Alien Boy Benefit Lineup

Unbelievably cool.

DJ Calvin Johnson – listen to – I’m Down – mp3

From Spin.com – He’s a revered college-rock icon as a musician, producer, DJ and label head. His deadpan monotone voice and blues-mired guitar elicits a nostalgic assault upon the listener. He’s unleashed the lo-fi in Beat Happening, brought the funk in Dub Narcotic Sound System and spun softly swirling melodies in the Halo Benders.

So it should come as no surprise that Calvin Johnson [pictured] took his Selector Dub Narcotic project out for a spin last night — DJ style – for Club Pop at Chop Suey. Is there anything this guy can’t do?

Read the rest at Spin.com

Ah Holly Fam’ly – listen to – Swimmers - mp3

From wweek.com – Ah Holly Fam’ly is quickly shedding their “new kids on the block status” (as the Merc lovingly put it less than a year ago). Joining the ranks of regular rotation here in PDX, the band brandishes saws, accordions, banjos and bells: All the tools needed for a delicate, moody and sometimes dreamy trip through avant-folk.

Read the rest at wweek.com

Tender Forever – listen – How Many – mp3

From Venus Zine – If French is the language of love, then that explains why the French are masters of writing clever pop songs about love and heartbreak. From Serge Gainsbourg to Stereo Total, the French have had a long, illustrious history with the tricky subject. French ex-pat Melanie Velera [pictured], the one-woman mastermind behind Tender Forever, first explored the subject on her 2005 debut, The Soft and the Hardcore. Her frankness and unsentimental take on falling in and out of love combined with a lo-fi approach to recording earned her comparisons to fellow K artists Mirah and The Blow.

Read the rest at Venus Zine

Meet me at the Wonder Ballroom – September 17

Meet The Film’s Supporters: Wonder Ballroom Owner Chris Monlux

Wonder Ballroom owner Chris Monlux has graciously donated the space for an Alien Boy benefit on September 17.

Monlux was a Portland cop himself for 3 years in the late ’70s.

“Things were a lot more liberal back then,” he says. “We had a liberal police chief, there were cops who smoked pot, and there were cops with long hair. I considered it as like social work.”

Ultimately, Monlux decided the police bureau was not for him, and quit to follow other interests. Or, more bluntly…

“I went from there to experimenting with drugs and getting into the music scene,” he says.

Monlux remembers Chasse from his days at the Pine Street Theater, where the Wipers would perform. He started his promotions company MonQui, which booked the Wipers, and later, Nirvana, and continues to bring in high profile performers today. I interviewed him outside the Wonder last thursday, July 17, before the Jesus and Mary Chain went onstage.

While sympathetic to Chasse’s story, Monlux feels Portland’s police are working in a far more difficult environment these days than they had to when he was a cop. Following Reagan’s de-institutionalization program in the early 1980s, he says, cops are expected to respond to a host of issues for which they are not necessarily either equipped or adequately trained.

“The cops deal with a lot of bullshit these days,” he says. “There’s more of an us versus them attitude. When I was a cop, I lived in the city, but these days a lot of the cops are coming into Portland from elsewhere to work, and they have the attitude that the city is a combat zone. So instead of walking around and communicating, they have this alienation. And that’s a big problem.”

Monlux is particularly interested in the intersection of mental health, drug addiction, music and performance—citing the deaths of River Phoenix, and of Kurt Cobain as tragic outcomes that affected his outlook, personally. He’s decided to support Alien Boy because he likes director Brian Lindstrom’s work on addiction in his previous documentary, Finding Normal.

“With musicians, there’s a certain looseness or openness to performance, and I guess being high, or a little fucked up, there’s an illusion of being a little bit looser on stage,” he says. “Although I think I’m tending to be a little bit more conservative these days when it comes to drugs. There are kids who are smoking ounces of pot in a day, and there’s a huge heroin problem in Portland.”

Ultimately, however, Monlux feels that an appreciation of the kind of world people like Jim Chasse inhabited as kids would help, more than anything.

“The police don’t have this understanding of the alternative,” he says. “Everything is either white or black.”

Thanks, Chris, for donating the Wonder Ballroom for our benefit in September.

Alien Boy Benefit Announced

A fundraising benefit for the making of the documentary film Alien Boy is in the works for the Wonder Ballroom on September 17th.

Mark your calendar now.

Alien Boy is a documentary film being produced by the Mental Health Association of Portland. The film will document the life and death of James Chasse.

We’ll have some early and raw footage to show you, an update of how the filmmaking is proceeding, a talk by director Brian Lindstrom, a celebrity DJ and yet to be announced performers.

The Wonder Ballroom has been donated for the event by Chris Monlux, and Chloe Eudaly of Reading Frenzy is coordinating a fantastic event.

Watch this site for updates about this great benefit for a great cause.

Fundraiser Brings In $500

Thanks to the generous donors who contributed $500 to Alien Boy at a fundraiser on Friday night at Matt and Sue Davis’ house. We’re planning several more such events, where people get a chance to hear from Brian Lindstrom about the film, and to see some early footage and ask questions about the project, before whipping out their checkbooks. Perhaps you’re interested in hosting a fundraiser yourself?

Contact Matt at matthewcharlesdavis@gmail.com.

The Wipers – Portland’s All-Time Best Band

This week the Boston Phoenix rates rock and roll by geography and give the award for best band for Oregon to The Wipers.

Read – 50 Bands 50 States / Oregon

Watch the video below, a clip from Mike Lastra’s documentary Northwest Passage, with comments from Toody and Fred Cole from Pierced Arrows, Steve DeShazer From the Styphnoids, Mark Sten from the Oblivion Seekers, Brian Lee from the Cleavers, and the late Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts from Poison Idea.

Greg and company perform Over The Edge from the second Wipers album. This is one of only two or three existing videos of The Wipers in performance and shows just a fraction of their raw power and influence.