Punks teach old man lesson, man bites dog

By Todd Stadler · Tuesday, December 12, 2000 6:01pm

I just wanted to say thanks to the kids. Those handful of punk kids at the show tonight.

See, I went to see the Blue Meanies tonight, with the Pinehurst Kids opening. I wondered how full the show would be, given that I've never seen the Meanies headline before, and they are two style changes away from ska now, even though they still get pegged with that label by stupid alt.weeklies who hear horns and assume it's ska. Ska isn't exactly the biggest seller anymore.

Things first went south when we showed up at the Pine Street Theater ("changing names with the seasons") fka Thrasher Presents on Pine Street fka The Paradigm fka the Womb fka La Luna. There was nobody there. No sound even. But there was a sign on the door - the show had moved to Meow Meow. Later rumor had it that Everclear (Portland's less-than-secret shame) was filming a video at the Pine Street, pulling rank as it were on our friends the Meanies. It'd better not be true, or I'll never buy an Everclear album again ha ha ha.

Over at Meow Meow, there weren't that many more people than at the Pine Street. Sigh. Why do so few people get how cool this band is? Maybe it stems from the fact that nobody knows how to set levels for a band with horns. The mix was awful! This isn't all that surprising, though, considering the lock that indie rock has on Portland. ("What do you mean you have non-stringed instruments?")

But the punk kids at the show, they didn't care. They strutted about like punk kids do, flailing all over. At first I thought they looked silly. But then I compared them to the other kids there - the indie statues, immobilized in their sweaters and corduroys, seemingly oblivious to the wall of sound. And I realized I'd much rather look stupid than, ahem, cool.

So I bopped around with abandon, neck popping, arms flailing, screaming, kicking. And it was good. I was part of the music, and I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted to thank a handful of stupid kids for reminding me of that.

Geez, what an old person thing to say.