MusicFestNW, Day 3.

Most of it was quite a bust. I sat through three bands @ Berbati's that seemed interesting this morning, but by the time the night rolled around... well, perhaps I was just ready for something a little more interesting.

I left halfway through the third act, after mentally composing a Facebook status having to do with instating a new rule: people who actually came to see the band, inside - people who came to talk (rather loudly and drunkenly), or Facebook/Tweet/play games*/otherwise wave their glowing neon device in my face, outside. One step ahead of you - NOW GET OFF MY LAWN.

Anyway, I wandered over to Backspace to see what was happening there. Last year I'd seen a plucky punk band from Dallas (which cheered me up) after just missing Matt and Kim (which bummed me out). Apparently, this gal and some friends were what was happening around 10:15 tonight. Lovely stuff, really - but not at all what I was in the mood for, and oh my god people were even talking loudly during THAT quiet set, so I headed back across Burnside to Dante's for a bit of The Soft Pack (good clean loud garage punk So Cal fun), and then over the river to the Doug Fir for one last show.

(No, Dante's, I am not staying for the Mudhoney show, for the same reason I am skipping the Chairlift show at the Holocene - I only know one of their songs and I don't really like it all that much. I suspect I will come to regret the Mudhoney decision, but... eh, whatever.)

But first, a digression. On the way to Doug Fir, I passed an interesting scene involving about five people dressed in colonial garb and one guy with a very large, convincing insect puppet over the upper half of his body. All told the guy + puppet may have reached 12' in height and the guy was maneuvering the insect puppet quite adeptly. I didn't see any video cameras or lights, which would've indicated a typical Portland scene of film school students working on a project.

Naturally, all I could think of this strange debacle in front of me was, "great, he'll probably be at the Doug Fir standing right in front of me for the next show." (Haha, actually, all I could think was "*&^% of all the days I leave my camera at home!!") End of digression.

Why do I doubt the Doug Fir? Why? It's such a silly notion to think they will ever let me down. It was crowded, sure, and after the set it took heroic efforts to procure a CD of the band I had just seen because the seller insisted on exact change of $12, but...

Oh, the set? By a trio of Nurses. It was great. They are unique, interesting, like nothing I've seen since maybe Xavier Rudd last year at MFNW. And from Portland - FTW!

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* Before the second act, a girl sat down next to me, pulled out her glowing neon device, and proceeded to play some sort of video game through the second act's entire set. Never looked up once. REALLY? That's just rude.