I give iTunes an 85% (B) on their Essential Portland collection. A friend of mine stumbled across this in the iTunes Music Store, and it’s relatively hard to get to. In fact, the only way I’ve been able to find it is retracing his steps: Search “Copy” under artists, select Copy from the search results, […]

The mighty beast of NoPo gentrification marches on?
Perhaps you remember Wax, the little yellow block of cheap breakfast and all-ages hiphop near the crossing of N Interstate and N Killingsworth. It was a proper little community-minded joint, giving kids in the neighborhood a place to kick it beyond parks and porches. It was a […]

Hooray! My favorite local band is getting back together! This from the Colin Grigson NerdSpace local punk news machine:
-PLAN R is officially getting back together. Yeah, I know, kinda lame since we only had our last show ever not that long ago. The long and short of it is we broke up because Willie quit. […]

“The Northwest doesn’t have too many bands that we really like,” explains David Hoffmann, the softspoken guitarist, songwriter and all-around point man for Portland’s punk-rock sweethearts, the SLiP iTs. Softspoken…and wasted. And at 7 pm on a Saturday evening, so is the rest of the band hanging in the bar: bassist Teri Lea Graves and […]

[SINGERS-SONGWRITERS] I arrive at McKinley’s bungalow, staggering distance from the Space Room and other upper-Hawthorne watering holes, to find the three ladies of Dirty Martini perched on countertops, sipping cocktails, awaiting homemade pizza from the oven and giggling up a storm. As I’m handed a drink, the band members’ lifestyle duties are spelled out: McKinley […]

[FOLK] In the 11 songs of Alela Diane’s debut album, The Pirate’s Gospel, there is barely a reference—musically or otherwise—to the past decade. Or the one before that. Or before that, for that matter. She’s written the sort of timeless, abstract songs that are endangered or extinct outside of folk music, and are still rare […]

Sadly, not everything the SLiP iTS divulged could make it into my Willamette Week profile, Grown Up Wrong; not the least of which being, the band is in the process of recording a seven-inch EP and a proper full length debut, both due out by the end of Fall. As for the rest of what […]

The proprietors of the Captain Ankeny’s Well at 50 SW 3rd Ave must have been a bit taken aback when, last night at about 9 pm, a few dozen frustrated death metal fans strolled up to drown their sorrows in Rogue pints. I had been with them a block away at the Gravity Room when […]

Apparently the Transportation Security Administration is not only allowing some liquids back on flights, but they have also cleared “minimal gothic junkbox blues,” an unstable substance that has been known to blow away entire clubs full of innocent Americans.
Now that I’ve made light of terrorism, onto the news.
Today Hillstomp, Portland’s North Mississippi trance blues […]

Sometimes it’s not the size of the audience, it’s what you do with it. Such was the case with Phoenix, the super hot Parisian alt-y/emo-y/moog-y rock band that played last night at the Wonder Ballroom (so sizzling in fact, that photo-ready front man Thomas Mars has impregnated indie film director Sofia Coppola).
Used to playing […]