THE TO-DO
LIST
BY ROBERT BELL
WEDNESDAY 12/14
HAMBOY JUKES BAND
8:30 p.m. Stickyz. $5 or a canned ham.
Last month, Amboy Community Food Pantry in North Little Rock served more than 900 people. That’s 900 people who would have gone hungry had it not been for the volunteer-run nonprofit. But pantries don’t just fill themselves. So in addition to the good work of the volunteers who run the food bank, the nonprofit also needs donations; hence this show. The Hamboy Jukes Band (dig the nod to the Amboy Dukes, the psychedelic rock
WEDNESDAY 12/14
VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS MAGIC LANTERN SHOW
band that launched Ted Nugent into the world) is a super-group of sorts, including Jimmy Powell (Go Fast), Walter K (Shannon Boshears Band), Mike Nelson (Gun Bunnies, Big Silver, Amy Garland Band), Johnny Atomic, JR Top (Booyah! Dad), Mark Wyers (Josh the Devil and The Sinners, The Weisenheimers) and Gil Franklin (Port Arthur Band), as well as Jim Jolly on guitar and jazz pianist Bill White (Farris Holliman’s Rhythm Masters). Be sure to bring a canned ham. Other nonperishable food donations will be accepted as well.
7 p.m. Old State House Museum. Free.
In the olden times, before smartphones and liquid crystal displays and cathode ray tubes, before even film itself, people still huddled in dark rooms to stare at glowing projections. You know, for entertainment. One of the earliest methods of creating shimmering distractions was the magic lantern, a sort of proto-projector that bounces light off a mirror and directs it across
an aperture and through a lens and a glass slide with a colorful image on it. Later innovations enabled the images to move, thus humanity took another step toward the birth of film. The Old State House Museum will give audiences a taste of Victorian-era entertainment, with a genuine antique magic lantern, which “rapidly projects spectacular color slides on a full-size movie screen.” The images are dramatized by costumed entertainers and by the audience itself, which is encouraged to clap, stomp and join in chants and songs.
THURSDAY 12/15
WHALE FIRE, PHANTOM LIMB 9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $5.
JANE FINCH
Little Rock’s Whale Fire is all ear candy of the sweetest variety: clean, clear guitar lines, catchy melodies and falsetto “ooh-oohs” all over the place, anchored by bedrock bass guitar. On the band’s EP from last year, the lead track “Sirens” includes all these characteristics; it sounds like a mission statement. Phantom Limb is a duo that got started in a fairly inauspicious way. A couple of friends — Justin Kinkel-Schuster of St. Louis (also of buzzed-about act Theodore) and Andrew Bryant of Oxford, Miss. — got to playing songs and recording them and then before they knew what happened, they had an album. The group’s self-titled debut (on Misra Records) filters Dinosaur Jr.-style guitar rock through The Band’s country-boy soul and raggedy backwoods sensibility. Vocal harmonies recall those of the critically vaunted Fleet Foxes, so if you dig that sound, Phantom Limb is recommended. POLKA YOUR EYES OUT: Veteran polka outfit Brave Combo plays Stickyz Thursday night.
ASO: “HAPPY HOLIDAYS”
THURSDAY 12/15
BRAVE COMBO
8 p.m. Stickyz. $10.
Call me crazy, but with the exception of being at some sort of German beer garden — kielbasa in one hand and the afternoon’s third massive stein-full of beer in the other — I’ve never really dug polka. But one exception might just have to be Brave Combo. The Denton, Texas, outfit got started in the late ’70s, doing polkafied covers of rock classics and by the 20
DECEMBER 14, 2011
ARKANSAS TIMES
FRIDAY 12/16 8 p.m. Robinson Center Music Hall. $20$65.
late ’90s/early aughts, Brave Combo was winning Grammys for Best Polka Album (1999 and 2005) and being featured on The Simpsons — a sign that you’ve made it if ever there was one. The band’s polka version of “Must Be Santa” from 1991’s “It’s Christmas, Man!” even resonated with Bob Dylan, who included a nearly identical arrangement of the song on his own Christmas album, 2009’s “Christmas in the Heart.” Dylan told Street News
Service that he “first heard that song years ago on one of those ‘Sing Along with Mitch’ records. But this version comes from a band called Brave Combo. Somebody sent their record to us for our radio show. They’re a regional band out of Texas that takes regular songs and changes the way you think about them. You oughta hear their version of ‘Hey Jude.’ ” High praise from Blind Boy Grunt himself? Hey man, good enough for me.
For its annual holiday show, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra presents an evening of familiar favorites. Selections include “Let it Snow,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Ave Maria,” selections from “The Nutcracker,” the “Winter” concerto from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” RimskyKorsakov’s “Snow Maiden Suite: Dance of the Clowns,” and much more. Also just as a headsup: Santa is rumored to be in attendance, so you’d better watch out, and all that. There will be another performance Saturday night at 8 p.m. and a matinee at 3 p.m. on Sunday.