Another Idea

The Satyricon is a Portland punk rock landmark. It's supposedly where Kurt and Courtney first met, on a night when Nirvana opened a show for the Dharma Bums. The Wipers, Poison Idea, Dead Moon, and Napalm Beach appear repeatedly on a wall covered in old flyers in the back room of the club. It opened in 1984 when the neighborhood and city were rougher, and while the space’s interior is largely unchanged, the building’s on the new transit mall and shares a block with a large and well lit assisted living facility. The Minutemen were rumored to have fallen through the Satyricon stage and the bar’s owner to have been arrested for inciting a riot (not necessarily on the same night). Courtney was eventually banned. The club closed in 2003 and reopened as an all ages venue semi attached to the adjacent bar, Fellini’s, in 2006.

I won’t argue that the world doesn’t need more small stages for kids to see music.

My newish band, Kate’s Mirror, got to play there a few weeks ago and it was the first time I’d gotten to see the club I’d heard so much about. Because of the proximity to the transit mall, cars can’t stop on the small street in front so you have to unload a block away and schlep your gear past seniors in wheelchairs nodding in the entranceway to the old age home. We drank our free Hamm’s tallboys in Fellini’s, smoked and tried to hear the first band over the loud TV. You can’t smoke in the actual Satyricon either. I tried to watch bits of the first bands but if I can’t drink and I can’t smoke, I just don’t want to really be in bar. I guess a lot of people feel that way, the place was empty save the door and sound guys, and you’d have to get the door guy to leave his post if you wanted to order a soda or something. We used up our drink tickets and went to the park to get high.

About half way through our set our singer announced that ‘playing at the Satyricon is like a dream come true.’ He’d grown up in Portland and we’re his first band, but it must have felt a little hollow because the 15 or so grey templed people dancing with our lip syncing geisha didn’t evoke images of the room’s past.

I guess I expected kids. Drunk or sober, bored or disturbed, rock club kids. It’s like what if you throw an all ages show and just old people come? It kinda sucks.

All ages show’s can be great. I saw the Meat Puppets a couple of years ago at an all ages club and the highlight was definitely when Kurt Kirkwood pulled a 14 year old kid out of the audience to sing and play guitar on “Lake of Fire” . The kid was too thrilled to do anything but stand there and smile enormously. The Wonder Ballroom is cavernous and maybe a little soulless but I was able to drink and watch the show and have a great time. It might be that for all ages places to work they need to be big and feel a little cold, or they need to be small and illegal. And on a different night, for a better known band the scene would probably have been different. Monotonix plays the Satyricon often when they come through town. Locals, Danava, play there regularly.

We had a fun show and a good turn out for a Sunday night, but there were no kids. Except for Devon, the sitar player we’ve been playing with this summer. He’s 20 and took classes with both our band’s singer and guitar player at a high school in the suburbs where they still teach. I think the night might have been memorable for him and he’ll be thankful to Scotty, the drummer, who lied to the door guy and snuck him into Fellini’s.

Noah Scuse
Portland, OR