Immediately after the “Seattle Sound” was supposed to come the “Portland Sound”, as Sub Pop and want-to-be-indie major labels combed the city for the Next Nirvana. Every time we attended a Hazel, Heatmiser, Sprinkler, Thirty Ought Six (can’t find the video I used to have, dammit!), or Crackerbash show we always said “you know, this may be the last time we hear these guys in a small club.”
Quick, if you’re not from Portland: Remember any of those bands? Didn’t think so. Heatmiser gave us Elliott Smith, and Sam Coomes of Quasi. Hazel gave us Jody Bleyle of Team Dresch. And if you’ve heard of the latter two, you’re approaching IMS territory, anyway. But we weren’t the only ones who thought so; all the big music magazines were profiling our little burg, trying to get out in front of the trend. I guess they got too far out in front, eh?
It’s entertaining to read, circa 15 years later, how Portland is “America’s Indie Rock Mecca”. Only this time, according to the author, it’s not because Portlanders themselves are creative, or anything.
[U]nlike, say, Seattle’s grunge boom in the ’90s or the Bay Area’s recent hyphy movement, Portland has neither a distinctive “sound” nor a “scene” to speak of. Sonically, there’s not a whole lot that the twisty pop of the Shins has in common with the “hyper-literate prog-rock” (to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert) of the Decemberists. And virtually none of these groups can be considered “Portland bands” since, with very few exceptions, they all moved to town after gaining some level of fame. (Generally speaking, it’s rare to meet a young, creative Portlander who’s from Portland.)
Eat me.
I like most of our Portland bands, even the transplanted ones. (Frank Black/Black Francis lived here for awhile and is now in Eugene, by the way.) And I love my city. But the fact that the big stars live here doesn’t have anything to do with the health of our “scene” (and although I’m too busy to actually participate in it with the frequency I’d prefer, I still love it.) If you haven’t heard Helio Sequence, Stars of Track and Field, talkdemonic, Dat’r, Menomena, et al., then you’re to one extent or another missing out.
Dammit.
(Link via Liberal Avenger.)
33 Responses to “Whoop de doo.”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Oh I know Heatmiser. My band played a couple shows with them in Ohio when they toured. Their bass player went to Oberlin and was an old friend of one of our guitar players. Their album “Dead Air” (great motherfucking record) is on my iPod right now.
Classic video from that record:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=swlaxOdfnSM
Whatever happened to Neal? Is he still out there?
I’ve lived in the Bay Area my entire 32 years, and I have no idea what this alleged “Hyphy movement” is. But I’m not an Indie Music Snob; I literally have not listened to the radio (college or otherwise) in about 15 years.
I have CDs by Hazel, Team Dresch, and Thirty Ought Six…and I’m not from Portland. I spent a week in your beautiful burg for a conference back in the mid-90s and popped into a local music store, asked the clerk to direct me to some local bands I would be interested in, and walked out with those CDs. I was NOT disappointed.
The only band that really got a big push out of Portland at that time was Everclear, IIRC.
Hey! I’ve heard of Hazel!
Wow. I never know any of the bands on the Friday top 10!
Considering I bailed on the music scene starting at the end of the 80s when rap and metal took over, that’s pretty amazing.
I feel slightly less old.
Oh, it’s a hip-hop thing. Well, that explains why I never heard of it–I loathe all hip-hop recorded after the mid-’90s.
Seriously, if you’re in Portland and you like the blues AT ALL, make sure you catch Norman Sylvester’s act. Best bluesman that Stumptown ever had, and still going strong. The only Portlander who ever came close was Curtis Salgado.
Let’s not forget The Prids or Other Men My Age on the list of Portland bands that rock!
My city, Tucson, could battle Portland for the title of Second Runner Up for the Next Big Thing Location. Of course, that would ruin the scene, fill it up with all sorts of people who are more into looking cool than having a good time, and make everyone subconsciously uncomfortable. And make the drinks cost more, too.
On second thought, Portland is really cool. Everyone should move there!
Taylor Clark giving us a tour of indie rock star homes via his bike?? I found this piece to be self-serving and tacky, yuck.
Regarding our fine music scene, I humbly submit that it’s the best in the country right now. Sure we have big names like The Shins but we have so many incredible, smaller, local acts, that it’s almost ridiculous. A great example of the Portland scene can be found during music festival extraordinaire, PDX POP Now!
My personal picks for Portland greats = YACHT, Copy, Blitzen Trapper, Laura Gibson, The Blow, Pseudosix and my favorite, The Thermals.
Let’s not forget the Prids and Other Men My Age on the list of PDX bands that rock!
shite. you’ve just confirmed that I am “approaching IMS territory, anyway”.
oh, and the Prids are so much fun, live.
I really don’t care who’s a transplant, and who’s a native.
They owe a lot to Poison Idea. All of them.
Gotta love a band that puts out an album entitled “Record Collectors are Pretentious Assholes”.
EggDog. Of course you’ve never heard of them, but they were a minor thing back when I attended a college in PDX that’s not named after a communist.
Incidentally, I don’t suppose you were in PDX when Front Street was briefly converted into Malcom X Street? I knew some of the perpetrators.
Generally speaking, it’s rare to meet a young, creative Portlander who’s from Portland.
Auguste, I have to agree with you on this. To the author of these words, as a lifelong resident of Portland, born and raised: eat me, you pretentious record-collecting asshole. I am so fucking sick of hipster pricks furping and farting their dumb skinny faces all over Portland, whining about the job market and the weather and those sullen uncool locals.
I am fucking sick of them, and now apparently they’re the only thing that makes Portland good — as if they somehow chanced upon this dumb lumberjack burg and tapped an unexpected wellspring of creativity somehow inherent in the region. As if Portland was somehow arbitrarily chosen as a meeting spot by these great creatives and slick professional Mormons from across the country for a reason that had nothing to do with its existing attributes.
Oh, hey, I notice Ms Kate already invoked the awesome power of Poison Idea in this thread. It’s nice to see Portland punk getting at least some attention. Well, I’ll let it stand. God damn, does this kind of bullshit make me mad.
Generally speaking, it’s rare to meet a young, creative Portlander who’s from Portland.
AAAAAAGHHHHH! FUCK YOU
Oh, Man! I have been a huge fan of northwest music for a LONG time. I’m a transplant but 10 years too late, and I am a record collector nerd but not the skinny girl-jeans wearing hipster fucktard.. Just a guy that has been a fan of the Northwest music and climate for a long time. I’m familiar with everyone you listed except 30.06.
There is so much going on here that I could easily go see 5 shows a week and see great bands play every show.
The history of the Punk/HxC/Indie scene here is staggering, not to mention the bands that are here now playing music.
Past:
The (legendary) Wipers
Weird, it ate half of my post?
Past:
The (legendary) Wipers
Last Try mods please delete the previous post, thanks!
Past:
The (legendary) Wipers —-PS, there is a demonstaration/protest downtown on the 17th near central precinct for police accountability in the death of James Chasse who the Wipers wrote the song Alien Boy about. And was killed by Portlands “finest” last year.
Greg Sage (see the Wipers)
Poison Idea
Team Dresch (who I STILL regularly listen to)
Clorox Girls (on hiatus, touring with/as another band)
The Observers
The Minds
The Diskords
All of the ones listed by others =)
Current:
Clorox Girls (on hiatus, touring with/as another band)
Defect Defect
The Flip-Tops
Tragedy (Members of His Hero Is Gone & From Ashes Rise)
Warcry (See Tragedy, but with other members)
Sex Vid (who sound like an American Seein’ Red)
Absolute Rulers
The Hunches
We’re From Japan
Hellside Stranglers
I’m happy to be able to see the amount of bands that I’m capable of seeing here too, the last few bands that I have seen here that I wouldn’t have in St. Louis:
The Regulations (Sweden)
Warcry
Witch Hunt (Philly)
The Subhumans (UK not Canadian)
Dinosaur Jr (ok could have seen in St. L but……)
sorry I can go on for hours about music and the Northwest scene, but I don’t wanna fill up pages of the comments =D.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the transplanted Portland band, The Gossip, which seems to have had some success.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpzZp2dm5wo
No idea that Tragedy had anything to do with Pdx. They’re great. Poison Idea is great, but sadly I never saw them. Seconded on the Wipers too.
But as for this question, “Quick, if you’re not from Portland: Remember any of those bands?”
Yup. But then again, I lived in Olympia 1989-1997, and that’s really where I cut my rocknroll teeth, and I used to go down to the Xray pretty often. Also once shared a bill with Moustache, a short-lived (like, did they play more than one show?) side project of Sean from Crackerbash. They were a freakin great band, and much, much better than any of their recordings. Up until that point, I’d never seen anyone play real guitar with the same bravado that I–I mean, one–played air guitar.
Saw Crackerbash in Seattle a few times, AND at Neurolux in Boise ID. They were great. I’m currently in Boise for a high school reunion; kind of embarrassing to have travelled so far for such a cliched American ritual, but it’s been fun.
I lived in Seattle for quite a few years in the early 90’s, but I always like Portland better. Much less pretentious somehow, more friendly, and most importantly: Powell’s books. I miss Ozone music, though.
Lots of great Portland music too–Yob, L’Acephale, The Grails, Heavy Winged, and lest we forget, The Standard. And you just can’t the the godlike bands of the past–POISON IDEA, WIPERS, POISON IDEA, WIPERS.
And maybe the Crazy 8’s. Silly sax player and everything.
The music scene is part of the reason the wife and I are planning to escape the filthy south and move to Salem, OR. Other reasons include: red necks, southern politics, Republicans Georgia democrats (another name for Republicans), the shitty weather and the utter void that is the cultural scene here in Savannah. You’d think with an art school we’d have something but, o, not really.
Djur and Auguste: I feel your pain on this somewhat. Try being from the Detroit area, which doesn’t seem to get credit for anything except the music.
I’ve lived in the Northwest for ten years now: three in Corvallis (go Beavs!) and seven in Seattle. I know of some of those bands you’ve mentioned, Auguste, and yeah, they’re pretty good.
As an aside, recent migration patterns here in the Northwest have really created this odd newcomer/native dynamic which is fading somewhat, but still discernable. Thing is, I tend to notice the negativity going in the other direction: long-time residents/natives basically complaining about newcomers, how they should stop coming to Portland or Seattle, they’re not “true” Northwesterners (which is supposed to be significant, but no one will say how), etc., etc. I haven’t gotten too much of it directed at me, since I appear to have come from a less-offensive part of the country.
There is still a tiny portion of my brain dedicated to locating a recording of the Vinaigrettes.
I’ve lived in the Bay Area my entire 32 years, and I have no idea what this alleged “Hyphy movement” is.
There’s not a “hyphy movement”. It’s something the damn kids are just *doing*, so naturally pretentious whiteboi music snobs want to hop all over and claim they Discovered.
Djur - I never got around to it when I lived there, but I keep meaning to get printed up some wallet-sized cards, one side of which depicts the rain cycle, and the other side of having the words THAT’S WHY IT’S SO GREEN HERE, DUMBASS printed on it in huge red letters.
Linnaeus: That’s a kind of fascinating, pervasive attitude around the PNW, and Portland in particular. I was born and raised in Oregon (Portland area for the first 15 years of my life), and as I’ve finally gotten out of town and moved around, I’ve been sort of startled to discover that the rest of the world has municipal pride. Portland/Oregon/PNW has a sort of regional pride that’s similarly defensive and a lot more… well, “xenophobic” has a lot of inaccurate baggage; I mean it in the etymologically literal sense. Portlanders, particularly, seem to bristle in the presence of Outsiders. (Particularly those infernal Californians.) It’s always interesting to me to hear someone else’s experience with it as a non-native.
All that said: I think longingly of moving back to Portland almost every day.
While I hear locals (or perhaps just local hipsters) disparage them, I really really like Climber’s self-titled EP. My love of that album (and a few of the download tracks from their website) is extreme enough to make me proselytize whenever the topic of Portland music comes up.
Karl Steel,
There was another probably-one-show-only side project of Sean’s called Apegrave that I saw at the Mt. Tabor and LOVED. Missed Moustache, though.
Furious, per Wikipedia Neil Gust is now an editor for Outside NY.
The aforesaid etymologically-literal xenophobia comes, I think, from the perception that we’ve got our “own way of doing things” and that outsiders - Sizemore, Mabon, OTU, etc. - are doing everything they can to make us California lite; anti-light rail, anti-UGB, anti-green energy people all seem to come from outside and start agitating. It’s like “Hey, thanks for keeping Oregon so cool, now let’s change everything about it!”
I’m not saying that excuses xenophobia, but it certainly explains it.
A couple of my old high school friends help organize PDX Pop Now! Whenever I hear about it, I always want to move to Portland. They also have their own band, At Dusk, which I think is pretty great.
Re: xenophobia–It’s an attitude that has some historical basis before Sizemore et. al. as well. Tom McCall made that statement… let’s see… ah, the Wikipedia saves us again! Tom McCall in 1971: “Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live.” I think he was tapping into a sort of groundswell of resentment about Californians moving north at the time. This was well before the mid-90s dismantling of a lot of the great socially and fiscally policies that the state had going on. (Is the OCA still around?)
It really is, I think, a regional variation on perfectly normal civic pride, and like all such pride it’s both justifiable and not generally motivated by reason. A lot of my friends who espouse a love of Portland wax eloquent on the virtues of the city (and state) in utterly convincing terms. It amuses me to no end, however, the degree to which they treat it like a zero-sum game: Oregon’s great because it’s in every significant measurable respect better than California. Or anywhere in the South. Or the whole East Coast.
I’m not saying that extreme form is typical, mind you. And I’m not actually damning it. I find it amusing, and harmless. (My friends will totally read this and yell at me for patronizing all over them.)
Also, again, xenophobia really isn’t the right word, as it implies a lot of racial and ethnic fears that aren’t really the case, as far as I’ve seen.
You want local and xenophobic? Move to Boston.
ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!
At the end my time in Portland for the conference, I was flattered when a couple of the kids that ran the front desk of my hotel told me, “We’ve enjoyed having you here so much, we wouldn’t mind if you moved here”. (I had accepted their invitation to bar hop with them a few times while I was there; they kind of watched out for me knowing I was alone in the city - I didn’t stay at the “suggested” hotel for the conference as it was too expensive).
I don’t really blame the people of Portland for not wanting everyone and their brother to move there (especially the Californians, who just want to make it another LA - ick). It’s a beautiful city, with its own personality - why ruin it with too many outsiders? I live in FL, which is the melting pot of all melting pots as far as drawing people from all over, and as a result this area has no personality at all.
I’m originally from the Detroit area as well, and we used to have a popular t-shirt there with a smiley face w/a bullet in the middle of its forehead that said “Welcome to Detroit, now leave”.
Having grown up a Detroiter, I always saw that as more self-deprecating or ironic, rather than something the wearer meant literally.
I’m all for preserving regional cultures, but there’s a point at which it can be too much of a fortress mentality. If (hypothetically) you don’t want me here, well, where do you suggest I go?
(Again, I don’t mean to overstate this. Quite frankly, I’ve never experienced outward hostility for being a transplant, and now since I’ve been in the area for a while, the likelihood becomes even less so.)
John Larson: Good observations you’ve made, especially re: sum-zero thinking. Though when I’ve explained where I grew up and what’s good about it, I’ve managed to get some people to at least consider that there are other cool places too.
Man, good times! I remember those grungy early-90s days. I was in high school/early college in Portland back then and caught those bands whenever I could. Remember Jane’s/Pixies/Primus at the Keller in late 1990? Still one of the best shows I’ve ever seen!
But I have to say, my current hometown - New Orleans - has a music scene that would be darn hard to beat (outside of NYC or perhaps Austin). In Portland you can find good music on some (maybe most) weekends, but here there’s at least one - if not several or a dozen - good bands playing every night of the week. Between the locals (from jazz/blues legends like Marsalises, Irma Thomas, Trombone Shorty and Irvin Mayfield to funk like Papa Gros Funk to the Zydepunks to the gypsy jazz VaVaVoom to swing like the NOLA Jazz Vipers to Rebirth and Hot 8 and all the other brass bands) and the big names constantly rolling through - even now post-K - you just can’t go wrong…