Week of 09/06/2008 - 16:00 to 09/13/2008 - 15:59

Photo by Todd Cooper

Whoever booked 31Knots to play the EC, I owe you a beer. Seriously. I'll pay up and everything. Because that was awesome. Tons of songs from Talk Like Blood, the singer layering a different outfit over the one he was initially wearing to play the last three songs, their total indifference to the spotty crowd (which grew as the show went on), the way that for once the parts being played electronically didn't seem like a cop-out (maybe because everyone in the band was so good on their own) ... yeah. I've been waiting for three or four years to see them, and it all lived up to my internal hype. And was fantastically entertaining, too.

If you weren't there, you missed out. Even though yes, as some folks were yelling, they did need to turn up the bass. And that's not a complaint I make often.

So I'm finally going to do the entire Eugene Celebration thing. In years past I've only been able to attend — maybe — one night of the EC due to my extensive September touring schedule. But this year I reversed the tables and got some of my relatives to visit me instead. "It's Eugene's biggest event," I told them. "How can I keep missing it?"

Well, I'm still (purposefully) missing the ass-crack-of-dawn EC Parade. (I mean really, why can't they hold the parade in the late afternoon/early evening of Friday or Saturday? There is no reason not to.) But I will definitely make it to the one-two punch of Menomena and The Helio Sequence on the Rogue Stage Saturday night. And this is why:

Thanks for the tip, Merc.

Lots of pats on the backs and awards were given out at today’s opening of the 2008 Mayor’s Art Show at the Jacobs Gallery. The Eugene art scene’s luminaries came out, bedecked in their finest. (Meaning: Paint stains weren’t to be found.) Given her small list of duties, we were wondering why the 2008 S.L.U.G. Queen, Marie Slugtoinette, failed to show for her ribbon-cutting duties with Mayor Kitty Piercy. Luckily a former queen happened to be in the audience and stepped forward so the tradition can live on.

And the winners are …

• Best of Show:
Strength, sculpture by Charly Pritchard Swing

• Mayor’s Choice Award:
Doors, photograph by Hugh Stump

• Director’s Choice Award:
Memory Variations X — Light in Winter Woods, hand-colored photograph by Jo Warren

• Designer’s Choice Award:
Darkness Was Upon the Face of the Deep, mixed media by Marilyn Odland

• Jurors’ Choice Awards:
Harvest, photograph by Jim Earl

Seahorse Taverna, Molyvos, watercolor by Geoffrey McCormack

Bremen Town Musicians, terra cotta sculpture by Linda Dyer

• Honorable Mention:
Love life — Live Love, photograph by Robin Bachtler Cushmann

• Chuck’s EW! A Blog. Choice Award:
The Living Word of God, mixed media by Kenneth Paul Tripp

(The Viewer's Choice Award will be awarded on the First Friday ARTWalk on Oct. 3. So get on down to the Jacobs Gallery and vote! Also, get to the Salon des Refuses at New Zone and vote there, too! And, uh, while you're at it, remember to VOTE HERE TOO, because polls close next Wednesday!)

I think I have a crush on Craig Ferguson now.

(For what he says, folks. Though that accent sure doesn't hurt...)

Barbara and I drove up to the Gorge last Saturday to check out Rock the Bells ... probably one of the best hip hop lineups I've ever seen. Tribe Called Quest + Pharcyde reunited! That's enough to make you wanna drive 6 hours alone. Here are some photos from the day. Click any image to see the whole gallery. BiG THANX to Tre and Martha for the hospitality! Good seeing y'all again. & if you missed the Camilla's cover story last week that featured them, be sure to check that out.

Mos Def, Green Lantern and Maseo of De La Soul

The Pharcyde

Tre crowd surfing

Booty Brown gettin' down

Fatlip & the dudes killed me with the Bobby Brown cover.

Dave and Posdnuos of De La

Barbara with Michael Rappaport ... who was running around with a video camera doing interviews (or so it looked)

The mighty Mos

Spank Rock lounging

Amanda Blank and Spank

Cool Kids blazed out on the couch

See earring for caption info

Nas

I got the news that I had just became an uncle right before Tribe went on ... needless to say I split from the show and missed their set. I'll catch 'em if there is a next time.

A longer version of the article in the paper today, and with apologies to Nir Kabaretti, whose longer interview I'll put up later today:

Speed Dating at the Symphony
Second candidate comes to town
by Suzi Steffen

A mere week after the Eugene Symphony’s whirlwind courtship with Nir Kabaretti, the second of three candidates for the music director job arrived in town with a plan and a challenging program for the Symphony. Danail Rachev, originally from Bulgaria, spent three years with the Dallas Symphony as assistant conductor before moving this fall to Philadelphia, also as assistant conductor.

Rachev, like the other two candidates, will conduct the first movement of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and one movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. For his concert at 8 pm Friday, Sept.12, he also chose Schubert’s Overture to Rosamunde and Alexander Borodin’s Symphony No. 2 in B Minor.

EW chatted with Rachev about music, programming and Eugene’s glorious summer weather.

I heard that when you visited Eugene for an earlier interview, you liked it because it reminded you of Bulgaria.

Yeah. Yeah, I always liked green, and also, the weather is nice. After three years in Dallas, I feel like there is more air here. The smells of trees are different. I like it here. It’s a beautiful town, and the wine I had yesterday was great! The people are nice, and the weather is fantastic.

You were pretty successful in Dallas.

I had some great years in Dallas, conducted several concerts, and the orchestra is great. As assistant conductor, sometimes some of them don’t have many concerts, but Dallas actually gave me a lot of opportunities. Plus, I like the city, I like the people — I just don’t like the weather.

I know you started playing piano at age 5. Tell me how you got interested in music and in conducting.

It was my father, basically. I remember liking something about it. We didn’t have a piano at the beginning, and I had to go practice at some neighbors’ [house]. I remember that they checked my ears because my uncle and my father, they never were professional musicians, but they played instruments and studied the instruments. You have to make sure that the ears work OK; they were playing high or low on a guitar, can I reach it, can I hear it?

But I was never a prodigy, never, even though the playing was good and I started to play bigger music, sonatas and concertos. Then I started going to concerts, especially pianists, and then I started feeling other music is great besides piano music, and I decided to apply to the conservatory in Sofia. I started studying there when I was 20 because I had to go into the army [before]. I studied choral conducting. The musical life in Sofia is serious — three symphony orchestras, opera, operetta. Afterwards, I was working in Germany with choirs of Bulgarians and Russians; we’d have to do 80 concerts in 90 days, and every one in a different place. Then I saved up some money and came to study here [at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore]. And everything started after that.

How does your experience conducting choral music help you conduct orchestral music?

Choral practices are strong in Bulgaria; we have lots of choirs. Orchestral conducting, you have to be very organized from the point of putting a piece together. With a choir, it’s very different. With choirs, you can be a lot freer; there are four parts. Here [with an orchestra], you have 50. So it’s more free.

How does being an assistant conductor help your development?

It’s a difficult thing because you are not the music director, and yet you conduct almost as much as the music director does, and more than anybody else. And the type of music you have to conduct — children’s concerts, family concerts. I was lucky, as I told you, because they gave me a lot of other concerts to conduct. For instance, the summer season, they gave to me. But assistant conductor is great because you can try things, and most importantly, you conduct a first-level orchestra. That’s a different feeling.

Yes. So why Eugene?

I heard about the Eugene Symphony a long time ago, actually, in connection with Marin Alsop, and then I got to know [former Eugene Symphony Music Director] Miguel [Harth-Bedoya] and [current Eugene Symphony Music Director] Giancarlo [Guerrero]. Giancarlo, I met in Dallas when he came to work with the Dallas Symphony three years ago, and Miguel is in Fort Worth. And I really liked them both. Then the job appeared, and with conductors, you can’t wait until the job in New York is going to open; it doesn’t work that way.

Explain your program for the Eugene concert. Why more Schubert? Why Borodin?

When I saw the Schubert first movement, I was like, I really want to not leave it there with Schubert. I think this movement is incredibly powerful by itself, but I thought, why don’t I find a piece that can have the full range? This symphony is so dramatic, really incredibly sad music in a way, and that’s something that Schubert does, but there is the other side of Schubert, the sunny, beautiful, light side. So I thought of this overture [to Rosamunde], which is bright, the other Schubert. In this concert, you will get the two sides of Schubert.

Borodin, I was like, what should I do since there is part of a Russian piece, just one movement. I like to show the contrasts between things, and I was like, why don’t I move to another [Russian] piece, so I can really do the two styles with early German Romantic music and Russian music, which is different. I’m sure [the Borodin symphony] hasn’t been done here for a long time, and it will be interesting for the audience to hear it, and it is an absolutely great piece.

The most interesting programs are if some part of the program can illuminate the other parts of the program. It’s not that they have to be all German or all French, but in this case, I liked the way it happened.

What else do you look at when programming concerts?

You can’t control everything, especially with soloists, but once the soloist comes, you start from there. It’s usually a good piece, and then you think what you want to do yourself at this moment, and then you think about what you can do at this moment in time.

You do a symphony, and then if you do it in five years, it should be different. A piece should evolve for you, and that’s absolutely the great thing about music. The Schubert, I studied it 12 years ago for the first time, and I had to study it again for this concert. Believe me, the pleasure was immense and very different than before, looking at this piece and seeing what it means to me.

What about new music, contemporary composers?

Sure, great. I like Ligeti, I really like Ligeti. For Americans, I like John Adams, and there is the great British composer Thomas Adès, who should be played everywhere. You are looking for something that inspires you, in a certain voice. That’s why I like John Adams. [His music] might seem simple to you, but he has a strong voice, and you feel the knowledge of this person of the repertoire, the music that came before him. It’s coming from somewhere, and you also see the feeling behind it.

Some [music] can be too much about structure, too much of logic. Logic is a great thing, but it has to be connected to understanding and belief that the meaning makes the structure and the feeling behind it one. It is hard to do, very hard to do.

You were the first conducting fellow of the New World Symphony. What was it like working with Michael Tilson Thomas?

He’s an enormously knowledgeable person; he really does know a lot about a lot. On top of this, he’s a very skillful conductor and craftsman. You could listen now to his new recordings of Mahler, and the way he is able to mold the whole thing. While I was there, I spoke to him of many things, certain pieces and certain composers, and you see that this person really knows. He goes deep inside of a piece, what the piece actually means.

Tomorrow: An update on Rachev's rehearsal and an evaluation of Kabaretti's concert from last week. Saturday: An eval of Rachev's concert. If you want to give the Symphony some feedback, you can fill out online evaluation forms at the Symphony's website.

You tell those mothereffing asshole news media ... um ... those other mfing dumbshit "news media," Barack Obama!

You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? ... It's you. ... I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift Boat politics. Enough is enough!

Photo of tacos similar to what you get at Belly, only the Belly tacos are better.

Unless you've ate at new restaurant Belly in the past month and received one of their cute buy one get one free cards, you probably don't know that the continental restaurant is open for lunch on Mondays for tacqueria-style tacos, Jarritos sodas and/or beer. I talked with owner Brendan Mahaney and he said that the taco lunch is an experiment they're trying out. But you better hurry, because Mahaney may pull this taco-lunch thing altogether if there's not much response. Right now the lunch special only happens from 11 am to 3 pm on Mondays in September, but the day of the week will probably shift after that (to Tuesday for example), says Mahaney, because he wants his weekends back.

UPDATE: Belly's Taco Lunch moves to 11am-3pm Tuesdays through Fridays starting in October. Yay!

Tacos are about $4 each and usually come with a free surprise appetizer like pepper-sprinkled watermelon (one of those special Belly touches I can't get enough of). So downtown workers, you know what to do come next Monday.

Goodness. First it's the Oregon Book Awards, then it's the Booker Prize. Shortlists for both arrived today; in the words of Bookslut, "Tonight, fans of world literature symbolically lock Salman Rushdie back in a closet and inwardly dread the prospect of working through 5,000 pages of something called 'The Northern Clemency'."

Booker Shortlist
Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs
Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole

Oregon Book Awards Finalists make for a long list; see the whole thing here. But special congrats to the locals: Ehud Havazelet (Corvallis), a fiction finalist for Bearing the Body; Lauren Kessler, a creative nonfiction finalist for Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's; and Cynthia Rylant, a double finalist in children's literature for Alligator Boy and Puppies and Piggies.

Blogging as it goes. I'll try to turn this into something a bit more coherent in the morning!

Last season, I loved this show. This season, 24 minutes into the premiere, I'm not impressed. It's trying too hard to be exciting; it's gone the predicable place already; it's become less plausible than ever before. Two humans aren't going to escape a Terminator. Not without help. I'm already frustrated. And trying to write without spoilers, since I can't remember how to do a jump at the moment.

Also, it's remarkably unclear as to whether or not Shirley Manson's character is meant to have her Scottish accent or not. One second she does, the next it's gone, and regardless, she's a bit stiff. I hope she warms up to it. A nice appearance by Max Perlich — toward whom Buffy fans feel a bit of fondness for his role as Whistler on Angel — seems surprisingly brief, but maybe he'll be back.

Oh, political commercials: "And that's wrong." Speaking of Buffy, all I can think of is Faith in the mirror in "Who Are You?", saying, "Because it's wrong."

And I just keep telling the TV how stupid it is. The kid can't get a chip out of a Terminator's head when it's life or death, but he can hotwire a car in even less time? And yet then he dawdles when faced with the most predicable tactic?

I fail to understand these Levi's ads about unbuttoned jeans. I think it's a scam, a weird experiment on the susceptibilities of the youth of America. There's no other explanation for it. Or for Body of Lies, for that matter. How very tedious it looks.

... and just like that, the show redeems itself. Thank you, Brian Austin Green! (Words I never thought I would say.) However, the kid's total freakout - not that we know exactly what it's over - is a bit much; if they made him a bit more of a believable teenager last season, I'd buy both of his decisions in the second act a bit more thoroughly. They're piling on the push-pull between Sarah and Cameron, and the unlikely affinity John has for machines - but at the same time they're forgetting to give us enough Sarah in the show named for her. Being saved again by her ex-fiancé? The dynamic between her and the other Reese? Setting things up as they are is giving too much weight to the sulky teen, frankly.

... or not. Moments like the scene between Cameron and Sarah in the chapel are what powers the show, what gives it its exceptional heart; moments like the (not surprising, but still enjoyable) appearance of Manson in the bathroom are when it plays for the action fan's heart. The balance is totally vital, obviously.

I'd give this a B-, overall. The first half was tedious, standard action that never truly put any of the principals in danger; the second the character-driven interactions that raise the show above average. And did I mention the tiny, fraught encounter between Ellison and Cromartie? Beautiful. More of that, please. More that looks as good as the preview.

And now it's Monday. Isn't it? I feel a little discombobulated. I'm pretty sure it's Monday, and I'm tired, and I keep babbling incoherently to anyone who'll listen about how much fun MFNW was. Seriously. Babble, babble, ramble, meander.

And the best part of MFNW? Les Savy Fav. Saturday night begins like the other two nights: At the Wonder Ballroom, where there is a giant freaking line that reaches all the way down Russell. I cross my fingers that the magic bulldozer passes will work as I walk up to a friendly-faced fellow who asks, "Did you have a question?" "No," I say, "I have this." I hold up the pass and he waves us in. Awesome. Even the bar line isn't as long as it has been. Not that I'm going to sit in the bar for LSF, but I've got to get through Ratatat first. Ratatat has one song I like; all their other songs sound like variations on it to me. Naturally, they play this one song last, after battering the Wonder with truly epic amounts of bass. My cell screen vibrates. The window behind me knocks in its frame. We bitch about the bass for most of the set.

And then I bid adieu for the moment to my starving boyfriend and begin swimming upstream against the tide of sweaty, exhausted-looking Ratatat fans. It's delightfully easy to get right up front, which is where you must be for Les Savy Fav. It is the vantage point from which to properly appreciate the mad genius of singer Tim Harrington, who comes out with tissue paper wrapped around one arm and a towel around his neck. He's got a weird little hat on and is explaining that he got in a car wreck. They don't have their flutist or bongos. He says. It's all very funny. And then the music starts, and Harrington is flailing and leaping into the crowd and spitting water into fans' mouths (ew!) and generally being the most entertaining performer you could hope to see. At some point, a ladder appears, and he hands it to the crowd, gesturing for them to put it on the floor. But they don't. They don't want to. And so he crowd-ladder-surfs to the lighting rig a few feet back, where he grabs a light and twists it to point downwards. Back onstage, he says, "That light was really bugging me."

That light now creates a little spotlight into which he wanders, later. They play all the right songs, except "Wake Up" and "Dishonest Don Pt. II," and I pogo and dance as best I can while pushing moshers out of my way. Dudes, c'mon now. You DANCE to this music. Seriously. Really. I've seen entire floors dancing. It's rock you dance to. It's not an oxymoron. But this weekend, Portland has two modes: standing stock still and flipping the fuck out in a dude-heavy frenzy. Two kids, one with braces, decide this is the time to take up crowd-surfing. I am not amused, but I just get out of their way.

Sweaty, sweaty, sweaty. Someone gives Harrington a fork and he combs all available hair (on his own body) with it. At one point, he yelps, "What's the difference between me and a pit bull?" The crowd responds, "Lipstick!" Harrington says, "I have human intelligence!" and tears into the next song to a weaker barrage of cheers than I expect.

For the encore, he comes out in orange thigh-high tube socks, red underwear and a hoodie, which he quickly removes as sexily as possible. The crowd is more frenzied than ever. By the time the set is done — the almost perfect set, all that booty-shaking total guitar-rock beautiful contradiction stuff tied for the best thing I've heard in ages — we're all damp and breathing like we ran here from the Crystal Ballroom. I stumble out the door and down the block and pull myself onto a stool at the BBQ pit where my boyfriend has ridden this one out, and proclaim it the best show ever, and by the way I could really use some water. The bartender overhears, obliges, and we chat for two seconds about the Les Savy Fav show being the show he most wanted to see during the festival. "I'm sorry," I say. He shrugs. "I'll get over it."

I dunno, man. That was pretty unmissable. Next time!

We opt for a quieter stop next: Horse Feathers at Holocene. I love Horse Feathers, I love Holocene, I love my delicious cocktail; I'm clearly having a Musicfest Moment. Horse Feathers are delicate and beautiful and heartbreaking and sometimes, in the instrumental-only moments, put me in mind of music that'd be used on Deadwood. I dream idly of being able to play the violin. The girl in Horse Feathers has the prettiest voice and is wearing huaraches. The singer is in the Sam Beam vein - not just that he sings gorgeous acoustic songs, but that he's a blond, bearded fellow. This is about the extent of my capability for thought at this point. This, and that I need to get my hands on the newer Horse Feathers record.

I want to see Panther, and the Shaky Hands, but I've spent a lot of time at Holocene already. We drive back to the west side, translate weird visitor parking signs so we can figure out where it's safe to leave the car overnight, and proclaim ourselves foot-bound for the rest of the night. On a whim, we trek down to Fez for Blind Pilot and have to pull magic-pass rank to get in, which is good for the band — the existence of the line of fans, I mean — and makes me feel like a dick yet again. But there's no beer on tap, the room is weird and the band is still soundchecking long after they should have gone on (this is extra weird, as everything else has, delightfully, been incredibly well-timed). We stay long enough to hear "Two Towns From Me," which is so catchy (and fantastically embellished by the handful of extra musicians onstage tonight) it spends the next 36 hours running around my head, alternating with Oxford Collapse's unexpectedly beautiful, oddly sad "A Wedding." It's a slightly unnerving pair of songs to have stuck in one's head that long.

From Fez, we head up Burnside to the Towne Lounge for Eskimo and Sons, having heard enough good things over the last few days about this about-to-go-on-hiatus band that we can't miss out. And it's fantastic. It's sing-along central with the Old Believers; it's packed; I can't even see who's doing what and I don't care. We perch on the back of a banquette and I love everything about the show, including the clubby feel. I don't know the songs, and for once it doesn't matter. They all sound familiar; they all sound perfect.

And that's it. We walk out of the Towne Lounge and down 23rd to the New Old Lompoc, where we discover too late that late-night snacks translate to a $4 Reser burrito (or fair approximation) served on a lettuce leaf. Thankfully, it comes with a side of salsa for drowning the thing in. We never leave beers unfinished, but tonight, we make an exception. Oh, the tiredness. But it's all worth it. Musicfest NW has proved to be fantastic - though I do have to wonder if it's as much fun for the non-press-pass holding folks. We would have spent a lot more time in lines were it not for that (so thanks, MFNW Powers That Be!). On the other hand, there was almost always another show I would have been happy to be seeing; the list of shows I wish I'd squeezed in includes Hot Water Music, Centro-Matic (my most sadly missed band!), Nada Surf, Menomena and Helio Sequence (though I can see both of those bands this weekend at the Eugene Celebration, so all's well there), Chris Robley and the Fear of Heights, Norfolk and Western and more I've blocked out so I won't regret not having seen them. It's a lot of a good thing, MFNW. It's so much of a good thing that I have, for the first time in months, this giddy-happy feeling about new music and seeing bands and all that good stuff it's sometimes easy to get jaded about. So thanks, you guys. I'm already excited about next year. Especially if The Thermals play. I'm just sayin'.

So I got a little behind. Forgive me. Let me shift into present tense so I can pretend I'm not writing two days late.

Friday! Friday is a day for sleeping in and enduring unsuccessful shopping trips. However, it's also a day for lucking out, and for arriving at venues in time to walk right in (for the most part). I turn up at the Wonder Ballroom at about 5:15 for Britt Daniel's 5:30 set and there isn't even a slip of a line. However, there is — in what becomes the theme for the evening, and for the Wonder — a line for the bar. A line in which I stand, briefly, before Daniel goes on and I realize it was a stupid idea anyway.

I have a confession: I only really love one Spoon album. Just Girls Can Tell. And thus, once Daniel closes the goosebump-raising "Me and the Bean" I think I'd be happy to leave were I not holding out hope that he might also play "Anything You Want." He does play another Girls song, and some other songs I recognize, as well as one song on the bass and several with the nearly ubiquitous Janet Weiss, who plays with everyone and is so awesome her frequent appearances are never less than delightful.

Daniel is charming and sort of adorable in his tousled-bedhead way; he says he's been living in Portland for three years and it's still magical. I'm pretty sure he actually says "magical." It's sweet. The short is set and also sweet, and involves a song for which Daniel has to stop his drum machine, practice the chords and start again. I don't know why I find musician fuckups so charming.

Outside, I find Chuck and his friend, grumpy about the no-magical-press-pass access at the Wonder. The line for Built to Spill is long, and I don't envy those who get in the realization that they most likely won't be able to get a beer. BtS is beer music. I'm leaving 'cause I've got to get dinner, but also because I'm still bitter that they're playing Perfect From Now On rather than the clearly superior Keep It Like a Secret. I was in denial about this for so long that I convinced myself it was the latter album. Whoops.

After dinner, we head to the Towne Lounge for the Old Believers, whom I wrote about in July when they played Cozmic Pizza. That night, we missed most of the band's set because they went on long before we'd expected them to; tonight, we catch most of it, and it's fantastic and nostalgic and lovely and graceful as expected. There are other folks onstage with the core Believer duo; later I found out these other folks were Eskimo and Sons, but that's a post for Saturday's eventual blog. There is a sizable Willamette Week contingent at the Old Believers show, which leads me to some internal speculation about music for alt-weekly staffers that goes absolutely nowhere. Also, the Towne Lounge sells 24-ounce cans of Pabst. I should be immune to this sort of gimmick now, but despite my dislike for the gut-twisting cheap brew, I consider it. Briefly. The bar is a little bit dinky and a little bit dingy in just the right way and I think I would like to see more bands in its dark environs, often.

As the Old Believers come to a hand-clapping, crowd-pleasing end, we split for the Roseland and arrive just in time to get in another bar line. We stay in this one, though; I text with Chuck about Portland's best bands and the fact that the Crystal Ballroom, where he's seeing the over-hyped Vampire Weekend, has an actual press space. Crazy. Jaguar Love takes the stage and I immediately have a shit-eating grin on my face, because I love these guys. I love their batshit craziness, stupid white pants and singer Johnny Whitney's tendency to scream EVERYTHING at incomprehensible levels. (Check out WWeek's Musicfest diaries for an accurate and entertaining take on the band.) I love that they make catchy music that veers from almost power ballads to almost-Michael Jackson pop, but coat it all in a layer of noise and ridiculousness. I love that some of them used to be in two other awesome bands.

The bad thing about Jaguar Love is that most of Portland is standing still and staring blankly at the stage. I posit the theory that some of them are convinced this is a test of their TV on the Radio loyalties. Eventually, we make it upstairs and obtain beer from the fastest bartender on the planet. My friend Toby sends a text from Brooklyn that ends, "FUCK THIS SHIT I AM MOVING TO PORTLAND," which, well, hey, at the moment, I'm pretty in love with PDX myself, even if its denizens seem to dance even less than Eugeneans. As the show winds down, Whitney screams, "JAGUAR LOVE! JAGUAR LOVE! JAGUAR LOVE!" over and over again, and we can't contain the laughter. A bearded dude in a baseball hat one row up catches my boyfriend's eye and high-fives him. I wonder if he's laughing with the band, like me, or at them.

Musicfest runs like clockwork, so it's almost weird that TV on the Radio goes on a few minutes late. Downstairs, no one is dancing, which makes me cranky even though I'm sitting on my ass with a pint of porter. Eventually, I make my way back downstairs, stuff tissue in my ears, and slip through the crowd to near the front, where I find myself stuck behind a very tall blonde who keeps punching the air. I'm not sure this is the most ... understandable? response to TVOTR, but whatevs; at least she's into it.

Photo by Dominik Kolendo.

But it's not their best show, to be honest. It's the fourth or fifth time I've seen them, and something just seems a little less vibrant than usual — though at least part of that could be chalked up to the fact that the crowd is waiting for the band's new album rather than excited about hearing new songs they've come to love already. But singer Tunde Adebimpe (full disclosure: I knew Tunde in college) has enough personality to carry any TVOTR show through, and there's something sweetly (that word again!) appealing to his demeanor as he thanks the crowd; it's in such contrast to his constantly-in-motion, shimmying, magnificent and oratorial presence during the band's songs. If memory serves, the main part of the set ends without "Staring at the Sun," so of course they're going to do an encore. Of course. And it's — to borrow a word from Britt Daniel — damn near magical.

Everyone is going to Berbati's after this, so we decide to follow along just to see what all the fuss is about. When we get there, we finally get to use the magical part of the magic bulldozer passes and waltz right in, only to realize we don't want to be there. There's a stomping party vibe that doesn't sit right after the epic density of TVOTR. I stand in the bathroom line, sweating, and get a text from Chuck: "Donuts sound better than this band." Voodoo Doughnuts is down the block, and it's a tossup whether there's a longer line for sugar-coated treats or The Builders and the Butchers. We pass on both and call it a night. One more to go!

Battles at the Wonder Ballroom

M Ward at the Crystal Ballroom

White Fang at Satyricon

The audience at White Fang at Satyricon

White Fang at Satyricon

Packt like sardines in a crusht tin can for Vampire Weekend at the Crystal Ballroom

The band in question, Vampire Weekend, played to a tiny crowd at John Henry's last year

TV on the Radio at the Roseland Theater

Packt in the Roseland for TV on the Radio

Horse Feathers at Holocene

Blind Pilot had a half hour sound check for a half hour of music

Didn't get any good pix of Blind Pilot in action, so here they are at Sam Bond's last week

The audience for Blind Pilot at the Fez Ballroom

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Let's face it, MFNW is primarily a sport of boozing, schmoozing and bands getting hooked up with free corporate shwag. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, it's a great time to be had, probably the best I've had in Portland since my best friend's mom took us all to see Disney on Ice circa 1992 at the Memorial Coliseum for my friend's birthday, and even bought us a McDonald's super value meal beforehand. That was something special. And MFNW sits up there near that experience.

It would be foolish to believe this "music festival" has anything to do with dispensing music to the widest audience possible. I saw roughly 15 bands over the course of three days and I had a friggin' ghost pass that let me in through the doors even when the line snaked for miles around the block. Think about that for a second. Over 200 bands and I saw 15 of them. That's only 7.5 percent of the Musicfest lineup Granted, I saw and heard some great stuff, but really, giving bands a set playtime of as much as an hour and a half (for major headlining acts) to as little as 20 minutes (at Rontoms) means you've got quantity trumping quality. And when half your time at MFNW is spent being hassled for spare change as you check your cell phone for the zillionth time while waiting to get into a venue
to see some band you're not even sure is still playing? That's called uncertain return on the investment. My only hope and prayer to next year's MFNW organizers: Please trim the thing down to just 100 bands, give each band a longer set and consolidate the venues to just the ones along Burnside (sorry
Wonder and Holocene! You're great, just inaccessible for most people who'd rather plunk down for cab fare than put the pedal to the power). With that said, thanks for putting on a premium music event in a city that's steadily
proclaiming itself the locale for premium music.

Without further ado ... SATURDAY

The Kill Rock Stars showcase at Holocene could've been
renamed "Willamette Week's Best New Bands: 2006-08." Sure, Horse Feathers and Shaky Hands have rightfully held the crown in years past, but Thao and the Get Down Stay Down could've qualified this year, despite not being
officially a Portland band (they're actually from Washington D.C./San Francisco, however that works out). Panther: Sorry, I skipped you for WW's Best
New Band 2009: Blind Pilot.

HORSE FEATHERS (9 pm, Holocene)

This band takes the stage as a trio of violinist (Peter
Broderick), cellist/backing vocalist (Heather Broderick) and an acoustic guitar/vocalist (Justin Ringle). The crowd is on their first drink, so they are patient and quiet and attentive as Ringle barely whispers into the mic, as if actually hearing his voice would be antiethical to HF's cause. Thus, the venue has the amp mic'd for good measure, as HF is a band you need to pay close attention to. Their last album, Words Are Dead, brought bedroom-folk to the masses and their newest album, House With No Home, which HF mostly played this eve, definitely caters to those who like gently falling into sleep with a CD spinning on the stereo. It's tender, sometimes poppy stuff that can drown out most worries of the day without making you feel like a total wuss for listening to it. The Feathers end their set at precisely the 9:40 pm mark, leaving us exactly 20 minutes to bike up to Burnside, take the Burnside Bridge
into downtown Portland, up Couch (pronounced "koo-tch") Street to 11th and over to the Fez Ballroom. We arrive just as they start cutting people off at the door.

BLIND PILOT (10:30 pm, Fez Ballroom)

I'm a little surprised there isn't a line stretching down
the street for Blind Pilot. I mean, the folk-pop outfit are opening for Sir-Mix-A lot. But they're definitely importing a large chunk of folks from the suburbs. Someone gives a shout-out to Sir-Mix-A lot (for no apparent reason) and a man probably in his mid-50s yells out, "You are the BEST band at Music Fest!" Other odd things keep happening, like:

1)
Israel Nebeker doesn't break a string until at least five
songs into their set.

2)
There is a huge roar from the crowd when the trumpeter does
his part. This makes him shy and the other band members smile.

3)
It takes nearly a half hour to do a full sound check and
nobody throws a beer bottle at the stage.

I really want to see Eskimo & Sons final show for a long
time, but figure I've seen them once at MFNW, might as well check out stuff I haven't seen. So I hop on my bike and cruise quite quickly all the way back to
Holocene.

THE SHAKY HANDS (11:30 pm, Holocene)

I hear very little of the Hands set after getting through
the door. Mostly I hear two songs and they both sound stellar. Their new album,Lunglight, is par excellence.

THAO WITH THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN (Midnight, Holocene)

Let's get this out of the way: While strumming her guitar,
Thao Nguyen looks like a Muppet. There, I said it. It's true. Just see for yourself. It's not a bad thing; it doesn't detract from her rock star onstage persona. In fact, to this Muppet fan, it made the evening extra special.

I heard of Thao back last spring, but didn't actively search out her music until recently. I wasn't too impressed. Not the kind of music I'd listen to over and over to while sitting at work. But Thao's live act is not to be missed. Boozed up on whiskey, she's a firecracker who doesn't miss a bang or a beat. Even the Holocene squatters, who normally like to have a contest to see who can stand the most statuesque, are moving a little bit. That says a lot. A real lot. Thao played a new song that Thao said was "for Portland." It was quite good. I'll have to give her full album another try sometime.
There's something that I'm missing, maybe.

Oh yeah, it's called the "live experience."

Thank you, MFNW. You made me a believer in real good live music. Now if only we could export that concept a little bit further south
… that'd be real nice.