PDX POP NOW!
(Refuge, 116 SE Yamhill) It's time for the funnest, rootin'-tootin'est all-ages music fest in town. PDX Pop Now! makes its annual sunny appearance with more than 40 Portland bands, like Radiation City, Youthbitch, and Sons of Huns, playing their hearts out for you for three straight days. For free! This is what Portland summers are all about. Now show your love. COURTNEY FERGUSON Also read our article on PDX Pop Now!
SPACEGHOSTPURRP, TRASH TALK, TxE, TRANSIENT
(Branx, 320 SE 2nd) Miami rapper SpaceGhostPurrp turns the booty bass of his home city on its ear, offering bleak, post-apocalyptic jams that command full attention of your head (and ass) with their minimalist grind and narcotic momentum. With Sacramento hardcore punkers Trash Talk also on the bill, this definitely won't be your typical evening out. NED LANNAMANN
DAM-FUNK, VINNIE DEWAYNE
(Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi) It would be easy to pigeonhole Dam-Funk as a retro act, riding the dual wave of frenzy for DIY and early '80s nostalgia. Aural reminiscing definitely has its place, but it's an ass-backward way to listen to Dam-Funk. It's a happy coincidence that the arbitrary masses finally caught up to what he has been doing for years—making electro-funk in his garage. When heard from start to finish on earphones, Adolescent Funk and Toeachizown show the full range of his keyboard ingenuity. Still, spending so many years in solitude can give a person his own way of doing things, and Dam is an iconoclast when it comes to details: from the pleasing immediacy of synthetic percussion and bouncy bass, to the sparse use of sexy Princeisms, to the fact that he does it all without using any of those familiarly aggressive sexist and racist epithets. REBECCA WILSON
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