Posts by Julie Van Amerongen

Setting sail January 4-9, 2008, Jam Cruise 6 features Warren Haynes, Michael Franti & Spearhead, the Funky Meters, Galactic, Soulive, Yonder Mountain String Band, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and the Everyone Orchestra feat. Steve Kimock, Jon Fishman and Jeff Coffin. As we look forward to setting sail, Ann keeps us afloat and educated on her efforts to keep the cruise close to 100% green and sustainable.

Burning Man is a project best known for an eight-day-long annual event that takes place in Black Rock City, a temporary city on the playa of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The event is an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.

Born in Black Rock City at the world-renown Burning Man Festival and incubated in Los Angeles' tribal-techno underground, The Mutaytor combines 100 thundering drums, live improvisational electronica, breathtaking fire performers, sensual hoop dancers, dazzling aerial stunts, various forms of modern and bellydance and giant video projections. It's a multi-media experience blending high energy music with amazing performance art all under a serious rising star.

Taking their art to the people, live painters are emerging as one of the more accessible and entertaining facets of our music scene, blending art and music, capturing rhythm and energy on canvas. Right before our eyes, live painters offer eye candy and inspiration for art and music lovers alike. Glide caught up with two dynamic Live Painters, Phil Cheney and Tovah Jacobson, about their onstage creation celebration.

rom the looks of it, the marching band in Prince’s halftime Super Bowl show couldn’t touch the fun factor of Portland’s favorite band with a 10 foot pole. Named after the date of their first gig, the MarchFourth Marching Band is a high-energy mobile unit of good times. Taking a Fellini-esque mix of Mardi Gras mayhem, Afro beat, Mexican hustle, sultry samba, big band, and gypsy folk to the streets and the club/ festival scene.

Vagabond Opera……a unique ensemble, plays Eastern-European, klezmer-based original, jazz and belly dance music with skill, exuberance, and a gritty vagabond edge. Eric Stern, operatic tenor, accordionist, pianist, and composer leads the band as they play songs about thieves, Jewish weddings, Parisian tramps and the enigmatic Marlene Dietrich. Every show is a cabaret of rich musical phrasing, sparkling lyrics and indomitable stage presence.

You’ve likely seen the smiling faces behind the Rock the Earth booth at numerous shows and festivals across the nation. An environmental advocacy organization born from and serving the music community, with a staff of volunteers recruited from the music community, the projects upon which the legal and technical staff work are suggested by artists and their fans. Outreach, education, canvassing and membership solicitation is done in conjunction with the music community — at concerts and festivals throughout North America

Circus Contraption, the Northwest’s premiere one-ring traveling carnival is not your Mama’s circus. Mixing traditional circus skills such as trapeze and aerial dance, acrobatics, juggling and clowning with elements of cabaret, vaudeville and physical comedy; the troupe also creates its own fantastical masks, costumes, puppetry, props, sets and banners.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for…that quintessential symbol of summer. Matt Allen, aka Ice Cream Man has logged more than 20,000 miles to give away frozen confections at music festivals across the nation, posting photos and reviews along the way on his website. From kids to rock stars and everyone in between, it seems we all have something in common: we love ice cream. And, what could be better than getting free ice cream? Giving it!

You never forget the first time you experience S.K. Thoth. Costumed like an ancient Greek superhero, complete with loincloth and a red feathered headdress, he is striking sight to behold. Then he opens his mouth and begins to sing in his three range operatic voice, with a violin on his shoulder, dancing like a man possessed by something otherworldly, stomping rhythms with his heeled sandals and belled ankles making an indelible impression in your mind.

In the hands of uber photographer Pixie, the camera becomes a kaleidoscopic conduit between subject and audience. Her photos are evocative, expressive and undeniably fun. You immediately gets that Pixie is exactly where she should be – smack in the middle of the most beautiful, colorful, freaky people on the scene. Her ongoing photography projects include Dresden Dolls, Flaming Lips, Fishbone, Particle, The Mutaytor, Bassnectar and many others.

Born from the saloon vaudeville that toured the Wild West in the late 1800

The girl with the longest name in the scene, soulful pop rock songstress Samantha Stollenwerck is saturating the scene with her self-coined

The Mutaytor combine tribal drums, live-mixed electronica, fire performers, hoop dancers, aerial artists, horn section, giant screen visuals andinteractive dancers and performers into a show like none other.

ince 1998 Mark Karan has been touring with offshoots of The Grateful Dead including The Other Ones, Mickey Hart

Scott Law toured and recorded as a guitarist with Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band) and the well-traveled instrumental group, Hanuman before forming Scott Law Band, which released their first studio album in 2005. Scott is partners with Jilian and Bill Nershi (String Cheese Incident) in the group Honkytonk Homeslice and is a frequent sit-in with many other acts.

For years, That One Guy has been stunning crowds with his remarkably peculiar one-man show, applying his stand-up bass prowess to a monstrous, homemade instrument. Standing nearly seven feet tall, The Magic Pipe is a chaotic collage of galvanized steel, duct tape and electronic gadgetry, run through an array of samplers and effects boxes.