Blogging the Sh*t Out of PDX Pop Now! 2006

One of the many things that keeps me from writing more around here is the work I do on PDX Pop Now!, a free all-ages three day Portland music festival I helped found with a group of other Portland musicians and music fans three years ago.

That’s why it was particularly satisfying this year that Mikey decided to add PDX Pop to UrHo’s Blogging the Sh*t Out of. . . effort. BTSOO is this cool project where Mikey gets a couple of people to attend a large Portland event and then write about as much of it as is humanly possible. They started with this year’s PDX Film Fest and PDX Pop was the second victim.

At first, we had these lofty ideas of giving all the bands and volunteers logins to write posts and of setting up a public blogging station where random people from the crowd could do the same, but there turned out, unsurprisingly to be more pressing practical thing to do to, you know, put on the actual festival. Plus, when it comes right down to it, who’s dumb enough to want to be running back and forth to a laptop blogging twice an hour for all of a three day music festival?

Well, apparently, I am. I wrote 19 posts covering 44 of the 48 bands that played over the course of the weekend — plus I cajoled a volunteer into writing one additional post about a band I didn’t get to see — making for more blogging than I’ve done here so far this year put together.

So, what did I take away from this binge bloggin? Well, there are all my new musical discoveries: Alela Diane, Evolutionary Jass Band, Please Step Out of the Vehicle, Thanksgiving, etc. Also, I think something about having to blog at festival speed was good for me. Trying to get down my ideas about bands in short between set breaks in a chaotic environment didn’t leave any room for second thoughts or hesitation. While I like the longer more analytical pieces I write here, I could definitely stand to add this new ability as well.

Anyway, with no further delay, I present Blogging the Sh*t Out of. . .PDX Pop Now! 2006:

Friday

• Officially underway!
• Horsefeathers and Small Sails
• First Upstairs set a hot sweaty success
• Whoa!
• Old Time Relijun and Viva Voce bring Friday night to a close

Saturday

• Bagels and The Upsidedown
• Picking Up Kegs for the After-Party
• Super Rock Block
• Alela Diane and. . .
• Upstairs pt2: Thanksgiving and Parenthetical Girls
• Nice Nice ..worms
• Decadence: Stength, Guau Guau, and Reverse Dotty and the Candy Cane Shivs
• Dykeritz, Shaky Hands, Dahlia, 50 Foot Wave and the end of Saturday

Sunday

• Sleepyhead, Y.A.C.H.T., and I Can Lick Any Son of a Bitch in the House
• PRA Mural
  
• Quiet Countries, Garland Ray Project, and lunch
• Treva Jackson, Tea for Julie, and Alan Singley and Pants Machine
• Old Growth, White Rainbow, Evolutionary Jass Band
• Wilding and Merch Booth Duty
• Wet Confetti at PDX Pop Now by Mike Fuchs
• Cool Nutz, Strategy, Copy, and Ohmega Watts bring the festival to a close with a giant dance party!

Tagged: pdxpop, pdxpopnow2006, portland, oregon, music, festival, all-ages, urho