Unicorn Domination, Raised by Television
Sellwood Public House
Beaterville Cafe
8132 SE 13th Ave. Tom Arnold
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. Tall as Rasputin, Old North, The Dirty Words
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Woodbrain
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. PDX “Pop Machine” II, Van Go Lion, Starlight & Magic, Night Surgeon, Dropa
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Ms.Ms.
St. Clare Church
2201 N Killingsworth St. Heartbreak Hotel, Shawn Hawkings and the Offenders
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Jimmy Boyer (9:30 pm); Twisted Whistle (5 pm)
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. David Ornette Cherry
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Kinky Brothers and Guerillacillin
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Bobby Bare Jr., Kelly Blair Bauman
8535 SW 19th Ave. A Lenten Reflection: Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time
Camellia Lounge
The Foggy Notion
Clyde’s Prime Rib
3416 N Lombard St. Swamp Buck, Fugue, Mustaphamond
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin Trio
510 NW 11th Ave. Tom Wakeling, Steve Christofferson Quartet 5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Elite
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Galactic, Cyril Neville, Corey Henry (ReBirth Brass Band)
Dante’s
1503 SE 39th Ave. Old Man Markeley, Cooper McBean (Devil Makes Three)
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Growler, Talking to Turtles
350 W Burnside St. The Slants, Exquisite Rap Duo
Hawthorne Theatre
The Know
Doug Fir Lounge
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Trevor Hall, Cas Haley
Hungry Tiger Too
207 SE 12th Ave. Junior’s Gang, Old Kingdom, Pellet Gun
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Errick Lewis and the Vibe Project, The Excellent Gentlemen
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cul an Ti
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Lewi Longmire Band, Denver (9:30 pm); Alice Stuart (6 pm)
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Ian McFeron, The Finches
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Foster the People, The Steelwells
Mt. Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Pojama People With Ike Willis, Notes From Underground
Mudai
801 NE Broadway Northern, System and Station, Mr. Frederick
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Johnnie Ward and Bill Uhlig
Oba!
555 NW 12th Ave. The Platform
Original Halibut’s
2525 NE Alberta St. Dover Weinberg Organ Trio
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Lynn Conover
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. My Life in Black & White, The Situation, The Spittin’ Cobras, Eric Tonsfeldt
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Meester
2026 NE Alberta St. Black Budget, He Whose Ox Is Gored, Dead By Dawn
The Woods
830 E Burnside St. Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO, Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. A Stroke of Luck to Benefit Amil Fulton: The Pink Widower, Class Me Planets, DJ Sapphos
Duff’s Garage
The World Famous Kenton Club
1800 E Burnside Elke Robitale
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Thee Headliners, The Moss, Weirding Module, Perfect Look
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Johnny Smokes
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Bureau of Standards Big Band
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Headless Pez, Tweakin Like Matty, Krix
Twilight Room
5242 N Lombard St. The Manimalhouse
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Berthaline and the Love Brigade, RedRay Frazier (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Uh Huh Her, Diamonds Under Fire
SAT. MARCH 26 Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Dan Bern, Ari Hest
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Russell Turner
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Fanno Creek
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka Trio
1635 SE 7th Ave. Shorty and the Mustangs, Trio Bravo
East Burn
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Strange Boys, Natural Child, Blood Beach
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Ben Darwish’s Commotion
Gotham Tavern
2240 N Interstate Ave. Fez Fatale
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Rotting Christ, Melechesh, Hate, Abigail Williams, Lecherous Nocturne
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cul an Ti
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Mighty Mighty Ghosts, Miss Mamie Lavona & Her White Boy Band (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Galactic Afterparty with Philly’s Phunkestra
Mississippi Pizza 3552 N Mississippi Ave. Na Mesa
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The People’s Meat Benefit Show
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Castanets, Holy Sons, Dolorean
Mudai
801 NE Broadway Boom!, Pelican Ossman, Braincloud
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. James Clem
Oak Grove Tavern
2099 SE Oak Grove Blvd. Invivo, Salty Blackness, In Repose, Static Parallel
Original Halibut’s
2525 NE Alberta St. Lind Meyers
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Dead Relatives, Ninjas With Syringes, Royal Tees, Lost City
Proper Eats Market and Cafe 8638 N Lombard St. Kinzel and Hyde
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Yoladrian, The Knuckles, Secnd Best, Cuntagious, Heaven Generation
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery 206 SW Morrison St. Bradley Band
Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Juma BlaQ, The Union, Roulette Delgato, Portland George, Y&R, Mighty
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Tim Paxton Quintet
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. It Prevails, American Me, The World We Knew, Farewell to Freeway
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Daniel Work and Songwriters
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Electric Six, The Constellations
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. The Parlotones, Imagine Dragons
Ella Street Social Club
Sellwood Public House
714 SW 20th Place Nuestro, Laura Ivancie, Worth, James Lanman and the Good Hurt
Slabtown
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
8132 SE 13th Ave. Dick Lappe & Friends 1033 NW 16th Ave. Monarques, Yours, Hosannas
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Sons of Soil
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Mikey Vegaz, Spaceman, TxE, Mr Mr, Illmaculate
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. SilverHawk
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont St. Women in Blues: Anne Weiss, Alice Stuart, and Mary Flower
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Benjaming Yerke
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Linda Lee Michelet
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Poenia Suddarth, Jackalope Saints, What Hearts
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Last Saturdays with The Remasters
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. The Poor Sports Band, Furniture Girls, Aaron Daniel
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Tony’s AM Gold Show
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Torture Me Elmo, Molestations, The Bangovers
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Chuk and Silky
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Bradley Wik and the Charlatans, Loaded For Bear, Brianne Kathleen (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Akron/Family, Delicate Steve, AU, Brainstorm, Why I Must Be Careful
SUN. MARCH 27 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. From Oregon, With Love: Pink Martini, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Storm Large, Holcombe Waller
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St.
1503 SE 39th Ave. Sam Wegman
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Revolution Overdue, Atrocity Archives, Crust, Bleeding the Raines
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Irish Sessions with Eric Tonsfeldt
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott (9:30 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Wicky Pickers
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Michelle Shocked
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Irish
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Flamenco Guitarist Jeffery Trapp
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery 206 SW Morrison St. Redwood Son
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St. Rocky and the Proms, The Hugs, The Charts
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Hanz Araki
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
8635 N Lombard St. Johnny Ward Sharktet
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Jason Oattis
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Sunday Sunday Sunday Swing Swing Swing
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Ruby Feathers, Brush Prairie, Duover
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Derek Monypeny, Planton Wat, Pulse Emitter
MON. MARCH 28 Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. John Desmore and the Pink Lady, Whale Revolution, Rumblebos
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Scott Head
CALENDAR Beauty Bar
Kung Pao Chickens (9 pm); Little Sue & Lynn Conover (6 pm)
Valentine’s
Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
The Family Funktion featuring Average Leftovers
Biddy McGraw’s
Mississippi Studios
White Eagle Saloon
East End
Mudai
111 SW Ash St. I Am the Monster 6000 NE Glisan St. Eric Tonsfeldt
Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Renato Caranto’s Funk Band
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Karaoke From Hell
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Liam Finn, The Luyas
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Big “D” Jamboree (8:30 pm); James Sasser Band (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Heavy Metal Ladies Night: Nate C
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Say Hi, Yellow Ostrich, Blair
Mt. Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Keegan Smith & The Fam, Hotels and Highways
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Death of Self, Reproacher, Violence of Humanity, Streetwalker
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery 206 SW Morrison St. Tasha and Kaloku
Rotture
1503 SE 39th Ave. Rockstar Karaoke
315 SE 3rd Ave. Smoking Popes, And I Was Like What?, Lee Corey Oswald
Hawthorne Theatre
The Globe
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Capture the Flag, Summer Soundtrack, One Hour Newport, Epidemic at Hand, From Sunrise to Sunset, Our Mistaken Grace
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Sister Spit, Plus special Portland guests, DJ Snowtiger
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Dan Balmer
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Danny O’Hanlon
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St.
2045 SE Belmont St. Hank Hirsh’s Jazz Lounge and Open Mic
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Free Monday: Reefer Madness, Kids Like Color, Adam and the Molecules
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Poison Apple Records Monday Showcase: Animism
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Unstoppable Death Machines, Fist Fite, DJ Smooth Hopperator
232 SW Ankeny St. Stepkids and friends 836 N Russell St. Joshua English, Little Beirut
TUE. MARCH 29 Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. The Harmed Brothers
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. The Harmed Brothers
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. JB Butler
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Mixed Social Every Tuesday: Age Sex Occupation, Jenny Invert, Damn Dirty Apes
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Said the Whale, Dustin Ruth, Holly Ann
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Fredrick’s Nordic Thunder
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Star Fucking Hipsters, Rendered Useless, Rum Rebellion, Ether Circus
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. The Ed Forman Show, DSL Open Mic Comedy
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Ha Ha Tonka, Hoots and the Hellmouth, Kasey Anderson
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave.
203 SE Grand Ave. Davila 666, Mean Jeans, Outdoorsmen
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Hazel’s Wart
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott Pemberton Trio
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Eric Allen
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The AP Tour - Black Veil Brides, Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, I See Stars, VersaEmerge, Conditions
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Miniature Tigers, Pepper Rabbit, And And And
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm)
Kells
801 NE Broadway Prince Rama, Cloaks, Edibles, Chrome Wings
Music Millennium
3158 E Burnside St. Abigail Washburn (7 pm); Kasey Anderson (5:30 pm)
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Paul Brainard’s Fun Machine
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Vagines, Jason and the Punknecks, Bad at Best, Highwater, Mr. Plow
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery 206 SW Morrison St. Ian James
Secret Society Lounge
116 NE Russell St. Dominic Castillo
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Steve Hall Quintet
The Woods
112 SW 2nd Ave. Danny O’Hanlon
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Chris Pureka, Holcombe Waller
LaurelThirst
Tony Starlight’s
2958 NE Glisan St. Jackstraw
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Baby Ketten Karaoke
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Wye Oak, Callers, Aan
Mt. Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Sportin’ Lifers
Valentine’s
Tiga 1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Copy, Maxx Bass
WED. MARCH 23 Star Bar 639 SE Morrison St. DJ Dark Ritual, DJ Tre Slim
The Crown Room 205 NW 4th Ave. Crush Drum and Bass
Tiga 1465 NE Prescott St. Cooky Parker
Valentine’s 232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Actual Magick and DJ Coldyron
THU. MARCH 24 Fez Ballroom 316 SW 11th Ave. Shadowplay with DJ Horrid, DJ Ghoulunatic, DJ Paradox
Someday Lounge 125 NW 5th Ave. The Fix: Rev. Shines, Kez, Dundiggy
Star Bar 639 SE Morrison St. DJ Isaiah Summers, DJ A Train
Tiga
232 SW Ankeny St. White Hinterland, Lavender Mirror
1465 NE Prescott St. Bill Portland
White Eagle Saloon
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Womb Service
836 N Russell St. Will West and the Friendly Strangers
MUSIC
Massive: DJ Goldfingers, Doc Adam, Ronic Roc, Cool Nutz
Valentine’s
FRI. MARCH 25 Fez Ballroom 316 SW 11th Ave.
Decadent 80s
Ground Kontrol 511 NW Couch St. DJ Flight Risk
Holocene 1001 SE Morrison St. Snap! 90s Dance Party
The Crown Room
Tube 18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Wels
Valentine’s 232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Knife Hits
SUN. MARCH 27
205 NW 4th Ave. Blown: WD4D, Rap Class vs. D Poetica, Djao
Plan B
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Flowers, DJ Dungeonmaster
18 NW 3rd Ave. Ronin Roc
Valentine’s 232 SW Ankeny St. Ecstacy #3
SAT. MARCH 26 Ground Kontrol 511 NW Couch St. Reaganomix: DJ Roxy Epoxy
Holocene 1001 SE Morrison St. DJ Zac Eno, DJ Rumtrigger, DJ E*Rock, Trance Forever
Rotture 315 SE 3rd Ave. Blow Pony: DJ Airick, DJ Kinetic, DJ Yer Momm, Roy G Biv
Star Bar 639 SE Morrison St. DJ Cecilia Paris
The Crown Room 205 NW 4th Ave.
1305 SE 8th Ave. Hive: DJ Owen
Tube
MON. MARCH 28 Star Bar 639 SE Morrison St. Into the Void - DJ Blackhawk
Tiga 1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Coldyron
TUE. MARCH 29 Someday Lounge 125 NW 5th Ave. Soul Classic Night: Selector Dub Narcotic, DJ Hannukah Miracle
Star Bar 639 SE Morrison St. DJ Smooth Hopperator
Tiga 1465 NE Prescott St. Megan Holmes
Yes and No 20 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Black Dog
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
39
Photo by Russell Young
JUST HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO FOR LOVE?
BOOMCRACKLEFLY
A quirky new play by Charise Castro Smith Onstage through April 16, 2011
503-236-7253 milagro.org
Sponsored by Josie Mendoza & Hugh Mackworth, and The Boeing Company
L D P aboratory
ance
roject
WEST COAST DEBUT OF SOUTH KOREA’S THRILLING ALL-MALE DANCE COMPANY
Photo by Han Yonghoon
WHITE BIRD
THURSDAY - SATURDAY
MARCH 31 - APRIL 2 Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 8pm
SPONSORED BY
TICKETS: $28/$18 Students/Seniors www.whitebird.org & PSU Box Office 503-725-3307 40
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
LDP 9 Unit WW.indd 2
WWEEK.COM/ EATMOBILE 3/14/2011 1:59:20 PM
MARCH 23-29
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
THEATER Attempts on Her Life
Defunkt Theatre stages Martin Crimp’s very odd 1997 play, which consists of many scenes describing a woman named Annie, or Anne, or maybe Anya, whom we see only in projected photos, taken from behind. She’s a terrorist, or a suicide, or an artist, or a survivor of war crimes, or maybe a new car. The show is at once funny and grim, entertaining and unsettling. The script names no characters and has no stage directions, much like Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, which Grace Carter also directed in an excellent production at Defunkt in 2010. Unlike that play, though, Attempts on Her Life is about 40 percent writerly twaddle, and your tolerance for such will determine how much you like the play. I’m very fond of twaddle, and so I enjoyed Crimp’s outrageously morbid riffs on art criticism, love and violence of all stripes. While the show should be a winner among fans of Nick Cave and Martin McDonagh, less macabre souls may find it disappointing. BEN WATERHOUSE. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 481-2960. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays. Closes April 9. $10-$15.
Boomcracklefly
Miracle Theatre stages Charise Castro Smith’s intertwining stories of dreamers having their fantasies fulfilled, set in New York; Key West, Fla.; and Havana. Olga Sanchez directs. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm Thursdays, 8 pm FridaysSaturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes April 16. $14-$25.
Futura
In Jordan Harrison’s dystopic sci-fi drama, a future where the flow of information is controlled by corporations begins with a lecture on the history of typography, delivered with the aid of beautiful slides (designed by Luke Norby) by an acerbic professor (Lori Larsen) to a class of students who have never beheld paper. The lesson was greeted with smug giggles by the audience of design snobs, who grew quiet abruptly at the beginning of the second act, as the play takes a violent and disquieting turn when the professor encounters a terrorist group bent on restoring to humanity its literary birthright. Harrison’s premise is as farfetched, and much of his dialogue as blatantly didactic, as those of his predecessors in the genre. But he fully commits to his vision of a world without writing, which is brought vividly to life by director Kip Fagan in this world-premiere production at Portland Center Stage. With the help of Mimi Lien’s origamilike scenic design and Casi Pacilio’s buzzing soundscape, Fagan achieves the solidity of place that so often evades theatrical sci-fi. BEN WATERHOUSE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, March 23-27. $20-$40.
Go, Dog. Go!
Northwest Children’s Theater reprises its musical based on the book by P.D. Eastman. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-4480. Noon and 3 pm March 24-27 and April 2-3; 7 pm Friday, April 1. $13-$18.
Good Citizen
Artists Rep presents a staged reading of a play by George Taylor about a Japanese-American Portlander’s protest against the curfew imposed on people of Japanese ancestry, on the 69th anniversary of the event that inspired the work. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Monday, March 28. $8 suggested donation.
Hopeless
Melanya Helene reprises her Drammywinning performance based on the writings of American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin St., brownpapertickets. com/event/162208. 7:30 pm FridaySaturday, March 25-26. $12-$15. Prepurchase required.
Kid Simple
Auditory intricacies take center stage in Jordan Harrison’s alternately whimsical and schmaltzy play about a plucky girl genius who invents a machine that plays impossible-to-hear sounds (such as—cue the groans—a breaking heart). As descriptions of noises are projected onto a screen, a Foley artist standing above the set provides corresponding sound effects. It’s one of the defter fanciful touches in a production that heaves with implausible plot turns and cutesy invented words. The cast is good-natured, but it’s cramped by the script’s too-brief exposition and tedious, sappy conclusion. It’s a shame—the boisterous medley of sound effects is delightful, and the twisting, fantastical plot should make for a meaty theatrical experience, but the show ultimately becomes too convoluted and precious for its own good. REBECCA JACOBSON. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 205-0715. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday, March 24-26. $20-$25.
Lend Me a Tenor
Lakewood Theatre Company presents Ken Ludwig’s classic backstage farce. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 635-3901. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7 pm Sundays. Closes April 17. $24-$27.
Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Well-Being
Jewish Theatre Collaborative presents a play about the life and work of Lillian Wald, a Jewish nurse who worked to bring proper health care to the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. Mittleman Jewish Community Center, 6651 SW Capitol Highway, 800-838-3006. 7-8:45 pm Tuesday, March 29. $8-$12.
Macbeth
Bag & Baggage presents what Scott Palmer, the company’s artistic director and adapter of this production, calls “Macbeth-ish.” Palmer draws on some of Shakespeare’s sources (The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland; Love’s Dominion; Maternal Elegies and The Two Noble Kinsmen) to weave together a fast-paced version of the tale. To the layman, the transition between Shakespeare and Palmer is practically seamless. The Weird Sisters dominate the stage and confuse reality with prophesy in a vertical set, towering above viewers as characters climb and descend the v-shaped stage (designed by Alan Schwanke). The minimal use of actors pushes the action along without sacrificing the story. Jan Powell (of Tygre’s Heart) directs. TIFFANY STUBBERT. The Venetian Theatre, 253 E Main St., 345-9590. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, March 24-27. $16-$23.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Under other circumstances, it would be the gravest of insults to say an actor was upstaged by the scenery, but in Rose Riordan’s new production of Kesey’s classic novel, it could hardly be otherwise. Here the asylum is not merely the setting but the lead antagonist: a breathing, blinking being dedicated to extinguishing the humanity of its inhabitants, with Nurse Ratched as its agent. It’s a hell of a set piece, designed by Tony Cisek and lit in a breathtaking realist style by Diane Ferry Williams, all green tile and fluorescent tubes and heavy steel doors, and it transcends verisimilitude. It
glowers. Riordan’s vision draws from a long history of plays and films about haunted places, from the House of Usher to the Event Horizon, and the production is rife with horror movie tropes: flickering lights at the end of a dark hallway, haze, thunder, constant thrumming and even, at one point, distorted children’s voices. It would be cheesy if it weren’t so frightening. The human performers in Riordan’s production are very good: Tim Sampson is painfully broken as Chief Bromden, and Gretchen Corbett makes an icy, baleful Nurse Ratched. The best of the bunch, though, is Ryan Tresser, appearing in Portland for the first time as Billy Bibbit, the fragile youth driven to desperation by Ratched’s browbeating. He makes Bibbit’s neurosis feel more real than those of the other inmates, and his fate is accordingly more distressing than McMurphy’s. BEN WATERHOUSE. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, March 23-27. $33-$58.
Emo Philips
The king of the paraprosdokian takes a break from British TV to swing through Portland. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE 9th Ave., 888-643-8669. 8 pm Thursday, 7:30 and 10 pm FridaySaturday, March 24-26. $15-$25. 21+.
Time Out: The Mother of All Comedy Shows
Comedy by moms, for moms, subtitled “Beware the Thighs of March.” Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., curiouscomedy.org. 8-9:30 pm Friday, March 25. $12-$14.
Two for the Show
A series of improv duets. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Saturdays. Closes April 9. $7-$10.
CLASSICAL Arnica String Quartet
departed 20th-century musical giants: the popular Polish composer Henryk Gorecki, who died last year, and the visionary Seattle-born guitarist/composer James Marshall Hendrix, better known as Jimi. (The occasion is the release of a CD tribute called Hendrix Uncovered.) Along with the honorees, the concert includes music by Portland composer Bob Priest (whose Free Marz organization sponsors these free concerts), Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, Michael Longton and Beethoven’s epic string quartet movement later and deservedly titled The Great Fugue. Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., 239-0099. 8 pm Friday, March 25. Free.
Bach Cantata Vespers
The series that features some of history’s greatest sacred music for chorus and orchestra continues with J.S. Bach’s potent Cantata 54, “Hold Thou Firm Against All Evil,” featuring Portland countertenor Tim Galloway,
This foursome of excellent local chamber players celebrates two
CONT. on page 42
The Peter Pan Project
The Working Theatre Collective presents a collaborative work about the pains of growing up. Eff Space, 333 NE Hancock St., Studio 14, theworkingtheatrecollective.com. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays. Closes April 2. $10-$15.
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
PERFORMANCE
The Rat’s Tale
Play After Play, which performs plays for small (age 8 and younger) children followed by playtime, presents a Chinese folk tale about a dissatisfied rat. Brooklyn Bay, 1825 SE Franklin St., 772-4005. 10 am Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes April 10. $7.
The Shakespeare Show
Vancouver, B.C., Monster Theatre presents a comedy about how the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., portlandminifringe.com. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday, March 24-26. $12-$15.
The Silence of the Clams
A drag parody of The Silence of the Lambs about a serial killer who waxes his victims, or something, and an FBI agent who has to interview a guy who really enjoys cunnilingus. Portland Actors Conservatory, 1436 SW Montgomery St., 800-838-3006. 8 pm Thursday-Saturday, 5 pm Sunday, March 24-27. $25.
COMEDY Brainwaves
The 25-year-old band of improvisers pokes fun at the history and culture of Portland. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 520-8928. 8 pm FridaysSaturdays through April 16. $10.
Broditarianism
Every Saturday evening, the Brody crew improvises a religion, which they promise will be “at least as plausible as Scientology.” Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 10 pm Saturdays. Closes April 9. $8.
Comedy Night at the Bagdad
Virginia Jones headlines. Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 10 pm Friday, March 25. $5. 21+.
Mice-tro
Put 16 improv actors onstage with a voice-of-God maestro pitting them against each other and the audience voting them off, and what do you get? A raw and clever Portland show that’s disgustingly full of talent. The actors take cues from the audience, asking them to shout out a scenario or sentence (“do not step on my begonias!”), which they instantly incorporate into their skits. A prompt about a union rally where each sentence starts with the next letter in the alphabet and one person is responsible for the vowels, performed in less than 90 seconds? They do it and make it look good. STACY BROWNHILL. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Friday, March 25. $10, $7 students.
(L TO R) TODD VAN VORIS, EMILY BELEELE, TAI SAMMONS AND JOHN SAN NICOLAS
JACK GOES BOATING (ARTISTS REP) Let’s hear it for likable losers. Not the self-pitying sad sacks and creepy men-children that populate the résumés of Seth Rogen and Paul Giamatti, but the pleasant dope who for some reason—chronic anxiety, general incompetence or an excessive affection for the reefer—never seem to make it very far up the ladder of adult achievement. I’d much rather talk to those guys than Philip Seymour Hoffman’s latest seething sociopath. Jack, a middle-aged New York limo driver with ambitions of driving for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is one of those guys. He was played by Hoffman in a recent off-Broadway production and subsequent film (in Hoffman’s typically creepy style), but I don’t think the playwright, Bob Glaudini, had a creep in mind. Jack is a stoner with his hair twisted into halfhearted nascent dreads, who plays the Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon” so often that the cassette has stretched and the music warbles ominously. As played by Todd Van Voris in Artists Rep’s production of this romantic comedy (directed by Allen Nause), he comes across as a genuinely nice guy, whom you’d be happy to have haul your rich self around. When Jack is introduced to Connie (Emily Sahler Beleele), a morbid and mousy co-worker of his best friend’s wife, he begins a hesitant and clumsy courtship. Connie wants to go boating, so he learns to swim. She’d like to be cooked for, so he obsessively braises and chops. Their relationship’s slow blossoming is charming, but less riveting to watch than the troubled marriage of his best friend and fellow driver, Clyde (John San Nicolas), and his wife, Lucy (Tai Simmons). Clyde and Lucy are aspirational types, striving to obtain better coffee and better weed, as impassioned in their marriage as in their trespasses. Their exertion in their work and tendency to inflict cruelty on one another feels truer than Jack’s fumbling romance, and their persistence in the face of repeated mutual betrayal is as convincing a defense of the value of marriage as any I’ve seen. San Nicolas and Simmons convey roiling discord, absentminded intimacy and reckless affection—and what more is married life about? BEN WATERHOUSE.
Less creepy; more lovable.
SEE IT: Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays, 11 am Wednesday, April 6. Closes April 17. $20-$42. Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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Never a cover!
PERFORMANCE
MARCH 23-29 CHRISTIAN STEINER
Since 1974
Buffalo gap We d n e s d ay 3 / 2 3 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Buffalo Bandstand T h u r s d ay 3 / 2 4 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Stone & Tone f r i d ay 3 / 2 5 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Deanna Walton w/ Sean garcia 10:00pm
Dewars Rocks promo girls - $4 S at u r d ay 3 / 2 6 • 9 : 0 0 p m
Kinky Brothers & guerillacillin S u N D aY 3 / 2 7 • 3 : 0 0 p m
Daniel Work_Songwriters 5:00pm
West Coast Songwriters Hosted By: Daniel Work
T u e s d ay 3 / 2 9 open Mic Night • WIN $50 Sign up @ 8:30 | Music @ 9pm Hosted by: Scott Gallegos 6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
CHRISTINE BREWER plus movements from the earlier Cantata 150, To You, Lord, I Lift up My Soul.” St. James Lutheran Church, 1315 SW Park Ave., 2272439. 5 pm Sunday, March 27. Donation.
Christine Brewer
The Grammy-winning operatic soprano, accompanied by pianist Craig Rutenberg, will sing music by Gluck, Wagner, Strauss, Benjamin Britten’s Cabaret Songs, a cantata by Elliott Carter and music by other American composers. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 224-9842. 7:30 pm Monday, March 28. $27-$40.
Classical Revolution
The local classical chamber jam returns to its original Portland home. Red and Black Cafe, 400 SE 12th Ave., 231-3899. 7 pm Friday, March 27. $5.
Free Marz String Trio
Another Bob Priest-sponsored concert, this one features Seattle trombonist Stuart Dempster (a longtime colleague of Pauline Oliveros), plus local chamber musicians performing music by Dempster, Priest, Henryk Gorecki and Igor Stravinsky. Everyone who attends will receive a free copy of Marzena’s new CD, Hendrix Uncovered: New Music Inspired by Jimi Hendrix. Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., 239-0099. 8 pm Saturday, March 26. Free.
From Oregon, With Love
[JAPAN RELIEF] Local event maven Stephen Marc Beaudoin and friends launch a giant benefit concert for the Mercy Corps Oregon Japan Relief Fund starring Pink Martini, Holcombe Waller, Storm Large, Oregon Ballet Theatre dancers and more. KELLY CLARKE. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 2 and 7 pm Sunday, March 27. $38 advance, $40 door. Tickets at aladdin-theater.com.
Michael Kissinger, Maria Manzo, Elizabeth Byrd, Fritz Gearhart
Four regional chamber musicians perform French composer/mystic Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which was written in a World War II prison camp, as part of a multimedia presentation that also includes artwork by Polish painter Jerzy Duda-Gracz and historical photographs of the Holocaust. St. Clare Church, 8535 SW 19th Ave., 244-1037. 7 pm Sunday, March 27. $10-$15.
Seventh Species
Portland composer Gary Noland has run this occasional composers collective and performance series for more than 20 years, beginning in San Francisco, then Eugene and now, after a four-year break, here. Noland is also a major figure in the newer Cascadia Composers organization, which is sponsoring this concert of music that pays tribute to earlier composers. The program
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
includes a rarely heard work by film composer Eric Wolfgang Korngold, Portland composer Bob Priest’s arrangement of Korngold’s Four Caricatures and Noland’s own tributes to Korngold, Scott Joplin and Franz Schubert, plus Toru Takemitsu’s beautiful tribute to Olivier Messiaen, Rain Tree Sketch II, and piano improvisations by Seattle pianist Terry Wergeland. Sherman Clay/Moe’s Pianos, 131 NW 13th Ave., 235-3714. 8 pm Wednesday, March 23. $5-$15.
DANCE Big Time Burlesque
Burlesque could be done in silence, but that might be kind of weird. Thankfully, Orchestre L’Pow! (which bills itself, probably without much resistance, as the Northwest’s longest-running live burlesque pit band) brings on the wailing horns and the chaka-boom audiences expect from traditional burlesque. At Big Time Burlesque, the band will back up local dancers doing big prop routines; among them Charlotte Treuse, Madison Moone, Itty Bitty Bang Bang and Holly Dai. Vincent Drambuie emcees. Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside St., 206-7630. 9:30 pm Saturday, March 26. $10. 21+.
Geeklesque!
Two of Portland’s favorite hobbies—burlesque and geekery—intersect in Geeklesque!, a cabaret-style event featuring sultry superheroines, villainous vixens, comics, video games and Batman knows what else. The vixen camp includes Baby Le’Strange, Hai Fleisch, the Infamous Nina Nightshade, Lizzy O’Boom and many others (including Tokyo Rose, or a modern version thereof). Elise breaks from the burlesque theme with her fusion belly dancing. The Mad Marquis de Maltease hosts, and there will be a raffle with prizes from Floating World Comics, Hollywood Vintage and more. Guardian Games, 303 SE 3rd Ave., 238-4000. 8 pm Saturday, March 26. $8. 21+.
Tease Time Second Anniversary
We can’t actually return to a gentler, more innocent age (did that age ever really exist?), but we can pretend with an evening out featuring supper and cocktails by the fire and a variety show with a little vava-voom. Tease Time celebrates its second anniversary with burlesque performances by Miss Frankie Tease and Lucky Lucy O’Rebel, synchronized vintage dance from the Dolly Pops, music from Boy & Bean and Sexhawk and comedy from Burk Biggler and show host Whitney Streed. Commemorate the event with a Polaroid from the photo booth and perhaps a raffle prize. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9 pm Friday, March 25. $7. 21+.
For more Performance listings, visit
VISUAL ARTS
MARCH 23-29
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 2431115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
MAR
23
TED DANSON / Oceana (Rodale) Actor Danson details his journey to become an ocean activist. Tickets, $29.99, include admission and a copy of Oceana, and are available at the Bagdad Theater, CascadeTickets.com, Crystal Ballroom, or 855-227-8499. WED / 23RD / 7P
BAGDAD
ALAN CHEUSE / Song of Slaves in the Desert (Sourcebooks) Explores one New Yorkerís struggle with the legacy of slavery. WED / 23RD / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
MICHIO KAKU / Physics of the Future (Doubleday) A provocative vision of the future that explains how science will shape daily life by the year 2100. THU / 24TH / 7:30P
DOWNTOWN
BUCKY SINISTER / Still Standing: Addicts Talk about Living Sober (Conari) A veteran of the punk-rock and spoken- word scene whoís been sober since 2002 brings stories from the trenches. THU / 24TH / 7:30P
HAWTHORNE
GENEEN ROTH / Lost and Found (Viking) Roth explores how emotional issues with money mirror those with food and dieting. Tickets: $25.95 (admission and copy of Lost and Found). Available at: Bagdad Theater, Crystal Ballroom, CascadeTickets.com, or 855-227-8499. FRI / 25TH / 7P
KRIS HARGIS’ TO THE HILLS AT FROELICK
BAGDAD
KRISTIN HANNAH / Night Road (St. Martin's)
NOW SHOWING Matt Cosby
The painting Homestyle is the pièce de résistance in Matt Cosby’s show, Peaks & Troughs. Chromatically it begs for musical descriptions à la Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. There is both a lyricism and a mathematical precision in Cosby’s imagery, which resembles undulating bolts of patterned fabric. Augen DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056. Closes April 2.
Portland Paper City
A nifty concept imperfectly presented, Portland Paper City, depicts our fair city in an assortment of paper sculptures created by a cavalcade of local designers. There are some fun moments here: Mount Hood as a mobile of myriad hanging pyramids; our infamous rain clouds crafted from slicedand-diced phone books; and whimsical cameos by miniature versions of Sam Adams and iconic Trail Blazers. But the installation makes no attempt to be geographically correct—Mount Hood, is plopped in the center of town—and the enterprise as a whole feels amateurish. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. Closes March 26.
In Site
Karl Burkheimer prefers to call his installation at Disjecta a “siteresponsive object.” It’s an enormous, sloping wooden scaffold with a round, sunken space toward the middle. Viewers are allowed to walk on it, drink, socialize and hang out in the sunken hole. Viewers are not allowed to skateboard or roller-skate on the ramp. A series of dance performances have been mounted on the piece, adding to the work’s provocation: Under what conditions does an artwork slide from a purely contemplative function into the realms of the utilitarian and the social? Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. Closes March 26.
Kris Hargis
The title of Kris Hargis’ portrait show, Me and You, is apropos, given that his subjects, U.S. servicemen and women returning home from foreign combat, bear strong resemblance to Hargis’ own distinctive self-portraits. Us shows a nude man standing alongside a woman who has no legs. To the Hills depicts a male figure with skeletal ribs and simian eyes, peering at the viewer. Hargis has a gift for betraying complex and disturbed psychologies with sensitivity and a hauntingly penetrating vision. Froelick, 714 NW Davis St., 222-1142. Closes April 2.
Sherrie Wolf
For opulent, hyperrealist still lifes, it’s hard to beat veteran painter Sherrie Wolf. In Transmissions, she subtly refers to Old Masters such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Rubens, alluding to their work in the backgrounds of her luscious flowers, fruit and dazzlingly reflective glass and silver bowls and plates. Laura Russo, 805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754. Closes April 2.
RE/ACTIVATE
Damien Gilley and Jordan Tull have created an invigorating futuristic environment that functions simultaneously as large-scale sculpture, architecture, interior design and stage set. On First Thursday, dancer Rachel Tess performed throughout the environment to an eerie soundtrack by Thomas Thorson. As Tess moved within Gilley and Tull’s wooden rhombuses, orange Plexiglas, and canted fluorescent light bulbs, audience members pondered the point at which an aesthetic object in its own right becomes merely a backdrop to human performance. Wieden & Kennedy lobby, 224 NW 13th Ave. Closes March 31.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
A complex novel that raises profound questions about motherhood, loss, identity, and forgiveness. FRI / 25TH / 7P
CEDAR HILLS
ANTON ZEILINGER / Dance of the Photons (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Demonstrates the stunning reality of quantum entanglement using photons created by laser beams. SUN / 27TH / 7:30P
DOWNTOWN
SMALLPRESSAPALOOZA This marathon reading features some of the best small-press authors from Portland and beyond. For a complete list of participants, see Powells.com/events.
MON / 28TH / 6-10P DOWNTOWN
J. D. KLEINKE / Catching Babies (Fourth Chapter Books)
The stories of a group of OB/GYN doctors who have chosen to preside over life's greatest medical drama ó high-risk childbirth.
MON / 28TH / 7:30P HAWTHORNE
SARAH VOWELL / Unfamiliar Fishes (Riverhead Books)
Vowell explores the history of Hawaii and finds America, warts and all. Tickets: $25.95 (admission and copy of Unfamiliar Fishes). Available at: Bagdad Theater, Crystal Ballroom, CascadeTickets.com, or 855-227-8499. TUE / 29TH / 7P
BAGDAD
TAYLOR CLARK / Nerve (Little Brown) Overturns popular myths about anxiety and fear to explain why some people thrive under pressure.
TUE / 29TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
JOSHUA FOER / Moonwalking with Einstein (Penguin) Foer chronicles his unlikely journey from forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion. WED / 30TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
Visit POWELLS.COM/CALENDAR for further details and to sign up for our EVENTS NEWSLETTER. Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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BOOKS
MARCH 23-29
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RACHAEL DEWITT. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23 Oceana
WWeek _5.727” x 9.152” Myst Tour_Runs 3-23-11
CLASSICAL MYSTERY TOUR A tribute to The Beatles, backed by the Oregon Symphony
A book outlining the harsh reality of our polluted and overfished seas isn’t the first thing one thinks of when imagining a decorative coffee table book, but Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them is both of these things. Equally unexpected is the book’s author, TV actor Ted Danson, who is best known for his starring role in the ’80s sitcom Cheers. For years Danson has fought alongside activists pushing for healthier oceans. He doesn’t preach, and the info isn’t dry. The trendy data visualizations, crisp photos and self-effacing tone make this a pleasant eye-opener—rather than a depressing excuse to head to your local version of Cheers. Danson speaks at the Bagdad Theater, 702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. 7 pm. $29.99, includes a copy of the book. Read a full book review at wweek.com.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24 Back Fence
The local storytelling showcase’s March installment (“Broke—Bones, Wallets, and Hearts”) features an all-star lineup of writers, artists and foodies including Andrew Dickson, Voodoo Doughnut’s Tres Shannon
and Live Wire!’s Courtenay Hameister. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. Food and drinks at 6:30 pm, show at 7:30 pm. All tickets purchased at the door, $12 advance, $15 door. 21+.
MONDAY, MARCH 28 Smallpressapalooza
Powell’s celebrates Portland’s micro-publishers with a marathon reading. Smallpressapalooza is four hours long and features 12 of Portland’s small-press authors, including Neil Davis (Incense for Calliope), David Agranoff (The Vegan Revolution…With Zombies), and Alissa Nutting (Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls). Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 6 pm. Free.
TUESDAY, MARCH 29 Sarah Vowell
NPR staple Sarah Vowell has a new book, Unfamiliar Fishes, which outlines the history of Hawaii (where “manifest destiny got a sunburn”). Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. Doors at 6 pm, talk at 7 pm. $25.95, includes a copy of the book; tickets at cascadetickets.com. All ages.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
TAYLOR CLARK NERVE
Sat Apr 2, 2011 | 7:30 pm Sun Apr 3, 2011 | 3 pm Jeff Tyzik, conductor More than 40 years will slip away as the Oregon Symphony, Jeff Tyzik and tribute group Classical Mystery Tour bring you the music of the Fab Four at their best.
“ More tha n just a n incredible simu lation” – LO S A NGE L ES TIME S
Groups of 10 or more sav e: SP O NSO R ED BY
Call: 503-228-1353 | 1-800-228-7343 Click: OrSymphony.org
Ticket office:
503-416-638
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MEDIA SPONSOR
923 SW Washington | 10 am – 6 pm Mon – Fri
ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL 44
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
In 1962, 500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, the free world was almost destroyed. When Russian submarines bearing a nuclear warhead were bullied to surface by American ships unaware of the subs’ explosive cargo, the Russian captains were in one hell of a pickle— die in an excessively violent blaze of glory or surrender now and attempt escape later. Everything you wanted to So begins Nerve (Little, Brown know about fear but were afraid to ask. and Company, 320 pages, $25.99), local journalist Taylor Clark’s new book about fear and how to deal with it, which asks how one Russian captain was able to stay so cool in the terrifying heat of pressure that he kept the Cold War cold. Clark’s first book, 2007’s Starbucked, examined the impact of coffeehouse culture on society. This time he takes on a different kind of jitters. A lifetime of nail-biting and brow-furrowing has given Clark, a self-proclaimed worrier, a vested interest in the emerging field of fear science. Beginning with a breakdown of neuroscience’s understanding of the frightened mind, Nerve examines why some athletes choke at the peak of their careers and why soldiers in some wars are able to withstand constant trauma and in other wars crack under sporadic threats. Clark takes a look at his own fear in hopes of ending his days as a deer in the headlights and finds helpful the U.S. military’s “eight P’s” mantra: “Proper prior planning and preparation prevents pisspoor performance.” Nerve is a fascinating summary of dry science that reads a bit like Woody Allen giving tips on how to keep Batman-like composure. RACHAEL DEWITT. GO: Taylor Clark reads at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 29. Free.
BOOKS J E F F S H AY/ C . C . S T E R N T Y P E F O U N D R Y
CONT.
OUT OF SORTS A GROUP OF PORTLAND PRINTERS REVIVES THE LOST ART OF METAL TYPE CASTING. BY R UT H B R OW N
rbrown@wweek.com
Once upon a time, before fonts came packaged in .zip files and people still owned pens, creating a page of printed text was more difficult than simply bashing it out in Word and pressing “print.” Newspapers, books, letterhead—it all had to be printed by skilled craftspeople using letterpress, and the characters they used—every capital and lowercase a, every comma, every semicolon (for people once knew how to use those, too) in every font—had to first be cast in metal by another skilled craftsperson. Although letterpress itself has seen a revival in recent years among local artists and people looking for fancy wedding invitations, the people and machines that actually produced that type have been largely forgotten. So in 2009, a group of Portland-based printers began working on a way to preserve and continue that tradition, by building a “working museum” and type foundry. The members were all friends and students of Chris Stern, a printer from Sedro-Woolley, Wash., who used old casting machines to create type for custom books. When Stern passed away in 2007, the group inherited his collection, moved everything to an industrial space in Northeast Portland, and the C.C. Stern Type Foundry was born. “The way letters work was defined by this kind of equipment,” says the foundry’s director Jeff Shay. “An awful lot of folks have never even heard of the equipment, have no idea that it existed or what it did. But every day, when they’re sitting at their computers, they’re using what is the product of this history.” But to realize their goal, the museum must get these old dinosaurs moving again. Its first project is to restore an “Orphan Annie” Monotype Sorts Caster—a big piece of Victorian-era machinery that looks like something out of a Tim Burton film; wheels spinning, arms cranking, pumping out
JUST MY TYPE: C.C. Stern Type Foundry’s “Orphan Annie” Monotype Sorts Caster.
little metal nuggets of type—and put it back to work. “[Chris Stern] was good friends with a type designer in Vancouver, B.C., Jim Rimmer...[he was] mind-bogglingly amazing…in several books he designed the type, cast the type, printed the book, did all the illustrations in the book and then bound the book and offered it for sale. When Chris died, Jim designed a typeface in his honor: Stern. Jim passed away about a year ago and bequeathed us the [Stern] mats, so our goal is to cast Stern on the Orphan Annie the first time it’s up an running again. It’s a tribute to all the people involved.” Ironically, the very thing that put this craft out of business is now driving its revival. To help Orphan Annie sing again, the museum turned
to crowd funding website Kickstarter, allowing supporters to donate anywhere from $1 to $500 to bring the machinery and Stern back to life. Within just 10 days, font fanciers and word nerds from all over the world had pledged well over the organization’s $5,000 goal, and the money is still rolling in. “The vast majority of people who have access to computers [now] know what a font is. That wouldn’t have been true 50 years ago. You opened up the newspaper, you read it, and you didn’t think particularly hard that that was Times Roman or whatever,” laughs Shay. “Now, everybody’s a typographer!” GO: C.C. Stern Type Foundry holds an open house, tour of the museum’s foundry equipment and silent auction of printed ephemera at 8900 NE Vancouver Way, 489-7330. 3-7 pm Saturday March 26. Info at ccsterntype.org. Visit wweek.com for a video of Jim Rimmer making Stern type.
$29.95 $19.45
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(503) 284-0987 • www.hollywoodsmokes.net Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
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MARCH 23-29 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
S O M E D AY S T H E M O V I E . C O M
MOVIES
Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] When director Tom Shadyac released his personal-growth documentary I Am last month, we asked: “Now will he please get back to making Jim Carrey talk through his ass cheeks again?” Maybe he won’t. But you can. PG-13. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Thursday, March 25-31.
The Adjustment Bureau
56 Like any paranoid thriller, The Adjustment Bureau gestures toward fighting the power—but not since Capra has a supernatural movie sided so squarely with conformism, acquiescence to authority and abdication of independent thought. Right out of the gate, U.S. Senate front-runner Matt Damon learns that his every decision is being programmed by a totalitarian brain-ray guild, and his basic response is, “Bummer, may I have my lady friend back please?” That the lady friend in question is played by Emily Blunt does not entirely excuse his surrender. “The whole world’s been turned upside down, and you’re thinking about a girl?” asks one of his more sympathetic, if baffled, handlers (Anthony Mackie). Yes, that’s pretty much all Damon’s thinking about: He boards the same bus every day for three years, looking for her, so if the mind-control dudes were trying to increase publictransit ridership, that’s a win. PG-13. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport.
Barney’s Version
70 Director Richard J. Lewis’ version
of Mordecai Richler’s novel is a stylistic nullity, not so far removed from the cheapo television its hero produces in a Montreal warehouse, but I can’t hold this defect against it. I’m too fond of Richler’s singular conception of hustling Canadian Jewishness, and of Paul Giamatti’s lusty, avid personification of it. Giamatti is Barney Panofsky, serial collector of whiskey and wives, who as the movie opens is losing his past to Alzheimer’s, and tries to piece together his side of the story. His performance has surface similarities to Sideways—both Barney and Miles are blotto a lot of the time, and Giamatti instinctively understands the proud man perpetually subject to indignities—but Barney just skips past the part where he’s supposed to be mortified, too eager to see what satisfactions could arrive next. The film is no match for the character’s energy, and early on it threatens to succumb to some pungent stereotypes, but it manages to cohere for two great set pieces: a lavish wedding, where Barney marries his second wife (Minnie Driver) and meets his third (an angelic Rosamund Pike), and a very misguided weekend retreat to a lake cottage, where Barney’s closest friendship goes up in flames. Every so often, there’s an appearance by Dustin Hoffman as Panofsky Sr.; for a change, he seems invested in the role. The movie, with its promiscuous, liquored-up, loyal men of the tribe, is candy for me—halva, let’s say. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
Battle: Los Angeles
40 Lonely and dreaming of the West Coast, spacemen storm Santa Monica like it’s Normandy, and we endure the invasion from the POV of an Aaron Eckhart-led Marine platoon that firefights from beach house to beach house. The movie opens with explosions in the sky and music that sounds like Explosions in the Sky; as director Jonathan Liebesman lifts Peter Berg’s back-of-a-pickup Stedicam shakes, it’s Friday Night Lights: Permian Panthers vs. Aliens. As the actual title suggests, the movie’s tactical coldness feels most like a Call of Duty-brand video game and, since the extraterrestrials are the usual whirring biomechanical biped bugs, most of the tech crew’s imagination is expended on making
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the picture unpleasantly nerve-shattering, then just unpleasant. The soldiers vivisect a captured enemy, trying to locate its vital organs. “Maybe I can help,” says a nice lady, played by Bridget Moynahan. “I’m a veterinarian.” PG-13. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
Beastly
15 This high-school Beauty and the Beast remake opens as some kind of hyper-snide Gossip Girl knockoff, then that Burberry model from I Am Number Four (Alex Pettyfer, is it?) gets his face magically melted so he looks like Powder covered in squeezes of Aquafresh, and the tone gets more moonish, and Neil Patrick Harris plays a blind tutor, and honestly no one over the age of 18 is ever going to see a minute of this, so the kids can feel unsupervised enough to sit in the back row and give each other blow jobs or tweet or kill hobos or whatever it is they’re doing for fun these days, because it sure as hell isn’t actually watching this shit. PG-13. AARON MESH. Lloyd Mall, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Cinema 99.
Blue Valentine
96 In Blue Valentine’s most iconic sequence, a love-struck Ryan Gosling positions Michelle Williams underneath a heart-shaped wreath outside a florist shop and croons the Mills Brothers’ “You Always Hurt the One You Love” while plucking a ukulele as she tap dances. It’s their first date. You see the longing, curiosity and affection in their eyes. You want it to last forever. You wish you hadn’t seen the hour that preceded it. You know you’ll soon return to the claustrophobic sex hotel where Gosling’s Dean is trying to re-spark his marriage to Williams’ Cindy. You, and they, know their love is all but dead. A film more than a decade in the making, Blue Valentine could well have been torture porn for the heart. Instead, director Derek Cianfrance has crafted a small miracle, a film that reminds us that movies are designed not just to stimulate, but to make us feel—even if those feelings are devastating. R. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Cedar Rapids
50 Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Youth
in Revolt) hosts a Midwestern potluck of current indie-comedy talent, which means Cedar Rapids is not very ambitious, and only superficially funny. Daily Show alum and Office a cappella specialist Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman for a Wisconsin firm called Brown Star—that’s an early sign of the movie’s insistently blue material. Tim leaves his hamlet for the first time to attend a business convention in the titular metropolis; the hotel, with its shabby atrium, chipped woodwork and azure indoor pool, is a marvel of production design by Doug J. Meerdink, who showed similar heartland retro flair for The Informant! Here, it’s wasted on a script that regurgitates the archetypes of The Big Kahuna (John C. Reilly and an excellent Isiah Whitlock Jr. play the loudmouth cynic and the quiet sage), the wistful mood of the convention idyll in Up in the Air, and the terror of adulthood from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Then there are a lot of jokes about how flyover-country folks sure do love talking about God before boinking. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Tigard, City Center.
The Cinema of Ernie Gehr
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Gehr, a leader in the structural film movement, brings a program of his rarely seen work to Portland. Clinton Street Theater. 7:30 pm Wednesday, March 23. Presented by Cinema Project.
Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
KNOW YR PUMPKIN: James Mercer, hold please.
CARING IS CREEPY THE THRIFT-STORE SINCERITY OF SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS. BY AA R ON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
After three years of preparing Some Days Are Better Than Others for its Portland premiere this week, Matt McCormick is full of fresh ideas. He could go on a voyage to Mongolia, he says. He could stay in the Mississippi Avenue neighborhood and start a bakery. He could debut the new baked good he’s conceived with his girlfriend: a combination muffin and doughnut, called the muffnut. “It would basically be a muffin dipped in a deep fryer,” McCormick explains. “It would be delicious. It would be so unhealthy.” Sipping a cup of herbal peppermint tea, the lanky McCormick seems freed—understandable, since he’s been working since 2008 on the making and distribution of Some Days, his leap from experimental-cinema ringleader to indie-drama director. (Full disclosure: I spent six hours standing in the rain holding a beer cup filled with water for a house-party scene that was cut from the final film.) He’s gotten a lot off his chest: Some Days feels like a distillation of a decade’s worth of McCormick obsessions. The director of 2001’s ironic DIY manifesto The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal lingers on images of condemned buildings and finds comedy in the nonplussed workers hired to pack up the furniture of the dead; the founder of experimental hootenanny PDX Film Fest pauses his drama to interject the soap-film rainbows 95-year-old Albany filmmaker George Andrus created for the festival. But if Some Days is a strange hybrid, it is downright accessible compared to McCormick’s earlier work: The movie’s tagline—“Why do the good times slip by so fast while the difficult times seem so sticky?”—was originally voiced by a robot-voiced parade mascot in McCormick’s short film Sincerely, Joe P. Bear. Trying to turn that sensibility into something marketable hasn’t been easy. “If I ever see a penny from this movie, it’ll be amazing,” McCormick says. “I’d just be so elated if we can get our investors’ fee back, and make everyone happy. I became very conscious of the fact: ‘Wow, I’m mak-
ing a movie, like, spending other people’s money.’ That was really spooky. That’s a burden.” It turns out to be a difficult movie to classify— part David Gordon Green homage, part study of seasonal affective disorder, part workingman’s lament—though an easy one to dismiss: The casting of Shins frontman James Mercer and a prePortlandia Carrie Brownstein in the lead roles invites reductionist slagging of Some Days as an indie-rock mood ring. The youthful self-pity does rise to mortifying levels in spots (neither Mercer nor Brownstein are experienced enough actors to recognize their depression as even a little funny), but Some Days reserves its real pathos for a lost city: Mercer’s karaoke rehearsal of Bonnie Tyler sounds absurd and poignant over a montage of boarded-up bungalows, while Matthew Cooper of Eluvium scores the demolition of the Virginia Cafe. (What may have been intended as a criticism of gentrification now plays as a record of economic collapse; the movie, which took so long to secure a distributor, feels like artistic commentary on the financial quagmire of a generation both rootless and stuck.) Eclipsing the bigger names is a lovely turn by Renee Roman Nose as a consignment-shop worker who will not abandon an unclaimed urn— like her, the film clings to fragile things worth caring for. It’s a thrift-store movie: not wholly original, but touchingly protective of castoffs. And the movie itself is in a precarious spot, as a piece of art cinema dipped in mainstream-market grease. Maybe that’s why McCormick is dreaming of other pursuits—he’s been taken aback by how fast mass culture now preemptively strikes out at anything defenselessly sincere. “I’m still very sensitive to that kind of thing,” he says. “It’s hard to hear. Even the classic YouTube comment: ‘This sucks, you’re gay.’ I know the movie has flaws. I’m not standing up here and saying, ‘Hey, come look at my perfect film.’ But I do think the movie is very Portland. I’m definitely proud of Portland, and I hope that reflects in the movie. It’s the opposite of Portlandia...I love Portlandia. [But] there are no clowns in my movie. Had I only known.” 73 SEE IT: Some Days Are Better Than Others opens Friday at the Hollywood Theatre.
MARCH 23-29
MOVIES
Classic French Crime Films
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] More Jean-Pierre Melville with Bob le Flambeur (9 pm Friday, 7 pm Sunday, March 25 and 27), more Lino Ventura in Classe Tous Risques (7 pm Saturday, March 26). NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
Cold Weather
88 Cold Weather, an unusually
observant picture, thinks about details. You might say director Aaron Katz and his protagonist share an affinity for clues: About midway through the movie, Doug (Chris Lankenau) learns his ex-girlfriend (Robyn Rikoon) has flown her motel room, and puts his detective skills to work. Katz, meanwhile, patiently feeds us information about Doug, who typifies the Portland resident as somebody whose ambition got lost by the airline on the flight out here. The private-eye-as-slacker is no new archetype—think of Elliott Gould shambling through Altman’s The Long Goodbye, or Jeff Bridges in several iterations—but Doug is the first case of a slacker mesmerized by the image of gumshoeing, and its accouterments: A Sherlock Holmes buff, he even buys a pipe to puff on while the game is afoot. Cold Weather congeals into something very close to a potboiler, but all the while the director is looking in the opposite direction. He’s studying the stirrings of empathy. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Cracks
42 Girls’ boarding-school fiction is
a proud British hobby with certain genre requirements—salaciousness and sapphic lip-smacking, mostly—and so it is unsurprising to find this cinematic entry, hilariously titled Cracks, featuring underage students following their tutor out for a nude midnight swim. They are all members of the island school’s diving team, you see, and the captain (Juno Temple) has a thing for worldly coach Miss G (Eva Green), who in turn is harboring impure thoughts about the Spanish exchange student (Maria Valverde). Right: Let’s remove our nightgowns in the moonlight, then. What is slightly more odd is the suspicion, increasingly felt, that director Jordan Scott...no, it can’t be...is she taking this twaddle seriously? A certain amount of stone-faced drollery is required here, but Scott (Ridley’s daughter) seems to indicate she’s regaling us with a profound fable about intolerance and repression. Which somehow makes it funnier. There are many worse sins a movie can commit than unintentional comedy, and I admired the mad commitment of Green and Temple (who, between this and Kaboom, has emerged as a kind of terrifying Spice Girl). Still, a movie that will surely be somewhere retitled The Island of Teenage Lesbians should be a touch more fun. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
He’s still wimpy? Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
Dust & Illusions: 30 Years of History of Burning Man
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary on the Nevada desert festival asks if it has sold out its ideals. Cinema 21. 9 pm Thursday, March 24.
The Films of Charlie Chaplin
[SIX NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] A wide swath from the prodigious Tramp: The scabrous A King in New York (7 pm Wednesday, 8:30 pm Saturday, March 23, 26); the daring Hitler satire The Great Dictator (7 pm Thursday, 2:30 pm Sunday, March 24, 27); sweetly clownish The Circus (7 pm Friday, 5 pm Sunday,
SUCKER PUNCH March 25, 27); and the murderous Monsieur Verdoux (7 pm Tuesday, March 29). NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
Gnomeo and Juliet
The Shakespeare tragedy, interpreted by cartoon garden gnomes. WW did not attend the screening. G. 2-D: Lloyd Mall, Clackamas Town Center, Evergreen, Bridgeport. 3-D: Eastport.
Hall Pass
22 Not sure if this counts as a spoiler
or not, but fuck it: Everything you think will happen in Hall Pass does, in fact, happen. It’s a film about two aging Rhode Island yuppies (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) who are granted a week off from their marriages, freeing them to go out and try to get laid. This being a broad mainstream comedy, it’s a safe bet to assume everyone winds up appreciating their spouse more in the end. And because those are the Farrelly brothers in the directors’ chairs, of course it includes jokes involving shit, dicks and masturbation. Predictability isn’t the problem. The problem is that Hall Pass isn’t a movie; it’s a premise. Sadly, the Farrellys have forgotten what they taught us during their late ‘90s golden years: that even jizz can have meaning. R. MATTHEW SINGER. Broadway, Lloyd Mall, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Bridgeport.
I Am
29 After Hollywood director Tom
Shadyac developed suicidal leanings while suffering from “post concussion syndrome,” he set out to heal himself and simultaneously figure out the fundamental problems of the entire world. That would seem a tall order for the man who directed Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty and The Nutty Professor. But being responsible for Patch Adams apparently garnered him access to a lot of respected brains, yielding an unfocused documentary featuring an epic parade of talking heads from Noam Chomsky and Thom Hartmann to Howard Zinn and Desmond Tutu. The doc flits from decrying man’s separation from the natural world and our obsession with stuff (cue fat WalMart shoppers) and competition to heartening encounters with experiments involving democratic herds of deer, human hearts that can tell the future and Argon atoms. The high point is watching Shadyac control the energy field of a petri dish full of yogurt with his feelings about his lawyer. KELLY CLARKE. Fox Tower.
I Am Number Four
65 Disgraced memoirist James Frey
teamed up with writer Jobie Hughes to pen this heavy-handed tale of literal—wait for it!—teenage alienation: John Smith (newcomer Brit Alex Pettyfer), displaced from the planet Lorien, hones his superhuman powers while posing as a disaffected Ohio teen. He plays the rebellious 15-year-old to Timothy Olyphant’s impossibly cool mentor figure, with the dialogue occasionally rising above clichéd “parents
just don’t understand” territory. PG13. SAUNDRA SORENSON. Lloyd Mall.
I Saw the Devil
64 The latest from Jee-woon Kim
(The Good, the Bad, the Weird), violent enough to have been initially banned from public exhibition by the South Korean government, opens with the savage murder of a pregnant woman at the hatchet of Kyung-chul (Oldboy star Choi Minsik), a snarling brute with a thing for raping and bludgeoning women to death, then skinning them. His success as a butcher is compromised when the woman’s fiance turns out to be an ass-whomping secret agent (Weird villain Lee Byung-hun) who isn’t content to let the monster off the hook without visiting as much pain upon him as possible in an elaborate revenge scheme. It’s a relatively simple premise, and one that ponders the familiar question of whether lust for revenge brings out evil in the avenger. But Kim isn’t interested in cat-and-mouse antics, instead pitting a rabid leopard against a calculating snake. The “hero” spends the entire film playing catch-andrelease, beating and slicing Choi within an inch of his life before freeing him so they can do it all over again, with creative bloodshed rivaling Japanese sadist Takashi Miike at his most vile. For a while, it’s a nasty, slick ride. Kim stages fights and murders with panache, highlighted by a savage knife fight in a moving car. Choi in particular is terrifying, a murderous beast recalling Javier Bardem’s iconic Anton Chigurh, if Chigurh were against the ropes. But unlike the other auteurs of the South Korean film renaissance, Kim doesn’t find—or seem particularly interested in finding— any humanity in inhuman acts. Kim opts instead to attack simple and derivative themes with the subtlety of a pipe wrench to the pubis…an act he’s more than glad to show us in extreme close-up. AP KRYZA. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
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Just Go With It
32 Another eminently forgettable Adam Sandler flick to add to a pile that is growing longer and more rapidly than his jowls. In this one, Sandler plays Danny, a womanizing plastic surgeon with a wisecracking assistant (nailed by Jennifer Aniston); he picks up women by pretending to be in a loveless marriage. There are some brief but shining appearances from the trademark absurdist humor and endearingly bizarre characters that made Sandler’s earlier films so likable, but they’re vastly outnumbered by poo jokes and “man getting hit in the nads” gags. Aniston is definitely one of the strongest female leads in his laundry list of goofy-guy-gets-thegirl films, and the pair trade barbs and banter with believable chemistry. But casting isn’t the culprit here (there are also nice appearances from Nicole Kidman, singer
CONT. on page 47
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FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A COMPLIMENTARY PASS FOR TWO, SEND A SELF-ADDRESSED, STAMPED ENVELOPE TO THE ADDRESS BELOW. Attn: YOUR HIGHNESS Janet W ainwright PR, Inc. P.O. Box 47087 Seattle, WA 98146 ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2011. YOUR HIGHNESS is rated R for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity, violence and som e drug use. Seats are first-come, first-served. W hile supplies last. Only a limited number of passes available. Limit 1 pass per person. Each pass admits 2. Seating is not guaranteed. Arrive early. Theater is not responsible for overbooking. Screening will be monitored for unauthorized recording. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. NO PHONE CALLS!
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47
MARCH 23-29
Dave Matthews and Kevin Nealon); it’s the tortuous, tedious plot and hackneyed script wot did it. PG-13. Broadway, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Cinema 99.
REVIEW L AU R I E S PA R H A M
MOVIES Kaboom
33 “What are you, some kind of
insatiable sex maniac?” “Yes.” That exchange pretty well encapsulates both the content and wit in all 89 minutes of the new collegehookup dramedy from Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin). I suppose I should add something about the digital visual style, which is precisely that of a SyFy feature—maybe that’s intentional, since some of the dorm residents have magical powers (and glowing eyes), which their roommates find no more remarkable than the fact that nobody declines any erotic proposition. If Araki’s up to something subversive here, for the life of me I couldn’t parse it: I’ve never been so bored by something with this high a naked body and orgasm count. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
The King’s Speech
73 If it is the task of the movie psy-
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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
chologist to tell his patient, à la Robin Williams, that distress is “not your fault”—and to convince us that, yes, that fellow’s problems are not his fault and, by golly, our problems are not our fault—then speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), despite lacking medical qualifications, does a bang-up job of telling stuttering George VI (Colin Firth) that it’s not his fault he is the King of England. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Sherwood.
Limitless
71 Limitless is a Hollywood writer’s
fantasy—you can tell because as soon as the hero (Bradley Cooper) gains extraordinary powers, he quits being a writer. But of course the director has the last word: While Leslie Dixon’s script is often cynical and glib (not to mention over-reliant on voice-over narration), Neil Burger’s surge of images and sound vaults the movie into the “more interesting than it has any right to be” canon. Limitless, a muddled fable about a clear pill that offers mental clarity, doesn’t make much sense, and doesn’t need to—it’s pure visual stimulation. Burger’s camera tunnels forward through Manhattan streetscapes in repeated zooms (the effect is of a photograph that, upon closer focus, dissolves into the photograph behind it) and when Cooper’s high wears off, the image literally flips, so that he is vomiting vertically upward, into the air and onto his shoes. When Limitless’ buzz is kicking in, it’s the sympathyfor-the-speculators fun that Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps failed to achieve. Cooper’s handsomeness has always carried a whiff of the disingenuous—he’s to the douchebag manor born—but that works for him in a role where he’s smart, sleazy and more than a little pathetic: a junkie whose fix actually does cure all his problems. Trading on his addicted amorality, the movie becomes a momentarily perceptive satire of unchecked capitalism as literal vampirism. Unusually for a semi-thriller, Limitless only falls apart after its action climax, in a final-scene reversal that dodges the ironic and deserved fate for its protagonist. The movie does have a limit—100 minutes, apparently. PG13. AARON MESH. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
The Lincoln Lawyer
67 Matthew McConaughey is a
lawyer who rides around in the back of a black Lincoln Continental with the custom license plate “NTGUILTY.” The movie is NTGOOD, exactly, but
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE: Mia Wasikowska.
JANE EYRE What a bunch of miserable assholes.
A word of warning for fans of sweeping period romances: This is not the Jane Eyre you are looking for. Young director Cary Fukunaga and screenwriter Moira Buffini pull everything dark out of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel and unleash it in all its gothic glory on the big screen. Although this version chops vast swaths of the original text, it is, in many ways, a much truer adaptation than most of the 5 trillion others, which have tended to polish away the characters’ rough edges—including casting inordinately good-looking stars to play characters who repeatedly talk about how ugly they are. Really, most of the characters in the original novel are assholes—ugly assholes—and Fukunaga doesn’t shy away from that. Jane (who is not an asshole, but rather our painfully puritanical yet endearingly strong-willed proto-feminist heroine) is portrayed terrifically by 21-year-old actress Mia Wasikowska, whose young age and plain yet captivating, otherworldly appearance is half the point of the character. The film picks up about three-quarters into the story—Jane is stumbling, semiconscious and sobbing through endlessly depressing, rainy English moors—relating most of her woeful life story through flashback. This is a neat trick that allows us to brush through her unpleasant but tedious childhood, to the meaty bit where she arrives, a 19-year-old governess, to the perpetually poorly lit world of Thornfield Hall. Here, she meets her new master, Edward Rochester, who is an asshole (a kind of lecherous old one at that, at around age 40, although the casting of 30-something Michael Fassbender is generous), but who nevertheless falls for her intelligence and unpretentious charms and comes to treat her as something of an equal, before it all goes to shit when it turns out he is, indeed, an asshole. A desperate, fleeing Jane is then rescued by another asshole, the preacher St. John (a decidedly nondancing Jamie Bell), and the flashbacks come full circle. It’s a visually stunning piece of work, full of howling halls, spooky forests, fire and blood, which highlight perfectly the bleakness and isolation of a poor woman’s world in that era. Even when the romantic story line kicks in, it’s hard to share in the lovers’ happiness due to the ever-present sense that it’s all about to go horribly wrong. And if the film has a failing, it’s this. While Jane Eyre is a story of pain, anger and defiance—all of which Fukunaga nails—it is also a love story, and in his effort to eliminate as much sunlight and dialogue as possible, the filmmaker fails to create a particularly believable relationship between the two main protagonists. The battles of wills, the banter, the story of two beings meeting as one are all condensed into about 1½ scenes. It’s only a major problem in comparison to the book— the film otherwise holds together well, and the lack of romance just makes it even more deliciously dark—but it’s hard not to think what might have been with just 15 extra minutes. The other missed opportunity comes at the very end, when Jane is supposed to find Mr. Rochester burned and deformed—yet redeemed—from the fire that destroys Thornfield and his past sins. Instead, after all the preceding 110 minutes of misery and despair, he looks like he’s just been off playing bass for Band of Horses, merely sporting a bushy folk beard and a slightly disheveled shirt. Others may not be quite so disappointed as I was after a good 30 minutes fantasizing about just how they’d rearrange his face. But the book says “mutilated,” and we get Devendra Banhart. That may be the film’s darkest twist of all. PG-13. RUTH BROWN. 77
SEE IT: Jane Eyre opens Friday at Fox Tower.
MARCH 23-29
Little Blue Pill
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] Local filmmaker Aaron Godfred’s comedy debut is about a local filmmaker who accidentally swallows an erectile-dysfunction drug. Hollywood Theatre. 9 pm Saturday, March 26.
Mars Needs Moms
28 Mars Needs Moms—a thin, sappy
treacle of a kid flick animated with the same creepy overdrawn-liveactor technology as The Polar Express or the latest Christmas Carol rehash—sort of lives in the uncanny valley, in that same circle of hell with wax statues and animatronic pirates; the cartoonish Martians are somehow more expressive than most of the people, who look and move like the malevolent plasticine lifeforms in Doctor Who. I can hardly blame my 4-year-old nephew for taking off his 3-D glasses halfway through and loudly begging to be allowed to wait in the hallway until the awful, awful spectacle was over. PG. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. 2-D: Lloyd Mall, Eastport, Bridgeport. 3-D: Eastport, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Cinema 99.
in 1967 is a state of bliss most Deadheads can only wish for. PG. MATTHEW SINGER. Fox Tower.
Paul
45 Paul is what happens when an
unstoppable force meets an immovable, albeit imaginary, object: Seth Rogen’s cavalcade of spliff-cough jokes makes its first contact with computer-generated imagery, and nobody wins. The movie sticks Rogen in the body of a little green man who looks like a Roswell figurine and behaves like, well, Seth Rogen—and the placement of a reasonably detailed CGI creature in the frame means Rogen’s voice and its human counterparts are all required to stick to the script. Thus constrained by technology, the players settle for driving their motor home down the middle of the road. This, at least, is the excuse I’m giving for why so many comedic talents have made a movie that is, for perplexingly long stretches, so unfunny. But it isn’t a sufficient explanation: It’s like saying a UFO sighting at a Mensa convention is the result of a collective hallucination. Paul’s script was written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the partnership behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz; the duo also stars, under the direction of Greg Mottola, who has gathered much of the cast from his Superbad and Adventureland, plus Jason Bateman. Paul opens at Comic-Con, and pays homage to the Spielberg-Lucas canon entire, but affection isn’t inspiration—and while certainly more lovingly crafted than, say, Fanboys, Paul is so visually unremarkable I started to wonder if I’d misremembered the way Pegg and Frost once teased their influences with parodic imagery. (Maybe I miss Shaun and Fuzz director Edgar Wright. Clearly they do.) This movie features a history-of-the-universe montage, and the only sight gag it can think to include is a shot
SPECTACULAR
of two aliens humping. I can’t really blame this on CGI. Paul just needs higher intelligence. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
INTENSE AND ABSOLUTELY RIVETING!” Tom Snyder, MOVIEGUIDE®
The Point
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Nilsson! Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, March 24. Clinton Street Theater.
Rango
82 If there’s a criticism to lob at
Gore Verbinski’s wildly entertaining existentialist cartoon Western, it’s that he made an existentialist cartoon Western aimed at kids. Ninety-five percent of the stuff that makes Rango so fun is going to be lost on its target demographic, unless Chinatown (from which it cribs part of its plot) and Sergio Leone flicks have suddenly become popular among grade schoolers. It’s an homage to films made decades before they were born, loaded with complicated, fast-paced dialogue and themes no child should understand until he or she is old enough to wonder if their entire life has been a fraud. But energy and imagination go a long way, and Rango is one of the most stylishly exhilarating animated films to emerge from a non-Pixar studio in years. Verbinski’s enthusiasm for what is essentially a pastiche love letter to classic cinema bursts through the clutter. PG. MATTHEW SINGER. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Hilltop, Sherwood, Wilsonville.
CONT. on page 50
REVIEW PHOTO COURTESY OF PIFF
it’s NTBAD, either. A sub-Grisham potboiler, its characterizations and atmosphere are secondhand, but the courtroom machinations of its plot are enjoyably convoluted. McConaughey has a good time playing the not-so-secretly principled scoundrel (the script requires him to go from oleaginous to agonized and dissipated in record time; the big bottles of whiskey help), and he’s supported by a bevy of reliable rogues: Josh Lucas, William H. Macy, Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo and Shea Whigham. That’s quite the docket, and doesn’t even include the biker gang that rumbles in from time to time. As ol’ Lincoln lawyer’s new, wealthy, maybe psychotic client, Ryan Phillippe eases into his comfortable role of Creepy Moneyed Douche, and for a while sets the picture on an anxious knife’s edge. How much you groove on the movie will depend on how much you care about being surprised: Everybody is pretty much who they seem to be, including the bikers. I didn’t mind. Proceed, counselor. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
MOVIES “
Monogamy
Chris Messina thinks about cheating on Rashida Jones. Idiot. Look for a review on wweek.com. Living Room Theaters.
MONK’S NOT DEAD: Michael Lonsdale and Jacques Herlin.
The Music Never Stopped
39 Ah, boomers. Will they ever stop
talking about themselves? They couldn’t save the world, but dagnabbit, that’s not going to stop them from proving they can save something. In The Music Never Stopped, ’60s nostalgia literally saves a guy’s brain. In 1986, after two decades of estrangement, an ex-flower child named Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci) is reunited with his parents, but a tumor has left him with severe amnesia. Only the music from his youth—the Grateful Dead in particular—manages to jog his memory. Working with a musical therapist, he begins to piece his life back together and, in the process, heal his relationship with his father (J.K. Simmons). On paper it sounds unbearably saccharine, and it does play out like a tie-dyed Hallmark Movie, but at least director Jim Kohlberg is smart enough to leaven the sap with a streak of PG-rated humor. What really makes the film grate is its tint of hippie self-importance. Songs trigger flashbacks to moments showing just how significant that generation was because they, like, protested and stuff, man. No one knows or seems to care what Gabriel has been doing in his 20 years off the grid, the suggestion being that getting mentally stranded
OF GODS AND MEN Like having sex with Cate Blanchett or killing a man with my bare hands, believing in God is something I’ve always wanted to do but probably never will. And so it is with a perverse kind of envy and rubbernecking disbelief that I have given my love to films about faith, for although I am not a believer, I know what it is to long for the ineffable (see: Cate Blanchett) and suffer because of it. Even proud sinners need a good cry in stained glass-tinted light. So thank God, I guess, for Bergman and Bresson and Dreyer and now Xavier Beauvois’ Of Gods and Men, a deeply serious study of devotion and doubt as experienced by a brotherhood of French monks whose quiet lives of prayer and community service (and a whole lot of puttering in the garden) are threatened by the Algerian Civil War. Beauvois evinces a deep and abiding reverence for the deliberate rhythms of ritual—the film is, at times, as slow as a Communion line at Lourdes—and although I don’t think I’ll be buying any of the Lord’s bullpucky anytime soon, Of Gods and Men builds to an affirmation of faith so stunningly transcendent that I emerged from the theater with some understanding of how grace might feel, and I liked it. PG-13. CHRIS STAMM.
Agony in the garden.
87
COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH RELATIVITY MEDIA AN ORIGINAL FILM PRODUCTION “BATTLE: LOS ANGELES” AARON ECKHART MICHELLE RODRI GUEZ RAMON RODRIGUEZ BRIDGET MOYNAHAN MUSIC EXECUTIVE NE-YO AND MICHAEL PEÑA BY BRIAN TYLER PRODUCERS JEFFREY CHERNOV DAVID GREENBLATT WRITTEN PRODUCED DIRECTED BY CHRIS BERTOLINI BY NEAL H. MORITZ ORI MARMUR BY JONATHAN LI EBESMAN CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES
SEE IT: Of Gods and Men opens Friday at Cinema 21. Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
49
2 COL. (3.825") X 12" = 24" WED 3/23 PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK
MOVIES
“A LOVE STORY AS FIERCELY INTELLIGENT AS IT IS PASSIONATE! It is not your grandma’s cozy gothic.”
BREW VIEWS
WASIKOWSKA
MICHAEL
WA R N E R B R O S . P I C T U R E S
KAREN DURBIN, ELLE
MIA
FASSBENDER
JAMIE
BELL
JUDI
DENCH
JANE EYRE AND
EXPERIENCE A BOLD NEW VISION OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË’S TIMELESS CLASSIC.
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY, MARCH 25 Regal Cinemas FOX TOWER STADIUM 10 Portland 800/FANDANGO 327#
CHECK THEATRE DIRECTORY OR CALL FOR SOUND INFORMATION AND SHOWTIMES SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT NO PASSES OR DISCOUNT COUPONS ACCEPTED MOBILE USERS: For Showtimes – Text JANE with your ZIP CODE to 43KIX (43549)
See JANE EYRE with your family and friends. For advance tickets or group sales call 855-4JANEEYRE.
Portland Willamette Wk • Wed 3/23 • 2x3’’
ALGERIA, 1996. INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY. JobID#: 490346 Name: 0323_Eyr_Will.pdf #100 3/21/11 11:43 AM pt “A MASTERPIECE!” WINNER WINNER -David Germain, ASSOCIATED PRESS BEST FOREIGN FILM GRAND PRIZE
*490346* “SUPERB!”
NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
L AMBERT W ILSON
CANNES
M ICHAEL L ONSDALE
UNLIMITED
SPRING
PASS $139 The rest of the season is yours! SkiHood.com
OF GODS AND MEN THA – SF
A FILM BY XAVIER BEAUVOIS Publication
WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM
Size
Run Date(s)
21 THEATRE STARTS FRIDAY, 616CINEMA NW 21 Ave, Portland TH WILLAMETTE WED 3.23 MARCHWEEK 25 3.772 X 6.052 (503) 223-4515
Initial
Time
ST
VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.OFGODSANDMENMOVIE.COM
3.825" X 2" WED 3/23 PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK Emmett
Artist: (circle one:) Jay Trevor Freelance 2
Heather
Staci
Steve
Freelance 3
AE: (circle one:) Angela Maria Josh Tim
McCool
54 I’ll hand it to Catherine
Hardwicke: She’s attempting to distill the essence of a teenage girl’s sexual fantasy into cinema, and she’s coming closer with every try. Sure, Twilight had its share of touch-yourself-but-don’tfinish shivers, but her new Red Riding Hood is a real Bavarian cream dream, existing in a soundstage Expressionist/Freudian forest where the trees sprout thick, jutting thorns, haystacks bloom with bright blue petals, and pure snow exists for the purpose of being mottled with drops of crimson blood. Hardwicke’s visual indulgence is unlikely to meet with much critical appreciation, mostly because David Johnson’s screenplay is atrocious—both plot and dialogue are squirt-Coke-out-yournose bad. The pubescence reveries get weirder and weirder, until eventually Amanda Seyfried is tied to a sacrificial altar and fitted with a cast-metal pig mask, in what can only be described as a vivid humiliation/submissive fetish scene. It brings a new meaning to the saying, “Lock up your daughters!” and suggests that Hardwicke, though limited as a dramatist, has few psychological spaces she fears to go. My, what big kinks she has. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
ART APPROVED AE APPROVED CLIENT APPROVED
For your chance to win a mobile pass good for two admissions to the advance screening in Portland on March 29, text “CLUES” and your zip code to 43549 (Ex. CLUES 97232) No phone calls please. No purchase necessary. Texting services provided by 43KIX and are free. Standard text message rates from your wireless provider may apply. Check your plan. One entry per cell phone #. Late and/or duplicate entries will not be considered. 30 (thirty) winners will be chosen at random on or about 1pm on Monday, March 28, 2011 and will receive a text good for two admissions. Limit one admit-two pass per person. THEATRE IS OVERBOOKED TO ENSURE A FULL HOUSE. A winning text does NOT guarantee a seat. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. This film is rated PG-13. Void where prohibited by law. Must enter by 12 p.m. on Monday, March 28!
OPENS IN THEATRES FRIDAY, APRIL 1 Visit the Official Site: EnterTheSourceCode.com
www.wweek.com Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2011 wweek.com
YOU STAY, I GO, NO FOLLOWING: More than a mere appetizer to the Objectivist Happy Meals director Brad Bird would go on to make for Pixar, The Iron Giant is one of the last, doomed stands of hand-drawn animation, and the rare American cartoon that can rival the work of Hayao Miyazaki for enveloping woodland quiet. (Bird must have spent some time out in the Corvallis firs.) For viewers of a certain religious background, the movie is an emotional wrecking ball: Its hero is a divine visitor who functions as a combination muscular metal father figure and loyal pet, which is how a lot of us pictured Jesus anyway. AARON MESH. Laurelhurst. Presented by Beer and Movie. Best paired with: Lucky Lab Superdog IPA. Also showing: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Bagdad, 9 pm Thursday, March 24).
Red Riding Hood
Deadline:
Confirmation #:
50
MARCH 23 - 29
Sucker Punch
Daily operations scheduled thru May 1, 2011 subject to change. Check SkiHood.com for operations and events schedule.
Visionary Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole director Zack Snyder explores a different kind of hooters. Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Pioneer Place, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Tigard, City Center, Clackamas Town Center, Division, Evergreen, Bridgeport Village, Cinema 99, Sherwood, Hilltop, Wilsonville.
Summer of 69
40 [ONE NIGHT ONLY] The entire
motivation for Seth Sonstein’s Summer of 69 can be found in a question asked by a “wise prostitute” (and, implicitly, by nearly all
women in the picture): “Do you want me to take my shirt off?” The answer, always, is yes. Between the two acts of reciprocal oral sex that bookend Summer of 69, starring comedian Ian Karmel returns the favor bestowed by his female counterparts: He bares much of his enormous girth as he scales the minor but absurd obstacles keeping him from the girl of his dreams (Greta Pauley, who does seem the kind of sporting person worthy of a gift basket filled with drugs). Flaccidly paced even at 77 minutes, 69 is still highly amiable Saturday-afternoon filmmaking, with the courage of its shaggy convictions: A gag with Karmel in ironic blackface would be tired, except he stoutly maintains he’s supposed to be Kevin Duckworth. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. 7 pm Wednesday, March 23. Hollywood Theatre.
True Grit
90 The Coen Brothers’ new ren-
dering of Charles Portis’ novel of Arkansas frontier retribution is remarkable for its lack of perversity—one character voices a slightly unseemly interest in the 14-year-old heroine, and another is graphically relieved of some fingers but, by Coen standards, everybody behaves with relative civility. But it maintains something sorrowful in the story of young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfield), who seeks retribution for her dead father and talks like Laura Ingalls Wilder with a law degree. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Eastport, Bridgeport.
Unknown
75 Jaume Collet-Serra makes
movies that are not what they seem. In 2009, he directed Orphan, a killer-child movie that was not really a killer-child movie, and now he returns with Unknown, a Liam Neeson righteous-vengeance picture that does not quite feature Liam Neeson gaining righteous vengeance. PG-13. AARON MESH. Broadway.