Street Roots • June 24-30, 2016
News
Page 5
“The entire history of Portland music has really been one of a lack of venues to play,” says The Woolen Men drummer Rafael Spielman,
WOOLEN MEN, from page 4
Browning said. “It’s a little bit harder maybe
to pipe up if you’re complaining about people
moving here and displacing you if you yourself
have moved here.”
At some level, they still find it a little
confounding that Portland became, well, cool.
“I feel like when we were in high school
was really the beginning,” Spielman said.
“The late 1990s was the beginning of
Portland as it’s become.”
“This was pre the lifestyle and in-flight
magazine articles and the food coverage,”
Browning said. “My mother grew up here.
She said in the ’80s nobody cared. They
would just live here and do their weird thing.
Nobody bothered them. It was a city where
you could do whatever you want.”
That’s the real Portland weird versus the
bumper sticker “weird,” which started out as a
campaign by businesses - first in Austin,
Texas, and then here - to get people to shop
local. Then, like so much else, it turned into a
brand. In their high school days, Browning and
Spielman were into local and regional artists
like The Wipers, Quasi, Crackerbash and
Sleater-Kinney. But Spielman confesses he has
mixed feelings about Sleater-Kinney today,
because of band member Carrie Brownstein’s
involvement in you-know-what
“My issue with ‘Portlandia’ is that the
meaning of the whole show seems to be that
it’s OK to not really believe in anything,” he
said. “I have no problem with satire, but the
show doesn’t really offer much other than
pointing out that what’s ridiculous in people’s
everyday lives.... It doesn’t really condemn or
offer anything different; it just lets people
keep doing what they’re doing while giving
them an out - ‘I think you should always try
to eat local food ... but I know it’s kind of
silly.’ I don’t think everything needs to be
serious or political or anything like that, but
something about it feels hollow to me.”
The boom culture of both “Portlandia” and
condominiums admittedly has its bright side.
For one thing, The Woolen Men make more
money than they did five or seven years ago,
albeit not very much money: a hundred bucks
for a night’s work instead of 20.
And while rehearsal space and houses with
basements to play in are harder to find than
ever, music scenes and cool neighborhoods
have always been a game of real estate
whack-a-mole. It’s just a more difficult game
now.
“The entire history of Portland music has
really been one of a lack of venues to play,”
Spielman said. Not long ago, he went to a gig
at a “totally disgusting punk house” on
Killingsworth and wondered how much longer
the place could last.
“I’m sure that some punks have been
renting it for years,” he said. “It’s great, but
it’s hard to imagine how the person who owns
that house doesn’t know the value of that
property.”
That people are still doing it is what
matters. The “Secret City” release show
ended up happening at the American Legion
Hall on Alberta. DIY can never die.
“As much as we’re all worried about what’s
happening with this city, there’s this really
nice wave of optimism and community spirit
that makes me feel very optimistic about the
music scene,” Spielman said. “Everybody has
a lot of mutual respect, and a lot of people are
really putting their all into doing really cool
stuff.”
“As long as people continue to be invested
in making that community, those things will
continue to happen,” Browning said, “It’s
really complicated because there are
definitely many remarkable things happening
now in Portland that are only happening
because the city has changed. So to lay it all
on this negative side or to look to the past as
if it was some ideal utopia is so ridiculous.
How you negotiate the moment that we’re in
now, that’s what matters.”
As far as Browning is concerned, it should
be possible for a city to create affordable
housing for working families, get people off
the streets and be a place where bands can
thrive, and where a kid out of college can live
and do art without being 20 miles out town?
“I think both those things should be totally
possible,” he said. “In a city as progressive as
Portland, there should be so much more
support. Like, I want to see Scandinavian
style, 50 percent taxes and we all get free
health care and free college, you know what
I’m saying? I’m down for that. I’ll give away
my money to that cause.”