Sleater-Kinney in Portland (part II)

I had no problems finding the Crystal Ballroom about 8 blocks from my hotel. At this point the rain was on and off seemingly every other hour. I didn't care about getting too wet because I knew shortly it would stop.

On my meandering way (I had 2 hours to walk 8 blocks) I stopped in a few music stores. I think each one had a poster of S-K somewhere. This is their homebase for sure. I also noticed a sizeable selection of records (but it appears that the cassingle has gone the way of the dodo). How little did I know what vinyl will do to me by the end of the trip.

I walk past the address and I don't see any signs for the Crystall Ballroom. I see posters for the concert but no "CRYSTAL BALLROOM." Instead there is a bar/restaurant called "Ringlers." I decide to try the local beer (what am I Rachel Ray?!) and holy crap, I almost choked from the cigarette smoke in the place. Strange that a green city like Portland would not ban smoking indoors. Anyways, I ask a fairly cute waitress about the Crystal Ballroom. It turns out that I was in the right place but the stage is on the third floor.

The beer was ok. I phoned Alecia and my family to past the time and a few minutes after 7pm. I see the zealots beginnning to line up so I get in line in the rain. I was about tenth in line. I went down my playlist of S-K songs on my ipod and went on sleater-kinney.net on my phone and followed the lyrics to the songs.


Just after 8PM the doors opened and damn it if it really wasn't on the third floor. I climbed the wooden spiraling staircase which opened to a pretty large concert hall and staked my spot right behind the front line of fanatics who also weren't going to give up their space. And I waited. and waited.

8:30PM - I realized that I will prbably have to go to the bathroom at some point. Sleater-Kinney would probably be on around 11PM. The people around me (couples) were nice enough to "watch my spot" for me while I dashed to the bathroom ("We have a runner!").

9:10PM - Is that... It's Janet!!! I yell out, "JANET!!!" Her ex, Sam, sets up on what looks like a beat up wooden box which turns out to be a really cool keyboard. Janet takes the time to sign a poster that he took down from somewhere. Quasi starts off with Janets bass drums beating the living crap out of me. She hits hard and holy crap she looks amazing doing it. Throughout the set she will look over at Sam in a way that I kept thinking, "damn, she's actually pretty hot." ok, sorry had to say it. Quasi is interesting. At one point Sam uses the keyboard as a percussion instrument and Janet sings and plays the guitar (!). I will definitely pick up their cd.

10 something PM - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - I like them. I've never heard of them before but they put a lot of energy and fun into their performance. They can get silly at times but it doesn't detract from their performance. I like Stephen's performance on the guitar, very animated. Then there's the bassist. My new theory is that any girl who plays the bass guitar increases their attractiveness by 50%.

11:30PM - Corin enters stage right to setup ("CORIN!!!") She's wearing a cute ruffles shirt thing and jeans. She looks pretty much how I have seen her.

Carrie enters about 5 minutes later. wow. She's hotter than any photos (except maybe the photos I've seen of her in "Group"). She's wearing a blue shirt and jeans. She tunes her guitar and at the first distorted note, the crowd screams. She rocks.

They start out with the Fox. The crowd goes into headbanging mode. yup, fanatics up front. Corin's voice is unbelievable. How does she sing so effortlessly? Again, Janet's pounding is overwhelming. I've seen a video where S-K is testing out the Fox in front of a crowd before they released the Woods and back then the audience looked like they weren't quite sure what to make of it. This night, everyone knew how the Fox went to the beat, the bridge, whatever.

I should not that by this time, 11:30PM I am pretty much spent and the crowd has squeezed in even closer to the front and I'm almost on autopilot. I have spent the last 4+ hours standing up.

I don't remember the order of the setlist:

Oxygen
Wilderness
What's mine is yours - Carrie opened with her "experimental" guitar solo
Jumpers - the crowd really started jumping
Modern Girl
Entertain - I noticed Carrie doing the same gestures as in the live video I have
Roller Coaster - "my sweet cherry tomato"
Everything - fantastic! I will never understand why they left this one out on the cd.
Let's Call It Love - With the first note, I yelled at the top of my lungs, but... the guitar solo was really off. :o( Corin sang "I got a long time for love!" slightly different. Hard to describe but like she delays or draws it out "I... got a long time for love!"
Get Up - the crowd loved to sing along to this one, mostly "GET UP!"
Sympathy - My first love. I'm so glad they sang it at my first S-K concert. perfect.

For encore they performed - Ironclad, an older S-K song I didn't know and they brought up the Jicks for Fortunate Son which got really rowdy.


random notes: Carrie's mic kept tiliting down to the point where an audience member gave her a swiss army knife screw driver to tighten it but that didnt' fix it and it looked like Carrie was getting pretty pissed off. Eventually duct tape fixed it of course.

Corin's guitar is beautiful, some kind of cherry or dark wood satin finish thing.

Carrie is is so over-the-top so amped. She did a few windmills on her guitar and I can watch her all day. amazing.

I think being up front is one of the worst places as far as sound quality is concerned. Most songs sounded off balance and I had trouble hearing the words. As I mentioned earlier Carrie's solo in Let's Call It love sounded even more off. Maybe because she was trying to play something that was improvised?

Why didn't they sell posters? Granted the pink poster was nothing fancy.. but that is all the more reason to sell them? I went back the next day to see if they had any but they were all gone.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Next time I think I will stand a bit further back to enjoy the performance, but this time I got to see them up close and how incredible they are.

next: my new year's and how I got home (yes I rode on a bird)