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Adam Gnade
Posted inMusic
This is Psychedelia
Lose Yourself in Portland’s Plants
WHEN I FIRST started working at the Mercury last year I spent a good part of my hours talking psychedelic music with Josh Blanchard, who—at the time—was our accounting clerk. The man knew his shit, so much so that I decided to do our last Music Issue on psychedelic music. This was partially because I […]
Posted inMusic
Spookily Noble
Remembering Angela and Orion
ON JUNE 25, 2003 Portland lost two of its best when Angela Leazenby and Spooky Dance Band leader Orion Satushek were struck and killed by a repeat drunk driver. Every year, on or around the anniversary, Angela and Orion’s friends get together to celebrate their legacy. This time it’s going down at the Artistery as […]
Posted inMusic
The Scene Report
Local Music News
Happy 10th anniversary to Jonny X and the Groadies, local purveyors of beautiful, fucked experimental heaviness. Send them candy-grams, cakes, and roses. A lot of bands lose their energy and give lackluster, limp, boring shows after 10 years. How do you keep it passionate and fun? DJ INVISIBLETOUCH: Practical answer—being conscious of bands that mellow/burn out after […]
Posted inMusic
The Immoralist
Cex Wants to Liberate You
“I TURNED HER OVER and went for that ass. It’s always hard to tell how a girl’s gonna react to having her shitter licked, so I asked her first if it’d be okay. Tyler was into it. My kind of broad.” And so goes the collection of short erotica showcased in the CD book to […]
Posted inMusic
Comfortably Free
Pink Mountain, Confident Amid Disorder
IT GETS CONFUSING. In the same music scene—psychedelic independent rock, subphylum semi-hippie experimental, more or less—there’s Pink Mountaintops and Pink Mountain. The former is Stephen McBean from Black Mountain doing trippy, hypersexual country rock. (“Everything is murky and sinister and rotting in the meth-drenched moonlight,” wrote Jamey Bainer in a recent Mercury story.) The latter […]
Posted inMusic
The Scene Report
Local Music News
Last week I reported on Lauren K. Newman’s (AKA LKN) near fatal head and spine injury. While her recovery has been a slow go, there are a shit-ton of good people pulling for her, including the folks behind helplkn.com, a site set up to help assuage her medical bills. Also, Lauren’s label, Greyday, has put […]
Posted inMusic
The Scene Report
Local Music News
First off, this shit is fucked. GreyDay Productions recording artist LKN (Lauren K. Newman) was seriously injured recently. Says Newman’s friend Jason DuMars, “Lauren fell face first down a flight of stairs and fractured her skull, seriously damaged a major blood vessel, and herniated a disc in her back. Doctors said it’s amazing that she […]
Posted inMusic
Obscurity Now!
Locals Open Underground Record Store
VALENTINE’S restaurant down on 232 SW Ankeny has been putting on some of Portland’s best shows lately, and shit’s just getting better. This Thursday (June 1), local music-makers Tom Greenwood and Pete Swanson unveil Clouds, a staunchly underground record store based in the restaurant’s upstairs loft. But when I say underground I don’t mean your […]
Posted inMusic
Not of This World
The Constantines’ Everyman Reality
THE CONSTANTINES COME complete with an anxious shiver, a jitter of guitars, or one of the singers’ voices quavering out when you least expect it. And it’s familiar—an uneasy, mild paranoia that feels like movies about coke or dark ’80s pop songs or Karen O bristling along with her band’s wind-tunneling howl. It also has […]
Posted inMusic
The Scene Report
Local Music News
Doug Fir assistant booker Nicole Warren recently left for law school. Meet her replacement, Julia Fernandez. What did you do before you got the Doug Fir job? I worked for Greyday, a local label run by my friend Todd [Berry]. My official title was in-house booking agent, but I tried to lend a hand wherever […]
Posted inGeneral
Kick Ass: The Steven Seagal Interview
Or, Steven Seagal and I are Best Friends Forever
The Steven Seagal Issue!