[Portland, OR] Lounging contentedly at the bar of a mostly empty small venue with my weird smart funny friend, I suddenly clocked people who looked potentially familiar to my behind left. I’m always surprised at how often I don’t run into people I know in Portland, even though my job often involves interacting with lots of people, so it seemed very unlikely that I’d run into someone I really actually knew in a place peopled by ten people total. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew them. It was undeniable … the people who’d moved into the condo next to mine maybe a year before. We’d crossed paths a few times on the roadway in front of our garages. They were both striking in their own way. He aggressively German-looking with pale skin, yellow-white hair, disconcerting eyeglasses and an intense vibe despite a soft physic. Her: a sly shy cat, dark toned all over except for the green splicing her hair. I ignored the situation for a bit and then finally spun in my stool and approached. He was exceedingly warm and friendly, confirming we were neighbors and suddenly revealing that the people who’d lived in the condo before them—the old couple who’d had me over for ‘a bit of wine’ one afternoon when I first moved in—were former federal spies. While both of us spun and laughed over this relevation, I remembered how the man spy had talked over his wife the whole of my afternoon visit.. and, worse, at least for me, later finagled to outvote the occupants of all four condos in our building to have the building repainted in a hideous orange brick color. Curses on that cursed man for harshing my mellow everytime I enter my domicile. The girl neighbor didn’t engage beyond furtive looks. Anyway, in further revelations, my nice neighbor then revealed that he was tonight’s headliner. It was strange – I’d picked the venue randomly, the night randomly, and my own neighbor was not only there but the headliner. We retreated to our corners. So I loved the band. They’re an incongruous group. Outside of my neighbor, the band members appear to be your average stoned psych metal jammers, facing each other instead of the audience like my beloved band of yore from Austin, Tia Carerra. I think there were three bass guitarists???? This seems impossible. I was in a haze. My neighbor was an exception to his own band in his glorious authentic weirdness. His energy was Dom who is sexy because he’s not but because he is. The band made me think of David Lynch, sludge metal, Skinny Puppy (my favorite band in high school to make my mom worry). His band is a reasonable genre like ‘psych metal’ but he’s an unreasonable one like ‘no wave.’ I wondered if his band members serve the same purpose as Mark Frost did for David Lynch, making Twin Peaks palatable and with-structure. Industrial music was my top genre as a high schooler but sometimes I’d get troubled by the German/Nazi tones/sounds in the songs. I recently watched the Wax Trax documentary and they framed all that as humor, intentionally “fucked up and stupid.” I don’t know. But that documentary did sooth my enduring fury at BrightShards for declaring all rock homophobic – in addition to a plethora of examples I could provide, Wax Trax was started by two gay guys. And I can’t kept trying to figure out what pop band Mike Mannequin reminded me of .. Mike & the Mannequins? No such band jaja… it was Mike & the Mechanics whose name they reminded me of… and probably no relation. Around this time, I clocked (clocking again!) the girl neighbor dancing to the band behind my stool – it felt aggressive. Truth be told, we have beef. Jaja. I can’t exactly explain why. Maybe because she feels that I think of her boyfriend/husband as an unsexy-sexy-Dom jaja. Most likely because I feel a strain of admiration competitiveness for her that leaks into my interactions. I google stalked her to see she’s a journalist for local newspapers – living the dream! And she’s inaccessible – Only Last Week, she cold-shouldered me for mispronouncing her name amongst neighbors. I remember a coworker in Austin telling me, in a tone that suggested I should be pleased, that she’d hated me when she met me but realized it was only because we were so much alike. I wasn’t pleased! She was mean. But my inability to behave around this neighbor reminds me of this story shrug-emoji. In addition to discovering my own neighbor is running one of the best bands in town, No Fun is my new favorite venue. I was being slapped on all sides by kindred music. Someone had a Protomartyr shirt on—I thought I love them because of Memphis’ Gonerfest but my log tells me I saw them at SXSW in 2014, god bless SXSW. The bar was playing Savages on their TVs, a band I already love maybe from Spotify, and then Sad Lovers & Giants is a band the amazing No Fun introduced to me. And the bartender had a Viral Sun t-shirt on – don’t know them but I will.
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