Well, my last post generated quite the email discussion. I inadvertently created a monster. It's starting to look like a friendly monster, though. This past Sunday evening, about 30 local musicians met up at the Lucky Lab to discuss the local scene and try to figure out what we can do to make it better. The current course of action is to create a loose-knit collective of local bands that will be the revolving cast in a regular local band showcase. More grandiose, logistically-challenging ideas about opening a co-op venue were put on the back burner. This isn't exactly a radical move, but it's already helped local musicians to meet each other, and it might eventually raise the profile of underground local music in Portland....Speaking of great underground local musicians playing combined bills to enthusiastic hometown fans, on Friday night I went to the Produce Row Cafe to hear my friends in Per Se, Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory and Metropolitan. It's a bit frightening how good SIMRF is. Is was sitting about four feet away from singer/guitarist Dave Klopfenstein, and he looked like a man possessed. An unexpected delight was the second band, The Lodge Club....After the show, I decided to finally check out that new PDX venue The Dunes. I've given it the unofficial title of "Darkest Bar in Portland". Once my eyes adjusted, I noticed that the DJ for the evening was local scene stalwart (and Captain vs. Crew drummer) Shawna Erwin-Gore....It was 1:40am by the time I reached Berbati's Pan, so obviously I missed The Decemberists' set. Colin Meloy told me that he met some of my friends when they played at the Red Star in Baton Rouge. My efforts to shrink the universe of American indie rock seem to be working....Finally, it was a Voodoo Doughnut and off to bed.

When I glimpsed the words "don't like" scribbled next to our band name in the booking contact's calendar, I figured it meant trouble. It was my first time meeting Dave, the new booker for the Tonic Lounge, and despite those two words (which he probably didn't realize I saw - assuming they weren't simply a manifestation of some undiagnosed paranoid delusion), he assured me that our show on October 18th, 2003 was still on. This was in September. In the past, I wouldn't have made a special trip to the Tonic to confirm a show. But, as is usually the case, the past was over. Gene Hall, the previous booker with whom we had a good working relationship, had left his post at the Tonic under murky circumstances. His protege, Sara, was also fired about three weeks later. Rumors of political in-fighting and intra-bar power struggles ran rampant. Word reached me that shows booked by Gene and Sara would not be honored under the new system. Hence my trip to the bar to confirm the show. Dave confirmed the show. I left the bar feeling relieved.

Fast forward a month. Wednesday, Oct 15: the Tonic Lounge listing is absent from the Willamette Week music listings. New booking people probably just don't have their act together about emailing in the listings yet, I reasoned. No biggie. Thursday, Oct 16: the Tonic Lounge did have listings, and an ad, in the Portland Mercury. However, I had never heard of the bands. So, that night The Countess and I headed back to the Tonic in an attempt to sort this thing out. "Oh, we totally axed that", explained an uninterested-looking goateed man who appeared to hold some sort of supervisory position at the bar. When I asked why we weren't informed of the change, I was referred to the email address for booking-guy Dave. The next day (Oct 17th) I wrote to tonicloungebooking@hotmail.com in hopes that Dave might shed some light on the situation. The full text of my email appears below:

--Dave,
--Hi. This is Ross Beach. We met last month when I came into the bar to confirm our
--Oct 18 show (which you confirmed).
--I stopped by the bar last night and learned that we are no longer scheduled to play.
--
--When were you planning on telling us? When we showed up with our gear?
--
--Looking forward to your explanation,
--Ross

Too flippant, maybe? As of this writing (Oct 24), the email has not been returned.

I have a great deal of respect for people who can differentiate between music they like and music they don't like. I would certainly never hold against someone the fact that they don't like my band. In fact, I'm constantly amazed that so many people do like us. What I don't appreciate is being lied to and having to backpedal on promotional efforts. Plans had been made. People with busy schedules were involved. If I could give any advice to the new bookers of the Tonic Lounge it might be this: if you don't want a band to play, don't tell them that they're playing. If you have to cancel a show, tell the band(s) involved. This strategy of confrontation avoidance is not going to work. People are going to get aggravated and this town isn't especially big.

Anyway, after leaving the Tonic on Oct 16th, the Countess and I headed down to Dante's for the Demolition Doll Rods show. They were great!

Back in 1998, I recorded a song for a tribute album to the enigmatic, Houston-based, cult recording artist Jandek. The song was subsequently un-included from the record, but because of my track's immense popularity (apparently with none other than Jandek himself), it's now available as a free download. Head on over to the Summersteps Records site and download the Van Ness Mission .mp3. Own a piece of way, way-underground music history. Is that really how my voice used to sound? The 2003 Bands Against Bush show happened at Liberty Hall this past Saturday. I received some nice compliments for my songs, got quoted in the Willamette Week, and had the honor of having Tom Dietzel of Shed Inc. wail on my guitar during their set. It was a zen-like moment of letting go for me, yet somehow the guitar was returned in one piece. As usual, Shed were amazing.

Oh, life. It's bigger. Bigger than you and you are not me...I think. I'll have to get back to you on that. What I do know is that Get Set Go totally rock! They're currently criss-crossing the countryside, spreading the rock onslaught whereever they go. Check them out if you get the chance.

Last night, September 11th, was a momentus anniversary. That's right, 30 years ago yesterday the CIA orchestrated the bloody coup in Chile that brought the tyrannical dictator General Augusto Pinochet to power. Sure, maybe he suppressed all political discourse using violence and torture, but he was GREAT for American business interests! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! We celebrated the occasion by playing a benefit show for Portland's chapter of Bands Against Bush at Conan's Pub. The Hellpets kicked off the evening with a selection of power pop nuggets covering topics such as economic disparity, natural resource privatization and military imperialism. We were followed by the dynamic dual-acoustic onslaught of Shed, Inc. Lastly, we were all treated to the freakshow stylings of BrewZerkus (which tonight featured Dingo Dizmal of the legendary PeptoDizmal Clown Troupe). Naturally, there was cricket eating, maggot eating, beds of nails, sharp knives, cinderblocks being broken over stomachs, escapes from straight-jackets, partial nudity and banjo playing. You know, the basics. All proceeds went toward the big October 11th Bands Against Bush show at Liberty Hall. Similar BAB events will be taking place on that date in cities around the world. Also amusing last night...a bar-goer paid us the compliment that we're a good band and would be really popular if we were famous. That's the rub, I figure.

In the last six days I've seen Nickel Creek, Carissa's Wierd, Imperial Teen, Lushus, R.E.M., Wilco (twice), Karla Bozulich, Minmae, Blue Skies For Black Hearts, The High Violets, Luke Janela, Captured! By Robots, The Carolines, Western, My Regrets, The Empty Set, Norfolk & Western, Nordic and Gravity & Henry. The last dozen of these were at MusicFest NW 2003, which felt to me like a great success. Now, it's time to sleep....In other news, the Tonic Lounge has reportedly already forced out the new booking contact Sara and does not intend to honor the dates she set with bands (of which we have two). Not sure what our future holds in terms of the Tonic.

This past Saturday we played a benefit for the Pet Overpopulation Prevention Association which took the form of an art fair / Italian food festival (an Italian bakery donated their parking lot for the festivities). Remember in the movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch when they played the Menses fair? It felt to me like I imagine that scene felt to them. I sang through our spare bass amp, so things were appropriately low-fidelity. We played one of our quietest shows in recent memory yet still managed to inspire a noise complaint (the officer arrived on scene after we had packed up and left). The artists were very appreciative...even the one whose tent we essentially took over. Please spay and neuter your pets so that we don't have to play parking lots on N. Killingsworth anymore!

The High Violets and The Empty Set are my new gods. There are nine band members between them and, while polytheism isn't readily accepted in this land of supposed religious freedom, my declaration of this new religion should nonetheless entitle me to heaps of faith-based government grants. The spiritual awakening occurred Saturday night during our show with these fine Portlanders at the highly sought-after venue The Blackbird. As profound and humbling as this conversion was, it doesn't equal the profundity and humbl...um...humblosity of being deemed worthy to, one last time, take the Blackbird stage after getting a year's worth of the cold shoulder.

Plenty going on, as always...I'm halfway through recording my leftist anti-imperialist country album...the Hellpets have just scheduled studio time to record basic tracks for the upcoming Ross and the Hellpets release...my song "All This Non-Stop Fun" has been played everyday on KLSU in Baton Rouge for the last couple of weeks, according to various sources...I recently attended great performances by Portlanders The Tuftees, The Minor Thirds, The Mouse That Roared and Shicky Gnarowitz & the Transparent Wings of Joy (currently my favorite local band name)...I just downloaded an MP3 of a drumbeat from the Music Liberation Project. They're encouraging musicians around the planet to download the track, record their own accompanying track, and send it in. The plan is for selected submissions to be mixed together to create a collaborative, experimental album. It's just gonzo enough to work!

We figuratively blew the doors off Portland's Ash Street Saloon Saturday night with the help of our fellow rockers The Odditors. Yes, the reports of back-bends and somersaults are true. Eric is one of the friendliest sound guys (to use the vulgar tongue) that we've encountered lately. Still, Ash Street economics has me flummoxed. The last time we played there, the crowd was...let's say, modest in size and, after the show, we were informed that the door take was $9 short of covering sound person expenses. Fair enough. This time, there were about four times as many audience members, but we're told the bar still didn't "cover expenses". I don't know if these means anything. While waiting for the show to start, I read the brand new issue of the Music Liberation Project. Finally, a local publication that actually concerns itself with local music. Gee, we might nurture a scene around here yet.

Yesterday, I got word that three members of the Portland band The Exploding Hearts were killed when their tour van rolled on Interstate 5 outside of Eugene, OR. They were pulling an all-night drive to get home from a show in San Francisco. My friend Ratch, the band's manager, was also in the van, but was relatively unhurt. I had only ever met one member of the band and only one time. The singer Adam Baby and I played the same songwriter's showcase show a few months ago. He was really good. This has been a rough year for the Portland music scene.

In light of the global instability wrought by the self-serving malice of various governing factions, many observers have, no doubt, taken it all to be an indicator of the quickly approaching end of time. That ain't nothing, though. The true harbinger is this: Ross and the Hellpets has been accepted to MusicFest NW 2003, putting an end of my long and (previously) untarnished string of music festival rejections. Woe be to the Gods! As if that wasn't enough, we were recently asked to play a show at The Blackbird, a Portland venue that, for some time now, we haven't been hip enough to play. Whither hipness? At the time of this writing, we're not listed on the Blackbird's website, so maybe they've detected our lack of painfully literate brooding ironic detachment. We played an amazingly fun show Friday night at the Jasmine Tree with our dear friends Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory (their first show since the addition of multi-instrumentalist Andy Giegerich) and The Minor Thirds (who decided to give their naughty material a rest for the evening in favor of songs on such topics as having a pet chicken). Among the attendees was my friend Margery whose Dark Porch Productions is putting on a performance piece this month at Disjecta.

We had a very (I'm told) successful evening of humanitarian fundraising this past Thursday evening at the 411 Collective. Proceeds went to buy supplies for a group of naturopathic doctors and students who will be volunteering in remote and impoverished areas of Nicaragua this summer. Among the participants were the band Polite Fiction, which includes the creators of that delightfully Portland-centric rock 'zine Music Liberation Project. For this show, Ross and the Hellpets were an official music pick of the Portland Mercury, which is something they periodically do as an excuse to ridicule us in print. Hard not to love 'em though. Saturday we had a terrific time playing the Tonic Lounge with our longtime pals Shed, Inc. and our new pals Queen Bee Jackson. Coincidentally, the Queen Bee drummer has a friend in common with us from the Baton Rouge music scene: Andy from El Tuco. Sunday, the homeless advocacy group Sisters of the Road Cafe put together the world's largest guitar band as a fundraising event. One thousand guitarists crammed into Pioneer Courthouse Square and played Woody Guthrie's populist anthem "This Land is Your Land" for an hour.

I just got word that the Capricorns have cancelled their west coast tour, so no show on July 15th. This is turning into a trend. Meanwhile, the fabulous electro-feminist duo Kid Quiz has left Eugene and moved down to L.A. (much to the chagrin of us Oregonians). In other news, tonight is the first rock and roll show being hosted by my favorite Portland bowling alley, Grand Central Bowl. Appearing tonight will be PDX rockers Metropolitan and the Tuftees. C'mon...bowling? Rock? How great is that?

A seriously rockin' time was had by all at the Twilight Cafe last night. We opened the show with a set that included a requested rendition of "I Prefer Sheep" (why does that song resonate so strongly with our fans?) and were followed by our Seattle-by-way-of-Louisiana rock stalwarts Jodi Hates the World. Also playing were NYC's own Crimson Sweet who played highly enjoyable New York Dolls-ish punk (or maybe I just think that because the bass player looks so much like David Johanssen). Rounding out the evening were the Portand rockers 8 Foot Tender. And, as if that wasn't great enough, Mark Serrat of the Portland-centric punk label Last Chance Records gave me a copy of his brand-new compilation "Northwest Kicked in the Nuts", featuring 25 female-fronted punk bands. Jodi Hates the World stayed over at Casa Hotstream West-Annex on their way to rock the unsuspecting citizens of California.

The Capricorns show at the Tonic is on for July 15th. They will be joined by BRONTRON, which is Sarah and Richel from Bronwyn wearing robot costumes. Yes! In other news, I've been asked to donate some door-prize CDs for a show sponsored by The Music Liberation Project, which is actively freeing local music from the chains of tyranny. The show is Saturday, July 15 at Nocturnal in Portland. Also, I've gotten word that the Hellpets won't be playing Bumbershoot in Seattle this year, so I guess that leaves me free to see a lot more music. Glass = half full.

I just painted the walls and pulled up the purple, dog-stained carpet in my basement. Soon, it will be the home of the newly reconstituted Casa Hotstream West recording studio. I'm halfway finished with the batch of psychedelic country tunes I started at the studio's previous location. It'll be interesting to see how that turns out. Look for a spring 2004 release date. After that will be the new Hellpets record, followed by a new Ross Beach solo CD in 2005. Or, that's the plan. Speaking of plans, I saw the Dismemberment Plan play their last Portland show last night. Awe-inspiring, as usual. Too bad for us that they're breaking up, but I'm sure they know what's best for them.

My friend Bethany from the band Estereo just asked me to help set up a Portland show on July 15th for a touring experimental female pop duo called The Capricorns. Looks like it'll be happening at the epicenter of eastside rock known as The Tonic Lounge. More details to come.

My long-suffering amp, the venerable Alamo Fury has, once again, returned from the repair shop. It's many recent attempts to join that great amplifier backline in the sky have been foiled by my relentless resusitations. I expect the Alamo will soon resort to more drastic measures, such as spontaneously combusting in mid-show. Exploding, perhaps. You know you don't want to miss that, so be sure to attend every Hellpet show possible, just in case.

I was informed today that my most recent record label, A Bouncing Space Recordings, has officially given up the ghost. The website has even been taken down. Not sure yet what affect this may have on the availability of my record. Such is life. I guess now I have no choice but to sell out to a major. Now THAT was funny! Also today I attended the garage sale of a certain Mr. Sean Broox and got myself a copy of his newly released Minmae CD. Also on hand were 2/3 of the Portland indie pop up-and-comers The Tuftees and Angelo, host of the KPSU indie rock show. Rock music and garage sales: the Portland tradition lives on.

Last night I played a performance showcase with the Portland Underground Showbiz Society Y'all (it's hard work to make that acronym). I did three solo acoustic songs, played tambourine for Dave and Linc of Sauvie Island Moon Rocket Factory and did a bit of mixer work for the band The Minor Thirds, who were typically great. I've had their new EP "Saskatchewan" in heavy rotation. Tonight was the maiden voyage for Jake Anderson's new bass fiddle. Also on hand were the comedians known as Rachael Parenta and Hecktow "King of Sweden".

The Countess has finally returned from a Hawaiian yoga instructor training course, and the Hellpets are once again ready to continue saving the world through rock music. In our very first post-hiatus rehearsal, my Alamo guitar amp fried one of its electronic gizmos. I know everyone is very interested in the well-being of the Alamo; that's why I write these things. Anyway, playing guitar through our backup bass amp sounded like crap. Just say no.