Popcorn Noises

Cold Pizza Friday LII

Imaginary Sasquatch!

Have you guys been watching “Portlandia” on IFC-slash-the-internet? Lolz for days, I tell ya! It’s so great to finally have my own self-aware generational version of a suburban sitcom, which next week’s CPF column will argue is a fundamental human need right up there with water, shelter, and Angry Birds. The best part is the repressed sense of conflict and the twinge of tension that propels my laughter: the show is funny and well-written and makes all this stereotypically hip Pac-NW stuff look ridiculous, but I myself am way too familiar with bird art and fixed-gear bike jerks and unprofitable bookstores to point any kind of fingers. That joke in the “Dream of the 90s” song about Portland being “where young people go to retire?” I still, in all seriousness, consider that a viable option for the next five years of my life. Sigh.

Although ‘The Gorge’ where the Sasquatch! Festival takes place is geographically closer to Seattle, these Portland-inspired dynamics play heavily into what I imagine the experience to be (having never been much further north than San Luis Obispo). It’s important to keep in mind that the festival is being funded (‘presented’) by at least two giant commercial entities: Honda, who in spite of manufacturing Earth-gagging motorcars do their best to appeal to young people by having something called a ‘hybrid,’ and Live Nation. In case you’re not familiar, Live Nation is the event-planning equivalent of Ticketmaster, continually striving to prove that the music industry can still generate revenue for anonymous corporate executives. Since a truly ‘conscious’ and ‘alternative’ person would abstain from such an event, it’s important to deflect any potential questions about your own consumer ethics by walking around Sasquatch! openly acknowledging all the corporate sponsorship and lamenting the downfall of ‘artistic integrity’ while rolling your eyes at the Foo Fighters. I’ll be right there with you in my imagination, folding my arms and saying things like, “Yeah, man, the internet’s really revolutionized, like, everything about our lives, y’know?”

Here are the acts in proximity to which you may imagine finding me:
- Modest Mouse (near the back in case they start playing ‘new stuff’)
- The Flaming Lips (aaahhh confetti!)
- Death From Above 1979 (getting other people’s sweat incidentally flung in my eye)
- Robyn
- Ratatat (for two or three songs because, hey, they’re all the same)
- Wolf Parade (before it’s too late!)
- Yeasayer (again, near the back in case they start playing ‘new stuff’)
- Beach House (hopefully after the sun goes down; it’s just not the same without the light show)
- Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
- Deerhunter
- Sleigh Bells (shouting into my friend’s ear: “I’ve been waiting for this since 2009!”)
- Major Lazer (“Why is he climbing a ladder?…Oh, gross!”)
- !!! (more sweat in my eye, but a slightly different mix of body odors)
- CSS
- Surfer Blood (“Dude, I heard the new Weezer album totally sucks!”)
- Gayngs (hooray, nap time!)
- The Radio Dept.
- Smith Westerns
- Twin Shadow
- Das Racist (“Um, is it okay for me to be listening to this? I feel weirdly guilty.”)
- Wye Oak (while everyone else takes a nap!)
- Gold Panda
- Washed Out (“OMG it’s the ‘Portlandia’ song!”)