THURS JAN 21-SAT JAN 23
Dr. Demento lectures at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock
• Jan 21: We’re All Americans Now—Diversity and Integration in American Music
• Jan 22: The Life and Music of Frank Zappa
• Jan 23: Punk Rock from the Beginning
Musicologist, radio personality, and eternal proponent of the weird Dr. Demento graces Portland this week with three lectures at Reed College. While Demento is known nationally for championing idiosyncratic 20th-century Americana and launching the career of “Weird Al” Yankovic, he’s also something of an honorary Portlander: Demento earned his bachelor’s degree in music studies at Reed (he allegedly earned P.E. credits “biking around Portland, looking for old records”) and cut his teeth as a DJ at the college’s radio station, KRRC. In addition to repeat performances of Demento’s acclaimed lectures on Frank Zappa and the history of punk rock is the debut of new lecture We’re All Americans Now—Diversity and Integration in American Music.
SUN JAN 24
Orgy w/Bobaflex, Death Valley High, Dead Animal Assembly Plant at Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside
Pay no mind to the fact they were the inaugural signees of Korn’s own vanity imprint, Elementree Records, or that their band name is fucking Orgy. The group’s debut, Candyass, is one of the more enduring artifacts from the Family Values era, which is otherwise one of the most disconcerting dips in pop music history. Opener “Social Enemies”—how could any millennial forget that iconic, scratchy synthesizer hook?—has probably appeared in at least three movies starring Vin Diesel, and big single “Stitches” is a legitimately good pop song, one that inexplicably sounded “tough” to an entire generation of Mountain Dew-guzzling, Tim Burton-nu-metal miscreants at the turn of the millennium. The band lost any shot they had at distinguishing themselves from their peers with their follow-up, 2000’s Vapor Transmission—a pitiable, obsolete concept album about the dangers of technology from a time when people still went to the library to use the internet.