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Damn you MusicfestNW!

and your little dog too!

MusicFest NW - why did you have to be so amazing!?!  Why!?!  Seriously - ten times more than I ever expected.
First you made me resentful - I mean you took Justin Timberlake away from me!  Seriously - I had been counting on going to that concert since at least May, gabbed about it to my friends, and then - poof, you make him disappear by having Grizzly Bear, Starfucker, Dan Deacon, and Rilo Kiley all on the same night.
But you redeemed yourself with what made me resentful in the first place.  I don't care how many times I've seen Grizzly Bear, it's never enough.

Ed after the show:

Live at the Doug Fir:

(Drummer Christopher Bear was rocking a brand-spanking new Deerhunter T)

Still, why Justin couldn't you have postponed Portland too?

But - oh the lack of sleep!  Never fully expected it to the extent it existed, but now I know not to have a day job during all the days of the fest and schedule myself to participate in Crafty Wonderland on my only day off my day job but still on a MFNW day.
But still I stayed out until 2, then stayed up even later uploading photos when I had to be at work at 9:30 the next day.
Oh MusicFest NW - why do you only have to last four days!?!
I now can't wait for SXSW!  I think I'm really gonna try for 2008, even though I already know I have a conflict with the dates in March.

Girl Talk and Dan Deacon were my favorite sets of the fest. 

I have tried and tried again to listen to 'Crystal Cat', but accepted that Dan Deacon was not my bag.  When assigned to turn up to his gig I did so with curiosity only emboldened by the fact that when I turned up, Justin Kent was there after having just put his camera equipment away - there was no way to shoot it apparently - the strobe lights breaking three minutes of just a blackened room completely packed with people like a gas chamber.  Oh how that made me want to witness it all the more.  I came for a concert, what I got was a cult. 

He had lyrics sheets for 'Wham City':

People sang from them covered in sweat:

(It was SERIOUSLY hot in there!  People's sweat was dripping in actual drops onto my camera)

It's so funny too, because I am like the most drug-free person - I mean I've never even smoked a cigarette or drank coffee, yet I found myself gleefully chanting along with everyone in attendance - "Harry Potter, Book 6!  Smoke weed everyday!"  In fact, I'm still chanting it.  Seriously - as I bounced around between sets of Swim Swam Swum, Holy Fuck, and Wolf Parade two days later on Sunday night, that chant and talking about Lorin of the Thermals was all that occupied my time.
I heard from two people - Cary Clarke and Jason Simms that Dirty Projectors was their favorite set of the fest.  Wish I could've been in two places at once, but I was over onstage shooting and dancing at Girl Talk.

Where's Waldo Girl Talk?

Can you find him?

With Girl Talk I got exactly what I expected - times ten!  I wondered with the Roseland's security as notorious as they are with a seemingly "no fun" policy - how would my man Gregg Gillis' set look without people clogging the stage alongside him?  Well, one - he didn't perform on the stage.  He performed in the barrier between the stage and the crowd - until he actually started performing because as soon as his beats began, people were hopping the barrier too fast to time.  And security was game with it!  They stood on the stage in protection of all of the fancy/swish/expensive hip-hop/rap/DJ equipment and let the crowd go WILD!!!!!!!!!!  He had a pretty copy of Finder besides his laptop.  He played Grizzly Bear's 'Knife' minus Clipse's vocals proclaiming "Wamp, Wamp, what it do, what it do?"
Oh Gregg!  You finally got to steal my heart live!  If you (actually you, not Gregg :) read this blog in November, I was actually scheduled to do a photo shoot with him and attend his show at Holocene, but he still had his day job at the time and didn't get into Portland until WAY LATE crushing our previously scheduled commitments.
And oh my god - did he look like Garrett or did he look like Garrett!?!:

My biggest upset was missing Typhoon.  Enough said... oh how I tried!
Eugene Mirman = super super crafty/clever/funny.

I accidentally spit what I had in my mouth on someone due to uncontrollable laughter.  Ten minutes later, someone spit a mouthful of beer on me for the same reasons, for which I could forgive him.  If you do not know him, I am NOT exaggerating - he is TOO funny.  Even when I think something is funny, I typically don't laugh out loud.  This was not the case with him.  Tokyo Police Club were trying so hard to see him at Bumbershoot.  I now know why.  Wolfcats forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Was there any gig that the Mercury's Rob Simonsen wasn't at?  I ran into him without actually talking to him too many times to count.
Oh and Fist Fite - "Ooohhhhh, love to love you baby.  Ooohhhhh, love to love you baby"!  Perhaps my favorite Portland band.  Perhaps hands down. 

I was really scared they'd start evolving into a more normal band - ie more normal antics, maybe become predictable, but they haven't at all.  They remain at the top of their game - you can guess, but you don't truly know what's coming next with them.  They owned the stage at the Doug Fir. 

It was great to see them again after months and months of not doing so.  Jonnie threw glitter all over us in the very front and her glitter remained there long after.  I spied it on the monitors during Deerhunter and then when I was selling bobby pins and scarves at Crafty Wonderland the next morning, my table was directly over a patch of glitter on the floor.
Prepare yourself for what I'm about to type.  I d-o n-o-t g-e-t D-e-e-r-h-u-n-t-e-r.
Yeah, I just wrote that.
Let's leave it at that, but still talk about them.

They were seated on the sidewalk outside of their label mate White Rainbow's gig on Saturday at Satyricon.
I wanted to take (scheduled) portraits of them minus Colin who quit last week, but it didn't happen.  I will next time though.  I have two specifically generated ideas for them and they are entirely too fun.
So what were my other highlights?  Even with my anti-social self that was surprisingly social after laying low and working six-days a week during August, my highlights centered around interaction.  I met Erik and we talked endlessly about the goddess that is Beth Ditto, Britney Spears, and Perez Hilton as well as sang Yo majesty songs at each other after he yelled "I love your blog," as I walked by trying to make it to the last four minutes of YACHT's gig.  His friend looked like Corbin Bleu from High School Musical.  My favorite quote of the weekend stems from this.
"Do people say that to you all the time?"
"All the time.  Mostly homeless people."
I met Max at the Crystal before Thermals who I ended up missing to shoot Clipse.  All of drummer Lorin Coleman's brothers were in attendance helping erect giant trees onstage.
Oh god - and Starfucker.  Can we talk about how much more he continues to rock with each gig!!? 

SEE HIM if you can cos he's gonna stop playing local shows too soon.  I have 30 Starfucker tracks because that was all that'd fit on the disc he gave me back in June-ish, but the absolute best of the night was his unrecorded ode to the Mariners' 'Ichiro'. SOOOOOOOOOOOO good!  We were texting back and forth before his set because I wanted him to save 'German Love' for me since I'd be shooting the first few minutes of Tiny Vipers' set at Doug Fir then high-tailing it across the bridge (with the Burnside bridge inconveniently closed) for his set that also started at 10 and he typically whips that one out early.  He assured that he wouldn't be playing it too early and when we arrived at Towne Lounge he was mid-way through.  Perfect timing!  And he had another drummer with him too!  And not his Sexton Blake co-patriot.  He briefly drummed with a juice bottle.
I ran into a lot of people from high school who I haven't seen for at least a year each.  It was weird/cool/surreal.
So yeah - Bobby Bare is fun.
I was gonna do a Bobby Bare/Cat power specific post, but not anymore.  Here is some of what I wrote:

Bobby Bare Jr. arrived in Portland via Nashville to open for Cat Power care of an earned free flight on Southwest Airlines and to an awaiting free pair of orange Nikes - not that he needed them.  When he took to the stage at Audio Cinema, he did so in stocking feet with an acoustic guitar and the Decemberists' Chris Funk in toe.  Together they rolled through half of the set -- Bobby Bare Jr.'s country sound made complete with his Hank Williams-esque yelps and Funk's guitar picking and mandeolin playing.  Mid-way through, the tempo turned rock at which point several more Decemberists made their way onto the stage, minus Colin Meloy who joked beforehand that he was an employee of Adidas and that's what prevented his partcipation.
What is a Cat Power show minus the breakdowns she seems to have left behind a couple tours ago and the seemingly mindless chatter that can plague her sets?

A kinda normal one, still uniquely Cat Power.  She performed quite a different set to her last Portland showing that included two shows in one day without accompaniment at the Aladdin.  This time around Chan's only duties were that of singing and hoofing it around the stage while her Philadelphia hailing companion commanded both the piano and guitar.
Masked in an unchanging blue light, she shook her hands, tapped her white shoes like a pony, and sang with very little interaction with the audience other than a brief comment about her "skinny jeans," passed off a lit cigarette after one drag, and admitted to being nervous, but that did not detract.
It was a set of covers including her Cat Stevens cover that appears in the Debeers commercial plus 'The Tracks of My Tears' originally by the Miracles.  Absent were her typical cover of the Rolling Stones and even Velvet Underground, or 'Freebird' as she played upon request at the Aladdin.
She closed her set with two originals - 'The Greatest' which drew cheers from the audience for the song itself and to finally be hearing something more familiar and 'Lived in Bars'.

Oh and I spied Quasi's Janet Weiss backstage at Spoon.

MusicfestNW started with a bang for me when I came from Seattle day of to catch Cat Power - literally went straight from Greyhound, into a taxi, over the river to Audio Cinema with 7 minutes to spare before Bare hit the stage and shot some candids of him and the Decemberists.

(He's managed by Trevor, who is the director of MFNW)

My weekend came to a very sad end both before and after Wolf Parade when Britney Spears failed to nail her VMA performance.  Can we cry collectively?  And you know, I realize that people's hopes should not be hinged on one human being - there is no way she can support all of the weight of that many expectations, but that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed and that I'm not going to cry or that I haven't already... multiple times... once while watching Holy Fuck tear up the stage with distorted casio rocking crap-pop.

My MusicfestNW experiences over the internets:

My Pitchfork photo expose

I blogged MFNW Day 2 at LocalCut

I blogged MFNW Day 3 at LocalCut

I blogged MFNW Day 4 at LocalCut

And you can pick up this week's edition of Willamette Week to see seven of my observations in print from Fist Fite to Deerhunter's dress sense plus a bit about Wolf Parade's set and spy three of my photos!!!!!!!

And my mini photo story of the fest: I typically don't LOVE my photos.  In fact I have such a hard time looking at them after I've taken them that I can sometimes be kinda late on deadlines because I don't want to look at them and see how close they could've been to being one step better, but the photo at the top of the post I immediately fell in actual love with.  I originally submitted it to the MFNW invite only flickr group for editors to browse through as I was submitting some of my top tier photos there, but then I realized that even though I loved it, some other editors might not and I didn't want to risk it not running, because I wanted other people to see it, so I removed it and sent it to Pitchfork where I knew it'd appear.
Today I got an email from the editor of the Bend Bulletin saying how much he in all-caps LOVED the photo and how he was happy to use my other Girl Talk shots he had access to in the MusicfestNW flickr, but that's the one he really wanted.  Since the exclusivity has expired now, I sent it his way.
I almost feel like a real photographer lately.  Keyword: almost.

Here's to next year!

(And no, I was not wearing a backpack even though it looks like it)

Now I'm sick, but it was worth it!

'Wham City' Dan Deacon MP3

'Knife' Grizzly Bear Girl Talk remix MP3

'How Can I Tell You' Cat Power clip MP3

PS - I'll be uploading ten million more photos that have yet to appear anywhere to my flickr within the next week.  So bookmark it if you wanna see them/yourself in the crowd at Girl Talk.

Cat Power in Concert

"Excuse me. Photographer girl-what's you name?"
Announcing it not only to her but the dead quiet venue, "Nilina."
"Can you take pictures after the show cause it's really distracting me."
And so began the second of two Cat Power shows this past Saturday at the Aladdin Theatre in Portland. Quickly she returned to the strings as I returned to my seat.
Earlier that evening she played a set in the seven o'clock hour that she described as "horrible" and "awful" many a time. Due to start at seven, the only inkling that she would indeed be playing was a quick wave from the side of the stage just after 7:30 and then a descent back into the shadows at which point my comrade and I left for another show, making the resolution to return for the 10:30 p.m. set.
And return we did, just as Cat Power did, once again to a nearly sold-out house to play solo in support of The Greatest. Barefoot and in skinny jeans that she lectured on twice, Chan played the first three tracks of the set seated and on the guitar the last of the trio being 'Could We', then seamlessly transitioned into 'The Greatest' on the piano. Previous to the performance I read previews that questioned how much of the album would translate with out the rich horns and other accompanying instruments, but their not being there didn't disrupt.
Soon she was standing, side of the stage on the right, guitar in hand to indulge in a cover of 'Hit the Road Jack' with a somewhat schizophrenic quality to it as she after inserting her name sung both parts as if having a conversation between herself and Jack in the song.
Commissioning a cigarette from the audience after admitting her desire for one, she soon squatted down at the side of the stage to grab the light then continued to stay there in conversation with the fellow smoker. The large seated audience watched on as it continued and within a few minutes she had returned to her seat beside the piano to indulge in the cigarette in near silence until she made a remark about living in Portland and a member of the audience urged her to tell of her experience.

She hemmed and hawed over picking what to divulge of her memories of her three and a half month long stay in Oregon during which time she lived in Portland. Chan advised of best menu items to aid a hang over and shared an almost serendipitous tale of wanting a job at the YWCA assisting with an after-school program. For three and a half months she had gone after the job-calling and applying only never to receive a celebratory call back. Then one day she got a call from her booker of a show booked in New York and that she'd have to leave Portland immediately for the show. On that very day she returned home to find a message waiting on her answering machine that she had indeed gotten the job at the YWCA. She instead went to New York for the show, then ended up canceling the tour in an effort to confront and end her alcoholism.
The smoking continued with her tipping her ashes into the left upper pocket of her button up shirt, looking out to the crowd and a feeling of anticipation coupled with a slight bit of uneasiness began to emanate.
Through out the set she consistently responded to audience feedback-to someone questioning if she had just tipped it's ashes into her coffee (she had) then continued to drink it.
When she couldn't remember the keys to a song mid-way through the show, she began several false starts each accidentally feeding into 'The Greatest'. From her description is was because she hadn't played it in so long and her initial forbearance about playing it was she didn't think she'd be able to remember the lyrics, but that was not the case. So she'd begin and stop and ask out to the anonymous faces, "Is that right?" four times before being able to play it as written. Then in the middle of the song after singing a lyric she stopped again to ask if that was really in the song. After a moderate response that it wasn't she launched into a short telling that it was supposed to have been, sat motionless, then returned to finishing the song.

At the end of each coupling of songs through out the set she'd elaborately shake her hands in a duel signal that the song was over seemingly as a signal for clapping and also to reciprocate the response.
Playing a host of covers from the requested 'Freebird' straight into 'Satisfaction' both on guitar Cat Power's versatility was fully intact, not only visible in the instrument transitions, but between styles and performing each song to the point where one would believe it to be fully her own.
To achieve different strengths and styles of vocals she circled the mic with her mouth, singing directly into on some occasions, other singing as far away as possible from her position or to the side, often including all in one song.
She took a stab at being a comedian multiple times. After commissioning yet another cigarette from a member of the audience and casting it as "intermission," she after a pause, told two related, pointless but entertaining stories about her French friend and Bob Dylan, including hilarious impressions of the French friend-accent and all.
Moments of inappropriate laughter from the audience during the entire set were offset by the multiple occasions that she burped into the mic, addressing the last one by saying, "I shouldn't do that."
Finishing up the tipping of ashes into her pocket she spouted, "If you're a Bob Dylan fan you'll know what this means. . . No you won't," ending her attempt at a joke.
The evening was truly an exchange and a equal exchange of music, conversation, and silence.
She brought up her sobriety on two occasions and admitted that she realized she "was whacked out" and that's not what she wanted to be and how "great it is not to be depressed." She also talked about that she can't wait for fall tour when she'll be back with a band-a band that have no baggage.
Penetrating moments of silence as she sorted her next move became repetitious and as the night rolling onto the a.m. the audience began to get anxious for the off kilter night to come to a close with movement in seats, audience departures, and repeated cups tipping over.

The absolute highlight of the set was 'Names', performed soulfully and languid.
To conclude she once again took her place at stage right shortly after playing 'Willie' and launched into a close infinantly greater than the already above sufficient set she'd just been playing. Southern accent out in tow she shared the story of how her grandmother used to tape her and her sister singing when they were younger doing covers of Kenny Rogers and Oreo commercials. Sounding like a book on tape-a great book on tape, she changed her voice several times to fully embody that of her grandmother, that of her sister in childhood, and herself in childhood, singing and talking. The pain and happiness of her childhood was visible and the segment was truly captivating.
Seeing out a two and a half hour long set, she finished the bit, did a hlf circle wave, then dashed behind the curtains to congratulatory clapping and an audience all the wiser.
Seemingly free of society's conditionings and fear, the Cat Power Portland saw was fragile near broken, but easily triumphant still.

Related/unrelated side note:
Once when on the beach in high school I realized I had never been chased by seagulls. So I took an entire jar of animal crackers and started running ("And I run, I run so far away"), crumbling them up in my hand at the same time. They all started to flock towards me-hundreds and hundreds and that's kinda like Cat Power stoppoing her song and asking my name-that had never happened to me before and now it has-yet another thing to cross off my list of things to do thatI didn't even know needed doing.