At some point during the warmer part of 2003, I got invited by my coworker Zach to play a short set for a show he was helping organize. The venue was a small print studio in SE Portland (19th and Belmont, maybe?), hung at the time with a mix of anti-fascist agitprop stuff and a big pile of skulls and other stuff. Zach knew I did music from conversations at the call center where we were both slogging at the time, but I think that’s about all he knew: that I did music. Inviting me along was either an act of desperation or willful randomness as far as I can tell; afterward he expressed some surprise that I turned out to be “actually good”. Heh.
I played the set on my acoustic into a mic, in front of a small crowd of punks and hardcore kids and such sitting crosslegged on the cement floor of the studio space. I remember being a little nervous in a fish-out-of-water way, not knowing anyone and feeling like there was a general presiding aesthetic in the room that I wasn’t even in the same neighborhood as. But they were a really warm and attentive crowd, and the set was a lot of fun.
One of the folks organizing the show recorded all the acts, which is how I have these recordings in the first place. He had talked about wanting to put together a compilation album of local acts after that, but I lost track of him and Zach, which I regret.
The show was played with the door open on a bus lane; you can hear Trimet go by a couple times during the set.
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