Arts DEVO

Mighty endeavors I am way overdue in giving those busy kids at Wild Oak Music Group a shout-out. The record label and music-promotion arm of Chico State’s music industry program is unleashing several projects on Chico for the spring semester.

In addition to continuing hosting the weekly meetings of their Hip-hop Collective (Thursdays, 7 p.m., in PAC 112 on the university campus), they have a marathon of live events on the horizon: Rock Solid, a celebration of rock featuring Red Giant, The Secret Stolen and Broken Idols (March 6,

7 p.m., at 1078 Gallery); Songwriters Guild songwriting competition (semi-finals March 10, 6 p.m., at Woodstock’s; finals April 20, at Sierra Nevada); high school battle of the bands (April 3, at 1078 Gallery) and their semester-ending, multivenue Chico Music Fest (May 9).

But Wild Oak’s most intriguing endeavor might be its new Business Soundtracks program. This is where a bunch of local bands submit original songs to Wild Oak’s song pool, then local businesses listen and choose which songs will appear on a tailored soundtrack that is released by Wild Oak. The soundtrack is then sold by Wild Oak and the participating business. It doesn’t cost the bands anything, they don’t give up rights to their tunes, and they even make a nominal mechanical royalty (around 9 cents each per disc). So far, two biz soundtracks have been released: Home Made Jambalaya for Chico Bike and Board (feat. Broken Idols, Magdalena, Andrea Desmond) and Peace of Mind for Santy’s Massage (feat. Soulifted, Prozak’s Beat Factory, G-Man). Visit wildoakrecords.com for more info.

The Cameronian Lifetime Achievement Award goes to … This is so embarrassing. It’s like two women showing up in the same dress at the awards show. Only, instead of it being two women, it’s actually two awards shows, and even though they both look stunning, one of them is going home early, mascara smeared, with a broken pump to go along with a broken heart.

What am I trying to say? There’s another CAMMIES on this pale blue dot! On the other side of the world, those rubber-tree tapping, South China Sea-hugging, acronym-stealing Malaysians have just announced the nominees for the Cameronian Arts Awards. Damn you, Boh Cameronian Tea and your sponsorship support of the theater, music and dance performing arts of Malaysia!

This is CAMMIES East vs. CAMMIES West, and our Chico Area Music Awards will win by beating the Malaysians at their own game. At our awards ceremony, we need to dress local metal foursome Blood of Cain in Baju Melayus and have them rock a three-string reba, a bamboo flute and a couple of small canang gongs while the four jam-masters in Swamp Zen perform an improv Butoh dance piece in the aisles. It is on!

DEVOtions:
• Persian New Year Celebration: Celebrate Nowruz with Chico State’s Persian Cultural Association this Sunday, March 8, at 4:30 p.m., in the BMU Auditorium. Featured performers include traditional Persian dancers, Persian music by Caspian Boyz and stand-up by Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. (Remember Bubba Bush’s Axis of Evil? Wherein the countries of Iran, Iraq and North Korea were lumped into all kinds of no-goodery and dastardly-ishness? That was so helpful.)

•Double Bell Euphonium demo: Saturday, March 7, 1 p.m., at Chico Museum. As part of the “Screamers, Bandsmen and Circus Fanfare” portion of the museum’s ongoing Chico Circus Town exhibit, Bill Delgardo (pictured, left) will give a demo of the somewhat rare brass instrument, the Double Bell Euphonium, which is capable of producing two simultaneous tones.