No Age + Mika Miko + Abe Vigoda + Gun Outfit - Hawthorne Theatre (Portland, OR; July 27, 2008)

At 7:55 p.m. Saturday night, the sidewalk surrounding the Hawthorne Theatre was almost deserted. By the main entrance were a scruffy indie kid with paper-bagged beer in hand (he was shortly thereafter cited by a police officer and unceremoniously escorted away) and a large, somber, green shirted twenty-something, impatient for the doors to open. Around the corner was a rowdy group, adorned in freshly pressed No Age shirts; I later found out they were Dean Spunt’s (of No Age) relatives. Sweet.

The crowd inside proved even more diverse and colorful: bright dresses, white suits, ironic jogging ensembles, oversized visors, Mountain Dew supplied scarves. (The aforementioned soft drink had a booth inside the venue, right next to the stage (!), promoting the AST Dew Tour.) Judging by the eager and hip crowd, it promised to be a lively night for the headlining Smell-buddies No Age, Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda. (Smell is an L.A.-based club, for all you non-L.A. scenesters.)

Olympia-based Gun Outfit opened the night a bit late. (I like to think that I helped the situation by encouraging the guitarist/vocalist in the non-moving men’s restroom line to try the ladies’ room.) The melodic, hardcore trio quickly made up the time, however, as the two guitars and drums slammed their way through a set of Meat-Puppetish tracks. There were a handful of dedicated fans for the early set, including a gentleman in a wheelchair, who commenced rocking out as soon as he reached the front row.

After an impressively short set-up time, Abe Vigoda took the stage next. I recognized most of the members - Michael Vidal (guitar vocals), Juan Velazquez (guitar, vocals), Reggie Guerrero (drums), David Reichart (bass) - from mingling amongst several chic cliques earlier in the evening. While their indie garb may have been a bit tried and true, their tropical groove driven punk rock felt fresh and inspired. Touring in support of their newly released LP Skeleton, Abe Vigoda heavily littered their set with its songs, including “Dead City/Waste Wilderness,” “Cranes,” “The Garden” and title track “Skeleton.”

Next up was another Smell regular, Mika Miko. Word of caution to bands out there: you do not want to perform after Mika Miko. Now, I’ll admit that when Jennifer Clavin (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Jenna Thornhill (vocals, saxophone, keyboards), Michelle Diane Suarez (guitar, keyboards), Jessica Clavin (bass) and Kate Hall (drums) calmly took the stage, I didn’t expect them to rock my face off. I was dead wrong. These ladies not only proved me (very) wrong, but also quickly turned the Hawthorne crowd, which up to that point had been modestly nodding and swaying, into a swirling, thrashing, sweating dancing frenzy.  Even so, the crowd’s energy, further fueled by some optimistic, misguided attempts at stage diving, paled in comparison to what was going on on-stage. Clavin, wielding a telephone-receiver-as-microphone, tore around the stage, while Thornhill, armed with a traditional mic, held down stage right, convulsing up and down as she delivered her vocals. Add noisy, thrashy punk music to this, and the crowd was perfectly pumped for perpetual motion. When Mika Miko finished their much too short set, the crowd let out a collective sigh; they were having too good a time for the L.A. quintet to leave.

Shortly after 11, headliner No Age emerged by way of a staircase crowded with members of the preceding acts. Dean Allen Spunt mounted his drum kit just below the nursery and later took up a lead mic next to guitarist Randy Randall. No Age’s currency has been growing steadily since the band’s 2005 debut. No matter what the name means to a fan, though, it’s hard to watch a pair of bashful rockers follow the kind of punk energy explosion achieved by the night’s previous act.

Spunt and Randall focus on big noisy riffs, often at the expense of lyrics. The Washington Post described it well, calling their sound “rudimentary banging.” The duo doesn’t talk much, either, and their photo blog is a picture of brevity: “We played live on MTV in Canada. it was funny. I totally choked. it was bizarre for sure (sic).”

Though their music didn’t (physically) move the crowd as Mika Miko’s did, something about the No Age sound prevented the Hawthorne Theater audience from thinning any further. By set’s end it was hard to find a photo spot along the front rail, and heads were banging to a huge throb in “Everybody’s Down”—even one particularly enthralled fan forgot his wheelchair for a few minutes. Count on No Age to deliver uniformly punkish beats - not variety - and to leave your eardrums in a happy, ringing stupor.  Expect antics, too: rather than waving goodbye, Randall treated the nursery to a classic vertical leap from a box speaker; then he (gingerly) flung his six-string against Spunt’s bass drum. I suspect that both instruments have lived to play another show. 

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