If you’ve spent the last four days of cloudy weather riding your bike around campus and listening to “Jackie Onassis” by Sammy Rae and the Friends, you’re in luck. Next Wednesday, Sammy is playing the State Theatre in Portland, and a slate of wonderful artists (and a few comedians) play shows in the greater Portland area in the following weeks.
Islands of black-clad fans congregated outside the steps of Portland’s First Parish Church on a Sunday evening in early March. The cool aura of cigarette smoke and septum piercings couldn’t hide their earnest anticipation. To the random passersby, the crowd might have provoked pause, as if Portland’s bygone punk scene had been shaken out of hibernation by the unseasonably warm night.