Belated Friday five.

But this one is OK because it wouldn't have made sense to do last Friday, and if I wait until this Friday I will have forgotten everything. So. Five good decisions I made during this year's MusicfestNW, in no particular order:

• Stayed on the east side, mostly. I wandered over to Backspace for a decent rock show Saturday night and headed downtown briefly Sunday for one set, but otherwise I parked in about the same southeast spot every night and wandered. In that area there are at least six venues I frequent within a 10 minute walk (and another dozen featuring music I don't usually listen to). I love Portland.
  
• Ditched numerous sad bastard indie pop shows Saturday night for mix-mastry and related dance fun instead. (I know, right, who am I and what have I done with me?) Local faves Boy Eats Drum Machine and Jeffrey Jerusalem were really fun, and Y4CHT was amusing for the extra 20 minutes I could bear to stand in that unventilated warehouse when it was 90 degrees outside. I need to do that more often... in the winter.
• Ditched the Pioneer Square show after a good set by Morning Teleportation and saw Hey Marseilles instead. (You may remember them from such festivals as MFNW 2009.) I was supposed to see Cass McCombs and Band of Horses that night, but after such good loud fun the nights before, and a particularly dull start to Cass McCombs' set*, and learning that HM was doing a free set in southeast, I wasn't in the mood. The crowd at the Square seemed like they were only there because they got a ticket with their MFNW wristband, but the large group of people in front of HM was there to see them, and it showed, and it was great fun.
  
• Gave live Helio Sequence another try. You may recall from the above MFNW 2009 link that I was underwhelmed last time I saw them, but I do love them and the Doug Fir was the perfect venue Saturday night. The bar brawl during the set was amusing - a confused hipster flew past me followed by a drunken angry frat boy, the chaos lasted about 60 seconds while beer flew and audience members tried to figure out what the hell was going on, and then it was back to this. Their drummer gives Animal a run for his money.
  
• Met up with some random people through a Meetup group for some of the shows. Didn't hit it off with all of them but a few were pretty awesome and I hope to see them again soon.

Thus ends another fine festival. Good job, Portland.

________________
* He's a Baltimore guy and I really, really want to like him. Just isn't happening...