Author: Richard D. Oxley

Portland’s The Brightest Comet have risen a bit out of left field. Performing around the schedules of the other bands the members are involved with, The Brightest Comet have still managed to produce a sound worth listening to—and talking about.

Once a teenage mother and high school dropout from a low-income family, Carmen Anderson now has a bachelor’s degree, multiple awards, two children and is a cancer survivor. She has defied every obstacle set before her.

Damien Jurado has long since proven his musical chops. Boasting over a decade in the Northwest music scene and nine albums/EPs under his belt, Jurado has set himself up as quite the institution, yet is still able to fly under the mainstream radar.

If you’re like me, you have often been struck with the dilemma of choosing between the wandering country of Willie Nelson and the sexualized disco of P-Funk. Well, struggle no more, my friends, the answer has come in the form of Portland’s Quick and Easy Boys.

With a fresh album out, the Black Lips are set to take on a supporting tour. Especially since the last one, across India, didn’t pan out as well as they would have hoped. But hey, how many bands can say they’ve been kicked out of a country?

Last March Portland State professor Steven Johnson found himself riding on the back of a motorcycle sweeping through the streets of Katmandu, Nepal. The water there ran through streams of polluted black muck.

The Student Fee Committee member candidates will debate Tuesday to earn your vote. Seven candidates are vying for a spot on the six-member board, creating quite the competition to prove themselves to the students of Portland State.

This Easter Sunday, Rev. Tony Hughes, backed by his band Jesus Presley, will make a pilgrimage to Dante’s Easter Celebration. Though there will be far more liquor at this celebration than most of its religious counterparts, Hughes and company are nonetheless in the business of providing purification.

Over the past four years the Juke Joint Gamblers have been ripping up Portland stages with something that can be most aptly described as rock-a-country-billy. Sometimes admonished by hardcore rockabilly fans that they aren’t a pure representation of the genre, the Juke Joint Gamblers are still creating the music that makes them thrive.

The Tugboat Brewing Company is tucked away on a little known corner of Portland’s downtown. Mary’s Club’s famous twinkling lights shine around the corner, yet even those lights don’t penetrate the dim, covert stretch of Ankeny Street, where you will find the door to this laidback pub serving some of the Northwest’s greatest ales.

To avoid any confusion, let’s establish one thing right off the bat: We’re From Japan is not, in fact, from Japan. Portlanders Brian McIntyre, John Reed Dunn, Aaron Heuberger and Martin Castillo did, however, manage to nab a record deal on a Japanese label, Zankyo Records, with their sweeping instrumental rock.