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.