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Mo' Volunteers
 350 bands + 25 clubs + hundreds of visiting record industry people = HELP!

 North by Northwest is growing, which means we could use more volunteers to work at the clubs and conference. Volunteers work hard, but get free entrance to the festival, taking place Oct. 16-18, and lots of other fringe benefits-- like maybe the chance to meet the soon-to-be rich and famous. If you're interested in participating, call 226-2150. And look for the first list of participating bands in next week's paper.

NXNW
Wristbands
go on sale Wednesday, September 24 at Music Millennium, Ozone Records, the offices of Willamette Week and via all Fastixx locations
(224-8499 in Portland; 800/992-8499 toll-free from around the U.S.). Priced at only $20 plus service charge, the wristband guarantees no cover charge at all official venues. Buy early--price increases to $25 beginning Saturday, October 11.

NXNW
Bands Announced
Check out the complete list on our NXNW News page!

CultureBuzz

The originality and exaggeration inherent to cartooning allow the best comic strips to serve as commentary as well as comedy. For four years, Rick Pinchera has been using these tools to chronicle the life of your average 25-year-old Portlander in both strikingly specific and overtly generalized comic strips. Local publisher Top Shelf has just released Crust, a collection of Pinchera's strip, which appears weekly in Willamette Week. Top Shelf will officially launch the book Sunday, Sept. 14. Pinchera will sign copies at Reading Frenzy (921 SW Oak St.) from noon until 4 pm. That night, Pete Krebs, Miss Murgatroid and Kaitlyn ni Donovan will play at Bar of the Gods (4801 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) for a Top Shelf reception. --Brooke DeNisco

Among the kitschy totems and familiars that pass for the "sacred" in popular culture--kittens, dolphins, human babies--our own Keiko the Killer Whale takes a commanding place in the pantheon. Somehow, out of the glaring paradox of his internment, Keiko induces childlike wonderment more powerfully than the rest of the menagerie combined. But while Keiko looms over his cutesy brethren in some ways, roll him over and you'll find a sordid underbelly. Maybe it's the flaccid fin, or the real-life venereal disease he carries (it's true, Keiko's got whale herpes). Maybe it's Michael Jackson's Free Willy theme, or the pseudonym "Willy" itself. Wherever you locate it, there's just something unmistakably genital about Keiko. Like Moby Dick before him, Soft Willy is dirty jokes waiting to happen.

 Somewhat in this spirit, a Free Willy parade the day before Labor Day captured the briny skank of Oregon's ostensibly "most famous citizen." Winding through residential Southeast Portland, the parade's lead float consisted of a golden chariot piloted by a sweaty man inside a flayed, inflatable Keiko skin. Like a thrift-store painting come to life, the sagging Keiko whipped at the bicycle-riding sailors dragging him while yelling unintelligibly into a toy megaphone. The other float carried a fetching sea princess covered in blood and glitter. On occasion, a flat, plywood whale tail bristling with nails plopped onto a grisly baby seal. The parade was filled out by a flag corps, a marching band (two accordionists), and a battalion of Portland's own riders of the apocalypse, the Chunk Bikers, fresh from their Grand Royal magazine spread. Although it delivered a vaguely coherent political message--liberate the whale, you hypocritical bastards--the parade seemed most intent simply on arriving at its terminal party, where a kiddie pool full of 40s on ice waited. Like the surrealist parades of the Oregon Country Fair, this one was equal parts sweat, spirit and debauched imagination.

 More than updated hippie burlesque, the Free Willy parade was grungy Pop Art, finding in Keiko the naturally occurring ambiguity of a Claes Oldenburg soft sculpture. Even if it wasn't the burst of childlike enthusiasm it posed as, it was exactly the kind of exuberantly arch cynicism the world needs more of.
--Jon Raymond

Portland's zero-sum game with music clubs continues as two new venues opened last week, just a month after the closure of Thee O and the Mercury Room. As part of the bargain, the city will finally have a space dedicated to electronic dance music. Zoot Suite, located in the former location of City Nightclub, 13 NW 13th Ave., opened Friday, Sept. 5, with Chicago DJ and producer Johnny Fiasco, who has recorded for labels such as Moonshine and Large. Zoot Suite will host all-ages shows with a separate bar area every week under the banner "Full Flavour Friday," while Saturdays will be a 21-and-over weekly affair called "Oxygen." For more information, call 904-0813.

The Maul, a new all-ages punk- and indie-rock club at 1534 NE Alberta St., also opened Sept. 5, with a bill of Team Dresch, the Lookers and Lady Speedstick. Co-organizer Shari Menard says the 100-capacity venue will offer live music about three times a week. For more information, call 402-1713. --Richard Martin

How do you celebrate 10 years of shared laughter and tears, and commemorate the birth of your first child? If you're Ruth Jenkins and Patrick Short, co-founders of Portland's chapter of the ComedySportz improv troupe, you choose up sides, put on funny hats and do your best to make each other look silly. In honor of a full decade of being "actletes" with ComedySportz, the couple will choose players from the Portland company and go head-to-head Friday and Saturday nights, Sept. 12 and 13.

Cowan Emmett Jenkins was born June 28 to Jenkins and Short, and six weeks later went along to Rock Island, Ill., to accompany the couple with the rest of the all-star Portland team in the ComedySportz national competition. The Portlanders made it to the semi-finals, then lost to New York. Undaunted, the Portland Oregon Donors team beat out Green Bay for the third-place spot in national standings. --Dan DePrez