Odyssey
Ohm
31 NW 1st Ave.,
223-9919
10 pm Friday,
April 28
Cover
Odyssey plans
to release a debut CD, Ocean of Sand, soon.
Fifteen years ago, Dan Reed was a lord of rock. Or at least,
he was the closest thing Portland could pull from its homegrown.
The Dan Reed Network was Portland's most successful band
of the late '80s and early '90s. With a swordsman's mane
of raven hair, Reed may as well have had "'80s ROCK STUD"
branded on his forehead. His band's rock/funk fusion clearly
nailed the tenor of the times; at the height of its success,
the Network toured in support of Bon Jovi and the Rolling
Stones.
Now, Reed shaves his head to monastic baldness, and his
new band won't go near a guitar solo. For Reed, it's all
about electronics now. In light of two decades of changes,
Odyssey, the new band's name, seems like a pretty obvious
choice.
A lot has happened in the Portland music scene since DRN's
salad days. Pop-metal gave way to grunge, which surrendered
to indie and hip-hop--all continually recycled, rediscovered
and reassessed. Reed kept up, and the Network's 1992 dissolution
was hardly the end of his creative endeavors.
Rather than slide down the descending spiral of cover bands
and mullets like many vet rockers, Reed continued to tackle
new challenges, including taking over the rock club known
as Key Largo and transforming it into Ohm, a haven for the
burgeoning world of electronic music.
"Portland is almost close to San Francisco in being the
leader in electronic music in the United States--even though
the world doesn't know it yet," Reed says, beaming with
youthful enthusiasm. "We just haven't got the props yet."
Reed enlisted an old comrade to further the digital cause.
Jason Webb, Odyssey's other member, is legendary in Portland's
music scene. Webb's infamous alter-ego, Jay Headsex, hosted
legendary jam sessions, featuring metalheads, funksters,
jazz hipsters, hip-hoppers and anyone with the nerve to
cut loose on the stages of now-defunct clubs like Day for
Night. In slightly more mainstream circles, he was known
as Nosaj, one half of the After Dark Production Crew, whose
1993 album Beyond marked them as the city's most
groundbreaking hip-hop act. In the fickle world of hip-hop,
ADPC was the right band at the wrong time, delivering music
designed to move the crowd rather than promote herb-toking
gangsterism.
"We were completely opposite of what was going on in hip-hop
at that time," explains Webb.
Wanderlust has driven both Reed and Webb through their
lives, as their ambitions for the aptly named new band make
clear. Combining music with video and dance, the Odyssey
hopes to go beyond traditional music, creating a sensory
experience that conveys the many facets of life--good and
bad, beautiful and ugly.
"I've seen and done a lot," Reed says, laughing, "from
interviewing the Dalai Lama in India to hanging out in strip
bars in Portland on a regular basis. All that is going into
this music."
That music is as far removed from the Dan Reed Network's
dated rock/funk hybrid as one can imagine. "I became a fan
of electronic music about four or five years ago," Reed
explains. "Then about two and a half years ago, I started
buying equipment. It didn't seem like it would be that difficult,
going from working with musicians, but to get it to touch
your soul a little bit, you've got to painfully play with
knobs and twist things and tweak with it until you make
something that works."
Rockers' age-old dis of electronic music--that somehow
it's not "real"--has largely fallen by the wayside in recent
years. Even though some of Reed's friends claim he's lost
touch with his roots, he defends his new passion.
"A drum machine and a sampler are no different now than
when the piano was first invented," says Reed. "All instruments
were new at some time. This equipment and this gear is just
a new way of creating music."
With its richly textured, hypnotic grooves, layered beats
and sparse vocals, Odyssey is sure to come as a shock to
some of Reed's long-time fans. But for Dan Reed and Jason
Webb, this is just another step forward in a long musical
trek home.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
