* Hello there! You've stumbled onto the archived bloggage of TRMW aka The Real Matt Wright (wait... who?). This site contains posts from my stints blogging at Metempsychosis and Urban Honking, before I moved TRMW over to it's current home. Enjoy!
OK, Blogger is all fixed now, so back to our regularly scheduled self-indulgence. You’ll notice there are now little envelopes at the bottom of the posts now. These let you email any post to whoever you want. Pretty slick, eh?
There are a couple delayed posts below too, including one about David Byrne and Patti Smith.
Check it out dudes, my site is totally red now! I’ve also introduced a slightly menacing “realness” thread here, in an attempt to establish my indelible connection to this reality. Or maybe I was just bored. Non-IE users will also notice a sexy blinking effect when mousing over links (does this work in Safari? Anyone?). Meanwhile, my Blogger account is not handling Metempsychosis’ recent move to a new server well, so I’m typing this in by hand, and blogging will be suspended for a little while. Any feedback on the new design is much appreciated.
This week has been a good one for live music in Portland. I’ve had the privelege to witness both Patti Smith and David Byrne in performance, and both sounded great. These are two performers who completely lay it out live. The both communicate deeply and honestly, but don’t take themselves too serious to break into some fun, straight-ahead hippie-rock (Smith) or lay out the serious disco/funk/house jams, complete with congas (Byrne).
Byrne went so far as to finish his second encore (what a trooper) with “Lazy” the epic dance track he made with British DJ’s Xpress-2, which was a huge hit when I was living in London, and which nobody has even heard of here. I think I was the only person cheering when he introduced it. Interestingly, he opted for a live interpretation of Freeform Five’s remix of the track. Haven’t heard that mix but it sounded great last night. And it gives my white, pseudo-intellectual ass hope to see a die-hard white intellectual like Byrne shake his ass to the funky music with complete and total abandon. Thanks dude.
Byrne is definitely winning in the presentation category: Smith had hilarious cheeseball psychedelic screen-saver projections running during the show, while Smith had and entire string section, all color-coordinated in navy grey Dickies shirts.
PORCH PLUR was a smashed success. The DJs sounded great (even the the lowly CUM LAZER) and the Snuggle Ups rocked it, positive-core. During the last song people were jumping up and down in ecstatic bliss as the disco ball spun at way-too-fast speeds and inexplicable fireworks burst just beyond the porch. Can you say “nirvana”? I did – but not out loud.
In other news, my friend and fellow festival organizer, Ross Beach, has posted a nice visual summary of the first ever PDX-POP fest, which went down early July.
Also, my new band – working name: Accident Pack – had our first ever rehearsal on Wednesday. Turns out Pat is a kick-ass improv-atonal guitarist with a very healthy Brainiac fixation. This bodes well for the future.
First Strongweek Presents show at Lola’s Room was a smashing success. Lots of happy people and happy bands (rad all-local lineup = Menomena, The Joggers, Talkdemonic), and a drunk Dave and Matt.
If you are in Portland, OR please come down to this on Friday night. It’s a big ol’ dance party on the Orange Room‘s big-ass porch, looking out over the Willamette River. Can you say P-L-U-R?
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big fat Weezer freak, so you can imagine my excitement this morning to discover that none other than Weezer’s lead singer slash songwriting genius (excusing those last two albums) Rivers Cuomo has been posting some solo mp3s up on MySpace. The songs are all covers (weird choices too: John Denver, Annie the Musical, whoever the hell Ann Poonkasem is), recorded in super stripped down lo-fi mode. The Annie cover is my immediate favorite for the ridiculous New Order octave bassline, painfully over-the-top vocal delivery notwithstanding. This is not the sound of Weezer’s first two albums, but it’s more interesting/quirky to these ears than the last two.
This is pretty interesting. It’s a game in which you play the president of the USA and you have to allocate money to military, business, social services, and foreign aid. Not sure what the point is, but it’s thought provoking.
Paul Morley writing on Brian Eno Reissues: “In Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry was not likely to ask a headless chicken how much kicking its teeth could stand, as Eno did on this album. Ferry’s discussion topics were a little less random. He would never, ever wonder if his girl prefers him or the guy who can set things on fire by breathing on them, as Eno did. Eno sang on this album, not in the way that Ferry would sing. Eno sang as if it never occurred to him that anyone would ever hear him. He sort of sang to himself, for the sheer hobgoblin hell of it, and to someone he once met in a bar in Madrid who couldn’t hear very well.”
That’s good (and funny) writing. And it’s absolutely fantastic (and funny) music.
My friend from high school, Emily Prince is totally blowing up the art world right now. She’s got some work in this exhibition at the Whitney Biennial (her name is in the fucking NEW YORK TIMES, dude!) and she created the artwork for Joanna Newsom’s new CD on Drag City. It’s really, really exciting to see someone from little Auburn, CA impacting the culture, inspiring really – and I have a portrait she drew of me in high school on my living room wall! You go girl!
