Bike Lane To Yr Skull Interstellar Freak Out Ensemble, April 24 At The Kenton Club

[April 30th, 2008]

[PSYCH-ROCK] The World Famous Kenton Club in North Portland has the most elaborate bathroom graffiti I’ve ever seen. It features the word “grout,” which Merriam-Webster defines as a “thin mortar used for filling spaces,” substituted into humorous phrases and written between bathroom tiles. Over and over again. There are hundreds of them: “The Grout White Hope,” “Kellogg’s Cornflakes: They’re Grrrrooout,” “Who let the dogs grout? Woof!”

I marvel at this discovery as Pure Country Gold drummer Jake Welliver smashes his kit relentlessly in the next room, no doubt still making the Phil Hartman Frankenstein face (“Fire bad!”) to accompany sweaty Patrick Foss’ twisting guitar riffs on one of the duo’s most popular tunes, “King of Cortisone.” The reverberations shake me dangerously close to the stall’s mysteriously high urinal (seriously, anyone under 6 feet tall would just have to lay it right out on the porcelain), but the band’s country and garage influences blend seamlessly: This is what rock and roll is all a-grout.

But PCG is only half the reason I’m this far north. Tonight is the debut of the Bike Lane to Yr Skull Interstellar Freak Out Ensemble. A well-written press release alerted WW to the collective’s one-night-only existence, but apparently the whole music part (details!) isn’t as well prepared. When asked who’s in the band, BLTYSIFOE keyboardist (and local singer-songwriter) Alan Singley says, “at least seven people.” He gets a couple names out, Travis Wiggins of Please Step Out of the Vehicle, for one, then draws a blank. “I just met those guys tonight.” “What? You’ve never even practiced?” “No! Travis is just going to call out the key changes.”

At this very moment, an old friend is down the street trying to find the venue. A kindly man points him in the right direction, followed by a “Hey, man?” My buddy prepares to be asked for spare change when the guy catches him off guard: “It’s about to get reeeeeeal weird in there.”

It does. Not quite as weird as the press release had indicated (the “13 amps” are more like seven or eight). No one seems to know where the soundcheck ends and the set begins, but Pink Snowflakes frontman Andy Rossi’s guitar gets real loud, Singley’s “mellotron” (more a Casio, really) fades into the background only to surface intermittently, and bright-’n’-happy stock sound effects float in a sea of chemical-fueled fuzz and hum. The Merce Cunningham Duo pokes and prods at its complex electronic devices, and Wiggins pulls out the slide whistle.

For long stretches, everyone is on the same page and it’s genuinely refreshing to hear songs headed in no particular direction. At other moments, there’s a definite lack of...well, grout. Most of the audience leaves midway through the band’s set, but BLTYSIFOE soldiers on right up to the—wait, is this the end? Yeah, I guess it is.