![]() ![]() Mark Arm smiles indulgently as a rabid Tim Kerr jostles and wrenches a thousand different styles of feedback from an overloading amp. THE MONKEY WRENCH, NEBULA, FIREBALLS OF FREEDOM, THE HEADS They've got some catchy music, though at times their singer is unsettling in his vocal resemblance to John Fogerty. You really have to see it to believe it! The Standard are more straightforward, a cut-and-paste of classic rock and '90s-influenced melodies. ![]() 31 Knots play like they're not afraid of physically falling to pieces, with a dark fusion of beautiful loudness that's metaphysical, powerful, and surprising all at once. They can go from dazzling, light show-demanding solos to interesting strolls in the meadow of jazz discord. The celebrated Cosmos Group package experiments a little, sometimes working the bass against the guitar so that it opens up the boundaries of key allocation. (Ash St.) Right now in Portland, there are a lot of bands that have all different camps of people saying the same thing: "Holy shit! I can't believe they're from Portland!" (Sometimes they say, "Jesus christ! These guys fucking rock!") There's magic happening all over the city those same people are saying, "Things are really starting to come together." It's coagulating because there are enough people with a strong work ethic (and the talent to back it up) that our scene is being revived. This stopover is meant to promote his latest bid at a comeback, and here's hoping whatever it is, is at least as good as what was. Sadly, the self-professed bastard son of Dylan and Baez disappeared shortly thereafter, to resurface every couple of years with a new collection of songs on a new label. I followed John from his great debut, Here Comes the Groom, through to his last full-length, major label effort, Why We Fight, a folk singer's interpretation of film noir. He was all the rage at the turn of the '90s, impressing critics and fans with his wry tales of would-be suitors and the foibles they suffered in the face of their own humanity. (Music Millennium NW) John Wesley Harding, God bless 'im, is that smartass kid from school who never really got the big pay-off that his charming wit deserved. To paraphrase James Brown: Maceo! Blow your mother fucking horn! PHIL BUSSE He has stayed current, touring with Red Hot Chili Peppers and, last summer, Ani DiFranco. Still touring, Maceo's playing has never slipped into the pitfalls of nostalgia, where he so easily could have. As James Brown's right-hand man in the '60s, Parker brought some of this punchier style of saxophone playing into the mainstream, speeding up the tempo and hitting the down notes hard. It was a post-war era when be-bop was pushing aside the polite horn blowers of the big band era. (Roseland) When he was a teenager in the mid-'50s, Maceo Parker's dad would sneak him into the juke jazz clubs around the North Carolina backcountry. Speaking as someone who always hated post-'60s Marley as a crap fusion of all that was bad in reggae AND rock, this isn't necessarily a welcome move. Since then, the DJ has cleaned up his act, converted to Rastafari and is now exciting comparisons with Bob Marley. That was when he played anemic lover's rock. He's the youngest of 15 children, and-if memory serves correctly-got in a certain amount of trouble in England a while back for some rather unsavory lyrics. ![]() Mark Myrie is named after the Maroon word for the starchy, oval-shaped breadfruit eaten in Jamaica (Buju) and Buju's favorite Jamaican dancehall artiste Burro Banton. (Pine Street Theatre) It's not his real name, you know. Plus, their vocalist can actually sing, which, these days, seems like a yard of gold among a vast expanse of charred and molten earth. There aren't any gimmicks with these cats, nor are they trying to hide their influences they just present good songwriting, with a nice balance between power chords and interesting melodies. I must say, though, that I've managed to listen to the entirety of Flophouse Palace's album more than once. (Tonic) In the parlance of our times, there are assloads of bands who try to pull off indie rock-y'know, vocals fueled by the struggle against anomie, slight guitar distortion, some sort of social or emotional point-and I can barely listen to that formula anymore without cringing, especially now that some of our NW friends (who we'll call "BTS" and "MM") have landed all-star deals on big-ass labels and everyone wants to sound like them. ![]()
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