ENTERTAINTMENT

Album not Standard fare
Richard Carter | For the Wichitan

She took her first name from the intrepid character Scout in Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The Nottingham England born guitarist, singer and drummer’s birth name is actually Emma Louise Niblett. The name Scout simply has a bit more edge than Emma, and suggests a certain Southern something to her musical project.
Mississippi blues, southern fried radio and folksy overtones, with a touch of Sonic Youth and a dash of Daniel Johnston, only begin to describe the music of Scout Niblett.
An accomplished guitarist, with a compelling bluesy-folk voice, the somewhat elusive Niblett threw listeners a curve after her first mostly quiet and plaintive first record adeptly titled “Sweetheart Fever” back in 2001. She took up the drums, in a very loud way.
Her songs now range from the simple swoosh of the hi-hat to hyper aggressive drum beats, and from simple guitar chord progressions to very tasteful rock and rhythm & blues strumming and picking. The vocals are also all over the tracks.
Definitely not standard faire, Niblett has just released her third CD, and her first on Too Pure, called “Kidnapped by Neptune.” In independent terms, the new label is “making it,” since it’s the same label responsible for Stereolab and P J Harvey.
Niblett started playing guitar ten years ago in college in England and claims songwriter Kurt Cobain as her major influence. “Technique wise, he wasn’t that great,” she said in a phone interview from her Oakland home, “but his songs to me were what made me want to start playing.”
It’s all in Cobain’s chord progressions, she said.
Niblett may have taken piano as a child, but that was more banging the ivories to create songs for her. It took a while before the residue of that clatter turned to real music. “I went to college to do art and music, and part of my course was I had to write and perform pieces of music. So I started to use the guitar as an instrument to write on.”
Her fascination with actual drumming came from a guy she met years ago playing open mikes. “He used to be in the military and he played the drums and sang Beatles covers over the top.”
Three years ago, she finally started playing the drums, perhaps the effect of all that childhood clanking on piano keys. It didn’t take long for Niblett to realize that she preferred percussion to guitar.
“But I know I play the guitar better than I play the drums,” she said.  
 Despite some of her newer songs being written and played around beats, she really doesn’t think that’s changed the sound of her albums very much. “I know that the first album was probably a little bit more mellow than say the last couple,” she said with characteristic Northern English wit.
But whatever she writes and plays her songs on, she doesn’t want to analyze very much how she sounds to the rest of the world. Niblett just wants to write, record and play what’s inside her.
“When I write a song, when I can really feel a song coming out, it’s an amazing experience for me, cause it’s kind of like releasing something. It’s kind of more of a personal thing,” she said.
But the inside spends a lot of time on the outside with her. Niblett adores playing live and tours most of the year ‘round. “I like the interaction, being able to express what I’ve been writing, with people,” she said. “It’s a great feeling.”
When she’s not creating music, Niblett enjoys listening to all sorts of songs. “My record collection is all over the place. I love Daniel Johnston, Nirvana stuff and Bongwater.”
“I definitely like Howling Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson. There’s a woman named Bobby Gentry who did a song I really like called ‘Ode to Billy Joe.’ That’s one of my favorite songs ever. I think I’m going to try and cover that one.”
Always curious and unafraid of the unknown, like her namesake, Scout is blazing a tour through Australia this month, and will move to Portland in October.
“I think you just kind of refine what you’re doing in time, constantly,” she said. “The music to me is always a work in progress. None of the songs stand out as more ‘me’ than any other. It’s just who I am at that point in time.”
Said like a true Scout on the trail for the next good sound.


Lecture series welcomes Paleoanthropologist
Marianne Lechuga | Staff Reporter

In the satire “Gulliver’s Travels,” a human finds himself in the fictional kingdom of Lilliput surrounded by “little people.” Fiction and fantasy of mythical little people may not be such a stretch of the imagination after Paleoanthropologist Dr. Peter Brown led his team to a fascinating discovery. Dr. Brown has uncovered the existence of a pre-historic species of dwarf humans that lived, and may have co-existed with modern humans. Even elephants can be little. The dwarf humans used primitive tools and hunted a species of dwarf elephant. This species lived 18,000 years ago on a remote island in Indonesia. Dr. Brown will be the first guest in the Artist-Lecture Series on Tuesday, September 20 at 7:00 p.m. in Akin Auditorium where he will share his breakthrough in the study of evolution.
“We’re really excited about bringing Dr. Brown here. It’s about human development and it’s changing the course of science,” said Claire Cotton, chair of the Artist Lecture Series Committee.
Dr. Brown is an associate professor in the Department of Archeology and Paleoanthropology at the University of New England in Australia. His finds have been regarded as the most important discovery in evolutionary science in the past fifty years. In fact, according to the Lavin Agency, his discovery has overturned 100 years of received scientific reason on how humans evolved.
“Even if you had a crash course of evolution in the past, you’ll see how much science has changed since then,” Cotton said.
Before Dr. Brown’s discovery, popular scientific belief was that a species of “little people” last walked the earth 3 to 4 million years ago in Africa. The fact that bones of these species was found in Southeast Asia has tremendously changed the timeline of human evolution. Dr. Brown’s lectures will include great visuals and will provoke the audience to see evolution in a different perspective based on scientific research.
“You don’t have to be someone majoring in science to enjoy what Dr. Brown has to say. He makes it accessible to everyone,” Cotton said.
Once a taboo subject in the past, evolution has become more accepted in communities. However, there are still some who do not agree with the theory and still find it controversial. Controversy isn’t something the Artist Lecture Series shies away from.
“Even though someone has a different opinion than you, you should still hear them out,” Cotton said.
Cotton believes the lecture will broaden student’s horizons even if their beliefs are different.
“If someone doesn’t accept evolution as fact, then they should be more inclined to come listen to a man whose life work is based on evolution and has been very successful in that field,” Cotton said.
Cotton is looking forward to all the events the all-student committee has planned and is very proud to be the chair for such an outstanding program.
“The program ties MSU to the community. We’re bringing culture and opportunity to learn something you might not have known before,” Cotton said.
She encourages all students to come out to the events. Students, faculty and staff receive free tickets with a valid MSU I.D and the cost is $15 for the community. Tickets can be picked up at the Clark Student Center information desk.
“It’s a good thing for MSU to bring in prestigious, world-renowned people to our campus and to be in the presence of someone who is so brilliant is really exciting,” Cotton said.
For more information or for tickets, call (940) 397-4291. 
 

Learner's Second Novel an Impressive Read
Jason Alan York | Staff Reporter

Isn’t it amazing what can happen in a bookstore? There you are, mindlessly scanning the racks, when suddenly a book seems to jump out at you. You may never have heard of its author, you may not even like the cover design, but there’s something about the book that will not let you go. You find yourself looking through its pages, fascinated. Its words are powerful drugs intoxicating your mind. Instantly you’re addicted; you have to have it.
That happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I knew I’d be writing book reviews for The Wichitan this year, but I had no idea what book to review first. I only knew it had to be good, very good, and I was coming up with nothing. I thought about reviewing Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, but everyone who’s going to read it already has. Twice. So I found myself at a bookstore, lost in a printed forest, searching aimlessly for something I wasn’t sure I’d find. Suddenly I felt it tingling all over me – that crazy bookstore mojo.
Transported to another state of awareness by the magic of the bookstore, I felt strangely connected to my pagan ancestors who once erected shrines to the gods and goddesses of the crossroads. I was a pilgrim in a foreign place, yet I somehow knew exactly where to go because there, like a crossroad idol glowing in its niche, was a sign: New Releases. I poured my mead-offering of thanksgiving to the god of the crossroads, and after singing a hymn of praise to Odin and Thor and the entire Nordic pantheon, proceeded to the new releases.
The book that spoke to me was The Witch of Cologne by Tobsha Learner. I know it’s said you can’t judge a book by its cover, but with this one, you can. The Witch of Cologne is an account of a Jewish midwife named Ruth bas Elazar Saul living in Germany during the 1600s. The daughter of Spanish Ashkenazi Jews, Ruth is a follower of an eclectic blend of kabbalism, scientia nova, and ancient Judaism. When she finds herself in love with Cologne Cathedral’s very secular canon, Detlef von Tennen, she falls under the wrath of the Inquisition.  The inquisitor, Solitario, is himself a tortured soul who seeks nothing less than the eradication of Ruth’s entire family, all because of his unrequited love for Ruth’s own mother.
Ruth’s life takes her many places. She goes to Holland disguised as a young boy to sit at the feet of the scholars and philosophers of the Age of Reason, where she learns heretical notions of religious liberty and scientific discovery. She returns to Deutz, the Jewish village outside Cologne, where her reputation as a successful midwife arouses the attention of the inquisitor, Solitario. Ruth is eventually interrogated by Solitario in a torture chamber, his torture bringing her to the very edge of death. The inquisitor seems to derive a sort of masochistic thrill from torturing Ruth, but she will not be the only victim of his sadism.
Coming to Ruth’s rescue is Detlef von Tennen, who is sexually involved with the young wife of one of Cologne’s leading merchants. Though Detlef is not nearly as corrupt as his cousin, the Archbishop, he mirrors Ruth’s self-discovery and intellectual enlightenment when he discovers the writings of the same philosophers and scholars who had instructed Ruth. Detlef as a character is not developed nearly as well or as fully as Ruth, but his receptiveness of new ideas is central to the story. It may, in fact, even be the point.
Learner is relentless in driving her plot along, not once bogging the reader down in boring expositions. She spices her story exquisitely with highly delicate erotic sequences that never cheapen or compromise the novel’s progression but always enhance and deepen the characters. Written primarily in the present tense, The Witch of Cologne reads like a day in the life of people you know and see all the time. The use of present tense for most o the novel lifts it out of the realm of historical fiction (which it largely is), and makes it read like an intriguing, modern gothic novel. Ruth’s personal and spiritual development is a coming-of-age story appropriate for and applicable to any college student waking from the intellectual slumber of adolescence into the glorious and life-altering dawn of adulthood.
The novel paints a strikingly clear picture of life in Germany at the end of the Renaissance. Cologne, the main setting of the novel, is depicted with meticulous precision.  Every detail of the city is treated with utmost accuracy, from its 22 merchant guilds to its theatrical troupes. Seventeenth century Germany becomes a character in its own right; a dark, poisoned omnipresence in the novel with occasional glimpses of divine beauty. With appearances by the demon Lilith, the Great Plague of 1665, and even the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, The Witch of Cologne could have been written by Dan Brown except for the fact that Learner knows her stuff and refuses to condescend to her readers with undeveloped characters and implausible plot lines. This second novel by Tobsha Learner is a paragon of modern literature that can be easily read in a week. The Witch of Cologne is one impressive novel with a supremely satisfying ending, but you’ll need to read it to find out what happens when two worldviews and two strong personalities collide.
The Witch of Cologne has been selected as this month’s book discussion group, a brand-new and informal group at MSU that will begin meeting later this month. The group will be open to all MSU students, so keep an eye out for announcements, and don’t forget to pick up a copy of The Witch of Cologne!