You’ve seen France’s La Blogotheque and we’ve shown you Black Cab Sessions direct from London—now it’s time for a Portland spin on quirky concert videos—the Penny Jam. The Penny Jam is an “almost weekly” online broadcast of concerts in the darnedest of places! Penny Jam’s producer, Scott Carver has this to say via his own blog (which is the bees knees of blogs):

It’s not an entirely original idea, but then again what is, everybody has a video podcast these days. Okay maybe not but I think that the main distinguishing factors of this project are 1) the fact that we are promoting Portland music and shooting in Portland locations 2) we’re focusing on keeping the production value really high.

Practiced folk-pop outfit Canoe inaugurated the Penny Jam with a set at the Monochrome Gallery and, so far, four installments have hit the web, the latest being one by Latin-tastic duo Magic Johnson:

Magic Johnson at the Dollar Scholar from The Penny Jam on Vimeo.

Magic Johnson’s face-paint reminds me of the Mexican brother and sister duo on NBC’s Heroes—one of them would bleed from the eyes as a sign of their power killing/ healing powers. Magic Johnson is no doubt unleashing some power of its own with it’s L.A.-bred, Portland-based bi-lingual punk rock. And you can catch them tonight, April 18th, playing along side New Bloods and the Old Haunts at Work/Sound (on SE 8th and Alder).

The other star of the video just so happens to be the coolest dollar store known to man-kind: Dollar Scholar, located on 33rd and Hawthorne in SE. Bummed you missed out on the Magic Johnson party? Well you’ve got a second chance of sorts this upcoming Sunday. Break out your eye-patches and peg-legs! The Dollar Scholar is throwing a pirate party on April 20th! I trust I will see you there!

Links:
The Penny Jam
Magic JohnsonSpace
Magic Johnson “Pansy Grrl” Cut of the Day
The Penny Jam flickr
Scott Carver’s blog

Photo by Joe Mansfield