State of Mind at the Crystal Ballroom.
1500 high school students crammed Portland’s Crystal Ballroom on May 30th raising $18,000 to help keep music programs in Portland schools. Midway through the night four of their own, students from Grant High, took the stage with their hip hop outfit State of Mind….the place went crazy, check the video.
First Thursday: Nick Jaina
Main Lobby, Gerding Theater at the Armory
6-7:15 pm, June 6
Free to the public (all ages welcome)
First Thursday in June, Nick Jaina, one of the keystones of Portland’s indie-pop scene (alongside folks like Laura Gibson, Loch Lomond, and Menomena), performs his evocative music. An artist with fantastic momentum, OPB says Jaina’s music is “full of the kinds of songs that sound as if they could have been written in any one of the past several decades, as comfortable next to Cole Porter as they are Tom Waits or (to a lesser degree) the Black Heart Procession.” Don’t believe it, hear for yourself below.
Hockey throwing down at Redlands University, CA
Hockey turned up on my radar when Peter Murray, who works with Pink Martini, slipped a CD into my hand at a Grammy discussion I was holding at Nemo last month. After hearing their excellent new album, Mind Chaos, I thought I’d interview the boys in the band……here it is.
1. Tell me about your experience on Epic/Columbia.
A few weeks after Benny and I graduated from college we met our big time, high roller managers in LA. They filled us with hope and confidence about this song and that song being a “smash” etc. Things seemed totally great for a while. We had our budget college demos shopped around to a bunch of record execs, played some pants-shitting showcases and eventually signed with Epic records. The decision from there was to put us in the studio to rerecord our “hits” (this direction came directly to us from the biggest fat cat at the top of the Sony music shit heap- we’re practically famous!). So we hit the studio with the hope of a quick three months and then hitting the road- Europe, Japan, Letterman! Three months turned into a year and a half. We spent time with two different producers in LA before landing with Jerry Harrison from the Talking heads in San Francisco. Throughout the process Benny and I were slowly beaten into the ground by the pressure of having to please the suits. Compounded with the fact that we were a two-piece with little to no live show and no touring base, we just didn’t have the songs, or the wherewithal to put the whole thing together (we blame ourselves). Eventually we were moved from Epic to Columbia, a bigger label where two guys called Hockey were even more liable to get lost in the shuffle. In the studio the producers wanted radio pop gloss and we wanted to be cool and make young people music. Our managers wanted this and that, and the label wanted Gnarles Barkley’s “crazy”. When all was said and done we kept all the money and the gear they bought us and moved to Spokane. We were officially dropped by a letter from our lawyer a few months later. NO shit.
2. Why did you move to Portland?
We moved to Portland last fall looking for a small yet up and coming music scene, a place filled with art and music and young people and all that counter culture and on and on. Seattle seemed totally gigantic and apocalyptic to us while Spokane was just way out there, isolated and off the map (duh). Portland made sense as an in between, and still located in the beautiful and enchanted northwest. We love it! Riding bikes and… just thinking…random…thoughts.
3. You’re about to hit the road, how are you traveling?
We’ve got an old (OLD) ford passenger van that we bought from our friends The Trashies (rip) in Seattle. Its creepy as hell (the ladies tell us) with big heavy blackout curtains and blue shag carpeting. The ride is quite comfortable though, all our sweaty butts in our own captains chairs. We also hooked up a trailer for our gear so its 35 mph over the mountains, baby! The good news is with our stuff in tow, we can sleep stretched out in the way back. The bad news is, that’s the good news.
4. Where and how did you record the new album?
We started recording our record last fall at a rented rehearsal space in industrial northwest Portland. The room was the size of broom closet and it had a strange stain on the wall that never dried. We named the stain “grossey” but ended doing mostly demos of the songs there. In November we ran out of money and had to move home. We made do by throwing some crappy sound boards on the walls of a room in our basement (sorry Chris and Jessie) and made a ton of noise there to record the record. We did it all on our own and it took us forever and drove us to the outer reaches of human sanity, what the MIND can absorb! But we’re really happy with the way things turned out! J
PDX Pop Now! is pleased to invite you and everyone you know to its CD Release Benefit, an all-ages party featuring live local music as well as an amazing raffle with items from local labels and businesses. All proceeds for the show will go to covering costs for the 5th Annual PDX Pop Now! Festival (free and all-ages on July 25th – 27th). The Benefit will take place at Holocene - 1001 SE Morrison
on Thursday, June 12th. The doors will open at 8 pm and the live music starts at 9pm. The cover is $10 and that will include a copy of the 2008 PDX Pop Now! Compilation CD. PDX Pop Now! And Holocene have made special arrangements with the OLCC to allow minors into the Benefit, so this show is All-ages. Come and support Local Music!!
Here are the details in short order:
What: PDX Pop Now! CD Release Benefit (All-ages)
Where: Holocene 1001 SE Morrison Street Portland, OR 97214
When: Thursday, June 12th - doors 8/show 9
Cost: $10 w/ free PDX Pop Now! 2008 Compilation of local music
Raffle: Featuring AWESOME raffle prizes donated from generous local businesses. PDX Pop Now! still
accepting raffle prizes if you know a local business who would like to donate!
Featuring performances by:
Southern Belle
White Fang
Yacht
Fist Fite
Lykke Li on stage at Doug Fir. Pic ©Nilina Mason-Campell
Live review by Nilina Mason-Campbell:
So Mary J Blige and Jay-Z’s Best of Both Worlds tour never made it’s way to Portland, but the city got a track from that setlist when Lykke Li covered “Can I Kick It?” as her encore at the Doug Fir on Friday night. How many openers do encores? Before she even took the stage in support of fellow Swede El Perro del Mar, it seemed like it was a headline set by Lykke Li. People asked each other, “Are you here for Lykke Li?” at the venue entrance and then gathered around the stage in the front was a definite fan section that quickly dispelled at the close of her set. She purposely steered clear of her ballads and kept her time on the stage under red and blue lights very upbeat with her up-tempo songs and a guest appearance from Miss del Mar. Her songs “I’m good I’m Gone,” which is receiving tons of buzz thanks to the quirky video and first single “Little Bit” drew the biggest cheers. In between songs there were the inevitable shouts of ‘I love you” and the very warranted “You’re hot.” She was most definitely on form - far better and more charismatic then when I saw her in the daytime during SXSW in March. Night time suits her. So does Portland. Hopefully she and her megaphone will be back soon. Oh and her cute backing male musicians. Can we import the whole band?
