Starcrawler - Roseland Theater, Portland - October 15, 2018

[from Los Angeles, CA] I found myself at the Roseland Theater thanks to Music&Ducks, music industry insider. As for the here and now, this venue and I just don’t get along. I’d been once before, and just like my first time, I happened to have my work backpack with me. Logistics!!! Super nerdy. I care so little, sometimes, nowadays. They, like last time, subjected me to scrutiny … but in this annoyed lacksidaisical you’re-getting-what-you-deserve backpack-toting woman tone. And then I am insulted by their disregard for the real threat I could pose. They don’t know me. Beyond the low grade TSA poseurs, this venue feels like the trashy part of The Strip, Bourbon Street, whatever. All of the staff are bitter and disengaged. You’re going to drink beer and it’s going to taste shitty. Maybe more unique to Portland, the city that loves to convert buildings to for things they were never intended to be used for, the bathrooms feel like scary junior high bathrooms – get out fast before you get beat up. This venue is also in a weird part of Portland. Downtown, not a destination for most Portlanders, excepting people who society forgot and ex-frat young professionals. There’s an allegory here... This part of downtown, though, is particularly rough: needles, etc. We ran into one coworker on the street before the show, on his way to his apartment home. He chatted about the sex-themed club, across the street from his apartment, that was about to close. He was upset it was closing, and this is why I love sociologists. I ran into the second coworker in the venue and he didn’t recognize me until I aggressed, which has resulted in apologies every time we cross paths in work life. I took no offense because we work in different streams and he was excessively stoned. And I like him as a person in general. That night, I was excited that I am enough of a Portland resident that I run into two people I know, while with someone I know, in the very same night. Community: our health and longevity depend on it. They are a band of four, three scruffy guys and one painfully thin woman. She mostly did lead vocals but one guy on guitar chimed in sometimes. I used to feel ok being hypercritical of excessively skinny people because they were emblematic of our toxic body culture – and they were on the winning side of it – but someone yelled at me that some people can’t help being that skinny. Well, I guess I’m still an offender because my main memory from this show is being horrified by the woman’s protruding hipbones. The band also enjoyed invoking death, suicide, rough sex… with finger-style guns, mic cord around neck, mic cord bound around wrist, mic down pants, mic as faux penis, shirt pushed up with hands downs pants. At one point, the lead singer rose from a crumple on the ground with face garish in exaggerated makeup and red paint. They tried to get the crowd to clap along but nobody was feeling that vibe… so it descended into them screaming at us CLAP CLAP. With epileptic lights flashing. I suppose it was all totally appropriate but, as a schoolmarm with a backpack, I found it quite inappropriate. Maybe most shocking of all, the two in the back were totally square. One in a pearl snap shirt and the drummer a total hippie. Their songs aren’t bad - I’d guess they’ve been damaged by aggressive LA managers intent on making them shocking. Why else would a bunch of kids open for MC5?