[US pop
collective] This venue wasn’t at all what I expected … despite the ‘theater’ in the
name … so, it was a theater. Portland has a ton of theater-style music venues –
I don’t dislike them, they just disconcert me, unconcert me. The place was
awash with grey-hairs. Again, I should have known – the headliner, Alejandro
Escovedo’s in his 60s himself. This band made me exceedingly bitter. I’d already
been suffering from a semi-cold for days, and at the end of a day-long-stretch
of a sneeze-that-wouldn’t-come. I was in Flame-territory, which makes me
melancholy – mind over matter. And this band was just cheesy and terrible and
unapologetically old. Band banter after the first song focused on the Turner
Classic Movie channel (channel number 265, in case you wondered). So Peter Buck
of REM was actually one of the guitarists but I can’t stand REM after seeing
Michael Stipe twine all self-importantly around a microphone for two hours at
one ACL --- and their songs grate outside of the really beautiful Green album…
and some other good songs. Plus poor little Peter had a really unfortunate bowl
cut. And then there was Crazy: guitarist 2 of 3 spent the entire set either
jumping in place or spinning his arm a la The Who. This band turned out to be
the backing band for Alejandro and Crazy really lived up to his name during the
second half of the show, running around the stage, propping his guitar on his
head, doing faux-splits, getting in everybody’s face (Peter would do an awkward little shake-shrug
to participate, obviously praying Crazy would go back to his side of the stage)
… I guess it's hard to find good guitarists in their 60s who aren’t cokeheads.
The main vocalist, Scott McCaughey, had a Jerry Garcia look to him and was fine
by me. The drummer was a female who looked to be a lot younger than them, a
ringer (from 1 mile away) for Broad City’s Abbi – outside of a garish sweater. Their
music was just really really boring. They segued from the chatter about cable
to a song about not wanting to be in a coffin – at least they’re real. Then
references that seemed even too old for them – like one whole song dedicated to
The Monkees: “Davy always gets the girl…” with a shout-out to the Brady Bunch. They
referenced Cosmo’s Factory (a CCR album) and “Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
Oh god and then a rocking Christmas song – they warned the crowd with
bad-boy-swagger that there wouldn’t be any Jesus or Santa in the song – IT DOESN’T
MATTER – YOU’RE SINGING A CHRISTMAS SONG AT A ROCK SHOW. In my misery, I spied on
the middle-aged guy in the seat in front of me, checking his phone, pretending
there’d be a message, and nodded my head: same-here-sad-mister. I’d curb-kicked
the pick of 15 online persons and was finally giving tinder a shot – radio silence
after four days – with nothing more to do, I checked again & discovered a major
technological malfunction – turns out there are scores of sad-misters out there
dtf. My mood lightened – I guess. Maybe more by a glimpse of a Social D jacket.
And then out of nowhere, they pulled out a tribute to Fred Cole (died day of,
member of Dead Moon, a Portland band that was an underground hit nationally).
And their tribute was a kick-ass cover of The Sonics’ “Have Love, Will Travel”
and I was left totally mystified as to why they’d wasted the last 45 minutes with
the trite they’d been playing. So the talent is there but the taste is not – or
maybe I’m just too young to get it J
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