Rock And Roll Weekend

Let the record show that I watched real humans play live music twice this weekend (!!!).

See, I'm riding out a dull phase where I'm just not that INTO music, like, as a component to life. Does that ever happen to you?

But! Watching (and listening to) a few guys sitting in a Portland living room making warm, sparkling sounds come out of keyboards and simple acoustic guitars ... I don't know—something alchemical happened. I get it again. I wanna to listen.

What happened was, Friday night, Tim Rutili of Califone fame played in the parlor of a grand old craftsman house near Mississippi Street. The home of friends. Friends of friends, really. It was a nice, human way to hear music—un-curated, you know? Chickens in the yard. Beer in a cooler in the kitchen. The sounds washed naturally over the fireplace and wound easily through the built-in columns to find me there in the corner.

The very next night, I found myself in the dark and heat of a punk house basement watching our buddies' band Donkey Lips play (see above!). Guitar shredding. Ravaging of drums. Rampant shirtlessness. Glee.

So, two shows, two ends of the spectrum—both weird and lovely, neither registering anywhere on the big-venue boring-ometer. It's a solid weekend, yeah? Yeah.