Crash-Course, No. 7: Wild Flag...Ooh, And Who's That Behind Them?

It was a fleeting moment in time...

Wild Fang was a short-lived, cross-country super-group, a mash-up of members from Helium, The Minders, and Sleater-Kinney – but mostly Sleater-Kinney. The latter had disbanded about five years prior (2006 to 2011) and, in her very thorough telling (this is the source for a lot of what's below), Carrie Brownstein had even stepped away from music. At some point during 2010, she, Janet Weiss (both of Sleater-Kinney) and Rebecca Cole (The Minders) got invited to contribute to a project called “[!Women Art Revolution]” and a quirk in the creative process made Brownstein think of Mary Timony (Helium). Over the next several months, that accidental collaboration lead to a couple handfuls of songs and, eventually, touring. Extensive touring, as it happens, and with a mission:

“I think one of the reasons we toured so much before the album came out was because we almost wanted to give people a chance to reject it.”

Based on what little I read Wild Fang, different members brought different motivations to the project. As alluded to in the quote above, Brownstein got to a spot where she missed music (Weiss, probably less so; she stayed busy), but didn’t want to go through being Sleater-Kinney again. With 13 years between Helium’s last unplugging of the mics and Brownstein’s phone call, and after burning out on solo projects, Timony was already thinking about collaborating when Brownstein reached out. Cole, meanwhile, had looked hard enough for something to do to find graduate school. They got together in the end, put out an album, and held together for three years, or thereabouts.

When they called it quits, Brownstein blamed logistics, but maybe Cole outlined the future we she talked about the excitement about the work that kept Wild Flag going. They only managed the one album. It’s a decent album, certainly not offensive, but I can barely remember the two songs that I posted on the weekly Spotify playlist (and grudgingly, more “plus-ones” than invites; the songs are “Endless Talk” and “Racehorse”). If you find it (username: snackyd), you’ll see plenty of Helium and Sleater-Kinney on there, so this probably has less to do with the artists involved, than how they fit together.

Crash-Course, No. 4: Celebrating PDX Pop Now!

Eh, they do pretty well sometimes.

With PDX Pop Now! 2019 happening over the weekend, I threw together this wee tribute to Portland, Oregon’s DIY, highly-affordable (it’s free) outdoor music festival. It’s been going on since 2004, it’s always been all-ages, and some of the bigger local names have given songs to the compilations that fund the festival each year.

I have far from a perfect record of attendance – think I’ve been to just three of ‘em, most recently in 2016 – but it’s usually fun. The current location isn’t the best - the organizers center it under the Hawthorne Bridge, with North and South stages on each side – and, unless they’ve got tarps this year, it’s largely uncovered. The crowds have been sparse during the day every time I’ve gone, which hurts the atmospherics a bit (it has looked downright desolate here and there), but the crowd fills in nicely when the sun goes down; it feels like a solid, regular music festival starting right after dinner.

The first year I went – this would have been 2006(?) – they held it at least partially at an indoor venue (think it was Loveland the year I went) and, if I could have one wish, they’d go back to that, but I get it at the same time.

Anyway, the coolest thing about PDX Pop Now! is the range of artists you can hear. An entire day spent there almost guarantees exposing yourself to something you normally wouldn’t listen to and that’s the festival’s strength. You get that on the compilations too – something that comes through in the 50 songs selected down below (and included on the Spotify playlist I’m posting with this). Last, but definitely not least, here’s information on where to find and, crucially, where to buy the compilations – and that gets you access to all of them. That helps with the funding for what is a goddamn cool event, however you take it in.

Some of your bigger local artists have contributed songs to past compilations and some of them (but not many) show up on the playlist I compiled. One thing I noticed as I was getting them onto the Spotify, a lot of the songs submitted for the compilations aren't the best-known works by many of these artists. In many cases, that happened because I'm pulling from older compilations (as old as 2005), and they've put out more, sometimes better work since that time. Best case, people can use the list and links below as a first step for exploring the local music scene. That's the goal here, and god knows I'll be doing that going forward. Just this post gives you/me about 47-48 bands/artists to work with, so have it.