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COLUMN rmartin@wweek.com One night shortly after I moved to Portland in 1992, I experienced a rock show that blew me away. Hazel had just released its first 7-inch on Cavity Search and was playing the X-Ray Cafe, the hole-in-the-wall all-ages club on West Burnside Street that would succumb a few years later--around the time this city's music scene changed dramatically. After a rambunctious set by Motorgoat (the trio that would eventually lose a member and become Quasi), Hazel's Jody, Pete, Brady and Fred shuffled onstage in tattered clothes and with wild looks in their eyes, like castaways just returned from some alternative Gilligan's Island. As the band played songs such as "Truly" and "Joe Louis Punchout," the effervescent capacity crowd (of about 80) moshed and sang along in a constant and free-flowing exchange of energy between musicians and audience. I felt as if I'd arrived in Paradise. Portland did turn out to be an incredible place to play, write about and listen to live music, but, as with most of the culture here, only fleetingly. Six years later this isn't so much an Eden as a medium-sized city with a lot of bands and not enough people to see them. Now there will be one less face in the crowd. While packing my belongings in preparation to move to Seattle last weekend, I happened across a New York Times article from July 1994--a little over a year before I began writing this column for Willamette Week--that put the music scene's evolution in perspective. The Times' ostensible purpose was to locate "the Next Seattle," and as with most such speculation pieces published during that period, Portland made the short-list, along with much larger cities like Chicago and Boston and smaller ones like Chapel Hill. What the writer observed about the music--"often derisively called watered-down grunge, the Portland sound is actually more catholic in nature"--isn't as pertinent as the bands listed, namely Hazel, Pond and the Spinanes. At the time, the three acts had almost no national profile, but each one could attract a sell-out crowd at LaLuna on a Saturday night. Their music had an artfulness rarely embraced by the masses, which made their loyal following in Portland both peculiar and poignant. But this idyllic setup was short-lived. As alternative rock transformed from artistic statement to commodity, Portlanders couldn't stave off the insistent forces of commercialism. Not that we were alone. In many American cities, narrow-minded, bottom-line-oriented radio programmers favored music that appealed to the lowest common denominator, and unknown local bands couldn't compete with major-label counterparts that were shoved halfway down music consumers' throats. In Portland, we like to think of ourselves as more enlightened than those monkeys in the rest of the country, but the attitude shift nevertheless went off like a flawless sociology experiment; Hazel could no longer sell out a show, but Bush and Better Than Ezra attracted hordes of frenzied fans. I began writing Timbre in the aftermath, and it made the job frustrating. I often found myself in sparse crowds at local shows that I'd foolishly expected to draw hundreds; writing about what I saw seemed pointless, as if I'd be operating in a vacuum. Amazingly, the indifference to local music hasn't impacted the scene all that adversely. A music editor from a major East Coast weekly recently asked me which acts, of the ones he would know, came from Portland. I was surprised by the length of the list even as I conjugated it: Sleater-Kinney, Sunset Valley, Quasi, the Dandy Warhols, Kelly Joe Phelps, Everclear and, although they no longer live here, Elliott Smith and the Spinanes. There are more clubs here than there probably should be, but most manage to hang on. And if you include Eugene bands--since they play here often enough--there are at least a half-dozen local groups that could rise to national prominence in '99, including Marigold, the Minders, the Lael Alderman Band, Drive, Wow & Flutter and Magic Fingers. At the moment, not one of the bands I've just mentioned could sell out Satyricon or EJ's or even the restrooms at LaLuna. For this next batch of promising Portlanders to succeed, they'll need to achieve some sort of national notice, be it in magazines or on the radio--or by mauling a Christmas carol in a Gap ad. That's wrong, and it's one reason I'm not sad to leave Portland. I've seen a lot of great shows here, especially when Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Quasi and Sleater-Kinney began their almost simultaneous ascents to stardom. I've enjoyed interacting with those in the music community on an almost nightly basis. I've appreciated the feedback I've received from fellow music fans about Timbre. But this is my last column. This city no longer provides the type of environment in which a music writer can inspire readers to check out a local band. I hope this scene does reinvigorate itself or becomes the next Seattle or whatever, but I'm outta here.
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