"I was walking around feeling satisfied. Can you imagine that? Then she cuts me loose. I don't know why. She won't tell me. Who knows the real reason? Maybe it's because of her father, I don't know. She won't talk to me. She won't even look at me."
--Lloyd Dobbler
Okay, I've been an emotional train wreck lately. I'm unemployed, I was broken up with this week, I've been in the blackest funk imaginable. I made myself go to this show for something to do, something to get myself out of the house. Nire, The Online Romance, and Sexton Blake at the Doug Fir.
I get there, and there's a wedding reception going on on the patio of the Jupiter Hotel (the same property that also contains the DF). Not a good sign, in my mind. But I head on in. I'm determined to have some fun.
I walk in just in time to hear Nire say, "Thanks, everyone, The Online Romance is up next!" I think that's the second time that's all I've heard from them. Oh well. Stupid parking...not only is there the show, and the wedding, but get this: Vanilla Ice is playing a creepy club down the block called Outlaws. Seriously. Vanilla Ice. The crowd standing in line for that place was indescribably, skin-crawlingly gross. Where do you get clothes like that, Hicks 'n' Prostitutes 'R' Us? So my intention to catch 15 minutes of the opening band was supplanted by 15 minutes of looking for parking.
The last thing I'm up for tonight is starting out by waiting through a set change. I went to get a beer, largely to convince myself to stay. But it gives me some time to watch the crowd. I begin to play a game with myself, picking out the people who came from the wedding (even if they'd stopped up to their room at the Jupiter and changed) as opposed to people who came because they knew they wanted to see the bands. Large group sitting at one of the few tables introducing each other and talking about their teaching careers: Wedding. Dancing Girl with the Excessively Aquiline Nose: Wedding. Four unfortunately sexily-dressed 50-year-olds in the corner: Wedding. Girls with big purses and skirts, shoulders in, wide-eyed, looking around nervously: Wedding.
So after that uplifting little game of cynicism and schadenfreude (is it schadenfreude if they don't even know how unfortunate they are?), The Online Romance started. It's not a good band name. It makes one think of My Chemical Romance. You immediately expect falsely dark adolescent emo. But no! It was stellar, Barsuk-ready, guilelessly referential perky and charming indie-pop. Earnest, non-ironic, bouncy, the perfect indie band circa 2007. It was a 5-piece band with an odd stage setup. The drummer sat in front, with the four other members behind him. The drummer was the only one who didn't sing. Not just boy-girl harmonies, but boy-girl-boy-girl harmonies. They started with just the keyboardist and a vocalist on stage, she backed him up and he sang about never falling in love with you again...and then falling in love with you again. In my pathetically emotionally vulnerable state, it made me want to vomit...but that beautiful, perfect '70's soft-rock combination of keyboards and falsetto...it was amazing! Fine, I'll stick around until I finish my beer. From then on, they had all five members on stage. Usually I find a band that shares lead vox duties among many members to be disjointed and incohesive, but this band had a remarkably consistent sound despite the changes in voice. And many songs had no particular lead vocalist, but passed them around or engaged in four-part bits that never, ever sounded like a barbershop quartet. Along with the '70's lite crooning, they used '60's pop conventions for their own purposes as skillfully as Elvis Costello. And I noticed during this set that the sticker that indicates that one has backstage privileges was a Tillamook cheese label! Near the end of their set, The Online Romance covered Toto's Hold The Line (...love isn't always on time...). And I smiled. I needed a good smile.
Sexton Blake headlined the night. Every time I've seen them they've been a different band entirely. There's the pop song Emma, on PDX Pop Now! 2004, that is so perfect I put it on a compilation for my mom (yeah, my 57-year-old mom loves her some good, clean indie-pop). There was the time I saw them live, with four or five people onstage, and they were an experimental '80's-themed electronic band in matching vests. There was that other time I saw them, and they were a three-or-four-person super-loud noise band (also, I believe, in some sort of uniform). The preview I read for the show indicated that SB is really the brain child of just one guy, and it's a great loud indie-pop outfit, and he just put out a disc called Sexton Blake...Plays the Hits! In which he covers a shitload of mediocre '80's pop songs, and does so miraculously. I hoped for the latter.
I got the latter. Two skinny guys in t-shirts bent over a pile of keyboards, a drum set, a Rickenbacher guitar (squee!), an acoustic guitar, a Fisher-Price toy keyboard-xylophone toy (used for Emma), and a harmonium. Playing terrific, danceable indie-pop that usually had an electronic beep-bloop vibe, but sometimes was just strummed guitar. Rather than the dressed-to-match polish of previous shows, they ended most songs in what seemed like the middle, like they just kind of ran out of song. They were humble, adorable, and happy. In past shows, the lead guy seemed to be the mop-top guy, but this time the guy who looks like my next-door-neighbor did all the talking, so I don't know which one guy is the "one man band" referenced in the weekly. They played Emma, which I haven't heard live (and that's where the toy key-xylo came in). And they played three songs from ...Plays the Hits! The first was Rod Stewart's Young Turks (Young hearts be free tonight! Time is on your side!). Such a crappy song. Such a transcendent cover. I may be the world's worst sucker for cross-genre covers, but for the first time tonight, perhaps for the first time in days, I smiled. Grinned, really. The Twins managed to score 32 runs in a doubleheader the day before, but that really didn't lift me out of my murk, but a completely unwarranted Rod Stewart cover? Better than drugs. (I have to give some serious credit to the Toto cover, though, for softening me up considerably). Sexton Blake also covered Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart and (oh my god...no way) Kim Carnes' Bette Davis Eyes, a song I actually really loved as a kid.
After the show, I asked the guy who seemed to be the lead this time about his hat. "Is that an old-school Pittsburgh Pirates hat?" "I dunno...I just got it at a thrift store. I decided it's P for Portland." I was disappointed, but not crushed. It's hard to be crushed when buoyed by Toto and Bette Davis Eyes.
