The Roving Musicologist
Found Sound, Outsider, Street Performers, Sound Events, Experimental, Recorded and Posted with a minimum of interference.
oregon:
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Eye Myths
It was a going away party.
Eye Myths relocated to Portland from San Diego several years ago, and since then have become involved in various projects, including working with the Tenses and Eat Skull.
They aren’t a band that plays very often, but when they do there seems to be a gulf of thought between what they sounded like before and where they are now. This was the most lucid set to come my way yet, although as it’s from June they’ve probably left it a long way behind by now.
Play count: 31
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Hungry Hungry Hippos Amplified (Portland, Oregon)
Re-enacting the Tragedy of the Commons provides hours of entertainment.
Contact microphones attached to an aggressive behavior-inducing board game provides us with this sound.
Play count: 50
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Travel Post #23: Party in the USA (Portland, Oregon Again)
Ending where I began the trip, this recording is a sampling of the country I almost left behind.
On this recording there is a street performer and two different conversations, one of which was just one person. While I can’t say where exactly they were recorded, the picture below was taken nearby one of them:
The storefront was blank except for soda bottles from bankrupt ventures.
Having recovered from the shock of being swathed once again in the language that not so long ago was reserved for the inside of my head, I have been able to put this together. More recordings from outside of the US will be posted when they can be identified.
Miley also welcomed me home when I caught a ride in a gleaming SUV. Photo courtesy of fisherwy.blogspot.com
Goatskin Sack Music was dominant at Alberta St.
And for those of you that came here in error:
Play count: 15
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Fred Meyer (Portland, Oregon)
Although they lost the battle of the bands, Fred Meyer knows it’s more important to be good sports.
The sun was hot when I recorded this show at the pancake house in north Portland. It seemed like things were going wrong. At some point there was an apology from the performer. I was having my own problems with recording…notice the conversation about dogshit halfway through.
But then when something is recorded it changes. This is the last song of a three song set.
A very rare photo of Lala, the other half of Fred Meyer.
Play count: 30
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Grandfather Claws (Portland, Oregon)
This Band performs sitting on the ground without back support, hence stretching is necessary to maintain proper posture.
Grandfather Claws is a band, two men and two women, that I happened to catch shortly before I left Oregon. I found them in the few recordings that I took with me when I left the country and they seem to be an appropriate thing to post after Michael Hurley, as they both represent, for me, a sort of rambling approach to folk music. What people call noise music, while it is approached from many angles, is at its core more folk than anything else. While it is influenced by esoteric ideas from all over the spectrum of music (well, hopefully), when you go to a noise show you are seeing these ideas being refracted in a way that will almost necessarily reflect a homespun approach.
http://www.myspace.com/grandfatherclaws
What I have posted here is only about a quarter of the show; to post more I would have had to reduce the quality to the point that many of the quieter tones would have been lost.
Play count: 53
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Michael Hurley of Astoria, Oregon
There is scratching at the beginning, then things get better.
How you will see the world after Michael Hurley
Michael Hurley was there for the folk scene in early 1960’s New York, was associated with the Holy Modal Rounders, and now lives out in the land of the Goonies. He played this show in an art gallery run buy a big guy with a ponytail. We came in a little late and so paid at the end of the show. Right after we paid, one of the small town weirdos came up to the art gallery owner and started talking about how someone had ruined their system for stealing breakfast from the local diner. Ponyman was just trying to get us out of there at that point…this is who we had given our money to, some guy that loved to steal breakfast, not to Michael Hurley. So I bought a couple of his comics and my friend bought a cd…because we have to keep Michael Hurley alive:
He wears this shirt a lot.
Play count: 30
