Woke up on my birthday and went to work. Saw my clients, went to my meetings, and on top of that, put together all the information I'd need to be grilled in court the next day by six lawyers and a court-appointed advocate. Sometimes my job is...(redacted). I mean, awesome!
Went home, changed clothes, and got taken out to dinner. At Higgins. Holy smoked fish, Batman! We just went and ate in the bar, but I've never even done that. Serious birthday pampering. And then off to Backspace. That was the goal for the evening. Dinner was like, "Where do you wanna go, OMS?" "I dunno." "How about Higgins?" "Uh...hell yeah, that'll do nicely!" But the real plan was to go out to Backspace.
Got there about 15 minutes into Norfolk & Western's set. These guys spent a few years with the same modus operandi. Wildly charming, elaborate artsy-detailed '30s-influenced down-home indie twang-folk. Every show involved a gramaphone and a fedora. And then they went on this crazy-ass evolution binge. Like fruit flies or something. I saw them at PDX Pop Now! in August, and they just tore shit up. There was a fucking mosh pit. For what had been a twang-folk band! Rawk all over the place, with barely a twang to be seen (uh...heard). This show split the difference beautifully. Most songs began with a cute, swingy art-folk start, and a slow build in intensity, until all at once, KABLOOEY! I mean, sure, it wasn't really 'kablooey' (that sounds like a terrible, tragic bubble-gum accident), but there's just no onomotopoeic word that accurately reflects what goes on when the electro-acousto-guitar-drums-bass-everything comes crashing in, sending the whole production spiraling off into raucous country-rawk territory...but not stupid or ugly. Just transcendent. Oh, and JFC, there was a Velvet Underground cover! I mean, for all the zillions of bands that pretentiously claim the VU as an influence, there are far too few VU covers. Lovely.
And then, the reason we were there: Blue Giant. Officially a Viva Voce side project, but aside from Kevin and Anita (on two guitars, or a banjo, harmonica, and dual vox), there were...oh, damn. This is why I take notes! I can remember at least four other people on stage, but that doesn't seem like enough. A (I assume) regular drummer, plus Rachel Blumberg of N&W also playing along (two drummers = kick fucking ass), Chris Funk of The Decemberists on banjo, keyboard, and pedal steel (a-berting-mazing), plus a bassist/keyboardist. And that was plenty, sure. This was southern country-rawk with the kind of playful touch that made me like it. I was a couple of songs into this set when I realized I was seeing a double-bill of bands that could be described as Americana. I hate Americana in any form. Yet, two songs into the BG set, I couldn't maintain the "I'm only enjoying the irony aspect" smirk. This was post-irony. This was meta-irony. This was the musicians seeing the ironic potential, and somehow transmogrifying it into pure joy. The joy may have been fueled by ironic appreciation, but it was transformed in the "shit, we've got two banjos! And pedal steel!" process into gold. They made jokes about being on "tour" of Portland (three venues in three days, and gee, the road sure is hard, anyone got a couch they could crash on?), then said that for every stop on their three-day tour, a local musician would join them for a few songs, all covers. Hi, Sam Coomes of Quasi! Come on up! Holy shit. Suddenly all Americana, all twang, all country-rawk-whatever, all was destroyed in the pure, blue-white fire that ensued. I recognized the first song as classic rock of some sort, plus (again, the perils of blogging a week later) two or three more that were more obscure but found some inexplicable classicrawk-punk-screamingloudindierock nexus that heretofore didn't exist except perhaps in legend or myth. A google search provides me with The Who's Hell Or High Water as one of Mr. Coomes' choices. Blistering, all of them.
And then we all went home, drunk on local fresh-hop-harvest Ninkasi beer out of oversized bottles, tired and happy. Or, at least, I did, and I want everyone in the sparsely attended room (maybe 75 folks in a room that holds 150) to have enjoyed themselves just as much. And in my case, with an astounding birthday-present re-issue to look forward to of the very first Replacements disc, Sorry, Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. And probably another couple of birthday presents before I finally fell asleep.
Thank you to everyone who made my birthday stellar, from whoever smoked the fish to the Ninkasi folks to all the musicians in both bands, and especially to the orchestrator who decided I was going to have such a lovely birthday. I didn't stop grinning until I went through the metal detector at court the next day. Squee!
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