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DWWILDLIFE
Arizona Daily Wildcat
B section
wednesday, september ,
Local artists strive to bring free music to Tucson crowds ALEX GENDREAU Is it possible to find accessible music around town without spending a dime? With college campus economics, it is easy to see why those who sacrifice their Monday lunch in order to afford a ticket to the next concert playing at the Rialto Theatre are suffering. “I feel like art should be free but it can’t be free,” says Hank Westermann, a frequenter of free music events around the downtown and university area. Like Westermann, many students on campus have little to no additional cash to spend on extracurricular activities. Luckily, with the shift towards a more doit-yourself musical attitude, many local bands and venues are grouping together to bring free music to their listeners.
Justyn Dillingham Arts Editor 520.621.3106 arts@wildcat.arizona.edu
Under the bridge
INSIDE In search of the best meatball sub b3
Performers Douglas Francisco and Oliver Baylock offer free music to the masses with their Gypsy-Folk-Improvisation
underneath the Fourth Avenue underpass. With Francisco on the steel guitar and Baylock on the violin, the duo jams out almost every night of the week while hoards of people walk from downtown to nearby Fourth Avenue. Despite the chance to listen to free art, it is difficult to maintain a consistent group of listeners when the audience is quickly rushing to the next local watering hole. Douglas says that “there are a couple people that come back and forth and they’re like, ‘good to see you again.’” The nod and wink is all this barefoot, cigarette-smoking band needs to keep playing for the night. Some patrons go as far as to drop a few dollars in the guitar case, but mostly it’s a come and go atmosphere. The pair has not always played around Fourth Avenue. Francisco says that they play“improvisational music, but (that he) used to play heavy metal and (that Oliver) is classically trained.”
Nevertheless, they surely liven up the space they occupy. Despite the cars honking and the drunken banter on the other side of the street, Francisco’s reason for continuing to“play down here (is) because of the great acoustics.” Other local bands are also trying to provide the same type of art in a more formal setting. “(We’re) trying to put art out there — it’s better if it is free,”Aharon Lund, drummer for the local Tucson band Flagrante Delicto, explains as he stands among the eclectic downtown crowd outside of Grill. Erik Ketchup, lead singer for Flagrante Delicto stresses that they are“a band for the people.”This means rarely charging for any of their shows. “We are pretty poor,” Lund says. But “people like free things,”Ketchup adds. The experimental sound combined with their free-art attitude brings many MUSIC, page B3
Sex takes center stage at gallery b8
The desert’s hottest treat In its 37th year, festival still draws chile lovers from around world to remote village in New Mexico to sample nutritious, mouthscorching fruits
Tim McDonnell/Arizona Daily Wildcat
A view from the top of the ferris wheel, above, at the Hatch Chile Festival’s adjacent carnival. At night, the festival’s mostly older crowd was largely replaced by local teens on their way to the carnival. These 40-lbs. sacks of Big Jim green chiles, right, each contain close to 500 chiles and sell for about $20.
TIM MCDONNELL Wade Worrell is a farming man and he knows his crop. “Eat chiles in the morning,” he says, “and in the evening you’ll be deeply moved.” Former chile farmer Worrell, 70, repeated his mantra last weekend as master of ceremonies at the 37th annual Hatch Chile Festival in Hatch, N.M. In this Mecca for lovers of the great green fruit, tens of thousands of farmers, “chile addicts” and curious foodies from as far away as Germany are brought together for two days of taste bud-searing fun. Worrell may have a wary attitude, but don’t get him wrong. This man, who looks like an off-duty New Mexican Santa Claus complete with beard and belly, loves these chiles. “The quality of chile grown here is higher than anywhere else,” he says. He should know. Worrell, who has lived most of his life in nearby Deming, N.M.,
has been the announcer for the annual festival for the last 36 years. For further proof of his claim, one need only look at the long line of cars backed up on the tiny road into the festival. Hatch, a village of only 1,700, explodes to more than 30,000 over the chile festival weekend each year. Exact attendance numbers for the festival are hard to come by since admission — a nominal $5 — is charged by the carload rather than per person. Inside the fairgrounds, vendors hawk everything from Mexican food to cookbooks to chile wreaths known as ristras, a teenage chile queen is crowned while country music bands play, and chileeating contests separate the strong from the weak. But the festival was not always so massive. There are some people here, like Worrell, who remember when it was a simple locals-only event with just a few booths. Vendor June Rutherford, 85, is among them.
Like many here, Rutherford looks weathered from a lifetime of chile farming. Her booth looks no different from those of other vendors, and she isn’t wearing the official festival tee-shirt, a name badge, or any anything else to indicate that, as a young woman, she was among a handful of local farmers who put the first chile festival together. Rutherford’s father came to the U.S. from Austria in 1905 as a manual laborer; working his way to the mines of Arizona and then out to the chile fields of western New Mexico. In 1971 he and
a few friends started the chile festival as a way to kick back after the hard work of the harvest season. He and his family continued to run the annual event for the next 15 years. Back when it began, CHILE, page B2
COMICS CORNER
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Mickey, Spidey join forces
wo big stories in the comics world dropped last week on the same day. What does this mean for comics readers and creators? Let’s take a look:
Disney buys Marvel for $4 billion
Barring any moves from the Department of Justice about antitrust concerns, this will be a major win for Disney and a probable win for Marvel. Why probable? The deal would like- Steven ly structure the two companies in a way that’s similar to DC Comics and its parent company, Time Warner.
One of the biggest non-secrets in comics is that DC Comics publishes its stable of old and new characters as a licensing path for Time Warner. That new villain facing Batman in the latest issue of“Detective Comics?”Potential action figure. He, she or it can also be used in any of the cartoons starring Batman and any Batman-related cartoons such as“Justice League Unlimited”or“The Brave and the Bold.”When Christopher Nolan Kwan begins his follow-up to“The Dark Knight,”he’ll have a stable of villains and storylines from which he can create a new Batman movie.
Marvel caters to teen and adult males through its publishing branch and, more recently, its successful movie properties like Iron Man and Spider-Man. Disney will bring considerable resources to Marvel — marketing, movie and animation studios, publishing and, most importantly, money. Disney will also bring to Marvel certain demographics that seem to elude most if not all comic book companies: adolescent girls (think Hannah Montana and High School Musical and their sizable mobs.) However, there have been instances in which licensing and merchandising concerns have worked against comic writers and artists. The most notable
example is Jack Kirby’s treatment in the 1970s. Disillusioned with Marvel after receiving no profits or having his original art returned for such creations of his as the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and The Avengers, Jack Kirby went to DC under the promise of breathing new life into its lineup, starting with “Superman’s Pal Jimmy
Illustration by Ken Wright
Olsen.” Kirby’s dynamic artwork and bold designs gave the comic a fresh look — except there was a problem with Superman’s head. It wasn’t realistic enough to satisfy the licensing and merchandising requirements at the time, so artists were called in to redraw Kirby’s Superman heads. The same problems COMICS, page B3