Sarre-Chasm
Nowhere by Nothing ’96
by Jon Sarre
Illustration by Eric Johnson
The much-hyped and highly overrated North By Northwest Music and Media Conference blew into Portland this weekend. For me, it wore out its welcome like a distant relative I hadn’t seen for years (and didn’t wanna see in the first place). The only positive aspect of this moolah-raking non-event was that it gave me something fresh to complain about. Christ almighty, I’ll tell ya, the bars were jam-packed with slumming cool-merchants who must’ve crawled out from under some rock that shoulda never been over-turned. They sipped micro-brew, checked out the “scene,” sucked up and sucked the life outta any kind of enjoyment to be had. Some guy with one of those laminated backstage pass things even punched me! I swear, I’d never even seen the guy before – go figure!
It’s all over now, thank God. Something like three hundred bands played at twenty venues and if you bought a wristband, you could go and see the whole thing. It seemed like a good deal when they first announced it, but when I found a grand total of eight acts on the list that I’d actually want to see, I decided to avoid the whole experience.
No such luck, though. The whole damn town was buzzing about NXNW like it was gonna culminate with the apocalypse or something. Even in some white-trash dive bar, I almost got in a fist fight with some drunk guy over the artistic merits of John Cale’s solo career (he headlined a record label showcase on Friday night). The drunk guy was one of those stumbling loner types who suddenly decides they want to bond with you; in other words, a pain in the ass. I figured that the best way to make him get the hell out of my hair was to violently disagree with everything he said. It only made him angry, thus the near-fisticuffs.
I don’t even know what kind of show Cale put on (since I didn’t care in the first place), but I did want to see Deerheart, Sluts For Hire, The Panties, Huevos Rancheros, Bloodloss, The Wipers, and Junior High. Unfortunately, I missed ’em all. Oh well. I did get to check out The Jimmies and they were great. They’re a local punk band in a Queers/Screeching Weasel vein. I guess you could call their music “infectious” or “singalongable” or what have you. Bittersweet Records in New York stuck ’em on a split CD with The Weaklings. It’s good. Interested parties should buy the thing.
So that’s it, one band. I also tried to see another but the line at the place was halfway across the block and, being wristbandless, my friend, Mike, and I would’ve had to scam our way in. That option didn’t look too promising, so we headed back to the restaurant Mike manages (Fellini – stop by if you’re ever in Portland, OR. It’s really, really great, really. This is a plug.). We chased the disappointment away with many shots of Jägermeister and then chased the Jäger away with many glasses of beer. It must’ve worked, cause my head hurt the next day.
Looking back on the whole deal, I realize just how bad NXNW was when details like how much liquor my system absorbed and the fact that a cop needlessly hassled me for jaywalking (he was “too busy to write a ticket,” but not too busy to lecture me on how lucky I was) seem more interesting than the Big Festival. It’s either symptomatic of how bad contemporary music is or how goddamned jaded I am. Hell, I’ll admit to being extremely down on all the crap that’s pushed outta the mills these days, but I would’ve guessed that out of the three hundred or whatever bands that played, there should’ve been twenty or thirty worth seeing.
There wasn’t, though, and that’s what I took from NXNW. If there was interesting and useful stuff out now (as opposed to hundreds of whatever’s-selling-these-days soundalikes), you wouldn’t need all these showcases and fests. The music wouldn’t need to be packaged so people’ll tear themselves away from their fucking TV sets and go out to clubs. Lucky bands get “discovered” at industry suckfests like CMJ and then sold at industry suckfests like Lollapalooza, I just can’t wait for CD-ROMs and virtual reality to debase that sordid business.
Convenience rules these times and that’s sad. Where are the reasons to get excited? I don’t have MTV, but people tell me they don’t play videos anymore (they were no great shakes to begin with, but I thought that’s why it exists). Radio is a pathetic jumble of special-interest chart rotation (and if it wasn’t, I suspect no one but a few out-of-touch obsessives like me would listen in). Live music is one of the last things out there and that’s being ruined by these packaged happening extravaganzas. Think about how it’s gonna be when there’s just one major media conglomerate covering all the cultural bases. We’d be thankful for the shitty information that the trade winds blow in now.
On a related note, Thanksgiving is gonna be upon us soon. As I prepare to carve my fluffernutter with all the trimmings and crack open that bottle of Wild Turkey (or, to be more realistic, Old Crow), here are five things I’m thankful for:
1. Railroad Jerk is gonna be here in a couple of weeks. Sure, they’ll probably come off ragged, but I’ve never seen ’em before.
2. Anti-North by Northwest Fest! A bunch of bands set up on the street in front of leading NXNW venues and busked for change. Not only did it provide a refreshing change of pace from the usual assortment of panhandling crusty punk rockers, drunks, and crazies, it was a chance for the bands NXNW wouldn’t touch to play. My personal favorite was a nameless three-piece running through a “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”/”Walk on the Wild Side” medley.
3. The Rainy Season (roughly October through May) is upon me. It takes the guilt out of spending my free time in bars. “Shit, it’s pouring – yeah, I’ll take another.”
4. This Space For Rent
5. I’ll think of this one later, maybe tomorrow… perhaps in time for Christmas. Anyway, next month’s column will probably be about something else, I promise!
