Artist	Song
The Replacements	Portland
Swell	Going Up (To Portland)?
The Decemberists	July, July!
The Dandy Warhols	Solid
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin	My Oregon Girl
Quasi	Seven Years Gone
The Physics of Meaning	Oregon, My Only True Friend
Earlimart	Portland, Ore.
Elliott Smith	Condor Ave.
M. Ward	Helicopter
Sarah Dougher	Moving
Norfolk & Western	Porch Destruction
Kind Of Like Spitting	Portland Nationals
Adam Selzer	Gentrified
Beltline	The New Rules
Richmond Fontaine	Glisan Street
Rocky Votolato	Portland Is Leaving
Dolorean	So You're a Touring Band Now
Chad Crouch	Go By Train

Comment:

"Exclamation points, gestures of authority with which the writer tries to impose an emphasis external to the matter itself, have become intolerable, while the sforzato, the musical counterpart of the exclamation point, is as indispensable today as it was in Beethoven's time, when it marked the incursion of the subjective will into the musical fabric. Exclamation points, however, have degenerated into usurpers of authority, assertions of importance." (Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature, Vol. 1 (Columbia University Press, 1991) pp. 92-93)

Apologies, then, for the multiple usurpers of authority in the mix title. Don't blame me; blame the local authorities of the city of Portland, Oregon.

Oh yeah, you came here for information on this mix, sorry I forgot. Has anyone ever wondered what it is they put into the water in Portland to spawn such a mindblowingly great indie music scene? I sure have, and while I haven't actually found an answer, I have tried to approach this question through a mix. Incidentally, if I had realised that Phantom Buffalo are from Portland, ME and that the CFTPA song "Jeane, if you're ever in Portland" also refers to the city in Maine before I started working on this mix and that I can therefore not include either of them, I probably would have never made it at all, but it was too late for turning back by the time I found out all of this. Still plenty of nice stuff on here, I think.

Most of these songs are by artists or bands from Portland; a few are not, but qualify on the basis of their lyrics/title for an inclusion on this tribute (my sincere apologies to the people of Oregon that aren't from Portland for the implicit suggestion contained in two of these choices that any song about Oregon is automatically about Portland!). The other songs also aren't just songs that happen to be by bands that happen to come from Portland; instead, I tried to choose songs that actually reference places or objects in that city - that's also my excuse for the (otherwise inexcusable) omission of Sleater-Kinney and the Holy Sons, as I simply couldn't find anything in their oeuvres that would fit thematically. In some cases, these references are hard to deny: Glisan Street, Condor Ave., the big letters on the Union Station building prompting to "Go By Train". In other cases, they are a little more debatable - but since we all know that all songwriting is necessarilly autobiographic (right? RIGHT?), it is obvious that Adam Selzer, who lives in Portland, must be talking about his actual hometown when he sings about the gentrification of his neighbourhood. And when Rob Jones hits the bars in "The New Rules" or Quasi and the Dandy Warhols walk around Old Town, then clearly they have to be talking about the bars and streets of Portland. And since Colin Meloy has never ever written a song from a fictional character's perspective, the "road that meets the road that goes to my house" in "July, July!" is obviously also located in Portland. I am glad that we are all in agreement here. So all of these songs make a reference to some aspect of city life that at least might allude to Portland. I count on the solidarity of my fellow Norfolk & Western fans (hello Barry, hello JY!) to not let you people know that the linernotes make it quite clear that the house being torn down in "Porch Destruction" is actually located in Washington DC. Thanks in advance, guys!

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