Eddie Vedder was there

So, what did you do Friday night? It was really hot, huh? Yeah. I decided to get out of town and, just my luck, there was a show at the Hawthorne Theatre in Portland I wanted to see. You see, the always brilliant Typhoon have been playing with bigger and bigger bands lately. In April they opened for The Thermals, but sadly I could not make it to that show. Even better, Friday they opened for Quasi. Yeah, that Quasi. The one with Sam Coomes from Heatmiser and Janet Weiss from Sleater-Kinney. The Quasi that toured with Elliott Smith and still backs up Stephen Malkmus. The Quasi that was the epitome of indie cool out of Portland during the 90s. Not bad, eh?

I was excited for the show in large part because, despite being a huge Quasi fan since David of the Widgets first suggested Featuring "Birds" to me, I'd never managed to see them play live. I can now say I've had that pleasure, and the additional pleasure of sitting right next to Sam Coomes most of the night while he sold Quasi merch and I helped with Typhoon's. I played it cool, though, like I wasn't impressed at all. That, and I was too shy to strike up a real conversation.

Typhoon played 2nd. There's like 12 of them so it took them forever to set up. I was a little disappointed by how short their set ended up being. But they played a few new songs and that was exciting to hear. Hopefully it means the new full length CD is coming sometime this year. Here's a video. I think I cut off the big finish, but it had one of those false endings.



Quasi's set was simply fantastic. Sam started on keys and they played a bunch of their classics. He was really wild and you got the feeling he had a lot of pent up energy from not having played live for a while. Janet pounded it out with vigor and at times it felt like the walls would come down around us. Halfway into the set Sam switched to the guitar and they started some new songs that, presumably, will be on a new album. They played an encore of older material to close out the night.

Oh, and apparently Eddie Vedder was in the audience.