We had lofty plans here at localcut to “live blog” our experiences at the 2006 PDX POP NOW! festival. Somehow, it turned out to have been a terrible, breakdown-inducing week prior to the fest for all of us, and no one felt much like writing anything. But between work and booze and sobbing fits, I [...]

Possibly the only noise track to make use of live handclaps, this is one of the more accessible tracks of D. Yellow Swans second and most recent studio album, Psychic Succession. Produced by White Rainbow’s Adam Forkner, it’s a hypnotizing ten minutes (still short by DYS standards) of heartbeat bass, live and sequenced percussion, Pete [...]

Sometimes life gets in the way of life’s most important moments. An enormous zit appears the day of the big dance. A parental notification law is passed the day before your abortion. An airplane flies into a skyscraper on your 21st birthday. Or, maybe, you experience a nervous breakdown the day one of the most [...]

Dan and Arcellus are swimming in a pool in Delafield, Wisconsin right now. (It’s 1:15am.) Eben’s reading. I’m getting eaten by mosquitoes while writing to Portland. Whiskey has been consumed. Tomorrow we are spending our slow Sunday playing a pool party and a retirement home.
Seriously – that’s not the whiskey talking. I actually didn’t drink [...]

At the first two PDX Pop festivals, I saw some really good bands both who I already knew and who I discovered at the fest. But last night, at the opening of the three day free local music festival at the Loveland, I saw something I hadn’t seen much of in the past: People getting [...]

Yesterday Gov. Ted Kulongoski announced 54 statewide grants being awarded through the Oregon Cultural Trust. Huzzah! Yay for culture and all that. But where is the support for the tennis-shoe wearing music community. Of all the recipients, shown below, only the Friends of Chamber Music, Portland Youth Philharmonic Association and Portland Taiko are wholly involved [...]

While down in Tucson recording its next album at Wavelab Studios, Richmond Fontaine was asked to contribute a track to a Hurricane Katrina relief compilation being put together by the studio called Graciously. You would expect the Americana band to throw down an afterthought b-side or a hokey theme-based track, but Richmond Fontaine does neither. [...]

After the demise of the Observers and Plan R last November and February respectively, fans of those bands—characterized by their enjoyment of getting wet willies and other mid-song harassment by Colin Grigson (Plan R vocalist and Observers bass player)—were given a new hope: Defect Defect, a band that featured Grigson, as well as Observers guitarist [...]

I was humbled today to learn that The Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois are indeed not the home of the Quad City DJs. As we pulled into town, Arcellus was happily singing the “ride the train / c’mon it’s a choo-choo train,” song; but my cousin informed me that they are from a different [...]