XRAY.fm Holiday Glam & Goth Ball
Join the great non-profit radio station for a non-lame holiday party in this season full of incredibly lame holiday parties. It’s time to get creative, too, as you’re encouraged to head to the Spare Room with some combination of, you guessed it, both colorful and non-gender-conforming glam and all-black goth styles. Think you can pull off Ziggy Stardust and Siouxsie Sioux, at the same time? DDDJJJ666 will be spinning records and Bowie cover band Boys Keep Swinging will be rocking out. It should be fun.
8:30 pm, The Spare Room, $10
Red Fang, Pushy, Acid Wash
Scene stalwart Jake Cheeto has been undergoing successful cancer treatment, and tonight some of his musical buds are teaming up to raise money to help him pay for all that hospital stuff. When your buds include the heavy maestros of Red Fang, that’s more than enough reason to leave the house. Throw in Pushy and Acid Wash, and you’ve got enough pure rock power to kick cancer right in the ass. NED LANNAMANN
9 pm, Dante’s, $15
Pedro the Lion, Advance Base
Pedro the Lion only released four albums, but boy did people connect with them deeply: sad kids (and adults) who didn’t dig the aggression of emo. Folks with a taste for melancholy melodies. Pacific Northwest indie scenesters. Christians looking for an alternative to mainstream Christian music. Fans of top-shelf storytelling. From 1995 to 2006, David Bazan was the creative force behind this faith-curious indie-rock band, by all accounts a modestly successful venture with a passionate, medium-sized fan base. But since Bazan shuttered the project to focus on his solo work, interest in Pedro the Lion has grown, and now a whole bunch of people are stoked for reunion shows and new recordings. That’s why the band’s three-night Portland stand is totally sold out. BEN SALMON
Dec 16-18, 8 pm, MIssissippi Studios, $20 good luck on the resale market!
The Shape of Water
Guillermo del Toro’s latest is strange, sweet, and wonderful, and easily the greatest film ever made about a mute cleaning lady who falls in love with an amphibious fish man. ERIK HENRIKSEN Also see “Guillermo del Toro Discusses the Tragedy and Delight of The Shape of Water,” Film, Dec 13.
Various Theaters, see Movie Times for showtimes and locations
Cam, Logan Mize
The singer/songwriter known simply as Cam has managed to carve a comfortable path between the two extremes of country music success. Her sound is neither solidly nostalgic, à la Margo Price and Kacey Musgraves, nor does it turn down the twang and stomp used by crossover hitmakers like Lady Antebellum. ROBERT HAM
8 pm, Hawthorne Theatre, $19.50-23, all ages
Violence Creeps, Toyota, Vog, Negative Option
Many contemporary punk bands journey into darkness and despair by drafting behind the behemoths of ’80s post-punk, and too often the results are wan reflections of cold terror, familiar ghosts that comfort instead of spook. Oakland’s Violence Creeps also scout the past for sounds charged with malice and dread, but they’re more likely to end up in the primal zone described by the Germs’ “Shut Down” and Flipper’s “Sex Bomb.” With the right tour guides, this can still be legitimately scary territory, and Violence Creeps knows exactly where the gnarliest pockets of slime and grime still thrive. The band is at its best when it gives itself over to mid-tempo meltdowns, viciously simple songs that throb with baleful promises of mutant shapes and startling new versions of death. It isn’t pretty at all. But have you noticed the world lately? This is the soundtrack it deserves. CHRIS STAMM
8 pm, The Know
The Goonies
Samwise Gamgee and Thanos ask Short Round, a chubby exhibitionist, and a bad Michael Jackson impersonator to join them on a treasure hunt on the Oregon coast, where Joey Pants and the FBI dickhead from Die Hard are illegally detaining an ex-football player with encephalitis. Will this motley gang of misfits find Captain Dick Joke’s secret stash of gold coins? Will everyone speak solely in perforated shrieks and yelps? Will you start to wish you were just playing the old NES game again instead of sitting through your 50th viewing of this tired nostalgia exercise that constitutes roughly 17 percent of Astoria’s economy? Hah! C’mon. Goonies never say die, right? It’s our time down here! BOBBY ROBERTS
2 pm, NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, $5-9
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Whatever your take on Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, you’ve got to give the band props for sticking to neo-swing revivalism two decades after the fad passed. Back when men called each other “money” and wore porkpie hats without a trace of irony, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were the among the biggest rock stars of the retro swing craze, with multi-platinum record sales, TV and film appearances, a Grammy nomination, and a live performance at the 1999 Super Bowl alongside Stevie Wonder and Gloria Estefan. But that brief period is now like an embarrassing high school yearbook photo—better not mentioned at all. And yet Big Bad Voodoo Daddy continues to carry the torch for swing revival (or is it now swing revival revival?), with their latest album, Louie Louie Louie, a collection of songs by the great purveyors of swing: Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, and Louis Prima. The band has also released three Christmas albums, so it’s a fair bet that this show will feature plenty of swinging carols to get you dancing and prancing and jingling around the clock. SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY
7:30 pm, Arlene Schnitzer Concewrt Hall, $25-75, all ages
Frontflip
There’s something so satisfying about hardcore’s ability to express extreme emotions, and that even the least aggressive listeners can find catharsis in its energy. The music of Frontflip features all of the genre’s typical trappings: abrasive vocals, driving power chords, and violent yet tightly controlled percussion. Despite its somewhat stereotypical sound, the band stands out with lyrics discussing identity politics—unusual subject matter for hardcore. Maybe if more bands were able to drop the hypermasculine act, the genre as a whole would be less of a toxic wasteland. This show is a benefit for No! to Rape Culture, a local organization that “aims to dismantle patriarchal structures within the punk/hardcore/metal scene.”
7 pm, Anarres Infoshop
Twist Your Dickens
Portland Center Stage presents the Second City’s Christmas spoof Twist Your Dickens, directed by Ron West and featuring some of the city’s finest stage performers, including former Santaland Diaries Crumpet Darius Pierce, and Craig Cackowski as Scrooge.
7:30 pm, Portland Center Stage, $25-82
Don’t forget to check out our Things To Do calendar for even more things to do!