The word on Blazermania

Matt Love, a PSU alumni, writer and founder of the Nestucca Spit Press, will be hosting a panel on his latest project, a retrospective of the Portland Trail Blazers 1976-77 championship season at Wordstock this weekend. The Vanguard sat down with Love to discuss Wordstock, his work, life, and most importantly, the Blazers.

What will you be doing at Wordstock this year?I am going to be hosting a panel called Blazermania, Past and Present, where we feature some stories form the Blazers’ days of yore, the great Blazer days, and then also looking to where the team is in Portland’s consciousness today and the state’s consciousness. This event is being held in connection with the release of a book earlier this year, correct?That’s correct, in the summer, late spring, a book called Red Hot and Rolling came out. It’s an anthology from a variety of viewpoints that all weighed in on that momentous 76-77 championship season, which was one of the most galvanizing cultural events in Oregon history and it also included a full-length feature film called Fast Break, which is a documentary on that team, so this event is a follow up to that.

What was your roll in the production of this book?I was the editor, publisher and a contributor. My press, Nestucca Spit Press, put the book out. I contacted all the writers to weigh in on the issue, I conducted several oral history interviews, and did all the research for the book, and then contributed the introduction, epilogue, one of my essays, and then helped track down the film and get it in there. So I was sort of a film entrepreneur as well. Pretty much everything.

Would it be fair to call your publishing grass roots?I would call it DIY, do it yourself, punk rock, selling books out of the trunk of your car. Literally I’ve done that.

What will Sunday’s event be about?It’s is an event to promote the book and also to speak to the larger story of connecting it to today. Is there any cultural relevance to the Portland Trail Blazers today? That would be a question I might ask at the event. See if it can it touch people the way it used to. Not just because they won, there is a lot more to it then just winning. What do you mean?That team in ’77 was of their city and of their era, probably unlike any other in the annals of American professional sports. These guys lived as Oregonians. They lived close to ground. Bill Walton biked to practice for god’s sake.

My question is, can a pro athlete today, who comes into Portland, embrace Portland and what it has to offer? Instead of bringing his cultural baggage and entourage and where he came from, and trying to recreate that. That has been the problem with pro sports and Portland in particular. None of these guys on the team know where the fuck they live and they run against cultural problems. And its not just a black and white thing, it’s a pro athlete who doesn’t know where he lives, has no sense of place. I speak of that a lot in the book and will probably talk a lot about that in the panel.

Do you think when Oden begins to play we can see a regeneration of Blazermania? Or do you think because our players don’t have local roots it will be impossible to re-embrace?Winning would go along way to reestablish that of course. You would see a lot of people come back to the team because of that energy. I think for me, as a Blazer fan of many, many years ago, it would take something beyond just winning to bring to me the team again.

Is Oden the resurgence of Blazermania? Depends, he seems to be a pretty self-effacing kind of guy and if he plays the kind of basketball the Blazers did, which is team oriented and they subordinated egos to the larger whole… it is possible. If that team found themselves in the community, and connected to the community in the way the old Blazers did, you know, that may be gone because of the layers of agents and corporate America and all the bullshit. But who knows, maybe there is still some magic left.

Blazermania Past and Present will take place during Wordstock on Sun. Nov. 11 from 1 p.m. to 2:25 p.m. on the Columbia Sportswear Joe’s Sport Stage at the Oregon Convention Center. Admission to Wordstock is $5. All books published by Nestucca Spit Press, including Red Hot and Rolling, can be found online at www.nestuccaspitspress.com or at Powell’s Books.