Wondering what’s up this weekend? Check out the Eugene Ballet Company in its final production of the season, Stravinsky Gala. Three ballets, 21 dancers and the music of Stravinsky will all be fused into one hell of a performance down at the Hult. Look to see the stunning choreography of Toni Pimble accompanied by a 17-piece string ensemble conducted by Robert Ashens. Another thing to consider is that this will be 18-year EBC veteran dancer Jennifer Martin’s last Gala performance — not something dance fans in Eugene want to miss.
Stravinsky Gala is 7 pm Saturday, April 14, and 2 pm Sunday, April 15, at the Hult. For more info go to www.eugeneballet.org
GloryBee Foods will host its annual Bee Weekend April 13-14 at its new location, 29548 B. Airport Road. This community event is “packed with beekeeping education, distribution of pre-ordered packages of live bees, honey sampling and additional activities.” Dick Turanski, founder and beekeeper, will demonstrate bees installation into hives. Friday demo times are 9:30 and 11 am, 12:30, 2, 3:30 and 5 pm, and Saturday at 8:30, 10 and 11 am. The store will be open until 12:30 pm Saturday.
Need cheap office space? We hear Growers Market, 454 Willamette St., has an office for rent starting May 1. The space is 132 sq. ft. and rents for $100 per month, including utilities, internet access and additional meeting space. Contact the building manager at growmgr@gmail.com
Local ad agency bell+funk has moved to new offices in the Broadway Commerce Center, 44 W. Broadway, Suite 210. The full service agency offering marketing, advertising, design and research is headed by David Funk and Jennifer Bell. Call 653-8969 or visit bellandfunk.com
Scott Landfield of Tsunami Books at 25th and Willamette says his new and used book business “keeps improving since Borders closed its doors,” and “It’s actually growing faster than we have cash flow to deal with; an interesting dilemma.” Landfield says he only has three years left on his 20-year lease, and someone will need to buy the building “for us to continue beyond the lease.” He says Lawson’s Piano Store across the street has closed after 30 years, but more new businesses are opening and the South Willamette shopping district is “becoming one of the hippest spots in town.”
A two-day intensive biogas workshop is being planned for April 14-15, and the instructor is Warren Weismann, owner of HESTIA Home Biogas and “an internationally recognized expert on biogas and anaerobic digestion with over 20 years experience as a builder, heavy equipment mechanic and power plant operator.” Cost of the workshop is $225. Email weiswar@yahoo.com of call 337-5690 for more information.
Fifth Street Public Market has two new businesses opening this month at the base of the new hotel. Outdoor Elements, owned by Wendy Jacobson and Mike Jacobson offers “modern eclectic furnishings, accessories, home accents, gifts and art for the garden, patio, kitchen and indoors.” The H Boutique, owned by the Ritchie family, is a jewelry and fashion store that will offer “plush interior amenities and an air of fresh exuberance in customer service,” says Melanie Diamond, general manager of the market.
Need a laugh? The Tai Chi Yoga Center is offering an all-day laughter yoga retreat from 10 am to 3 pm Saturday, April 14, in Elmira. Call 515-0946 or visit taichiyogacenter.com
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Reunion, Full Blast
In the noisy, urine-soaked hallways of rock ’n’ roll history there exist epic stories of origin — those chance encounters or strange coincidences that seem designed by fate to bring a band to the attention of the world at large the Violent Femmes discovered on a Milwaukee sidewalk by a guitarist for the Pretenders, or Kim Deal being the sole respondent to a Charles Thompson classified ad. One of the greatest of all of these is the story of fIREHOSE. It goes like this: Band ahead of its time (the Minutemen) loses soul and creative lifeblood when leader D. Boon is killed in tragic accident. Band breaks up, obsessive fan drives cross-country, finds Mike Watt’s name in the phonebook and tries to convince remaining members to continue playing music by forming new band (the fan, Ed Crawford, was mistakenly told by members of Camper Van Beethoven that Watt and George Hurley — the ex-Minutemen — were holding open auditions for a new guitarist). And thus, fIREHOSE was born.
Reuniting now for its first show in nearly 20 years (the band’s last appearance in Eugene was in 1993), fIREHOSE was among the giants of the late ‘80s college rock underground and quickly gained a reputation for being hard-working, playing nearly a thousand shows in its eight-year run. Cresting a second wave toward the shores of a rock ’n’ roll rebirth, fIREHOSE took the jazzy,winding funk-punk of the Minutemen and aged it like fine whiskey, the bite still present but ultimately going down a bit more smooth.
Alongside contemporaries like The Replacements and Sonic Youth, fIREHOSE represented the epitome of the late ‘80s college radio aesthetic, giving legions of young people a respite from the horrific machinations of mainstream ‘80s rock. For most casual fans of music it was Nirvana that slayed the big-haired beast of butt rock, but Nevermind was more like the cavalry — the final charge that delivered a decisive blow and sounded the horn, alerting the arbiters of good taste that it was safe to come out. fIREHOSE and its ilk were the infantry, slugging it out on the battlefield — Look What The Cat Dragged In was the group’s personal Helm’s Deep. If Nirvana is the Run-DMC of “alternative” rock then fIREHOSE is the Treacherous Three, laying down a foundation that to some contemporary ears may sound almost dated — though in reality was but one more ingredient in the rocket fuel that launched grunge into the stratosphere.
fIREHOSE plays 9 pm Tuesday, April 10, at WOW Hall; $15 adv., $18 door.
— Mark Sullivan
I think this is going to be my new favorite Tumblr: textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/
Please, please, please let a Eugenean remix a local news broadcast.
And here's the original.
I suggest remixing "Panda Cow." You could do a lot with the words "Panda Cow."
Lane County Commissioner Rob Handy's re-election campaign got the attention of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters this week as one of Oregon's "critical" races.