Your first PDX concert experience?
I’m taking my kid to his first concert tonight – we’re going to what was inexplicably billed as an all ages show at the Roseland to see rapper Tony Yayo (his idea, not at all mine…)
The saving grace here for me? It’s fairly inexpensive – plus I’ll be able to sneak upstairs from time to time for a beer. But friends are arguing that I really ought to be making his first concert-going experience a much more pleasant one – or at least at a place where he could sit down and/or might have a chance of seeing things.
I don’t know that I agree – when I think back on the best shows I’ve ever seen – in Portland and beyond – PDX venues stack up pretty nicely (excepting The Crystal Ballroom, topic of my inaugural rant here.) But who knows – I might be setting the kid up for a pretty disapponting time, now that I think about it. So to make me feel better and/or guiltier than I already do right now – tell me about your first PDX experience, and what made it so magical (or disappointing) for you, will you please…?
My first concert was the Monkees at Civic Stadium sometime around 1983. I was four at the time and remember swinging around like a chimp on a security barrier near a walkway. There weren’t many people there and my parents, for some reason, turned a blind eye to my reckless spazzing. When I started hanging off it by my legs, my father intervened and made me sit down. The Monkees zoomed out on go carts to a small stage in the middle of the baseball field. Their open act was a Beavers’ game. While it could have been a better band, at least my first live show wasn’t Raffi or something like that.
I saw my first show at the Crystal Ballroom in November 2003. I got there two hours early because I didn’t want to be late. I hadn’t been in Portland long enough to know that parking was free after dark, so I paid the attendant at a small theater for the privilege of using the lot. At the show, I got into a competition with the guy standing next over who sing every lyric the most accurately. I won.
My second PDX show was a year later seeing the same band at the Bite of Oregon next to the Morrison Bridge. It was nice – the band interacted with some of the people catching the show for free from the guardrail. I sang every lyric again and took more pictures and called it a nice time at the end of the day.
And the band was Death Cab for Cutie. My bad.
Wow, my first PDX concert! Where does one begin to describe, not the shows one’s seen in Portland, but where one’s seen a show in Portland.
I remember seeing shows at the old La Luna, where fresh air was an extinct commodity, that is unless you could manage to sneak some from the only broken window pane 30-feet up in the roof.
Berbati’s bathroom use to be a “at your own risk” type of adventure. I haven’t been there lately, so I don’t know just how clean they are NOW.
The old Satirycon was a great place to see a concert, especially if you loved rock, punk, metal. Sadly, it too is no more.
The old “Meow Meow” (A.K.A. the Loveland) is like partying in your house attic: stuffy, hot, low-lying ceiling.
The Roseland’s bathroom’s overflowing so bad (at least a foot of water, urine and fecies everywhere), that during a Slayer show, overly violent and testostorone-driven men begin to kick out windows, urinating on innocent passer byer’s as they walked down NW 6th.
If you wanted dirt…Then the Columbia Meadows dog track was for you. Long lines, not a lot of grass (at least healthy green grass), but a lot of sand and dirt. At times, if you weren’t up front to see a show, it would get hard to see through the cloud of thick dust that eminated from the mosh pit that engulfed most of the field.
If you want trippy, go to Lola’s Room (second floor, below the Crystal.)After several drinks, you’ll be weirded out by just how bouncy the floor is throughout the whole venue. At times, you feel like you’re going to fall through the floor; though you never will.
There are so many more memories, such as: seeing the first ever concert at the Rose Garden (Prick, Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie); Watching country fans brawl with heavy metal fans while standing in line for two totally different shows, both playing the same night at both the Rose Graden and the Memorial Coliseum.
BUT IF YOU WANT THE WORST CONCERT VENUE…DRIVE SOUTH TO SALEM AND THE SALEM ARMORY. With the lack of ventilation, and enough heat and body odor to make deodorant companies salvate at the marketable possibilities, taking in a concert at this venue would be comparable to you turning up your home stereo as you stuck your head in your 400 degree oven. Enjoy.
My first concert was the Manhattan Transfer at the Civic Auditorium in the mid 1970s.
First Portland concert: The Cure ‘Head on the Door’ tour 1985 at the Arlene Schniter Concert Hall.
Followed soon after by Howard Jones, also at the Schnitz.
What can I say? I was a teenage new waver.