Posts from — December 2008

This year’s  celebration honors that past by welcoming in the New Year with an imaginative mix of art, music,  Steampunk fashion, and dance. With a diverse and exciting lineup, this night promises to be an unforgettable evening.

Portland’s own Scott Law joins forces with Keith Moseley (String Cheese Incident), drummer Jeff Sipe  (Aquarium Rescue Unit, Susan Tedeschi) & guitar man Gibb Droll (Marc Broussard) for the highly anticipated West Coast debut of the aptly named Moseley, Law, Sipe & Droll. Joining us for a special post-midnight extended set is the electrifying leftcoast breakbeat/glitch-hop/house duo, EOTO, composed of Jason Hann & Michael Travis. Onstage, EOTO’s music is created, recorded and mixed live for a continually evolving & highly danceable musical experience. The Senate, an up- and coming Seattle- based acoustic rock trio, will kick off the New Years festivities with their catchy songwriting, tight arrangements, sweet vocals, and unorthodox instrumental techniques.

No Shanghai Nights would be complete without a Shanghai Surprise at midnight. Look for members of each of the bands to play alongside special guests, including world renown fiddler Darol Anger, singer/songwriter and the event’s MC, Big Water, and our very own Shanghai Rose Queen, Stephanie Schneiderman. There will also be surprise guests, creative merriment, a sculpture exhibit by musician Tony Furtado, and live painting by Daniel Work, who will be creating the Shanghai Nights commemorative posters during the show.

Shanghai Nights: NYE ‘08
December 31, 2008
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell
Portland, OR 97212
503.284.8686

Tickets: $48 advance, $55 day of show. Ticket prices subject to service fees. Onsale now thru
Ticketmaster, by phone at 503.224.4400, or in person at select Fred Meyer stores. Reduced service fee tickets available at the Wonder Ballroom / Cafe Wonder & PSU Ticket Office.

10 Great Live PDX Shows From 2008

• 4-Mar – Stephen Malkmus & Jicks @ Satyricon
• 19-Mar – Steve Earle @ Aladdin Theater
• 4-Apr – The Black Keys @ Crystal Ballroom
• 3-May – Weinland w/C. Meloy, S. Mcoughy, Norfolk & Western, C. Funk @ White Eagle
• 5-Jul – Eric Lindell @ Waterfront Park
• 27-Aug – Priscilla Ahn @ Lola’s Room
• 4-Sep – Sleepercar / The Blakes @ Dante’s
• 26-Sep – My Morning Jacket @ Edgefield
• 23-Oct – Hayes Carll @ Doug Fir
• 22-Nov – Drive-By Tuckers / The Hold Steady @ Crystal Ballroom

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9AfKcHwoP4]

Portland, Oregon’s The Upsidedown, called “dreamy and decadent in all the right places” by The Boston Globe, have finished recording and mixing their new album, Human Destination, at The Dandy Warhols’ Odditorium. It will be released digitally on the Dandys’ new label, Beat The World Records.

Doug Fir Lounge
THE UPSIDEDOWN
THE HUGS
plus DEEPEST DARKEST
Saturday December 20, 2008
Doors 8pm, Show 9pm / $8 at the door[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDIqBdEqTAU]

Scott McCaughey has once again assembled an all-star lineup of Portland musicians for a one off gig this Friday at Dante’s in downtown Portland.    KMRIA performs what Scott calls their 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxv0t7lVKgM]

10 Great Albums from 2008 – PDX Style

1. Blitzen Trapper – Furr
2. Horse Feathers – House With No Home
3. Blind Pilot – 3 Rounds & A Sound
4. Portland Cello Project – Self Titled
5. Weinland – La Lamentor
6. Richmond Fontaine – $87 and a Guilty Conscience that Gets Worse the Longer I Go
7. Michael Dean Damron & Thee Loyal Bastards – Bad Days Ahead
8. The Shaky Hands – Lunglight
9. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Real Emotional Trash
10. Lewi Longmire Band – Fire ‘Neath the Still

MP3/Download: Lewi Longmire – Whatchoo Gonna Do About It
MP3/Download: Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer
MP3/Download: Blind Pilot – Oviedo
MP3/Download: The Shaky Hands – We Are Young
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HivNEsFpiHw]

The Virgins are an American indie rock band consisting of four members: Erik Ratensperger, Donald Cumming, Wade Oates and Nick Zarin-Ackerman. They were originally from New York City, they formed in 2005 based in New York City, New York. They have toured with Jet and opened for Sonic Youth and Patti Smith and played at the All Points West Festival in 2008. They also performed at the 2008 SXSW festival, and toured in the United Kingdom with The Pigeon Detectives in November and December 2008.

I’ve gotten so used to “New York band” being synonymous with “Brooklyn band” these days that it’s almost jarring to meet a group that’s kept itself planted in Manhattan. “I tried to get an apartment in Williamsburg once,” admits The Virgins frontman Donald Cumming, “but this is home, man.” And unlike so many of those bands that now call Brooklyn home, three-fourths of the Virgins are that rare breed: native New Yorkers. Cumming grew up in the Tribeca neighborhood — before it was Tribeca — guitarist Wade Oates was a West Village kid, bassist Nick Zarin-Ackerman is from the Upper West Side. Only drummer Erik Ratensperger, a Connecticut native, did not grow up in the city.

The New York rockers found themselves thrust into the mainstream last year when the producers of “Gossip Girl” used their EP as the soundtrack for an episode of the show. The Virgins said “I think it made a big difference for people knowing about us,” lead singer Donald Cumming told MTV News, with some understatement. “[When the producers approached us,] I kept thinking ‘Gilmore Girls’ … and I was like, ‘I don’t know if that sounds right!’ “

PRESS: MTV / MTV Interview / DayTrotter

LINKS: http://www.thevirgins.net

MP3/Download: The Virgins – One Week Of Danger
MP3/Download: The Virgins – Rich Girls

Doug Fir Lounge
THE VIRGINS
plus HOCKEY
Friday December 19, 2008
Doors 8pm, Show 9pm / $10 advance, $10 day of show

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13CIzmy6bM4]

First things first: We’re from Japan! is actually from Portland, Oregon. But they may as well be from Japan, because they’re signed to Zankyo Records, and their overseas fan base adores them. It’s always embarrassing when another country “gets” the music of a quality act before the home country, but even Jesus wasn’t appreciated in his home town. I, for one, would love to see this band break big in the U.S. They’ve been paying their dues for five years now, they’re enormously appealing, and they have demonstrated that they are willing to take creative, counter-instinctive risks to further their sound.

We’re from Japan!’s last album, 48 Minutes, 07 Seconds, Then the Open Air (available domestically from Jackpot Records) was a solid post-rock effort that presented the requisite builds, drops and crescendos, but did so in a relatively unassuming way. Standout track “Larsen B” concluded in a wash of strings that peaked all too early; other tracks tended toward the languid and soothing. While there was nothing wrong with this, and the album was certainly worth purchasing, it was not especially memorable, and the listening experience soon faded from memory.

“There Are Horses in the Streets” is the track that makes the listener put down the book, drop the spatula, put the caller on hold, stop texting, sit up and take notice. It starts with a bang, a rustle of drums, a squelch of guitars, a melodic propulsion, and swiftly enters into a series of swoops and swoons which leave the listener breathless and the woofers gasping for air. The Big Moment arrives four minutes in, as the song topples into a pounding, half-tempo trough.

The album’s highlight, however, is the closing piece, the nearly 13-minute “September 13, 1848.” On this date, rail worker Phineas Gage had a tamping iron blasted through his frontal lobes. The 26-year old, with a bar sticking out of his eye, walked toward assistance, sat upright all the way to town, and lived another twelve years. His personality, however, was afterwards observed to change from “hard-working and responsible” to “capricious and profane.” We’re from Japan!’s truly epic piece seems to soundtrack the accident, the emotional fluctuation, the slow, sad retreat from polite society. (The complete stop at 3:36 likely represents the moment after the impaling blow.) If not for the absence of vocals, “September 13, 1848” would be right at home on an iLiKETRAiNS album. One of the tracks of the year? Absolutely. Three years ago, We’re from Japan! ended up on TSB’s list of “25 Missed Releases of 2005.” We’d like to think that this corrects the injustice, so take it from me: Don’t miss out on this one!

PRESS: Virb / R-T-C

LINKS: http://www.werefromjapan.com/

MP3/Download: We’re from Japan – Ants
MP3/Download: We’re from Japan – Extraneous

Doug Fir Lounge
WE’RE FROM JAPAN
plus special guests
Sunday December 14
Doors 8pm, Show 9pm / $8 advance/ day of show
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwSpEpw5HuA]

Among his stories and patient instrumental interludes, Shearer manages to interweave hope into his songs of loss with melodies and lyrics that battle for poignancy. Proving the old adage that pain equals art, John Adam Weinland Shearer started working on a new batch of songs in 2007 with WEINLAND‘s second record, La Lamentor. Darker in feel and heavily influenced by the struggles Shearer faced in relationships and at work in a flawed and troubling mental health system, La Lamentor portrays life’s misfortunes with dark-hued tones and moving lyrics. Shearer says of his experience and how it affects his song-writing, “My eyes are open to a new level of struggle. The people I’ve known and our relationships play recurring roles in the stories I tell.”

Shearer, who spent the last six years working with emotionally disturbed teenagers says, “The complications that come along with working in such an emotionally charged environment force you to think… sometimes it gives you amazing perspective and sometimes it shuts you off.” Featuring guest performances by Adam Selzer (M.Ward, Norfolk and Western), Rachel Blumberg (M.Ward, Bright Eyes, The Decemberists, Norfolk and Western), and Nathan Delffs (The Shaky Hands) among others; La Lamentor was primarily recorded with close friend, and Demersville (2006) co-producer, Adam Selzer at Type Foundry studios. WEINLAND also collaborated with Dylan Magierek, proprietor of Badman Recording Co. (My Morning Jacket, Hayden, Mark Kozelek), hatching a plan to record full band songs with Selzer and hire Magierek to record and co-produce the band’s more acoustic songs with the intention of giving the new recordings a greater depth.

A regularly contributing author to Willamette Week’s Tour Diaries, WEINLAND recently recorded “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” for a Led Zeppelin tribute LP alongside Laura Veirs and M.Ward. They also contributed a track to a live compilation from Portland’s Mississippi Studios featuring Feist and Regina Spector. Both albums are set for release in 2008. With La Lamentor complete, Badman Recording Co. as a new home and a 2008 tour planned, a self-assured WEINLAND prepares to take on the next step when they release La Lamentor on March 4th, 2008. Resigning from his career in mental health to pursue the band’s success full time, Shearer hopes his difficult experiences translate as the musical healing that aided in the record’s manifestation.

PRESS: HARP / Blurt / West Coast Perf.

LINKS: http://www.weinlandmusic.com

MP3/Download: Weinland- God Here I Come
MP3/Download: Weinland – Sick As A Gun

Doug Fir Lounge
WEINLAND
plus MATT SHEEHY & THE BELIEVERS
And JOHN VECCHIARELLI
Friday December 12, 2008
Doors 8pm, show 9pm / $12 advance/day of show
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1kk6JbQUfY]

Last month we brought you the initial post about the the Rock and Shop Flea Market being held this Saturday at Slabtown featuring music for sale from our finest local labels.   

Where?: Slabtown – 1033 NW 16th Ave.
When?: Saturday, December 13th
How Much Is This Gonna Set Me Back?: Nothin’, Admission is FREE!