Love, Dean - Abbie Weisenbloom House Concerts - December 7, 2023

 

Love, Dean: [Portland, OR] I attend house concerts sometimes with my 70-something bestie from my condo complex. At this one, I was massively bored and working hard to keep an impassive face because we were in the front of the small audience. These concerts really exemplify the West Coast White suburban foundations of Portland. The exceedingly monochrome and well appointed set of 'radicals.' I could see the song list on the stage ground and was calculating percentage completed, like my middle school teaching friend used to do to get through her day – she’d report our percentage to me when we’d cross paths in the hallway. I found it disturbingly anal and deeply resonant. She also used a spreadsheet to track her online dates once she decided it was time to get serious. Anyway, he was a millennial Bath & Body rockabilly guy, with his expensive jeans flipped at cuffs and a plugged-in Gretsch. She was a suburban hipster - ash blonde - dimples - pink cheeks - gold necklace. She had a sweet voice but it was inexplicably muted - her face was impressive though in its mutations and screws to go high. TheBirds&TheBeesANDTheFlowers said she needed training. Their soul music had a similarly hazy sound. They share a last name - are they siblings? Lovers ? They read as Christians. Both of them had annoying wedding rings. In a welcome relief, they started talking instead of playing. They did a show in Summit, Oregon and told the crowd to imagine drums. An old guy started playing on an Altoids box and fucked them up. Then the old guy sat in the front and sang along with every song. And there's such things as songwriting camps. They were told to write a song about a random word. The word was ‘contrary’ - she was stressed so he wrote it, a song about how opposites make good pairs. They had a 'rocking' song that almost evoked the Rolling Stones - her face contortions were on fire. She joked about being bad at math and her mom, apparently, piped up to claim blame – nothing angers me more. My life’s work.