[Portland OR] Overwhelming
restlessness. I’m either sleeping 4 hours or 11 hours. I shouldn’t have been
here this night – restlessness descended into sullen bitterness. I don’t even like
this venue. I was soothing myself with the fact that this band was from my
homeland, the Mojave Desert. Plus this awesome black-panther looking person was
doorman. But then… I genuinely like PBR (but only in the can)… and was annoyed that they only had Rainier
(the Pacific Northwest’s version of shitty-good beer). Then I went to the
bathroom and really got riled: fake graffiti! I swear the staff came in one
weekend and graffiti-ed it to create a punky feel. No. At least it was less
crowded on this weekday night – the first time I came here people who paid to
see the band were spilling into the bar area behind the curtain – it was stupid.
I looked over
the sparse collection of attendees and saw a sea of black-stick-legs and beanies
(shrugged just right) – boring scenesters, dressing exactly the same so as to
not fit in. Maybe hipster eating disorders, though, are helping to eradicate
gender? Adding to my list of why Austin is better than Portland, I decided even
the hipsters in Austin are better than the hipsters in Portland – more extreme,
more diverse – it happens I was in Austin three days ago and can confirm this –
but maybe I’m also a petty asshole too. The band started with a Tool cover –
not a fan of starting with covers but Tool was definitely fitting for a Mojave
Desert band. They had a bit of a Primus sound too. Bass-driven prog rock, math
rock. Some classic prog like Rush but more understated. One guy incorporated a
guitar slide - interesting. This was all really good but then they sort of descended
into a Dirty Three sounding band – a band that really irritates me. Chamber
rock, but the bad side of the coin – all ambient and shit. I was yelling at
them in my head to go listen to God Speed You or find a day job. Why was I
wasting time that I could have spent doing yoga? Bad bands lead to yoga
cravings more than other bad activities – I don’t know why – maybe because
music should be meditative and when it’s not, I get angry. Or maybe it’s my ass
injury – the constant ache leaves me forever jonesing for forward bends. AND
THEN I found out they weren’t the band actually from the Mojave Desert, next
one, doh, what does it all mean.
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