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Eight Balls of Fire
11340
NE Halsey St., 252-4881
All
on Dischord Records:
The
Nation of Ulysses
The Embassy Tapes
Q
And Not U
No Kill No Beep Beep
Faraquet
The View from This Tower
Lungfish
Necrophones
www.dischord.com
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Government press releases generally constitute a fairly
dire subgenre of English prose, but this one had a certain
hardboiled sting:
"Portland nightclub Eight Balls of Fire is changing
its format from a dance club to a sports bar...to put a
knot in the lengthy string of assaults, drunk driving incidents,
noise complaints and over-service of alcohol at the business."
This gritty dispatch bore the mark of the OLCC, the Guardians
of Temperance who wield godlike power over Oregon's licensed
premises. Eight Balls of Fire, located in a sector of Northeast
that isn't considered a hip place to act all avant garde
and whatnot, ran afoul by filling a Commission incident
log with 52 separate misdeeds over a year's time. According
to OLCC spokesman Ken Palke, this record of malfeasance
ran from sending customers weaving into the streets to hosting
numerous brawls.
"There were a lot of assaults at this particular place,
sort of a culture of fighting," says Palke.
Under an agreement with the OLCC, the bar will beef up
security and enforce a dress code aimed at gang members.
The State has also deduced that some of the evil fruit harvested
at Eight Balls of Fire has its roots in those ancient inducements
of the devil, wild music and dancing.
So, even here in the homeland of unfettered free expression,
Eight Balls' owners had to overturn the fare delivered via
their PA system. Namely, no hip-hop, no Top 40, no sounds
that might provoke or attract dancing whatsoever.
"In a sports bar, unlike at a dance club, you're not up
and moving around," Palke notes. "Apparently, they did have
some rap music there, but we don't profile, so this isn't
connected to any racial make-up of the crowd. The dress
code, though, would seem to indicate that there had been
some gang activity there."
Eight Balls of Fire co-owner Scott Detweiler blames
many of the problems the club experienced in its early days
on "wanna-be gangsters." Now that the bar has adopted a
more sedate "format," such bad elements will presumably
look elsewhere for fun.
"When I opened up, I was overwhelmed by the number of people
who showed up," he says. "You get that many 21-to-30-year-old
kids together and everyone's drinking, there are gonna be
some fights. For the last six months, we've been following
the compliance plan, and it's worked great."
As for the connections between music and social disorder,
they remain a murky riddle for future
generations to ponder.
Dischord Records, the DC label that established
itself as one of the most vital underground imprints in
the '80s and '90s, has looked a little moribund in recent
years. Once counted on to deliver fresh tidings from one
of the country's most fertile scenes, a long lull left Dischord
looking more like a historical preservation specialty house
than a living label.
Lately, though, the company founded and operated by Fugazi
firebrand-in-chief Ian MacKaye has launched a clusterbomb
of new releases. True, two of them come from a couple of
the label's old warhorses, but the other two are from new
bands that could reignite Dischord's pulse.
Unfortunately, the most exciting of the four records is
a collection of four-track recordings made in 1992 by the
long-defunct Nation of Ulysses. This firecracker
packet buzzes with basement hiss and the art-punk pseudo-revolutionaries'
youthful chaos. There aren't many bands that sound this
fevered, mad or self-certain, and when you combine the frenzy
with the calculated cool of songs like "Gimme Disaster"
and "Shakedown (Party)," you have some serious heat despite
the years gone by.
Lungfish, a band that's been on Dischord for years,
provides more of its trademark ominous prophecy on Necrophones.
Lead singer Daniel Higgs' strangled voice and end-times
visions still have an entrancing power, though anyone who
already has a couple of Lungfish records might not find
this a necessary addition.
The two new bands, Q and Not U and Faraquet,
explore different aspects of the "DC sound" that Dischord
more or less bequeathed the indie-rock world. Both their
label debuts have their points, but Q and Not U's furious,
melodic emotional upset trumps Faraquet's meandering jazz-rock.
No matter their drawbacks, though, these two bands are worthy
new exponents of one of the country's most venerable punk
scenes.
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