Music Stories Admit it: You love lists. C’mon, you know you’re reading every single “Best of 2012” piece, either nodding with the satisfaction of having your own opinions validated or boiling with anger   More

Music Stories Even for a town rife with butterfly collectors eager to net especially rarefied species, Monarques’ fitful approach toward maintaining band loyalty would ordinarily test the patience of even the   More

Music Last week, local retro-pop band Monarques received a surprise phone call from a woman who works for the NPR live radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion. Over 700 people submitted tracks for the show's 2010 "Battle of the Bands" but only five—including Monarques—were chosen to fly out to Washington, DC on April 17 for the taping and a chance to perform three songs for over 3,000 people. ...   More

Music Saturday. We were picked up promptly at 12:30 pm to head to NJPAC. We practiced our songs a ton in our dressing room and we were feeling confident. We got a bottle of Jim Beam, which Jon (our guitarist) claims he risked his life for (Newark's a tough town) to calm our last remaining nerves before showtime. During rehearsal Garrison had this idea that he wanted to do a "round robin" where each band ...   More

Music Last week, I wrote an article for the paper about Portlanders using crowdfunding website Kickstarter to help finance a variety of weird and wonderful creative projects. Due to word limits—every journo's mortal enemy—I was only able to feature one music project: Blue Crane's tour by train idea, which I chose because it was recent, original and because they did such a good job of crafting ...   More

Music Josh Spacek of Monarques and I sat down the other day outside a coffee shop near his house in the inner SE. We hit it off immediately. This may have been due to our matching bedraggled appearances and safety glasses. Whatever the case, something about the meeting lead to a longer story than I'm accustomed to. Though usually pickled with short questions and small answers, this week's installment of ...   More