Posted 3:00 PM by Dave Allen
Gang of Four reforms. Yes it does. The interest has been there for years from many people outside our camp and yet within it we could never agree whether we actually wanted to do it. I for one have railed against nostalgia in past newsletters and columns so that's the hurdle that I placed in my own path regarding band reunions, not that it's insurmountable.
November 8th and I find myself on a United flight to London's Heathrow; I even got upgraded to business class. 6.55 AM November 9th and I'm searching the arrivals area for Hugo. 7.10 AM there he is. It was suddenly real, as real as the London drizzle basting the outside of the Heathrow Express as we head in to Paddington Station. We join about a hundred people in line waiting for a taxi. It's at this point that I realize the dollar is worth about 50 english pence, in other words two dollars to the quid. I ruefully presume that Alan Greenspan knows what he's doing as I am to read in a few days that Bush's Treasury Secretary, John Snow, whilst visiting London said that the US would be doing absolutely nothing to slow the dollar's descent into the basement against other currencies. Other countries can now help pay down the debt of US consumer excesses, but I digress.
London's Mayor, Ken Livingston, or Red Ken as he's affectionately known to the inhabitants of Greater London, came up with a plan to combat London's legendary traffic congestion by imposing a daily tariff of about £7.00 (yes, $14.00) to drivers who enter central London so now we speed through light traffic from Paddington. I use speed without irony as at one point in very recent history Londoner's crawled along at a pace less than that of 18th century horsedrawn carriages. Me and Hugo are dropped off outside the Euston Travel Inn. For the price of a suite at the W in Seattle, £90.00 or $180.00, we are offered a room with a twin bed and a pull out couch. No thanks. We park our bags and head over to the offices of Big Life Management in search of Jazz Summers, the man who will be managing the reincarnation of Gang of Four. Cat wrangling comes into my mind but that might be the jet lag.
To be continued.

Posted 11:13 AM by Dave Allen
Ok, I've signed up with FeedBurner so that you can now get my rantings and ravings via RSS feed. Here's the url to subscribe to - http://feeds.feedburner.com/DaveAllensBlog I use News Wire Lite to receive RSS feeds. Here's their address to get your own RSS browser http://ranchero.com/

Posted 10:16 AM by Dave Allen
Out of the gate I have to say thanks to all of you who wrote me emails thanking me for the Pixies review in last week's newsletter. I had no idea that my long-winded ego-centric puff piece would have resonated that deeply amongst you. Although I'm glad that it did because casting light into the darker recesses of the human stain gets me out of bed in the morning. Still, remembering as I write that the Pixies are now living it up, post-Coachella on the Brazilian tour circuit , gave me pause over this morning's first cup of Joe; two thoughts - Brazil, I wish!..... and despair + nostalgia = $$'s.

I know I should be less cynical and I try believe me. Meanwhile having beat the New York Times to print by two days, with my story of how I got my live Pixies CD, courtesy of DiscLive's trailer full of technology behind the theatre that night, I have to give a nod back to the NYT's Jon Pareles for his overview of this years Coachella Festival. He affirms my cynicism.

And I quote, " The new wave was the old school and the 1960's were rock prehistory at the fifth Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival this weekend." He goes on to review The Cure(!), who headlined on Sunday night, for whom he appears to have a fondness, but eventually having scanned four stages over two long days reflects that unfortunately "For most of the Coachella Festival, rock history began in the mid-1970's."
So maybe it's true; Death to the Pixies indeed - we need fresh, we need new. Nostalgia may kill but history is destined to repeat itself, unfortunately. Meanwhile pundits, keep your eye on Broken Social Scene - you read it here second.

- Dave

Dave Allen (DA)
Matt Wright (MW)
Kurt Dahlke (KD)
Jenny Tatone (JT)

Telephone, Mu Meson, Blitzen Trapper, DJ Joelskool and Phil Busse, Lola's Room, May 8th, 8PM, $5
Despair + nostalgia = $$'s could also be a calling card in this year's election campaigns. He (they are always he's) who points out our shortcomings whilst getting dewy-eyed about the past, will most likely raise the most moolah. And that folks is why Phil Busse has more than a million dollars in his war chest and will be Portland's next Mayor!
Just kidding...he may have energy, charisma, charm and ideas by the bucketload, of which about 20 or so of us were witness to firsthand at the home of the lovely Heidi McBride last week, but unlike Francesconi he's cash poor. As much as Matt and me would love to line Phil's pockets with the green, we are pleading poverty. Instead we are throwing a party of sorts at Lola's Room in the Crystal Ballroom this Saturday, May 8th from 8pm on. Phil Busse is the Master of Ceremonies all night so you'll have a chance to heckle him in between sets by Portland's very fine Telephone and Blitzen Trapper plus Washington State's finest, Mu Meson. DJ Joelskool will spin the rock too - until very late he says. All of this for just $5. And you can get free admission to a Portland music seminar - see below. (DA)

Free Music Business Seminar - Register in Advance
All of you musicians who have ever complained to me about the music industry, the music scene, how to book a tour or how to replace a drummer who spontaneously combusted at your last gig - your prayers have been answered, sort of.

On May 21st come on down to Lola's Room in the Crystal Ballroom from noon until 6:30pm for a one day FREE music conference. It's called Music Business Chops and it's a series of one day music seminars traveling up the west coast. I put together the Portland panels, and I have also arranged for FREE admission - read on to find out how to get in for free.

Panelists include Mark Baumgarten, Willamette Week's music editor, Terry Currier of Music Millennium, Bart Day a local music industry lawyer, Jim Brunberg of local Mississippi Studios, and my good self.
There will be other music business professionals throughout the day.
You will all have a chance to ask those pointy questions you've always wanted to ask. You can also sign up for a free one-on-one song demo evaluation and career mentoring session.

The event is sponsored by GC Pro, Guitar Centre's Professional Division and also by the following magazines: EQ, Keyboard, Guitar Player, Bass Player, Pro Sound and Surround. DiscMakers is also a sponsor and that company's VP of Sales and Marketing, Tony Van Veen, will be speaking too. And best of all, it's absolutely FREE!

There are two ways to get free access to this event. (1) Come to Lola's Room this Saturday for the Telephone show and I will be handing out postcards that gives you access. (2) Register here - promo@musicbusinesschops.com. (DA)

First Thursday Happenings
Portland’s most loved/hated monthly art event rears its head tonight, and Dave and I will be there. More specifically, we’ll be at John Brodie’s art opening at Stumptown Downtown (128 SW Third Avenue), featuring (gasp!) art that actually addresses society! Brodie’s installation is comprised of cardboard signs, like the one’s homeless people employ, featuring surreal and brutally honest messages (eg. “We were beautiful in the early days”). Then we’ll be heading over to Old Town for the grand opening of the Fashion Incubator’s new space. The Incubator is a great organization devoted to empower local designers and shops. See you on the streets! (MW)

“Signs, Desperate” by John Brodie, Opening reception: Thursday, May 6 from 6-9pm, Stumptown, 128 SW Third Avenue

Portland Fashion Incubator Grand Opening, 23 N.W. Fifth (corner of Fifth and Couch), 5 – 6pm

Kurt Ponders Decorative Art and the Saward Collection
The dirty word is Decorative art. And here, where many of the spasms of growth are so worked up with defining Portland art or coming up with the ‘next thing,’ it can be instructive to check back with the old non-existent Northwest School of art. It’s tough to be a visionary anyway, and it’s nice to know people can be counted on to make vital, beautiful worked based on a few simple principals.

I crammed into the cramped hallways of a Kaiser Permanente office recently to check out the old-school crew and some fantastic Northwest art from the ‘50s through the ‘70s. This special Last Thursday show displayed the Saward Collection, put together by Virginia Saward, a Northwest artist herself and husband of Kaiser Northwest’s founding medical director.

Mingling with some of the artists, including the delightful Eunice Parsons, I attempted to absorb the draughts of eastern-mysticism, and earth vibrations coming off of mostly abstracts and landscapes. It’s a nice trick in a 3-foot hallway jammed with people holding out maps or plates of crackers, but one I’m not good at.

Louis Bunce was well represented; his large-scale painting Monolith overpowered with a cluster of earth-toned rectangles hovering in gauzy, fleshy space. Nearby Byron Gardner’s Master of the Western Land conjured an ill flutter of black crow-y strokes with religious fervor. George Johanson’s cool cityscapes managed to subvert 3D space, while Melinda Thorsnes’ psychedelic portraits were the exception that proved the rule.

Too much coolness to absorb in one evening, but I’ll be delving into more research, because there’s deep value in this nominally decorative art. There’s little in the way of pedagogy in a painting of the beach, much less the pushing of any boundaries, but somehow that injection of reverent, Northwest mysticism makes it A-Ok. (KD)

Jenny Ponders Art-Punk and the A-Frames
While art-punk often arrives as an afterthought to pretension, don’t expect the A-Frames compelling art-punk set to contain an ounce of it when they play North Portland dive Porky’s Pub Tuesday. And if it’s anything like the last Portland stop the Seattle trio made in the winter, it’ll not only lack elitist snoot, but will outdo it with burning bass repetitions, sparse, tension-drenched guitar work and mighty, robotic beats.

The unassuming, blue-collar demeanor behind the band – chief songwriter and singer/guitarist Erin Sullivan, drummer Lars Finberg and bassist Min Yee – sets their dark, angular punk rock sound distinctly apart from the rest currently mining the apocalyptic post-punk soundscape. Sullivan – who runs Dragnets Records with Finberg – speaks-sings about surveillance cameras, electric eyes and robots as if he were standing frustrated and lost under a black cloud – it’s creepy but delightfully infectious. Despite the thumping simplicity and repetition, the band’s heavy, sluggish sound gets under your skin like shivers infiltrate your spine.

The A-Frames debuted in 2002 with a self-titled album released on Dragnet/S-S Records, following it with last year’s 2 (S-S Records) – both vinyl editions are currently out of print, but CD versions are available. Sure, the show is likely to ignite Wire and Joy Division references but you won’t walk away with a handful of influences as your only source of post-show conversation. There’s simply so much more to the A-Frames – it’s unspeakable so don’t bother explaining to your posturing friends. (JT)

Matt Ponders "Things," Death Cab, and Melissa Farrick
“Not my thing.” Music fans turn this phrase whenever they’re feeling too lazy to explain why they don’t enjoy a certain band or kind of music. But if you think about it, it’s a pretty bold statement. Defining what is and isn’t “your thing” amounts to nothing less than defining yourself, a task that takes most people the better part of a lifetime. Still, last night it seemed pretty obvious which of the night’s live music choices/”things” was mine; I inadvertently chose to wear the exact same outfit that Seth Cohen from The OC was modeling in the photo accompanying Amy Phillips’ excellent Death Cab for Cutie piece for Willamette Week, and more than one of my friends had already asked me if I was going to the show. Well, of course I was – as an “indie-rocker” Death Cab is my “thing,” right?

Maybe, but not last night. The show sold out early, and my friends and I headed to Berbati’s for lack of anything better to do. I had never heard of the singer-songwriter on stage, Melissa Farrick, but one look around the room and it was clear: this was someone else’s thing entirely. The crowd consisted mostly of very enthusiastic lesbians, and Farrick’s lyrics were very much queer-oriented; one of her songs, “I’ll Hold You Up All Night,” provided the most explicit description of lesbian “relations” I’ve heard set to music. But watching Farrick, a lone woman on stage with a guitar, pouring her heart and soul into her confessional, deeply personal songs, I realized it didn’t matter. The real power in music lies in its ability to transcend the silly cultural walls we surround ourselves with, and lay bare the soul, naked and raw. Yes, that’s music – the only “thing” that matters. (MW)

Guest Top Ten List: John Chandler, Portland Tribune

01) War - Grooves so tight you can hang your laundry on them.
02) Iron & Wine - Typical for me: I always discover the great ones like two years after everyone else. Soft and bold like the last majestic words from a dying monarch.
03) Destroyer - Still trying to put this one into words. Daniel Bejar slays me.
04) The Gentle Soul - Old '60 folk-pop reissued on Sundazed. At first listen it's sugary, guy-girl hippie poop. But it grows on you and soon you're infested with smiley vibes. For a gloomy jerk like me, it could prove fatal.
05) Spirit - "The Family That Plays Together" is a criminally neglected psych-pop classic. Most prefer "12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" but this one kills. From start to finish, it's hooks galore that shimmy and soar.
06) Bob Pollard - Rediscovered his first solo album, "Not in My Airforce." Wow! Why was it on the shelf for so long?
07) Fairport Convention - "What We Did On Our Holidays" never fails to bring me back from despondency. Sandy Denny's voice can thaw even the coldest hearts.
08) Horror Hop - Fantastic compilation of scary, haunted house R & B and rockabilly from the '50s and '60s.
09) The Coachwhips - Aaaagghh! My brain's exploding!!!!
10) The Cowsills - You got a problem with that?