Portland School of Rock, Best of the Northwest

Angel and I drove down to Portland on Friday, and happened upon this: Portland's Paul Green School of Rock was performing their "Best of the Northwest" Show. Essentially it was a bunch of kids playing with loads of NW musicians: Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie is in this video, the guitar player from Mudhoney played with them, Dave Bazan from Pedro the Lion, a guy from the Decemberists was there, a guy from the Shins was supposed to be there, but wasn't. It was incredible: the most fun I've had at a show since I was a teenager. The kids were really talented, and there was great support from within the local and national scene. It was amazing seeing kids performing songs next to the guys that wrote them without any obvious self-consciousness. You have to give props to Portland for being able to support something like this in a relatively small city. They're the new Seattle when it comes to music, it seems.

The best part was that they were really starting them young. I'm waiting for the clip to come up on YouTube, but some they had some 10 year old (or so) kid singing metal with this awesome butt-kickin' sneer.

Here's an article on the show, and another video.



By the way, Portland has officially made it on to my top 10 favorite cities list.