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.

Been slacking massively on posting… much as I expected I would. Well, here are some shows I’ve seen recently.

Caught the legendary Portland surf band Satan’s Pilgrims at the Clinton St. Block Party yesterday. Their drummer — and probably main motivator — moved to Memphis back in 2000, so they don’t play very often. It was great to hear them again… it’s been probably over 10 years since I last saw them play. The street party atmosphere was great too, with little kids running around and dancing. And I picked up a totally sweet Satan’s Pilgrims shirt.

Friday night, I caught the DJ Shadow/Cut Chemist show called The Hard Sell at the Roseland Theater. They do this entire show scratching, cutting, and looping 45 rpm records! That’s it other than some effects pedals. They had a cute, kitschy intro film — done somewhat in the style of a 50’s educational film — to explain what they were doing. They also had two big screens behind them that alternated between cameras catching their live action (including a camera mounted on Cut Chemist’s wrist) and more artsy type stuff… which was often amusing and/or trippy.

I was really impressed with the technical ability displayed and there were definitely fun moments, but unfortunately I was just really beat after a long week of partying at OSCON events. I think most people were really amped that they played over two hours. For me, it got really old. I have to say that I find it ironic that they are so popular, because a lot of what they do really isn’t very musical. Not that that’s a criteria for me liking something… there are plenty of whack, noisy things that I like.

Actually, the last notable, national act I saw before DJ Shadow was a fairly “whack” band. I saw Matmos at the Aladdin Theater on July 9 and was very, very impressed. I would definitely check them out again (wheras, I feel like I’ve “done” DJ Shadow and don’t have much interest in seeing him again). Even though they use some very weird sounds and noises, they are one of the most musical acts I’ve ever seen. This is really what so amazing about Matmos: they take all manner of strange squeaks, pops and burbles and weave it into a hypnotic musical tapestry. And what’s sad is that the theater wasn’t even full. DJ Shadow was packed.

Holocene was also packed, the night before Matmos, for Ratatat… and a packed Holocene can be quite exasperating. I really think they should punch a big whole between their two rooms… although I have to say that they at least had the sound from the band piped into the main room at the same level as in the stage room. This created a nice feeling of the sound of the band being all around you throughout the club.

Unfortunately, Ratatat had some sound issues that night… and they even had some plain old performance issues, having to actually start one song over again cuz they were off from each other. It was only the second or third show of the tour, so they were still working out the kinks. The crowd didn’t seem to care… much adulation was observed. And really, they were a lot of fun over all.