The Days of Lore

This band could be your neighbor: part 2

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 | musiX, pdX | 1 Comment

I think I saw one of them.

My girlfriend told me she had once seen two of them from a distance—a man and a woman—skinny, with long, wiry hair, sporting retro garb that one wouldn’t consider normal streetwear … even by Portland standards: “It looks like they’re from a completely different universe,” she explained.

I like them already.

The other night, we were walking back to our apartment right by a small pathway that runs along the back of the complex …

“There he is … ”

I looked down the path, and about 50 yards away was a skinny man, clad head to toe in denim with a long mop of stringy black hair. A plume of smoke dissipated to the left side of his dark coif. He looked like Tony Iommi, or maybe a young Jerry Garcia, or … Joey Ramone?! Is this guy a member of a stoner doom-metal group? A ’60s psychedelic jam band? A Ramones tribute band? No matter. I am hell-bent on finding out. This might, indeed, be the greatest rock band in Portland, or even the world … or one helluva tribute to The Ramones …

Tags: band, Jerry Garcia, Joey Ramone, rock 'n' roll, The Ramones, Tony Iommi

This band could be your neighbor: part 1

Monday, October 13th, 2008 | musiX, pdX | 1 Comment

There’s a mysterious van—gray with tinted windows—that comes and goes from my apartment complex … I’ve been told it’s sometimes gone for days at a time. Of course, my first thought was that it was a serial killer, like Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs! Maybe not. OK, perhaps it’s a group of circus performers! Naw. Flight attendants?! Hmm …

The thing is, I’ve never seen anybody enter or leave the vehicle—it’ll be parked and 20 minutes later, when I peer from behind the blinds, it’s gone. I don’t want to randomly knock on my neighbors’ doors. That would be weird. I’m going to assume it’s a band. This is Portland. That’s what people do—work at coffee shops and play rock ‘n’ roll. And I could be living next to the greatest rock band in Portland.

I’m going to get to the bottom of this. Because that’s what I do.

Tags: band, rock 'n' roll, The Silence of the Lambs