The best way to warm up as the cold sets in is to have a dance party. Whether SPACE's Halloween costume ball or the spontaneous Obama victory celebration in Monument Square, it seems the colder it gets, the more Portlanders want to shimmy. It doesn't hurt that the city has a glut of bands with infectious beats.
Bangor's Feel It Robot play highly danceable songs in the vein of Devo and the B-52s by way of tuba, organ, guitar, Casio, and boy/girl gang vocals. The energetic front lady, K-Bot, got the crowd dancing by coming off the stage and encouraging the crowd with "Who's Having A Hard Time?" After that, nobody was having a hard time dancing, especially to such songs as "Move It," and ones that tell you to "Take off your pants." As they seem interested almost exclusively in dance parties and bikes, they fit in nicely here and should come back soon.
Once Feel It Robot got the crowd nice and sweaty, it was time for Dracula Zombie USA Yankee Ingenuity to take over the dance provisions. DZUSAYI are from Portland, New York City, and San Francisco. Driven mainly by electro-synth beats, the band also featured a drummer of Cougars kill Cobras fame, a bassist from Honey Clouds, three female vocalists in matching uniforms, and a front man in a wolf mask (at least for part of the set). At several points in the set, all of DZUSAYI's vocalists came off stage to join the dancing. By the end of the set they had almost everyone following their lead, crawling on the floor and chanting along. They are an indie/dance/punk band in a very real sense: as repetitiveness risked redundancy, it also became all the more danceable. Only one song contained odd changes that left the arms of the crowd swinging awkwardly.
I had been looking for a winter activity; skiing is too expensive, and cycling is almost out of the question. I think I found my calling in the crowd at SPACE.
On the Web:
www.myspace.com/feelitrobot |www.myspace.com/draculazombieusa
