I Couldn't Think Of Another Band I'd Rather Have Be From Portland

As if I needed more reasons to love the Decemberists without abandon, I will just go ahead and let you know that the show tonight was incredible, and if I do some tricky non-mathmatical mathmatical reasoning in my head, the twenty dollars I spent for the ticket evened out to ten. And we don't even think about the whiskey coke money. We already forgot about that, and it falls forgotten from the final tally. The opening act was Sarah Dougher, who I've always heards personal stories about and then felt excited when I saw her name in print, but never actually seen. The way she stood there with her guitar and just a drummer made me think of the old days, before I turned 21, when we would go to the old Meow-Meow and watch whomever just rock the small stage with the shallow ceiling and that horrid leopard-print backdrop I always hated, and the us dregs from the barrel of underage hipness would flail around and get all hot and sweaty for whatever they played, and it'd be just some girls and guitars and little old three chord them up there, but they'd be earnest and eager and we all'd lap it up. Maybe that's rosy tinting it a bit, but that's what I'm good at. Now the crowd was a bit disappointing, just consisting of anyone who had an extra twenty to fling the way of the show (which was a benefit concert, so it went to a good cause, which also factors into my reasoning). Lots of girls dressed in lots of ways that all looked alike. But that's not fair, now, is it? I always disapprove of the crowd at a Decemberists show, always wanting them to be pale young things in period garb. And that's never how it's going to be, they're more than just a novelty act designed to help me meet boys in woolen knickers. And it's okay that the DF is much cleaner than the Meow Meow. Aside from all the commotion about whether or not the crowd met my approval, I had got what I chanced on, that the band would be looser and more approachable due to the circumstances surrounding the show. Which was absolutely true. The interaction up on stage was playful at the least, and filled with witty shining moments of things said, pantomines and this exquisite arched eyebrow Colin Meloy can muster. The evening was chock full of covers, including a version of "Tam Lin" sung by Petra Haden that was very... well, it was a song that hailed a different era, but one much more recent than their usual. By the end, after the blistering electric guitar solos (of course, blistering. I don't know how else to describe it without wiggling my fingers at the top of an imaginary guitar and going "Deeedle-dee-deedle-dee-Deedle-deedle" etc.), the entire band was on its knees in some form or another, and the crowd was nuts. The cover song "Mr.Blue Sky" actually had a part where Colin made the entire crowd sit down, and then stepped into the audience to tell us a short story about a man named Jeff Lynne, who formed the original Electric Light Orchestra. It was just a pleasure to listen to, and that's almost all I've got to say. The members appeared to be having a great time, having recovered some of the original instruments that had gotten stolen a while back, and the boys behind me were loud in their praise and in belting out lyrics with me. All was good at the Doug Fir tonight.

People worry, what are they worrying about today?

The thing with the Violent Femmes is that they're never violent enough for me. If I'm in the audience and I hear the music, I can close my eyes and imagine the jittery twentysomething on stage, pulled tight like a live wire, but when I open them it's only sweet-faced Godon Gano playing like it's easy. I want them so badly to be more, I want them to light the crowd until we're all angsty firecrackers set to goo off in...

...I took one, one, one 'cause you left me and two, two, two for my family and three, three.....

At the same time, I have this very large amount of person-to-person respect for any man who can still act gracious as the sweaty fair-going masses go happy nuts for the five hundreth version of "Blister In The Sun." If I were him, I would have long since turned petty and recalcitrant and just plain unwilling to appease the radio friendlies.

Word on the street, which I'm very thrilled about, is that Gordon Gano is a, as they say, "devout Christian." Which rocks my socks off, to know that when they cover the Byrds "Christian Life", with the lyrics:

My buddies tell me that I should've waited
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun
But I still love them and I sing with pride
I like the Christian life...

...it's not nearly as ironic as one would think. What's even more interesting and notable is that the other guitarist, Brian Ritchie, is a devout atheist, with his side projects having names like "No Resistin' a Christian" and "Religion Ruined My Life". Yet somehow, in a display of tolerance that, if concentrated, could perhaps bring new ways of conflict resolution to the Middle East, they've played together in a band for the last twenty odd years. Trust me on this one when I tell you that bands have enough issues after only a few months, not including any large idealogical gaps .

I've decided that I really like the Violent Femmes, and that's really something to consider, since I haven't devoted any time in this whatsoever to the Decemberists, who opened the stage for the Femmes last night. Rest assured that they were great, and I died a little inside every time I had to come to grips with the realization that I could not get anywhere close to the stage because I gave my roommates a ride and we left too late.

Let's Dance (For Fear Your Grace Should Fall)

"What would Jello Biafra say, if he saw you doing the fucking 'Safety Dance'?" It's a fair question, but the lanky boy just gives us his best toothy leer and rubs his sweaty shirted torso up against my friend's bare arm, so she rolls her eyes and recoils in mock disgust, and then shoves him out of the noisy clamor of the bar, into the hallway. "Is that, indeed, what Jello would do?", I ask. She nods grimly and sort of shrugs. The question was fair. The room has been packed with kids doing their best to pretend they rememember the Eighties, with help of the giant screen in front of the dj that shows a steady succession of glossy lipped mouths wrapping their copious lips around the words to the songs that everybody knows. I'm not even sure why we were there, but I believe it was some sort of personal hysteria on my part. The day was filled with box jockeying and phone answering, and since I work in receiving that means I'm fuckin' tuff, right, so the night was young and so was I, so after a few false starts and a couple of drinks, we were dodging bullets in downtown Portland because Walter the dear was meeting people at Eighties Night which meant I felt that there was highly logical and rational reason for me to subject myself and others to the retro throwback throw-up that such nights entail for the general populous. Which means, hours and hours and jello shots after the evening began, we are lurking on the fringes of a crowded dance floor, two stories up above the city. While I was waiting to get in the door, the music blaring from inside sounded awful. "Even when I was saying 'Eighties Night, Eighties Night', I didn't think they'd be playing this song." Kenny Loggins is describing how very much he wants everybody to cut loose. Footloose, in fact. "I did." my friend replies. I grimace. The next one's even worse, but by that time we're in the bar, already regretting it. At least some of the people are familiar, and there's a lot of friends of friends, so the dance floor is friendly even if I'd rather sit than ever attempt to dance to "Maniac" (that's for sure). The single redemption to the non-stop block of soundtrack songs is a girl we dub "Eighties", for the sheer reason that she does the best job of personifying that actual decade that we've ever seen, give or take are distaste for the decade itself. She dances mostly alone, but she bounces through the crowd like every movie montage you've ever seen, shoulders twitching and feet bopping against the lighter than air ballroom floor, head thrown back and short hair shaking madly in the rotating lights. Compared to her, we are all poseurs, amateurs in a world she recreates merely by dancing, dancing like she's never danced before.Which brings us back to the boy in question, actually, and his also lanky friend. Coming back to my seat after a particularly rousing play of "Down Under" by Men At Work ( during which I danced with my roomate while we utilized a full semaphore of lyrics translated into bodily motions, and which I consider one of the dim highlights of the evening), Cole gestured over to the dance floor with a sort of "what the hell are they doing here?" expression. I followed the line of her pointed finger through the crowd, until it rests ona tall boy in a tight black shirt and Dickies sticking his little neck out in a very awkward chickenish sort of dance move. Upon further observation, he brought to mind my friend Patches, except I couldn't recall ever seeing Patches dance except in short bursts of excitement when the A's win. Perhaps it was the close shorn hair, perhaps the fact that the back of his shirt said Lookout! Records and I know for a fact that Patches' band back in Berkeley had a song on one of their compilations, back when everything was punk as fuck and couches were beds and beer was breakfast. I have heard those stories. So what was this kid doing here, exactly, letting down his scene by gyrating in thick stomping motions across the thicket of sweaty half-hipsters? "You have a good eye.", I say, leaning in confidentially as if I really needed to in the dull roar of dancers and post-disco. Cole nods, and we sit back and watch them for a while, taking in the absurdity of the entire situation. Who are we, really, to judge? We're here, aren't we? She doesn't dance, but I am lured out to the floor time after time for reasons beyond my grasp, because it's the closest thing to a live show or violence that I can find. One of the boys we came with, a lord of the manor type in a thin white tie and suit coat, is making his rounds, insinuating himself into all the different dancing groups. We watch him for a bit and then refocus on the boys in matching black shirts, shaking our heads sadly at the spectacle. The other one has a shirt with a Dead Kennedys graphic on it, and the logo for Alternative Tentacles on the back. Quite a pair. "If you took me out more, I wouldn't wind up in places like this." Cole's been promising to take me out to punk shows, and we'll mingle and mangle together. I've been looking forward to it ever since I heard the idea, and she's from Brooklyn so for some reason I'm confident we can handle whatever comes our way together. Kicking ass and taking numbers, I've been promised. She bobs her head in acknowledgement, and we renew our plans once more, and as Modern English comes up on the speakers I weave through the loosely herded chairs and tables until I find Walter, and we spin around, loosely choreographed, until one of the Berkeley toughs stomps his scrawny way into the center and flails briefly, and I try to keep up in a dignified manner until he stomps his way on through. Later, as they're heading through the door, Cole will reach up until she has his ear and shout her question over the din, and he shoves at her while all his friends laugh, and we chuckle to ourselves and later, sprawled out on the sidewalk in front of the Crystal Ballroom, I promise never to bring her to Eighties Night again.