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You know what you’re getting when you go to a concert at the Rose Garden arena: either a band that released its last good album 20 years ago (The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Roger Waters) or a band whose songs you’ve already heard so many times on the radio that they’re permanently burned into your brain (Coldplay, Katy Perry). You also know what you’re getting from a show at the Crystal Ballroom: a band just popular enough for casual music fans to like and serious music fans to hate (Snow Patrol, Hot Chip). Elsewhere, though, it gets murky.

If you’re the dancing type, you may have noticed the distinct lack of EDM events in Portland. EDM is an all-encompassing genre standing for “electronic dance music.” Essentially, it is the catchall term for electro-house, dubstep, moombahton and everything else people dance to these days.

Everyone knows that Portland is well known for its plethora of haircut rock, but our fair city is also host to several punk and metal staples, such as Poison Idea, Agalloch, Millions of Dead Cops and Tragedy.

Over the last 10 years, Portland has seen a rapid decline in all-ages live music venues. Younger college-age kids living on their own in the city find that they are veritable outcasts from the live music culture that defines a huge facet of the urban experience. Especially in Portland, a city formerly known as an all-ages music hot spot, where the field of options has dropped off significantly.

Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave.

I asked Doug Rogers, owner of Slabtown, what’s going on at the bar and venue today, and he told me that right now he’s hosting the urban golfers, who are getting ready to knock tennis balls around the city.

Harsh noise, the genre that moms everywhere have been conflating with metal since the ’80s, is a real thing, and it has some history in Portland.

The Sarcastic Dharma Society started out as a dream. Singer-songwriter Mat Vuksinich was on a road trip with Woody Allen when their car broke down. During their trek to the next town, a dramatic archway loomed, inscribed with the fateful words that would follow Vuksinich from his hometown in the foothills of northern California to Portland.

Portland’s Daniel Menche is a living legend in the international avant-garde community. As a musician and performance artist, Menche has spent more than 20 years crafting a body of work that is both highly conceptual and ferociously visceral. In a genre often characterized by sonic extremes, Menche’s music assaults the intellect as much as the physical senses, gripping the listener in a total body experience.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, and raised in New Jersey and Minnesota, Ilyas Ahmed came to Portland on an uncommon path. If Ahmed’s life is anywhere near as interesting as his music is, it’s a story that I’d like to hear.

Grouper is a one-woman project featuring electro acoustic music by Liz Harris of Portland. Harris grew up on the northern California coast. Her music combines soft guitars and keys with ethereal vocals. This, along with the use of reverb and tape delay results in a unique, spooky and surreal musical experience.

You know how most rock musicians’ careers have an arc that generally travels from frenetic, aggressive youthfulness to a reflective, subdued adulthood? Like how Paul Westerburg went from shouting “I Need a Goddamn Job” in 1981, to crooning “Here Comes a Regular” by ’85, to looking utterly despondent and confused while twanging out “It’s a Wonderful Lie” (as if he was country all along)—in ’08?