Ex-Cult - Bunk Bar, Portland OR - October 19, 2018

[from Memphis TN] Perfect. Head thrashing nihilism. I’m infused with joy. I want to meditate. Weird eerie turns. Thrash grooves you can ride on. Dancing chaos. Garage punk turns into goth punk like The Vanishing. Some goth punk dance ala TSOL, Fields of Nephilim. I’m stretching a little here but they get me excited. Voice is familiar and comfortable. Not like just to me, like to the universal pathos in all of us. Ja. I even recognized the furry jowled bandmember – he’d been at Gonerfest (which I had only returned from a few weeks before) & I’ve seen this band before, maybe a few times. I hardly ever see bands multiple times. That’s how good they are. They gave Ty Seagall credit (same label I think) but they’re 1000 times better. They’re a good definition of the Goner Label sound. Bizarrely, they covered Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil,” a song I don’t deny loving to pretend to play on guitar. In other bizarre events, I had a napkin romance with this person next to me at the bar. A person who was, on average, far more financially successful, confident, and mainstream than anybody I typically see at shows. I actually more enjoyed chatting with his cheerful goofy record-collecting buddy. They went way back and, in current times, made no sense at all together. I was supposed to meet them again the same weekend but google confirmed the confident one told the truth about being a southern California executive for a well-known social media site, but failed to communicate that he had a wife and children, so I no showed. He weirdly followed up months later – and didn’t deny my polite observation that he seems to have a wife and children. His friend was his best accessory. Then the tall gangly soundman let me know about the PDX pop festival. My exuberance for the band was catching.