//ALL AGES//
8p - 11p
A musical even to honor our friend Edmond Lapine and raise funds for the scholorship in his name featuring:
TENDER FOREVER - https://tenderfore.bandcamp.com/
THE MAXINES - https://youtu.be/lYN3JbhNIMc
SELECTOR DUB NARCOTIC - https://selectordubnarcotic.bandcamp.com/
THE LUNGS - Members of EBT BBQ, Family Stoned & Pill Wonder
75% OF ALL PROCEEDS GO TOWARDS THE EDMOND WILLIAM LAPINE ll SCHOLARSHIP at THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE
QUANTIC (LIVE)
After a year of travelling and recording through Puerto Rico, Panama and Colombia the album 'Tropidelico' was released; itself a sonic adventure through Cumbia, Soul and Salsa. With a move to Cali, Colombia in 2007, Holland explored an ardent interest in tropical rhythms of the region and it was there he established his Sonido del Valle studio. This culminated in records from side projects Los Miticos Del Ritmo, Quantic and His Combo Bárbaro and Ondatropica, as well as the soulful and psychedelic LP 'Look Around the Corner' with long time collaborator Alice Russell. He also produced a 2011 EP with Serato: 'Hiphop en Cumbia,' which saw Holland paying tribute to his hip hop favourites in accordion laden Cumbia-style. Holland released his fifth studio record 'Magnetica' in 2013 under the Quantic moniker; it received critical acclaim for its marriage of South American folklore and a strong return to Holland's signature electronic aesthetic. Nidia Gongora, a Colombian Pacifico folklorist, a frequent collaborator from Holland's time Cali was prominently featured on this record. Holland's pioneering and enigmatic productions as well as his musical expressions as Guitarist, Accordionist, DJ, Studio Engineer & Music Compiler have earned him an international fanbase and constant engagements as a music selector, remixer and band director. He has 16 studio albums under his belt, as well as several compilations. He has collaborated and recorded with the likes of Ana Tijoux, Jorge Drexler, Shinehead, Anibal Velasquez, and more. Currently residing in Brooklyn, Holland has a new musical release (or two!), planned for 2016.
FLAMINGOSIS
Top Down Rooftop Cinema is an annual outdoor film series. Classic, campy, and always entertaining, films screen every Thursday night in August amid Portland’s ideal summer weather.
Thursday August 17 -- ARMY OF DARKNESS 1992
Happy-go-lucky S-Mart employee Ash is ripped from his 1990s existence and transported back to medieval times, where he must struggle against warring factions of men and an army of the dead that threatens all existence. The third film in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy puts the pedal to the metal with an endless array of sight gags, one-liners, and demon busting action sequences. Can Ash retrieve the ancient tome known as the Necronomicon and banish the evil forces it summons from the face of the earth? Or do we even care about plot with a film as wickedly fun and frenetic as Army of Darkness? “Sam Raimi’s “Army of Darkness” is a goofy, hyperventilated send-up of horror films and medieval warfare, so action-packed it sometimes seems less like a movie than like a cardiovascular workout for its stars.” – Roger Ebert
Join us atop the Hotel deLuxe’s parking structure at SW 15th and Yamhill for our 13th annual program of cinema under the stars. Doors open at 7 pm with food and beverages available for purchase from Aladdin’s Café, Brass Tacks Sandwiches, and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Music begins at 8 pm and films begin around dusk. Entry for advance ticket holders is guaranteed until 8:30 pm. Advance tickets ensure that you will not have to wait in the ticket purchase line but do not guarantee entry after 8:30 pm. A limited number of chairs are available on a first-come, first-served basis, so feel free to bring a chair, pillow, or blanket, along with a light sweater or jacket. Advance ticket holders who arrive after 8:30 pm but are not admitted to the screening (in the case of a sell-out) may exchange their tickets for another Top Down screening. There are no refunds or exchanges for arrivals after the film begins (c. 9 pm) or for entirely missed screenings. Please, no pets or outside food or drink.
Each film will be preceded by a short film by a Northwest filmmaker.
Advance tickets are available at nwfilm.org: $10 general; $9 student/senior/PAM member; $7 Silver Screen Club Friend. Tickets at the door are $12 general; $11 student/senior/PAM member; $9 Silver Screen Club Friend.
Sylvan Esso
Sylvan Esso was not meant to be a band. Rather, Amelia Meath had written a song called "Play It Right" and sung it with her trio Mountain Man. She'd met Nick Sanborn, an electronic producer working under the name Made of Oak, in passing on a shared bill in a small club somewhere. She asked him to scramble it, to render her work his way. He did the obligatory remix, but he sensed that there was something more important here than a one-time handoff: Of all the songs Sanborn had ever recast, this was the first time he felt he'd added to the raw material without subtracting from it, as though, across the unseen wires of online file exchange, he'd found his new collaborator without even looking.
Meath felt it, too. Schedules aligned. Moves were made. And as 2012 slipped into 2013, Sanborn and Meath reconvened in the unlikely artistic hub of Durham, N.C., a former manufacturing town with cheap rent and good food. Sylvan Esso became a band. A year later, their self-titled debut-a collection of vivid addictions concerning suffering and love, darkness and deliverance-arrives as a necessary pop balm, an album stuffed with songs that don't suffer the longstanding complications of that term.
These 10 tunes were realized and recorded in Sanborn's Durham bedroom during the last year, an impressive feat considering the layers of activity and effects that populate them-the dizzyingly crisscrossed harmonies of "Play it Right," the gorgeously incongruous elements of "Wolf," the surreptitiously minimalist momentum of "HSKT." Sanborn's production is fully modern and wonderfully active. He enlists obliterating dubstep stutters and crisp electropop pulses, hazy electrostatic breezes and epinephrine dancefloor turnarounds.
But this isn't a workout in production skills or a demonstration of electronic erudition. Instead, his music syncs seamlessly with Meath's melodies, so that the respective words and beats become a string of ready-to-play singles. The irrepressible "Hey Mami" webs handclaps and harmonies around a flood of bass, a strangely perfect canvas for a tale of dudes hollering at neighborhood tail (and, finally, finding the chivalry not to do so). "Coffee" sparkles and quakes, patiently rising from a muted spell of seasonal affective disorder to a sweet rupture of schoolyard glee. These pop cuts condescend neither to their audience nor their makers. They are sophisticated, but with none of the arrogance that can imply; they are addictive, but with none of the banality that can entail. There is sensuality and sexual depravity, homesickness and wanderlust, nostalgia and immediacy. Sylvan Esso acknowledges that the world is a tumult of complications by giving you a way to sing and dance with those troubles, if not to will them away altogether.
When Meath and Sanborn talk about Sylvan Esso, they come back to context-to how, before this project, they felt that their solo endeavors often felt short of it, as if they were lacking a crucial component. That is no longer a concern. When Meath sings to Sanborn a melody that she's conjured and captured, he almost instinctively knows how to respond. And when he delivers to her the backbone of a wordless beat, she adds lyrical bait where he'd only seen white space. Sylvan Esso represents the fulfillment of their fortuitous encounter by, once again, linking parts that too often come stripped of their counterparts. Here, motion comes with melody. Words come with ideas. And above all, pop comes back with candor.
For more than a decade pianist Marco Benevento has been amassing an extensive body of work. His studio albums and live performances set forth a vision that connects the dots in the vast space betweenLCD SoundsystemandLeon Russell, pulsating with dance rock energy, but with smart, earthysongwriting to match. It has led to numerous high profile appearances, ranging from Carnegie Hall to Pickathon,Mountain JamtoTreefort Festival, while headlining shows coast to coast.Marco Benevento's latest studio LP,The Story of Fred Short, and its companion live release,The Woodstock Sessions, is some of his finest and most adventurous work to date-a maestro making "bold indie rock" saysBrooklyn Vegan, while the LA Times raves, "Benevento continues to straighten his twisted sound into the guise of an indie-rock singer-songwriter, harnessing his inventive sonic palette into rewardingly bite-size pop songs that touch on disco and soul." Honing his psych rock and late night dance party sensibilities, the recordings find the pianist citing everything from Harry Nilsson, Manu Chau and Gorillaz as inspiration.As anybody who's seen Marco Benevento perform can attest, with eyes closed, smile wide across his face and fingers free-flowing across the keys, he's a satellite to the muse. With a devout and growing fan-base, Benevento is an artist whose story is only beginning to unfold.Press Quotes"Benevento jams with a concentration on the textures and colors available in his keyboards and arsenal of manipulated pedals and effects. His songs feature deceptively rich, catchy melodies and straight-ahead grooves that expand with subtle mounting gestures." - Rolling Stone"A musician so original that he can ultimately only be judged against his own standard." -All Music"Reminiscent of Dr. John's New Orleans psychedelia and piano chops with a hint of Father John Misty's general coolness, Marco Benevento brings something very unique to the modern pop world." - The Wild Honey Pie"Benevento continues to straighten his twisted sound into the guise of an indie-rock singer-songwriter, harnessing his inventive sonic palette into rewardingly bite-size pop songs that touch on disco and soul." - LA Times"Marco Benevento is one of the most talented keys players of our time." - CBS"Benevento's colorful, improvisational, piano-based compositions stretch so wide and cover so much sonic ground that the idea of genre seems quaint. Very quietly, he has been evolving into one of the most vital figures in jazz or rock or post-jazz or post-rock or-all of music." - Kansas City Pitch"A vocalizing party-starter, Benevento extrudes sinister balladry and hustling disco beats." - Village Voice
Kid Koala (DJ Set)
Kid Koala is a world-renowned scratch DJ, music producer and award-winning graphic novelist. He has released four solo albums on Ninja Tune, the most recent being 12 bit Blues. He has also released two graphic novels: Nufonia Must Fall and Space Cadet. He has also been involved in collaborations such as Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, and The Slew.
Kid Koala has toured with the likes of Radiohead, Arcade Fire, the Beastie Boys, Money Mark, A Tribe Called Quest, Mike Patton, DJ Shadow and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has contributed to scores for the films Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Looper, The Great Gatsby and Men, Women and Children. He has composed music for The National Film Board of Canada, the Cartoon Network, Sesame Street, and Adult Swim. He has also been commissioned to create music for runway shows for Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten. Kid Koala's unforgettable live shows range from silly touring turntable carnivals like Short Attention Span Theater (featuring turntable bingo) and Vinyl Vaudeville (including puppets and dancers) to quiet-time events like Music To Draw To, his Space Cadet Headphone Experience and the multi-disciplinary puppet theatre film/musical performance Nufonia Must Fall, directed by K.K. Barrett.
DJ O.G. One
Official DJ for the Portland Trailblazers
Survival Skills
'Survival Skills (aka Aaron Bergeson) is a long time Portland based musician, an electronic producer with releases on Cavity Search Records, Radio Host of Beat Parlor Mon-Thurs 11-Midnight on KMHD 89.1 FM, and live DJ.'
...speaking of air and darkness, Born on a Gangster Star came into the world in a big damn hurry, like nightfall on an island. You can see it happening, but then again it's so gradual that the next thing you know--it's dark.
Imbued with the energy and ideas from all the creative embers floating in the atmosphere like fireflies, Shabazz Palaces recorded this entire album over the course of two weeks with Blood in Seattle. New gear and new equipment disintegrated comfort zones into dust and a new path appeared in the ashes.
Herein the Palaceer continues the tale of Quazars, a sentient being from somewhere else, an observer sent here to Amurderca to chronicle and explore as a musical emissary. What he finds in our world is a cutthroat place, a landscape where someone like him could never quite feel comfortable amidst all the brutality and alternative facts and death masquerading as connectivity.
Inspired by days on end spent in the waves--water and light, both--of Southern California, the work came to the Palaceer in a flash, like being picked up by something and carried. Always dribbling with his head up, he can see what's going on around him and react to it, rather than starting in a certain direction and hoping to achieve something upon arrival.
What's good?--the kids ask. What does it even mean, and what does it even matter? Who is behind these choices? We are all of us sitting under a waterfall of all. this. shit. but it's the excess that is casting us into ruts.
The Palaceer stays away from the fleeting and the superficial nonessential. Stay away from your device--your phantom limb--and stay away from your image--your phantom self; that is his decree. Considering the motions behind the things you like to consume artistically, rather than just the way something looks or sounds, and thinking in layers, and trying to be more considerate and not so self-oriented--this is his medicine for combat.
Born on a Gangster Star flirts with a pop sensibility, but through the prism of Shabazz Palaces's fire and fury. For the Palaceer, that sense is all about how the groove is moving, and the supernatural telepathy that occurs amongst his cohort. Appearing here, in body or in spirit, are Julian Casablancas, Thundercat, Darrius Willrich, Gamble and Huff, Loud Eyes Lou, Thaddillac, Ahmir, Jon Kirby, Sunny Levine, and Blood. The story belongs to Quazarz, but the air and darkness belong to us.
And so we shine a light on the fake.
GUANTANAMO BAYWATCH:
https://guantanamobaywatch.bandcamp.com/
HONEY BUCKET:
https://honey-bucket.bandcamp.com/
MELT:
https://meltmeltmelt666.bandcamp.com/
THE GHOST EASE
The Ghost Ease is a Portland/Seattle dynamic driven, moody garage rock trio comprised of Jem Marie on vocals/guitar, Nsayi Matingou on drums and Lauren Vidal on bass. The Ghost Ease has morphed through various incarnations since Marie began penning songs under the name in late 2010. It wasn't until 2012 when drummer Nsayi joined that a band proper was established, yielding a self-released album. As a musical entity, The Ghost Ease revel in the warm folds of a sort of soft savagery, pin-pricking holes into the fabric of the astral veil, and contorting sordid anti-anthems into hypnotic, raw opuses by way of heavy guitars and lilting vocal timbres.
JO PASSED
Jo Passed is the songwriter band project of currently Vancouver based musician, Joseph Hirabayashi. After the breakup of Hirabayashi's band Sprïng in 2015, Joseph assembled material quickly and moved out to Montreal to start a new project in a new city. With the help of Mac Lawrie (Flash Palace, Cult Babies), Jo Passed released a debut EP entitled "Out" on Toronto label Craft Singles. After returning back to the West Coast in early 2016, Joseph assembled a new lineup of Jo Passed with Bella Mckee on guitar, Spencer Hargreaves on bass, and Daniel Ruiz on drums; released a 2nd EP, "Up" through Los Angeles/Portland label Golden Brown (Lefse Records) and toured the West Coast many times. Since forming in 2015, Jo Passed has performed over 80 shows both on both coasts in both Canada and the US. Jo Passed is currently working on a debut full length to be released in 2017.
AH GOD
Ah God is heavy art grunge and fuzzed-out psychedelia with a DIY recording ethic. Heavy drum beats are carried to your ears softly and sweetly on the backs of stoney guitar melodies of the utmost sensuality. Straight out of Portland, OR, Ah God freshly emerges from the current scene, coming at you with loud bouquets of floral punk and the fuzzy sweetness you didn't know your life was missing.
NARITA MUNEHIRO (of High Rise):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7kK5nYGRXc
MOON DUO:
https://moonduo.bandcamp.com/
R.I.P. :
https://braveinthegrave.bandcamp.com/releases
Bryan Ferry
From his earliest recordings with Roxy Music at the beginning of the 1970s, Bryan Ferry has taken his place as one of the most iconic and innovative artists to emerge in popular music. In his work you hear a vocal and lyrical brilliance that merges the intensity of Lou Reed, the poise of Sinatra and the charisma of Serge Gainsbourg. But then there is something extra - a verve and performance so ultra-modern that it continually breaks new ground.
When Ferry’s group Roxy Music first appeared on ‘Top of The Pops’ in 1972, performing their debut single, ‘Virginia Plain’, their impact was instantaneous. For here was a group which appeared to have taken the history of modern popular music, from French chanson to Elvis to progressive rock, by way of soul and the avant-garde, and fused their different inspirations into a seamless and glittering pure pop moment. More or less overnight, the band’s audience was secured - from screaming teenage fans to highbrow rock critics. And in many ways, Ferry’s creation of Roxy Music was one of the great statements of Pop Art – with all of the musicians, designers and stylists whom he had brought together combining their talents to make an intoxicating and radically new montage of musical and visual styles.
The revolutionary electronic treatments developed by Brian Eno for the first two Roxy Music albums would join with Andy Mackay’s mesmeric sax and woodwind playing, Manzanera’s dazzling guitar work and Paul Thompson’s thunderous drumming to provide the haunting, futuristic and filmic ambience of the founding Roxy sound. And subsequent to Eno’s departure in 1973, and across the further six epoch-defining and chart-topping studio albums recorded by the band over the following ten years (including ‘Stranded’, ‘Siren’, ‘Manifesto’ and ‘Avalon’) these co-founding members of Roxy Music would combine their talents with Ferry’s songwriting, vocals and artistic directorship to more or less chart the potential futures of popular music.
Since 1973, Bryan Ferry’s career as a solo recording artist has run in parallel to his work with Roxy Music. His first solo album, ‘These Foolish Things’ (released that same year) would introduce what Ferry has described as his ‘ready-mades’ - cover versions of recordings by artists whom he admires, which he then interprets in his own style. Like all great singers, Ferry turns the cover version into a form of self-portraiture.
Bryan Ferry’s vocal genius lies in his peerless ability to merge and where necessary mutate musical styles – from hyper-stylized cabaret chanson, through classic soul crooner to hard-edged rock - creating the sheen and pure drama that has become his artistic signature. This was certainly the case with his thunderous, pulsing version of the northern soul classic, ‘The In Crowd’, which became a hit for Ferry in 1974.
It was likewise at this relatively early stage in his career that Ferry was perceived by his vast pop audience to be the living embodiment of the worlds of high fashion, high society and high living that his songs, personal style and performance brought to life with such romantic intensity. In one sense, above and beyond his musical accomplishments, Ferry had ‘become’ his art – a feat shared with performers such as Little Richard, Sinatra and later Prince.
As also defined by his work with Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry’s solo recordings have long achieved a perfect tension between languor and brooding passion, whether in his own songs or in his interpretations of works by other artists. Many of Ferry’s greatest compositions describe the fate of the lonely, isolated romantic - always on the outside, even at the heart of the grandest party or the most exotic city. Ferry has said of himself, “I feel always to be on the inside looking out, or the outside looking in -” – the classic situation of the artist.
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the musical style of Ferry’s recordings acquired a lustrous and pristine flawless sheen that enhanced their darkling mood - well suited to such tracks as ‘Can’t Let Go’ from the album ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’, released in 1978. As a lyricist, Ferry combines the language and proportions of classic pop songs with a modern, angular imagery that exactly mirrors his style as a vocalist. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, he would further hone and perfect this pared down, glistening refinement of his recordings to produce some of his greatest work in the three solo albums, ‘Boys and Girls’ (1985),
‘Bete Noire’ (1987) and ‘Mamouna’ (1994). With their high gloss surfaces and dark folds of sound, these albums might be seen to comprise a great triptych of recordings – a musical statement about Bryan Ferry’s founding themes as a lyricist and singer, invoking – like the writings of one of his literary heroes, F. Scott Fitzgerald - the timeless capacity of romance and glamour to shape destiny. In many ways, ‘Boys and Girls’ and ‘Bete Noir’ are Ferry’s most consummate achievements as a singer and songwriter, enfolding the listener like a carefully lit film set, and providing the defining soundtrack of an era.
Throughout the 1990s to the present, Ferry has continued his work on both the ‘ready-made’ and his own compositions, exploring specifically the music of the 1930s and 1920s (‘As Time Goes By’ (1999) and ‘The Jazz Age’ (2012)) and the songs of one of his great musical idols, Bob Dylan (‘Dylanesque’ (2006). In 2002 Bryan had released ‘Frantic’, his first album to feature original material since ‘Mamouna’ and including tracks with Dave Stewart and Brian Eno, who co-wrote ‘I Thought’ - one of the finest tracks on the album.
Comprising mostly original Ferry compositions, ‘Olympia’ – like ‘Boys and Girls’ and ‘Bete Noir’ before it - was a dark masterpiece, spectrally lit, on the eternal subject of obsessive love. Inspired in part by Edouard Manet’s painting of the same title – and featuring postmodern muse Kate Moss on the album artwork – the album involved many different collaborators and recording sessions while possessing an uncanny artistic unity and defining filmic atmosphere. From the self-penned ‘You Can Dance’ and ‘Reason or Rhyme’, to the Tim Buckley classic, ‘Song For The Siren’, this was an album of rich emotional intensity – its mood at once nocturnal, urban and elegiac.
Last year Ferry celebrated the 40th year anniversary of his career as a singer and songwriter by rearranging his own compositions and recording them in a 1920's style with his very own Jazz Orchestra, The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, for the instrumental album 'The Jazz Age'. It was after hearing ‘The Jazz Age’ that Baz Luhrmann asked Ferry to record the 20's music for the film 'The Great Gatsby'. This included rearranging elements of the score and also recording in a period style the contemporary songs that Luhrmann and Jay-Z had selected for the movie, all of which have been recently released on the companion Gatsby soundtrack album 'Yellow Cocktail Music'.
Prior to embarking on his forthcoming 2013 UK tour, Ferry will perform for the first time orchestral arrangements of his songs at Proms In The Park, combining both his band and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra with the BBC Concert Orchestra.
Judith Owen
British singer/songwriter Judith Owen's eclecticism has seen her records shelved in the rock, folk, and jazz sections of record stores. She was born the daughter of an opera singer and began writing songs as a teenager. Becoming a professional musician, she met and married actor/musician Harry Shearer and contributed vocals and keyboards to his 1994 album, It Must Have Been Something I Said. Her debut solo album, Emotions on a Postcard, was released on her own Dog on the Bed label in 1996. Among its songs was "Hand on My Heart," which was featured in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets and appeared on the soundtrack album. Owen befriended singer/songwriter Julia Fordham and appeared on Fordham's albums East West and That's Live. Another musical association was struck up with Richard Thompson, which led to Owen's appearances on the Thompson albums Mock Tudor, 1000 Years of Popular Music, and Old Kit Bag. She released her second solo album, Limited Edition, in 2000. "Creatures of Habit" and "Get into It" from the album were featured in the film Olive Juice. 12 Arrows (2003), her third album, boasted guest appearances by Fordham and Thompson, and it featured Owen's cover of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." It earned her an opening slot on a k.d. lang tour. In 2004, Owen released a holiday EP, Christmas in July, including her cover of "Christmas with the Devil," a song by her husband's fictional group Spinal Tap. She also placed her song "Dreaming" in the film P.S., then used it on her fourth album, Lost and Found, released on her newly formed Courgette Records label in 2005. Her cover of the Kinks' "I Go to Sleep" was featured in the TV movie Mrs. Harris, and she then included it on her fifth album, Here, released August 8, 2006.
The Selecter
The Selecter is led by their iconic frontwoman Pauline Black, whose recent series of shows on BBC 6Music were hugely well received, and whose book ‘Black By Design’ continues to sell in droves worldwide, alongside an incredible talented band of musicians, including Neil Pyzer (Spear Of Destiny) Will Crewdson (Rachel Stamp) and co-fronted by original member Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson (who features extensively on Subculture).
The anarchic passion that fuelled Selecter gigs during the 2 Tone era, when they toured with the Specials and Madness at the peak of their early fame is still there, except the pair (Pauline & Gaps) seem more driven than ever. Their confidence is sky-high and they’re also writing the best songs of their career, which is saying something given the enduring popularity of hits like Three Minute Hero, Missing Words and On My Radio.
Steve Earle & The Dukes
If you ever had any doubt about where Steve Earle’s musical roots are planted, his new collection, So You Wannabe an Outlaw, makes it perfectly plain. “There’s nothing ‘retro’ about this record,” he states, “I’m just acknowledging where I’m coming from.” So You Wannabe an Outlaw is the first recording he has made in Austin, Texas. Earle has lived in New York City for the past decade but he acknowledges, “Look, I’m always gonna be a Texan, no matter what I do. And I’m always going to be somebody who learned their craft in Nashville. It’s who I am.”
In the 1970s, artists such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck, Billy Joe Shaver and Tompall Glaser gave country music a rock edge, some raw grit and a rebel attitude. People called what these artists created “outlaw music.” The results were country’s first Platinum-certified records, exciting and fresh stylistic breakthroughs and the attraction of a vast new youth audience to a genre that had previously been by and for adults. In the eighties, The Highwaymen was formed by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. Their final album “The Road Goes On Forever” released in 1996 began with the Steve Earle song “The Devil’s Right Hand.”
Steve Earle’s 2017 collection, So You Wannabe an Outlaw, is an homage to outlaw music. “I was out to unapologetically ‘channel’ Waylon as best as I could.” says Earle. “This record was all about me on the back pick-up of a Fender Telecaster on an entire record for the first time in my life. The singing part of it is a little different. I certainly don’t sound like Waylon Jennings.”
The Mastersons
Don't bother asking The Mastersons where they're from. Brooklyn, Austin, Los Angeles, Terlingua; they've called each home in just the last few years alone. If you really want to get to know this husband-and-wife duo, the better question to ask is where they're going. Perhaps more than any other band playing today, The Mastersons live on the road, perpetually in motion and always creating. Movement is their muse. On tour, in the unpredictable adventures and characters they cross, in the endless blur of skylines and rest stops and dressing rooms and hotels, that's where they find their greatest inspiration, where they hone their art, and where they crafted their brilliant new album, Transient Lullaby.
"When you travel like we do, if your antenna is up, there's always something going on around you," reflects guitarist/singer Chris Masterson. "Ideas can be found everywhere. The hardest thing to find is time."
For the last seven years, The Mastersons have kept up a supremely inexorable touring schedule, performing as both the openers for Steve Earle and as members of his band, The Dukes, in addition to playing their own relentless slate of headline shows and festivals. It was Earle, in fact, who pushed the duo to record their acclaimed debut, Birds Fly South, in the first place.
Wet Dream Committee
Møtrik
To say Møtrik is simply a krautrock band would be a gross oversimplification. The '70s masters may have showed Møtrik the way, but the band defines its own route. Progressive rock, funk, '80s garage rock and indie sensibilities shape the Portland, Oregon band's sound, and that collision of influences allows the band to go any route it wants to get “there."
The Northside Four is what happens when you take members of various other Rockabilly, R&B, Jump Blues, Country, Punk, Rock bands and put them together alone in a room. When the dust clears, you have a new band of misfits we call The Northside Four. This band plays classic and obscure tunes from a variety of artists and genres from the 40's and 50's. From Bob Wills to Ray Charles, Little Richard to Joe Clay, Buddy Holly to the Sonics this band will play music from a time period that will be impossible not to dance to!
$5 suggested
All ages!
There is no wrong time to play 'Bam Bam.' Every summer belongs to 'Bam Bam.' ... A perfect song.” — The New Yorker
In the words of her iconic 1982 single “Bam Bam,” Sister Nancy is “one inna three million,” an artist whose talents truly “come from creation.”
Regarded as the first female star in the male-dominated world of Jamaican dancehall, Sister Nancy continues to blaze new trails 35 years after the release of her first and only album. Recently recognized by Pitchfork as The Best Dancehall Song of All-Time, “Bam Bam” has been sampled, quoted and referenced in tracks by Lauryn Hill, Wiz Khalifa, Too Short and Kanye West. Its ethereal and inherently cinematic tones have made it a popular choice for films, too, leading to memorable scenes in 1998’s Belly and Seth Rogen and James Franco’s The Interview (2014).
Born Ophlin Russell, Nancy grew up in Kingston, Jamaica’s Papine district, in a large family that included dancehall pioneer Brigadier Jerry. Her familial ties afforded her an opportunity granted few, if any, Jamaican girls at the time: To deejay (or chat) songs on sound systems, the local DJ crews that form the backbone of dancehall culture. After learning of her talents from artist General Echo, Winston Riley of Kingston’s storied Techniques Records label brought her into the studio to record her first single, “Papa Dean,” in 1979. Returning to the studio to complete what would be her first and only album, One Two, in 1982, Nancy lent her voice to a haunting, minimalist version of Riley’s Stalag riddim, a popular instrumental track voiced by countless artists since 1973. Co-opting a lyrical refrain (“Bam bam bi lam, bam bam, what a bam bam…) from Toots & the Maytals’ identically-named 1966 hit, Nancy created an anthem of female empowerment, repurposing the skepticism she encountered as the lone woman on the sound system circuit into a supremely-confident mission statement.
“One Two,” the title cut from her album, would become her signature hit in Jamaica, leading to international tours and collaborations with dancehall’s then-reigning king, Yellowman. Little heard at the time of its release, “Bam Bam” would find its audience in New York, first in the city’s Caribbean Diaspora and then in hip-hop. In the early 1990s, it was sampled by golden-era rap acts Main Source and Pete Rock & CL Smooth, and remixed into a hip-hop version by legendary radio DJ Stretch Armstrong. It wasn’t until Nancy herself relocated to New Jersey, where she would take a job as a bank accountant, later in the decade that she became aware of her song’s and her own iconic stateside status.
Hype Williams’ 1998 film Belly cemented Nancy’s place in the pop culture canon, in an unforgettable scene in which “Bam Bam” soundtracks the movements of the stunning Jamaican femme fatale, Chiquita. That same year, Lauryn Hill echoed Nancy’s “Bam Bam” chorus on “Lost Ones,” from her Grammy-winning and career-defining album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, passing Nancy’s patois inflections on to a new generation of listeners.
Since then, the samples, covers and placements —including a 2014 Reebok TV campaign featuring model Miranda Kerr —have become ever more frequent. In 2016, Nancy received the ultimate co-sign, or at least some really great exposure, when Kanye West used “Bam Bam” prominently on “Famous,” arguably the most controversial song and video of his always-provocative career. The New Yorker’s Carrie Battan went so far as to dub “Bam Bam” the Song of the Summer for 2016, describing it as “a perfect song” and a “reggae classic that only grows more lustrous with age.”
Now retired from her bank job and fully focused on music once more, Nancy began 2017 by performing in Jamaica for the first time in decades at Rebel Salute, the island’s top reggae festival, and appearing at Winter Music Conference in Miami. At a time when dancehall has re-entered the mainstream via pop hits by Rihanna and Drake and a new generation of Jamaican artists led by Popcaan, Spice and Kranium, Pitchfork celebrated “Bam Bam” as the best dancehall song of all-time in a list published in March.
XRAY FM is throwing a big, free "bazaar style" party with some of your favorite XRAY radio show's broadcasted LIVE from the White Owl patio, also featuring performances by musical acts like Cool Nuts, Surfer Rosie, Motrik, Anjali and the Kid, AND THAT'S NOT ALL. Over 40 vendors and pop up shops selling art, vintage, books, records, jewelry, free samples, and so much more out on the patio and adjacent street. Join us at the White Owl on August 12th from 2pm on for a summer event to remember.
FB RSVP HERE!
Enjoy our street fair and patio full of pop-up shops, jewelry, vintage, food/drink samples and more. Shop for zines, books and records inside the bar. Street fair is all ages, inside the bar and patio is 21+.
VENDORS/POP UP SHOPS: 2pm-8pm
MUSIC + PARTY: 2pm-1am
2-3pm DJs Jené and Shira of Everyday Mixtrapes (Live Broadcast)
3-5pm DJ Honest John of Savage Beat (Live Broadcast)
5:15-6pm Surfer Rosie
6-7pm Serious Moonlight and Palm Dat of Intuitive Navigation (Live Broadcast)
7:15-8pm Cool Nutz & DJ Fatboy
8:00-9:30 Anjali and the Incredible Kid (of XRAY's Chor Bazaar)
9:30-10:20 Motrik
10:20-1am Heavy Metal Sewing Circle Afterparty with DJs Nate Carson and Triple M
This party is made possible by our friends at Stumptown Coffee Roasters,New Deal Distillery, Hifi Farms, and Secret Aardvark Trading Company. Poster by Tony Cohen. Thank you!
**** Interested in becoming a vendor? Email events@xray.fm *****
If there were a Mt. Rushmore for gangsta rap icons, one could definitely make a case for the inclusion of Scarface. His iconic voice and knack for consistently delivering soulful vitriol through a hardcore Houston, Texas, lens have made Scarface a virtual deity in the South, and his influence on hip-hop is celebrated just about everywhere else.
A few years ago, while in a tour van somewhere in Idaho, the members of Chastity Belt--Julia Shapiro, Gretchen Grimm, Lydia Lund, and Annie Truscott--opted to pass the time in a relatively unusual fashion: They collectively paid one another compliments, in great and thoughtful detail. This is what we like best about you, this is why we love you. I think of that image all the time, the four of them opening themselves up like that, by choice. It's hard to imagine other bands doing the same. But beyond their troublesome social media presence--see: the abundance of weapons-grade duck face, the rolling suitcase art--and beyond the moonlit deadpan of say, "IDC," lies, at the very least, an honesty and an intimacy and an emotional brilliance that galvanizes everything they do together. Which is a fancy way of saying: They're funny, but they're also capable of being vulnerable. "Giant Vagina" and "Pussy Weed Beer," two highlights from their aptly titled 2013 debut, No Regerts, were immediately preceded by a sublime yet easily overlooked cut named "Happiness." I saw a younger, still unsettling version of myself all across 2015's Time to Go Home. This June marks the release of I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, their third and finest full-length to date. Recorded live in July of 2016, with producer Matthew Simms (Wire) at Jackpot! in Portland, Oregon (birthplace of some of their favorite Elliott Smith records), it's a dark and uncommonly beautiful set of moody post-punk that finds the Seattle outfit's feelings in full view, unobscured by humor. There is no irony in its title: Before she had Chastity Belt, and the close relationships that she does now, Shapiro considered herself a career loner. That's no small gesture. I can make as much sense of this music as I can my 20s: This is a brave and often exhilarating tangle of mixed feelings and haunting melodies that connects dizzying anguish ("This Time of Night") to shimmering insight ("Different Now") to gauzy ambiguity ("Stuck," written and sung by Grimm). It's a serious record but not a serious departure, defined best, perhaps, by a line that Shapiro shares early on its staggering title track: "I wanna be sincere." When asked, their only request was that what you're reading right now be brief, honest, free of hyperbole, and "v chill." When pressed for more, Truscott said, "Just say that we love each other. Because we do." This is who they are, this is why I love them. --David Bevan, February 2017 "They're funny, and slightly goofy, and gently vulgar, and they play with an appealingly loose, relaxed confidence." - Pitchfork "In between pelvic-thrusting sexual innuendo and self-mockery, Chastity Belt filter feminist theory, cultural commentary and general intellectual bad-assery...Chastity Belt isn't the band 2013 wants--it's the band 2013 needs." - CMJ "The guitars on this record...have a nice ring to them, like Liz Phair's recordings." - NPR