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Frances
Farmer Gals,
Canned Hamm, Karaoke From Hell
Dante's
1 SW 3rd
Ave., 226-6630
10 pm Friday,
April 21
Cover
Frances
Farmer Gals, Various Guests
Flying
Saucer Cafe
2138 SE
Division St., 231-3899
4 pm Sunday,
April 23
Cover
"We were never riot grrls. We were gals."
On an unseasonably hot and humid afternoon, Dawn Panttaja
sits at a sidewalk cafe downtown and talks about the glory
days: those halcyon X-Ray Cafe days, the sainted salad days
of Portland underground rock.
It's a refrain you hear from practically everyone who made
the scene during Clinton's first term--oh X-Ray, fair X-Ray,
we miss you so. The hole-in-the-wall on West Burnside Street
may have spawned more legends, elegies and gilded memories
than actual shows before it shut down in 1994.
Panttaja did her bit for the mythmaking, for sure. In an
era when the aforementioned riot grrls roamed the Northwest
with SLUT scrawled in black ink on their bellies and dreams
of Sassy features in their heads, Panttaja favored
more raucous and womanly rebellion. Along with Jeri Ann
Sheehan, proud owner of a whiskey-scratched rock-and-roll
throat, and a rotating cast of drummers, dancers and other
conspirators, Panttaja blasted away with the Frances Farmer
Gals.
The Gals stomped out a ragged heathen crossbreed of roadhouse
rock and cowgirl punk, raising their share of Cain before
the centrifugal forces of family and wanderlust brought
the band to an end at mid-decade. Now they're reuniting
for two shows that aim to reignite some of the fertile chaos
of their own good old days.
After all, it's the season for resurrections, and this
second coming promises to be particularly bizarre. On Good
Friday, the reconstituted Gals headline in the hellfire
of Dante's, within slingshot range of the old X-Ray. That
bill includes Canned Hamm, a pair of hulking Canadian ventriloquists,
and Karaoke From Hell, a 100-song sing-along frenzy with
a live band. Then, on Easter Sunday, the Gals hold forth
during an all-ages matinee at the Flying Saucer--mostly
so their own kids can watch 'em play.
These two shows--one a nightclub throwdown, the other a
family affair--nicely sum up the Gals past and present.
"We were known as the hardest-drinking band in Portland,"
Panttaja says. "But then, it came to a point where we had
to live or die, and we chose to live. I'd just had my daughter,
and I'd been playing all through my pregnancy.
"I played in a black bikini at eight and a half months
pregnant, when we opened for the Voluptuous Horror of Karen
Black. But I played for a little while after my daughter
was born, and I realized I just couldn't do it."
At the same time, Sheehan, the badass font of the band's
attitude, took off for New Orleans on a one-way ticket,
reappearing in Portland many moons later. Sheehan lives
in California now and is flying back to PDX for the Gals'
short-term 2000 comeback.
It's pretty obvious why a Frances Farmer reunion attracts
the band's alumnae. Panttaja and drummer Victoria Porter
(a.k.a. Vic the Stick) drop stories of mysteriously heisted
drumsets, Weimar Republic-style cabaret madness and shows
in Saran Wrap. In general, it seems that willful cussedness
and a refusal to take things too seriously ruled the day
with FFG.
It seems like it was pretty goddamned fun.
"We were a drinkin', non-smokin', meat-eating band," Porter
says. "Which was highly unusual at the time."
"Yeah, we opened a show with Bikini Kill wearing vintage
swimsuits," Panttaja adds, recalling a gig with the humor-deficient
flagship band of the riot grrl movement. "I don't think
they thought that was very funny.
"It was pretty much an amazing time," she continues. "Everybody
was doing things, but no one felt like they were going pro
or anything like that. And Jeri Ann just captured this quality
that was everything raunchy and vibrant about rock and roll."
"You didn't have to be that good," Porter recalls. "You
just had to have a schtick. Now it seems like it's back
to having to be good."
Ah, well. Surely, the Frances Farmer Gals will do just
fine anyway.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 19,
2000
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