Another year, another birthday party for Elvis! I'm speaking, of course, of Portland institution John "Elvis" Schroder, known around town as "Downtown Elvis" for being one of the most... um... eyebrow raising Elvis impersonators you'll ever see. (Although between you and me, I think he's slowing down his performance schedule. I have only seen him twice since the Mercury office made its move to a building that practically sits on top of the Skidmore Fountain.)

Elvis' tight bros at BarFly are throwing him quite the shindig on Wednesday (Oct 5)—they've even arranged for him to get a makeover from Heads High Barbershop's Josh Poole for the occasion. The main event will go down at Star Theater with Advisory, "supergroup" Hog Wild (members of Freak Show Rodeo, Diamond Tuck, Popewyrm, and Richmond Fontaine), Frank Furter and the Hot Dogs, The Leaders, and Holy Children.

Elvis will be guesting with both acts and running what is sure to be a fascinating trivia contest, Jen Lane of BarFly will emcee and DJ, and naturally both cake and Voodoo Doughnuts will be served. And it's FREE (21+) but donations to Elvis' "Disneyland fund" will be accepted. I do not think that is a euphemism.

• Ron Mason Gassaway
• The Mudai Lounge

Back when we first caught wind that the Mudai Lounge was ceasing to operate as a live music venue we were upset, seeing how the space within the Ethiopian restaurant had become one of the consistently great outsider venues in town. The room was cramped, the bar was limited, and the speakers were shredded, but the bands were sensational and the crowd would feel it; you got the vibe that you were walking into a 21+ house show and that someone was about to call the cops. Plus it smelled like berbere. That's the kind of void that doesn't fill easily at a time when most venues in town are increasingly marketing themselves to our suburban neighbors and unfortunately, it's going to be one of the most difficult spots to replace.

So what happened? How did Mudai reach the breaking point? When I caught up with bartender/booker Tony Prato at SMMR BMMR, it was clear that he was relieved and just wanted to move on from his whirlwind stint at Mudai, but not before he told his story at least one more time. We knew something was off about the place, but Tony's version of events is a lot more curiously fucked than we ever imagined.

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• Praise Satan! Always pick up your spares!

Now in its ninth season, the Portland Metal Bowling League is gearing up for yet another run of bashing pins and banging heads every Tuesday night at the AMF Pro 300 Lanes. Teams are compiled of four members and interested metal bowlers should contact the league for more information on joining their ranks. In addition to the headbowlers' ball (so proud of that one), there will be local metal bands playing on the lanes as well.

If you are in need of a new ball, might we suggest one of these?

• G.D. Burns

Local band Youth may be impossible to Google, but discovering them is well worth making your search cache look like that of a pedophile's. The local quartet of Maggie Morris, Elec Morin, Stephen Leisy, and Matthew Hall hasn't been around long but they've made big moves fast, playing at some of the best venues around town and gaining a reputation for crafting subtly gratifying pop melodies without any of the shrouded pretense attributed to our city's recent influx of dream pop bands. Youth appear to have only three publicly available tracks, but the strength of those tracks has more than warranted our attention. We just had to know more about this band.

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Tipster Gregory Day was kind enough to send us these photos of the famed Satyricon building meeting its ultimate demise at the hands of a demolition crew. While the punk rock landmark is now literally just a pile of rubble, you can always post your (hazy) memories here.

Teary-eyed punks should not click the jump, because there are more photos there.

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End Hits recently asked guitarist Jesse Gandy of the Whines to share a tune that's important to him. He shot back with a tip on an outstanding You Tube video of Bentonian bluesman Skip James performing the murder ballad "Crow Jane." Jesse's choice is another clear indicator of the bands' deep fascination with American blues music. After his piece, you can stream the A-side of The Whines' newest 7-inch, "Shootinhead."

"I don't You Tube much but this is one I always come back to. It's nice to be able to see a video of him actually performing such a cool song. I've learned from it. From what I gather about the man, he was pretty resourceful having lived through the Depression. I understand he was a share-cropper, a boot-legger, a pimp, and one hell of a performer. It's said that John Fahey paid his outstanding medical bills to get him out of the hospital to record him in the 60's. I really dig on all the real good blues that came before the electric guitar and most of which pre-dated jazz. It's a shame that video wasn't around to capture the likes of Blind Blake or Charlie Patton. Thankfully, though, there are a few videos like this." - Jesse Gandy

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Earlier this month we turned you on to the fantastic new Tunnels release, The Blackout. We were so impressed by Tunnels mastermind Nick Bindeman's string of influences that we've invited him back to share some of his favorites with you. Take it away, Nick.

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Local up-and-comers Psychic Feline have been popping up on a lot of great bills lately thanks to a fantastic cassette released earlier this year on High Fives and Handshakes.

The release is punctuated by the excellent "Targets," in which the band sings with detachment of looking down the barrel of a gun against the track's hallucinatory 3/4 sway to great dramatic effect. On their new 7-inch (also for High Fives and Handshakes), the band's knack for weaving tremolo'ed guitar and pleasantly droning melodies between serrated rhythmic passages has developed into a sound more intent and commanding than ever. After the jump, you can learn a little more about the band that may or not be inspired by an actual psychic cat and check out the Swell Maps-meets-Ray Davies goodness that is "Parallel Lines."

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End Hits recently caught up with our favorite mutant popsters Nucular Aminals to chat about their new full-length and 7-inch for K Records plus their upcoming tour with Psychic Feline. Read more about singer Robert Cometz's Frawg Pound Studios, a supergroup called Itchy Problems, and spicing your food with human remains after the jump.

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For an upcoming feature on Group Doueh's show at Mississippi Studios next Thursday, I interviewed Sublime Frequencies co-owner Hisham Mayet. It was a great conversation and I'll post it next week. Aside from psyching me out even more for the show, I learned a lot about Mayet and his taste-making world-music label.

First of all, when he's not on the road—that's about four or five months a year—Mayet calls Portland home.

Second, Sublime Frequencies began as a field-recording project with an emphasis on video. Alongside audio, Mayet and co-owner Alan Bishop have been gathering loads of footage on all their travels. As such, film is a integral component to the label. They do everything from feature-length travel and music documentaries to performance pieces. Alongside their small-run LP printings Sublime Frequencies have released 11 DVDs.

In fact, it was a well-received screening in Seattle back in 2002 that spurred the label's creation. Sure would love to see them throw some film-related events here in Grumptown...

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. The piece and interview will be out next Thursday, just in time for the show. Get tickets here.

My first experience watching Papi Fimbres play was two years a go at a sweaty, packed-out show at the Mudai Lounge. I remember looking around and noticing nobody was even sipping on their drinks. Instead, the crowd was bouncing up and down gleefully with their full-attention on the man jumping out of his drum seat chanting "O BRUXO!" O Bruxo has since gone on an indefinite hiatus, but the man behind the drums continues to make music with over a dozen other local acts.

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• photo from William Joseph Gallery
• The Star's marquee in 1954. The hope is to rebuild it to its former glory.

I stopped into the Star Theater last night for a quick glimpse of the new venue. It is indeed across the street from Roseland, in a building that you've probably overlooked but are no doubt familiar with. The Star is an appealing venue with some quirks, with a good stage and fine sight-lines from everywhere in the building. The sound was plenty loud, and clarity-wise it was probably not better than okay; the room is long and thin, and it's always a challenge to send a warm, full sound to an entire room of that shape. There's a large balcony, which is where you'll be going to schmooze and ignore the show. If that doesn't suffice, there's a large patio through an unmarked door—you probably won't notice it at first. But on the other side is a generous patio with a bar, lots of seating, and a glimpse of NW 6th's streetlife through the fence.

Back inside, there's lots of room up front to get close to the band, but in order to get there you have to navigate some narrow stairs and ramps and railings—kind of like that ramp that runs down one side of the Doug Fir. I bet the back of the room gets clogged during big shows. There's also a terrifying row of tiny closets in the basement that house the venue's toilets, which seem leftover from the venue's previous incarnation as a porn theater. The room has charm to spare and loads of potential. Right now the Star's schedule is pretty minimal; there's nothing scheduled there until June 17. If they're able to continually book solid shows, there's no reason for the venue to be anything other than a raging success.

Public Access Television isn't just for the preachers, psychics, call-in cranks, and boner-riffic hard rockers in their mom's basement. Here in Portland, Channel 22 is home to Experimental Half Hour, where some of Portland's more adventurous bands perform live thirty-minute sets amidst colorful, molten psychedelic video effects and green screen explorations. The bi-weekly program, which airs multiple times every week, has so far done ten episodes, the latest featuring experimental garage compatriots Blood Beach. For their set, Blood Beach performed both older sides from the bands EP and new tracks from their forthcoming full-length. The results are delicious and mind-melting.

If you're not tuned into Channel 22 on the boob tube tonight at midnight, you can take a gander at their twenty-four minute long set below. Welcome to space, dawgs.

Experimental Half Hour is produced and filmed by Brock Fansler and Eva Aguila at Portland Community Media. They have so far produced videos for the likes of Eternal Tapestry, The Miracles Club, and Dangerous Boys Club, among others. You can watch what they've done so far on their Vimeo page.

Conflict of interest pony insists that we mention the fact that Ethan Jayne of Blood Beach is an occasional writer for this very paper.

And today in vaguely music-related news, Portlandia—you know, that sketch comedy TV show that has yet to officially air, but has already driven your rent up a notch—has a Facebook page. And for the next few weeks, the page will be curated by Claire Evans (roughly one half of local band YACHT), as a collective study on the innerworkings of what keeps Portland... gulp... weird.

In the words of Evans herself:

Consider this an interactive Internet zine of Portlandian information; meet our weirdos and semi-notables, bone up on our history, peer at our meals and into our coffee mugs, ride along with me in the bike lane of the internet superhighway and experience the dream of the '90s as we live it.

Why is this necessary, you ask? Well, what the fuck else should be done? Should we let another TV show slip past our consciousness as a blip of mindless drivel? Would you let that bottle top your newly-transplanted roommate put in the trash just slide on by? Use a brand new plastic container for bulk Tahini at the co-op? Hell no!

There's a fair amount of music-related stuff up there already, including the new Parenthetical Girls video and a link to Into The Woods' site. Though, it should be mentioned that this database is in danger of becoming obsolete once we all learn this important piece of Portland's history.

• Elliot Smith at EJ's in 1998

I've always found it strange that bootlegging concerts hasn't become more prevalent in the internet age. Recording technology is more portable and easier to use, and online sharing is fast and efficient (forget waiting for the tapes to dub at regular speed, then dropping them in the mail—and shit man, when Jere Bear drops the 80-minute version of "Truckin'," that's a whole cassette right there). I have a feeling it has something to do with the way bands play—a lot less improvising, and near-facsimile sets—but that's just a guess. Maybe it's just that the only people who ever really wanted to hear all a band's shows were dirty, stinking hippies.

For the most part horrible jam bands like String Cheese Incident (1,141 shows) and Ekoostik Hookah (493 shows) dominate archive.org's Live Music Archive. But poke around and you might find something a little less dank, like the 93 different recordings of Elliott Smith or 28 outings of the Minutemen. Each of the 83,364 shows at the site is available for free download.

Better yet the concerts are searchable by city and venue, which in Portland's case you means can thumb through a few of the bygone days at venerable clubs like La Luna and EJ's. They aren't always great quality, but it's pretty cool to listen to Elliott Smith back in the mid-90's when he beginning to hit his stride—gives the whole thing a little extra weight.

There are a number of bootlegging sites like archive.org out there, and if you know any good ones, please share. I guess that's how it works now—instead of trading tapes we trade sites.

This past month saw the release of the debut LP from The Whines entitled Hell To Play. If you were lucky to catch their release show then good for you, because unfortunately I missed it. And now, in the WTF move of the century, their singer (Karianne) has decided to take off for Alaska just as her band picks up speed. Though the buzz is slow to build, Hell To Play is gaining some important fans, rumor has it that even Thurston Moore was quite impressed upon hearing the record while visiting Portland for the Jandek vs. Moore show that took place a few weeks back.

Stylistically Hell To Play is much more than another lo-fi throwaway, and it would be a crime to judge it based on the contemporaries of the Whines alone—stop thinking Eat Skull and start thinking Neil Young. Their songs are dark, moody, honest, heartfelt and beautiful. And while the recording itself is obviously analog in format, this fact becomes almost entirely insignificant upon first listen. All in all, Hell To Play is a recording that is full of depth and quality.

LISTEN:

The Whines - "Staybird" (from Hell To Play, courtesy of Meds Records)

• Elliott O'brien
• EGGY Tape Releases

Eggy Records, a local cassette-only D.I.Y. label, is releasing some of the best sounds around, including materiel by artists like Mattress, Orca Team, and the Woolen Men. After going through a package of cassettes that was sent here to the Mercury I immediately was struck by the quality of the releases on Eggy and also the simple fact that I didn't know much about who was behind it. So I decided to ask label head Rafael a few questions:

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Tonight marked the opening of the sixth annual The Art of Musical Maintenance show at the Goodfoot. The amount of work on display is staggering (281 in all), and the majority is great. All are screen printed by hand. A number of local bands (Modest Mouse, Decemberists, M. Ward, etc) and even local shows are available. Each poster is for sale, framed and unframed. The unframed posters average from $20-30, while the framed versions start around $100. Pretty good Christmas gift ideas for the music lover in your life (although, damn—no bands my girlfriend really digs to be found... what the fuck am I going to get her?!).

You'll need to be quick. At most there are five or so copies of each poster and a number of them have already sold out. I'd get there this weekend if you're seriously considering purchase. That said, it's a great exhibit. A beer and a wander through them all is totally worthwhile. A few of the posters are really special—hand printed on wood, and even some with a kind of metallic process I'm not sure what to call. Go see for yourself.

An idea of the amount of work we're talking about: