Places I've Never Been

I've managed to cram three shows into about a week. Go me!

Sunday of last week, I went to see a show at rontoms. I'd been there once, but never inside and never for a show, so I'm counting it as a Place I've Never Been. And you can't stop me. So there. Alan Singley and Pants Machine started off. I've seen them a few dozen times or so. There's always been some variation in lineup, from solo Alan to the core three (with Gus and Leb) to a lineup of many. But this time was different, for some reason. First off, there was a female backup vocalist, which I've never seen them do. Mostly successful, which is pretty amazing given how difficult it must be to harmonize with Alan's off-key squawk. A few moments when it just didn't mesh well. Also, a viola and a sax, working together in one corner, adding some sort of genuine gravitas (only a little, but still) to the goofball. New directions, new songs, and reportedly a new disc on the way...

(And also new hair: Leb Borgerson used to have a bad feathered haircut, but it made him look like a young Kenneth Branagh. The new hair leans more toward Luke Skywalker circa Empire Strikes Back. Not an improvement.)

They were followed by Blue Cranes. There's a song on the current PDX Pop Now! compilation, but I didn't think to listen to it before I went to the show. To my surprise, they were the good type of modern indie-rock-influenced jazz! (Yes, there is a good version, so shut up.) Ornette-Coleman-sounding bits, a Sufjian Stevens cover, but all genuine jazz. Two super-patinated old saxes, accordion, upright bass, drums, and keyboards. More than anything, they reminded me of Happy Apple. Classic jazz played by people with deep-rooted indie-rock sensibilities that come through like a bay leaf. Not wildly prominent, but just adding a little hard-to-define something underneath. Really gorgeous stuff, and I was pretty mesmerized.

Then last Thursday I saw a four-band lineup at Holocene. A four-band lineup on a weeknight is never a good idea. Showed up at a bar just in time to see the very last out of game two of the World Series (I'll give a belated Go Rays! here, and I wanna say "there's always next year," but I'm pretty sure this was their one and only chance), then had a lovely dinner of beef short ribs and mashed sweet potatoes. I love it when I tell someone, "you've had a hard day, let me take you out to dinner." Because the added bonus there is that I take me out to dinner, too! Confusing arrangement at Holocene--the available info said 8:30, but is that doors, or show? We got there about 10 to find that doors were at 8, show was at 9...huh? We missed Vandeveer, but I hadn't heard of them, and they were, of course, the Opening Band. And I never see the Opening Band. They were followed up by These United States, who vacillated between pretty damn good Replacements-era punk-with-a-country-backbeat and distasteful '70s-throwback hippie-twang-rawk. I was wildly ambivalent. Next up, Nick Jaina. A comparatively small six-person band, some new songs, and the old songs, as always, made new again. You know I'm always amazed by Nick and crew, but being able to sound fresh and different after coming home from a cross-country tour generates another level of amazed. Finally, Chris Robley. And the Fear Of Heights? I can't remember. It was a full band, anyhow. I know he plays solo, plays as CR&tFOH, leads The Sort Ofs, plays (guitar?) in Norfolk & Western...the Portland music scene is like that weird branch of the Mormon church. Everybody's got half a dozen bands, and everyone's related to everyone else and their bands, so that if any bands wanted to get married and have little bands, the little bands would have three heads. Anyhow, I want to like Chris Robley. The music appeals to me, the lyrics are complex and story-like and interesting, it's all pretty great...but there are times when Chris Robley slips into that rawk voice. You know, the metal-ballad voice, all throaty with the vibrato and the words with the excessive syllables, like "one" coming out as "woah-oh-un". I would love this band except for the rawk voice. But I was out with someone who adores the various Chris Robley permutations, and though we were both very tired, his joy was infectious.

Last up, on Saturday I finally made it to the Roseland. The goal was seeing Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The...uh...bonus (?) was Against Me. I've never been to the Roseland, thanks to its preponderance of hip-hop and kid-punk shows. This was definitely the latter. There was this weird rigamarole where I had to go through a metal detector, but I had my keys in my hand, and no one seemed to want to take them from me. So I'm basically holding my metal out in front of me as I walk through. I show my keys to someone (see, I have metal!), my friend had to empty his pockets. We then head upstairs and discover we're a few songs into Ted Leo's set already. I don't really know the music, but it's high-energy melodic old-skool punk. Clash-like, maybe? They were political and vegan, and it was fun watching the crowd of high school kids confused by things like "this next song's about the CIA!" "Um...whoohoo?" What I wanna know is, where the hell did these kids learn to mosh? Moshing isn't running at people so you can shove them. It's not safe if people each have several feet to run around in, and good moshing shouldn't involve running around like that. I'm pretty sure we've reached the point where moshing needs to be taught in dance studios, like the foxtrot, because it's clearly a lost art. Damn kids...get off my lawn! Anyhow, this was followed up by Against Me (or perhaps Against Me!, I forget). I knew going in that it was punk for kids, silly rabbit. I expected total thrash, and wasn't entirely wrong, but there were some bits that could be hummed later, were one inclined to do so, so it actually wasn't quite as bad as I expected. In good news, the mosh pit tightened enough for some short-lived crowd-surfing, so clearly they were doing something right. But overall, loud as all fuck and dully repetitive, so we took off early to go to a birthday party with lovely cake and good beer, and curried apple-squash something-or-other, and a bonfire. And a crazy guy from down the street, but that's neither here nor there. A pretty good time was had by all, and a few stolen pears mean ongoing enjoyment from the evening! Poached, or pie? That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of pie-crust tyranny, or to poach, perhaps to dream...

Happy Birthday To Me...

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!

All Experimental and Punk and Shit

I'm honestly not sure what I saw last night. Except that I know it was the wrong end of the lineup for The Artistery's 7th anniversary party. I did get a burger and some cookies (plus some vegan "German potato salad" that, duh, lacked bacon, which was unfortunate enough, but since when is vinegar an animal product?). I think the lineup started with Why I Must Be Careful, which was almost kind of cool atonal-experimental jazz-fusion....zzzzzzzz. It actually failed at being grating enough to not be boring after about ten minutes. Luckily, they only played for about 20 minutes, which was the running theme for the show. There might have been another band in here...I can't remember for certain. Next up was White Fang, a self-indulgent hardcore-punk band amusingly injected with the unavoidable Portland dork-punk bits. It's in the water here, I swear. Dear White Fang fans: A mosh pit is characterized by vertical, not horizontal, movement. Thanks much, OMS. White Fang was lots of fun for their 20-minute set, but truthfully, I don't think I'd like them as much in intervals any longer than that. I'm pretty sure the other band I saw was Owl Dudes. Weird-ass shit that inhabited the space exactly halfway between horrifying white-boy rap-metal and pretentious (yet horrifying) spoken word experimental performance art. It was actually intriguing for a few moments, but not much longer. There were quite a few more sets before we'd have gotten to see the stuff I was actually interested in (Rob Walmart is supposed to be....well, the best of this bizarro stuff, so that might have been worth seeing; Nick Delffs of Shaky Hands has a pretty fascinating voice; and I love Point Juncture, WA), so it was off to play bar shuffleboard and drink interesting beer instead.

I hope to go to a show I absolutely and for certain want to be at again soon....