Arizona Daily Wildcat
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Justyn Dillingham Arts Editor 520•621•3106 arts@wildcat.arizona.edu
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‘Some Girl(s)’ a tart treat INSIDE 1702 offers succulent slices ‘Pirate Radio’ flounders at sea
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wednesday, november ,
Denver rockers follow in Jay-Z’s footsteps at UA By Alex Gendreau Arizona Daily Wildcat ASUA is back with another concert tonight from the Grammy Award-winning band The Fray. After last April’s Jay-Z fiasco (see “Concert loses almost $1 million,” Arizona Daily Wildcat, May 6, 2009) the UA’s student government seems to have decided it would be wise to team up with UApresents and provide a more affordable and less extravagant concert. The Fray, a Denver-based band formed in 2002 by schoolmates Isaac Slade and Joe King, will perform at 8 p.m. Spawning from jam sessions, The Fray rocketed to Billboard Chart success with their wildly popular debut album How to Save a Life in 2005 . Songs like “Over My Head (Cable Car)” and “How to Save a Life” raced to the top of the charts and quickly became embedded into pop/rock minds across the nation.
photo courtesy of myspace.com
With the promotion of these catchy songs on television shows like “Scrubs” and “Grey’s Anatomy” throughout 2006, The
Fray catapulted into pop-culture icon status. Since then the band CONCERT, page B8
Gordon Bates/Arizona Daily Wildcat
THE AD JUNK PROFESSOR
Levi’s ad a barbaric yawp of art, capitalism A
COMMENTARY by Anna Swenson arts writer
black-and-white image of a flickering neon sign reading“America.”A scratchy, bootleggy recording of a man’s voice reading poetry. Strong, muscled young backs. Fields of grain. Smoke. Back flips. Bare feet. Fireworks. Blue jeans. Is it a nouveau film playing at The Loft? A collage of Dorothea Lange images at the Center for Creative Photography? A new mixed-media piece by Fine Arts graduate students? No, folks, it’s the new Levi Strauss jeans ad. The stylish ad spots have been showing up since summer 2009 in movie theaters, television and various
forms of print media. The campaign’s tag line is“Go Forth,”emphasizing the bluegrass roots feel of early American ingenuity and originality. The ads are visually striking and oddly mesmerizing: try tearing your eyes away from the flashing images of young, strong bodies running through fields, hugging, kissing or dancing around bonfires wearing jeans and little else to the words of Walt Whitman read, in one version, by the poet himself. The America the ads suggest is as we wish it was:“So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,”reads a man’s voice as young people dress, undress, and
make Levi’s look like the uniform of the sexy modern counterculture. The black-and-white version features a recording that is thought to be Whitman himself reading his poem “America.”As barefoot, many-raced young people run and (not exactly) frolic with odd and striking tension, the scratchy audio reads: “Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich … perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love.”A beautiful mixed-race couple kisses JEANS, page B8
How you can find ‘Paradise’ on campus By Anna Swenson Arizona Daily Wildcat
photo courtesy of photobucket.com
If you’ve been looking for a place to wear your sexy Satan costume other than the Heaven and Hell party on Greek Row, you’re in luck. The 12th Annual Milton Marathon will take place this Friday at the UA Main Library in Special Collections room C205 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The marathon is a 12-hour-long reading of English writer John Milton’s masterwork “Paradise Lost.” The event is free (and costumes are optional). Started by English professor John Ulreich in 1998, the event joins others across the country in the marathon effort to make it through the 10 books that comprise the 1667 epic. Milton, who was blind by the time he finished the timeless piece of blank verse, wrote the piece to, in his words, try to“justify the ways of God to men.”The
book-length poem essentially retells the first few chapters of Genesis — in around 500 pages. English majors, graduate students and exceptionally literate members of the greater Tucson community are expected to turn out by the hundreds for the annual event. Drop in for a few minutes of a few hours to hear participants take turns reading from the work. You’ll hear stories of love, betrayal, divinity, exaltation and damnation from the perspective of Adam, Eve, God and the most unnervingly convincing Satan this side of a near-death experience. Milton is famous for his ambitious, often incendiary topics in his political and prose works. His poetry, such as “Paradise Lost” and “Samson Agonistes,” is lauded by scholars and sometimes feared by students because of Milton’s cha acteristic nuanced writing style and eclectic, academic references. If you ease into Milton by listening to
his work read aloud while sampling light refreshments, however, he’s not so scary; the Milton Marathon is an ideal way to catch a taste or a stomachful of the brilliant writer’s most famous work. So if you hear the voice of God at 8 a.m. Friday morning while stumbling through the library, don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. It’s just the Milton Marathon. After 12 hours, we might all be paradise losing it.
THINK YOU CAN HANDLE IT? 12th Annual Milton Marathon, Friday Nov 20, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Main Library Special Collections room C205