Portland 8/2

The State Theater is a smelly old dump, not unlike the Ventura Theater, with a balcony and a bar in the back. 2 couples were seated in the row in front of me who were blown away by sitting in the 3rd row and couldn’t contain their enthusiasm about it. They were also out of their minds on some kind of drug/alcohol mixture, laughing and screaming inappropriately at times. At first I thought they were on acid, then I thought maybe I was on acid, then I decided they were zonked out on Ecstacy. They were also the only non lesbian couples in sight; the place was packed with same sex couples of the female type, all charged up and ready to rock and roll.

Lu hit the stage at 9:10 pm. Everything was going smoothly. She looked and sounded fantastic. The couples in front of me were doing their best to get Lu’s attention, clapping hysterically in the middle of songs, talking in between, generally having the times of their lives, oblivious to all around them. In fact, even during Sweet Side, they were partying and gesturing wildly while Lu sang her sad song about her sad friend. Great.

Doug played an awesome pedal steel on Greenville. I was in ecstacy myself when Lu played West. Finally. Another funny Lu story when she talked about Blaze Foley; she said before he was a drunken angel he was just a drunk, then he became an angel. Awesome. The usual stories about Buttercup and Seeing Black.

During Out of Touch, the world’s most insane woman marched down to the stage and started to gyrate spasmodically, as if she were having a seizure, or were being electrocuted, and of course she conducted this exercise standing right next to me, almost hitting me with every wild flailing of her arms. Her face was contorted into a mask of pain, and she would occasionally look at me and shout various non words, as far as I could tell. Of course security pretended nothing was happening. She struck various weird poses, at once point jumping straight up and down in place while screaming “Jump” for about a minute, while I recoiled in horror. This was getting good. All of this with no musical rhythm and independent of normal body movement theory. She made it through the song and during Honey Bee she adopted a crouched pose, curled up in a ball with her hands cradling her head, for the entire song. Super.

During Joy some of my same sex neighbors took up positions in front of the stage near Doug and decided to cheer and scream at his every move. He was the greatest thing they had ever seen, fists in the air, arms covered with tatoos, designer baseball caps askew. I forgot to mention that while the lunatic woman was doing her interpretive dance to the demons in her head, Doug kept both eyes on her, just in case she decided to go full on commando crazy.

During Blessed, apparently inspired, another woman decided to come down and dance next to me, also with no dance skills to speak of. She was slamming her feet so hard into the floor that I thought she was going to break an ankle. At this point I am ready for anything and I thought “where the fuck is TnTracy when I need him”? Somehow we made it through the rest of the show. The band was soaked in sweat.

end part 1