New Years Eve Preview

Only one more day left in 2010, and here in Portland people are preparing to wring out every last drop of awesome out of it. We've laid out our top picks for the best events all night, peruse at your leisure after the jump!
And remember kids, whatever you end up doing, if you end up going a little wild this NYE, just keep this in mind: Go balls out, because regrets are for the weak and nobody is going to remember anyway.

Pegasus Dream needs your help!

Portland electro rock band Pegasus Dream needs your help to keep rocking. The band's customized Roland Juno G keyboard was recently thieved from their car, which superbly sucks because they not only can't play concerts until its replaced but they can't get cracking on any new recordings. Luckily they've entered themselves into this Kickstarter contest where combatants raise $2000 - but if they don't make it, they receive nothing. Kind of harsh, but they need the funds for a replacement keyboard, which is one third of their music. Also they want to introduce a sure to be stunning visual element to their live shows.

PegDre puts on an awesome live show and is made up of three genuinely talented musicians...but more than that, they are some chill ass dudes who need a helping hand.

You can donate to them here at the Kickstarter site in any increment you wish. They are at $785 currently and need to make their goal of $2000 by January 17, which is less than a month away! Remember, they get nothing if they don't make it to $2000. $5-50 donations get you a smattering of their awesome merchandise -- their first album Painting Pantheons, stickers, shirts, et cetera -- all of which are extremely viable Christmas presents for the music lover in your life. If you donate $500, keyboards/vocalist Andy Carlson will tattoo your name on his butt. That kid is no liar. He will fucking do it.

Check out two tracks below from Peggy Dre, and toss the guys a few bucks. They're worth every penny!
Pegasus Dream - KGB
Pegasus Dream - Its Ill Eagle

Sticks & Stones Video Musical

Our friends at accessories company Sticks & Stones have teamed up with our other buddies Serious Business to create a music video -- well, a video musical, in actuality. It features a brand new song by the Portland electro group and it's pretty entertaining. The song is called "Godly Fresh," and the video is called 0-60, check it out below!


STICKS & STONES PRESENTS: 0-60 from YEAHWEWOOD on Vimeo.

Here's a Serious Biz track for you about a little thing Portland knows well -- rainy weather and sexi times.


Serious Business - Sweater Weather

Portland, I love you, and you'll never bring me down

Halloween is the weekend in Portland when all of the resident freaks get, well, freaky. It's an excuse to dress up, dance, have fun and go all out; and tonight there's a doozy of an event. Copy, Guidance Counselor and Pegasus Dream, will be throwing a Halloween party at the awesome new venue called The Waterheater. If you live in Portland, you shouldn't be anywhere other than here, if not, I'm sorry you're missing out on this. It's all ages, and there is a bar for those who are 21+. For everyone's enjoyment, I'm dishing out some tracks that only proves the talent and musicianship of these bands.

Die Antwoord 10-14-2010

Die Antwoord last Thursday was honestly the best hip hop show I've been to. Ninja and Yo-Landi brought an unprecedented level of energy to the Crystal Ballroom. Ninja was leaping into the crowd, and although he missed a couple cues and started rapping at the wrong time, he was having a better time performing than a lot of other musicians I've seen recently. Yo-Landi won the heart of every man, woman and child with her pidgin english and half-shirt. The only critique was the show's duration -- about an hour, over by 11:30 and no encore. If they're rolling through your town, do not miss them!

See about half of the concert below!

Sunday night kicked ass for two reasons

The first reason:


Luciano Oliveira from The Twelves, RAC, and Remy the Restless played consecutive DJ sets till 3AM at a Portland house party.

The second Reason:


The show happened to be at Volcano City's House.

I wish we had recorded the set itself because I would be listening to it right now. Luciano has a way of blending songs together with The Twelves' disco-infused beats which made it hard to stop dancing. This resulted in a sexy sweat lodge of a basement filled with sticky people, and yet somehow Luciano managed to stay cool and collected as he rounded out a 2 hour set at 3:15 in the AM. We already wish we could do last weekend just one more time. LUCIANNNNOOOOOOOO! Please come back and party with VC again soon!

More vids HERE and HERE and HERE

Del ripped it down last night

The Rotture hosted a free hip hop concert last night with the highlight being Del The Funky Homosapien. He finally got on stage at around one oclock and seemed pretty messed up...but whatever. He closed the night out with the Gorillaz song "Clint Eastwood"...well, it was the beats and chorus of Clint Eastwood but Deltron thought it appropriate to ad-lib every verse. Pretty great stuff. Pop over to youtube to watch it fullscreen in HD.

The Mercury, You Slay Me.

The Oregonian's article about the recent controversy over a Portland cop entering an anarchist cafe, buying a coffee, and then being told to leave had the above photo running along with it. The Portland Mercury in all its hilarity noticed that it looks more like a band's press photo than a co-op anarchist café's staff. "Name That Band!" they said. Hilarity ensues.
Some of my favorites:
"There's No Such Thing As Vegan Cocaine"
"Original Angsters"
"Clap Your Hands Say Meh"
"The Just Moved From California Raisins"
"The Meh Meh Mehs"

Send in your suggestion and maybe they'll start offering a prize. Read all the comments here.

got this text...

"1st ever guerilla style BlueberryPieCake under hawthorn bridge water and madison tomorrow 630 start time, end while it gets dark. bring blankets chairs candles and masks. No cans or bottles sippy cups only for we dont want open container fines wooo hooo spread the word@"

Do we know what this entails exactly? No. Do we get the gist of it? Yes. Are we going to be there with masks on to watch the sun set over Volcano City? You better bet your last Blueberry pie cake.

ATOLE house party tonight!

tonight, baby. Our place. Atole's bringing some cool lookin Strike Zone 7"ers to sell, so get one! come and DANCE!

PDX Pop Now! Compilation Album!

PDX Pop Now is the premier music festival of Portland (sorry, MFNW). There, I said it. What else could you want? It offers the best of local Portland bands, it takes place right in the middle of summer, it's mostly outdoors, and it's all-ages (but you can drink in the Rotture if you need a lil summer thirst quencher). Oh yeah, it also will cost you nothing. Jack. Squat. Every year, not only do they put together a festival, but they also release a compilation album celebrating some of the best of Portland's music. The track-listing for the double album has been released. Click after the jump for it

The Best "New" Portland Bands of 2010

Willamette Week, the alternative journal that covers all things Portland, has an annual competition for the 10 best new Portland bands of each year. The bands are voted on by peers (musicians, writers, promoters, bookers, etc.) also heavily involved in the Portland music scene. Well, just in time for the summer music crush, they've just released the results for the best new bands of 2010. Here they are:

1. Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside
Click to download mp3 of 'Danger'

2. Typhoon
Click to download mp3 of 'Starting Over'

3. Deelay Ceelay
Click here to download an entire album!

4. Hosannas (formerly Church)
Click to download mp3 of 'Golden Girls'

5. Wampire
Click to download mp3 of 'Orchards'

6. Operative
(listen to a song on their blog)

7. The Miracles Club
Click to download mp3 of 'A New Love'

8. Aan
Click to download mp3 of 'Wet and Dripping'

9. Atole
Click to download mp3 of 'Strike Zone'

10. Red Fang
Listen to songs on their website


Check out the original article

Record Store Day!

Today is Record Store Day! Go out and grab some vinyl. Oh man you just.bought. a record last week and it was like twenty bucks! Should've waited for the holiday, my friend, because now you gotta do it again. I think records are an awesome way to listen to music. In other news, water is wet.

Jackpot Records' is having two FREE events at their downtown location at 203 SW 9th today. At 3pm the guy from Grails will be spinning some jams, which is going to be...I have no idea. Grails is crazy. Itll be good.

Then at 5 the new amalgam Ylang Ylang will be performing. Ylang Ylang is a band with an almost completely null myspace consisting of Charlie from Panther (despite this being musically distant from Panther, expect the same live exuberance from him) with Ricci of Patterns, Caroline of Spooky Dance Band and Jake from Joggers and The Shaky Hands. The members of Ylang Ylang have described themselves as "the Who if the Moody Blues and Sonic Youth were playing at the same time." Should be pretty interesting.

Attendance of this would most likely increase chances of meeting a new girlfriend/boyfriend who likes a certain winning trifecta - free live music, big stupid CDs or whatever the hell those things are, and Volcano City.

Free 21-Song Sampler from Kill Rock Stars!

Kill Rock Stars, the Portland, OR label that has been doing great things for the past 20 years has just put up, for yours, ours and everyone's enjoyment, a free 21-song sampler of the some of the finest their label has produced over the years. Why should you download it RIGHT NOW? We'll just let the tracklisting answer that for ya

Tracklisting

01 ELLIOTT SMITH "Angeles" from Either/Or
02 THE THERMALS "Now We Can See" from Now We Can See
03 GOSSIP "Standing In the Way of Control" from Standing In The Way of Control
04 THAO "When We Swam" from Know Better Learn Faster
05 SLEATER KINNEY "Oh!" from One Beat
06 PANTHER "Love Is Sold" from Entropy
07 UNWOUND "Corpse Pose" from Repetition
08 THE PAPER CHASE "What Should We Do With Your Body? (The Lightning) from Someday This Could All Be Yours (Part 1)
09 XIU XIU "Dear God, I Hate Myself" from Dear God, I Hate Myself
10 DEERHOOF "Believe E.S.P." from Friend Opportunity
11 QUASI "Repulsion" from American Gong
12 MARNIE STERN "Transformer" from This Is It...
13 STEREO TOTAL "I Love You, Ono" from My Melody
14 LILIPUT "Ain't You" from Liliput
15 BIKINI KILL "New Radio " from New Radio
16 BRATMOBILE "Die" from The Real Janelle
17 COMET GAIN "Kids In The Club" from Realistes
18 THE SHAKY HANDS "Allison and the Ancient Eyes" from Let It Die
19 THE DECEMBERISTS "16 Military Wives" from Picaresque
20 HORSE FEATHERS "Curs In The Weeds" from House With No Home
21 JEFF HANSON "Hiding Behind the Moon" from Son

Click here for link to download site
or just type in www.killrockstars.com/sampler/

House Party Tonight!

Let me paint a picture here. Its a picture of you. I'm painting you confused, listless, half drunk, lying down with your legs folded under you ala Christina's World with a five dollar bill in each hand. You're looking back to that house. What's in that house? You're so lost.

I've drawn a second painting. Its you, with those two fives I gave you earlier. You're giving one of them to the girl on the keg and she hands you a cup of what is probably Pabst. The other you're giving to the people who live there because you're a nice guy wanting to help them out with their police citations. Ah, super chill of you, dude. Okay, I can maybe paint over the 5 symbol to make it say 1. It still helps.

Tonight, at 3828 SE Tibbets Pocketknife, ADVENTURES! with Might, Your Canvas and Tattered Times are playing and it will be really rad. Pocketknife is a pretty poppy dance rock band that has a song about Hank Venture from the Venture Bros, which makes me extremely happy. I've seen ADVENTURES! with Might before and hes pretty fun too, he covers Andre Nickatina's "Ayo" and nobody really sees it coming. The fucking Myspace player cut out so I don't know what Tattered Times and Your Canvas sound like, but I'm sure you're going to have a good time when you show up to this.

Rainbow zebras will be in attendance giving out free rainbow zebra gum. So show up right at 8.

Portland Ecstasy!

Picture says it all. This summer, seven of Volcano City's best dance acts are coming together to release a 12 inch LP entitled PDXTC. Atole, Breakfast Mountain, May Ling, Guidance Counselor Wampire and Jeffrey Jerusalem have combined forces to create (hopefully) one of the best Portland mixes since Copy's "86 Til Infinity" podcast for XLR8R in 2008.

Breakfast Mountain has released the song they've contributed for it, which you can listen to here at their tumblr. Its a heavy hip hop banger that you can definitely get lost in. Become a fan of it on Facebook here and you can receive regular updates from the bands themselves. Expect it for a pre-Memorial Day Weekend release on May 27th, 2010.

Tobacco, Small Black, Washed Out, The Hood Internet, Pictureplane@ Holocene

Last night the Holocene held a lineup which is in high demand right now. First on deck was Washed Out, who is quickly becoming a heavyweight in the unnameable 'chillwave' or 'glo-fi' scene. This man knows his way around a synthesizer. Pictureplane was a definite crowd pleaser who laid out some really unique sounds. Each song was a new flavor for the ears. The beats were accompanied by a trio of stage dancers who not only were dressed like they were ready for Burning Man, but kept the crowd going with some sweet 3-way dance moves. After a stage change, Small Black put on a great show. The 4 piece group started off right with some dreamy keyboards and vocals. It sounded like Tokyo Police Club on ritalin with a glo-fi twinge.

Next up was the Cali duo Tobacco. The mix of beats and trip hop thumping bass mixed seamlessly with their visuals. A large video monitor displayed clips so non-sequitur it boggled the mind. A live ChatRoulette projection also added a little bit of spice/male nudity to the Gorilla-masked front man Tom Fec. Rockin' the house comes naturally for the man behind such crazy-minded projects like Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Everything wrapped up with mash-up champs: The Hood Internet. When you put on a set that combines indie goodness from Glass Candy, Passion Pit and Little Boots with the ghetto fab of Juvenile, Weezy and Gucci, its hard not to set a dance floor off. Be sure to catch these artists again, because the place was so crackin' it could have changed that sourpuss Garfield's mind about Mondays.

There's a whole slew of mp3s after the jumpbreak from these artists, slurp em up

Reed Party TONIGHT

I was going to write this big thing comparing the decadence and splendor of parties at Reed College to ancient Roman orgies with vomatoriums and naked slaves but while researching I fell prey to lustful Wikipedia's own tidier orgy of knowledge and so after an hour of link-filled text I have nothing to offer further on that allegory except for the fact that apparently the Vatican only gets one more Pope and then Rome will be destroyed.

The fine young hooligans at Reed College, on the other hand are not likely facing destruction in their place of worship. I've always had a fun time at their concerts. Smoke rises to the often toilet-papered rafters as a stage too easily filled by the crowd itself hosts such previous great acts as Pictureplane and Best Coast. They've created an incredibly welcoming shrine to the god of Having A Good Time.

Tonight High Places is set to play along with Breakfast Mountain, Sunburn and DJ Molly Ringwald. Trust me, you are not going to want to miss it. Doors are at 9:30 but a beer garden opens at 6 so feel free to head on down and get it going early. In a decidedly non-decadent turn, all proceeds are going to Mercy Corps to help with that bump 'n grind in Haiti.

See you there. SPRING BREAAAAK ! ! !

Reporter!

Time to show a 'lil Portland love.

Reporter, in the playground that is Portland's music scene, reminds me of the undersized, yet feisty kid that never takes any shit from nobody. Combining dark guitar lines, ice-chill melodies and shake-it-till-ya-drop drumming, Reporter has established itself as one of Portland's best dance party bands. If you ever have a chance to see them live, do so. Until then, here are some tracks with which to get acclimated.

Reporter- Geronimo's Bones

Reporter- Clicksha

going away party