On Substance and Design: A tribute to Collin Jennings.

At first I was worried that perhaps I'd entered the wrong house. There was this one time where I had two eyes full of LSD and I walked into some random house in the South East. Ever since then I've been wary of 'respectable' looking homes. Hardwood floors (swept), Couch (no rips or tears), Christmas tree (still up), textile art (retro vogue), 'Zoobomber' in bicycle shorts and leather jacket (drunk), and so: much in the style of Toucan Sam to some fruit loops, I lifted a few feet off the ground and, crazy-eyed, floated gracefully on the wave of sound down down into the flavor-packed basement below. El Come Home (Koh-meh Ho-meh: from 'the Spanish'; He eats dude?) I only caught the last little wave of surf-y riff tide to wash over a still small though gently expanding crowd, I made my way toward Captured By Porches and tried out the new beer. Yummmm.
AAAAAAUUUUUUUGH...!!!...Rave rave rave. Blah! World's Greatest Ghost. From the people who brought you: this party. Comes the debut of ungodly basement pop perfection. This being their first show I understood the wavering nerve of the first song vocals and let slide the little skip and stumble off-beat oops in the first chorus. They held it together and finished neatly leaving the grainy tart of synth lingering dainty on my tongue after that fat mouthful of heavy drums and solid catchy riffs served up with gourmet precision. At most, the best one can hope for with basement vocals is that the melodic distortion sounds like it's supposed to be there thrown in and bounced around on the sonic butts-up of the electric tonal wall, but these guys nailed it. After that first song they grabbed their respective rhetorical balls and really whammed it out there. Awesome. It made me think about the point of music, being to convey some sort of emotion or sentiment too complicated for friendly blabber. This was the lust of pure pop-abandon/ the youth we thought we'd have hasn't existed in a good 40 years and so here we are: disillusioned, staring off into a plastic decadence we might like to call life some where down the road and we're saying: shit. Well if ya'll don't need me here...I'm gonna call it a night. The Ghost's last song was one of love and respect. An homage to local favorites Here Comes A Big Black Cloud at one point they broke into a piece of The Cloud's Gamma Ray and everybody went wild, including the Cloud themselves as they rolled up some cigarettes and got ready to follow up on the next set.
Can I continue to review these guys? There's gonna come a time when I'll just have to note that they played and leave it at that. Honestly I spent their entire set talking to a lady but I kept one ear and at least an eye directed at them so here's what it was: Dope as always the cloud shocked, rocked, and slammed the crowd like a tall stack of pogs lost to the kid with the best wrist-snap in class. A friend of theirs was celebrating the first of a planned 15 25th birthdays and they doused him in an up-turned stomach's load of ketchup and mayonnaise leaving slick puddles of the stuff stinking up this once tidy basement and securing for the band a championship title of Portland's Smelliest Act. Tiger Boots Calhoun, dancer for The Cloud, has returned from her voyage safe and sound...but this leaves us with three dancers? Is this how it's gonna stay guys? Is that really necessary? Well as far as I could tell it looked alright and they meshed well together so I suppose the future is for the masses after all.
Here's where I leave. I had heard of another party: Mikah Sykes? I think that's the name. At the Cartoon Bungalow. When I got there the music was over and the dance party was small and sad if not a tad pathetic. Coco 'Jailhouse' Delight and I yapped out the pharmaceuticals from our systems and proceeded to...Blackout? I don't know. Well regardless I woke up at home. Thanks.