Portland’s Must-See Concerts For July/August

Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg in Baton Rouge, La.

I am killing time before the El-P/Killer Mike show tonight at Hawthorne Theater by looking ahead to Portland’s live music schedule for July and August on Jambase. The schedule looks robust!

Below are the shows I anticipate attending. (NOTE: I’d love to see Florence+The Machine and Sigur Ros’s shows at Edgefield but they are sold out. I’d also like to see Fiona Apple’s show at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall but not for $50+.)

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Track Review: “Wasted Days” by Cloud Nothings

Dylan Baldi

The fist-pumping loser anthem of 2012, “Wasted Days” is a blitzkrieg love letter to anyone who believed they would grow up to be universally adored, richer than God, with a beautiful house, car, and wife, and everything else David Byrne once seemed so confused about. The standout track from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings’ third album, Attack On Memory, is also one of 2012′s best songs.

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Cruise, Travolta Wage World’s Slowest Race Out The Closet

Minutes after the Twittersphere erupted with news of Tom Cruise’s divorce from Katie Holmes jokes about his sexuality began. To be fair, the chatter about his sexuality never went away during their marriage, as The Family Guy gif above shows. Even with the birth of their clone baby, his couch-jumping weirdness on Oprah, and a host of public appearances made to highlight that the TomKat love affair was indeed real … well, it never quite seemed real.

Cruise’s sexual identity should not matter. Except it does. He is one of the world’s highest paid actors, and as such, the average red-blooded American male – the kind who sees his action movies in droves – demands he love and sleep with women. Admitting he was gay would likely negatively impact his box office draw in the bigoted Bible Belt, yes, but it would also inspire many young gays to be who they are without shame. In this way he could be a pioneer, of sorts.

Cruise is not going to do this because : 1) he values his box office draw and his status as one of the world’s leading movie stars and 2) Scientology, his chosen religion, looks down on homosexuality. Maybe Cruise, 49, is not gay. Maybe he has been the subject of nasty rumors that have muddied his sexuality to the masses. If so that is unfortunate. But not as unfortunate as if he has chosen to hide in the closet to collect $20 million paydays.

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