bentness

I’d meant to put down some thoughts on Portland’s MusicFest NW last weekend, but a few days of recovery ran right into a nasty flu, which has put me down now for several days and is still kicking my butt.

Basically, I mostly had a blast. There were times when I tried to go between too many shows and wound up seeing more of the street between clubs than the actual bands.

The worst of these situations was the midnight slot on Friday: I was at Ash St. with some old friends and figured I should stay to see a bit of Witchcraft before heading over to Monotonix at Satyricon. Well, at quarter after, Witchcraft still had not taken the stage. I bailed and ran towards Satyricon, but was slowed by a couple “hellos” along the way. Got to Satyricon to find it completely empty. Monotonix had only played about 20 minutes… I had completely missed it. The crowd reportedly even carried the band and its gear — still playing — out onto the street!

So anyway, that was one of my regrets. However, it was great to see SF’s legendary Steel Pole Bath Tub play on Thursday night. They thoroughly rocked the house. It was great to carouse with old friends, singing along with the chorus: “These are my friends now…”. Red Fang was a pleasant surprise that night: kind of doing the stoner sludge thing, but with lots of unexpected little nuances. It was also great to see the recently reformed Iommi Stubbs, now with Rob Wrong of Witch Mountain on guitar and vocals.

Seaweed and Supernova were also a bit of nostalgic fun at Dante’s on Saturday night… fun, but not really the sort of stuff to make me ecstatic. I’ve always had an appreciation for power pop, but could never work up a lot of enthusiasm for it. Trevor Solomon, the workaholic who booked the festival, certainly has a sweet spot for Seaweed though… he did a stage dive halfway into their first song!

Les Savvy Fav’s frontman lived up to his reputation as a crazy man, and he was very entertaining to watch. However, musically, it was also just pop punk… I just can’t work up too much enthusiasm for that stuff anymore. On the other hand Ratatat was the opener at Wonder that afternoon and even though I like them a lot, they left me a bit cold too. At least their set came off flawlessly, as opposed to their show back in early July at Holocene when the royally screwed up a few songs.

Now, all this stuff in the last couple paragraphs was on Saturday and I was definitely dragging ass by Saturday. Maybe I’m just too old for four consecutive nights of rocking. It’s possible that approaching Saturday’s line-up completely fresh, I would have gotten much more enjoyment out of it.

And actually, I got a pretty good kick out of No Age on Thursday evening. They’re a somewhat scrappy guitar/drums duo that plays what one might describe as pop punk. So it would seem that part of why I enjoyed that more was that I was still pretty fresh on Thursday.

On the other hand, I may have just been in a particularly good mood durning No Age knowing that Battles was coming up next. And actually, seeing Battles on Thursday evening definitely left me with a ridiculously high, high-water mark that no other band would touch.

Battles was better than I imagined they would be. I had thought that a lot of the odd elements on their album was studio trickery. However, they pretty much recreated the songs off the album, but with enough variance to let you know that they were doing it all live.

The result was nothing short of amazing. I have very rarely seen such tight virtuosity… and it never degenerates into wanking. Their parts are all essential, no one ever really commands the lead, and it’s all beautifully orchestrated. They rely heavily on loops — captured live — and they play flawlessly against them. The result is music that feels strongly improvised, but always holds together… and follows the studio recordings remarkably closely.

I guess I’d have to say that my main regret about the festival was that there weren’t more eclectic acts like Battles. On the other hand, there was obviously a lot of stuff that I didn’t see. I really wanted to catch Dan Deacon, but it was way out at the Hawthorne Theater and I was happy to stick to foot travel in Old Town. I also went for the old names — Seaweed, Supernova, Steel Pole, etc. — for a bit of nostalgic joy, but perhaps I should have just skipped that. Well, I *had* to see Steel Pole, but I probably should have gone for Dan Deacon instead of Seaweed/Supernova.

Ironically, part of why I stayed downtown on Saturday was to go to the VIP after party… never want to miss out on a free party, don’t ya know. Well, I lasted about 20 minutes… it was just packed full of obnoxious twits. Oh well, live and learn.

My hope for future festivals is that it would broaden it’s eclectic/electronic/DJ-oriented choices. I did a lot of running around, seeing a lot more than is mentioned above, and I saw plenty of bands that I think were just “adequate”. I suspect that they were picked to fill out a line-up of like-minded bands. On the other hand, I imagine it’s possible that a lot of electronic or eclectic acts just wouldn’t even try to get accepted to MFNW.

On the other, other hand… I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I wasn’t involved in the selection process at all, and I would expect that it was an extremely difficult task. Basically I found myself wishing for more of the sort of stuff that I like to hear, but that doesn’t mean that the breakdown of acts didn’t actually represent the general breakdown of styles that the Portland scene likes.

All in all, it was a fun, crazy four days. I would probably do it again… but I definitely need plenty of time to recover.