Portland Music Mural

Here are a few photos of the new-ish Portland Music Mural, next to the MAX turnaround on 11th in downtown Portland (and near the RBG mural we looked at recently). Painted by the Pander Brothers, and featuring prominent local musicians past and present, and backed by various movers and shakers in local music, the mural got quite a media blitz when it was created in 2023. Here's an Oregonlive story, one at Willamette Week and one at the Portland Tribune, a KATU story, and probably others I missed in a quick search. Which, ok, that may not seem like much of a media blitz, but it's more than new murals usually get around here.

The worst thing about it has nothing to do with the mural itself. It got a generally positive reception here, so its backers concluded the next logical step would be to rapidly take the concept nationwide, to finally celebrate local music in places like Austin, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle (ugh), and even Boise, where the local music scene is just cave people hitting rocks with sticks and grunting on the 1 and 3. I dunno, it just reminds me too much of what happens whenever a beloved local business sells out to private equity: First there's an aggressive nationwide expansion, and then the whole thing craters a couple of years later, and after that -- instead of losing their shirts over this -- the private equity dudes just use the loss to cancel out profits elsewhere and end up owing precisely zero dollars and zero cents in taxes again, year after year. I'm not suggesting there are big piles of cash changing hands behind the scenes here; just that taking things nationwide ASAP usually doesn't work out as planned, and it makes me sad to see dumb ideas from Wall Street popping up in the arts.

The best thing about the mural is that the website includes a key to who's on the mural, which you should probably commit to memory in case someone challenges you to Portland's traditional bloodsport, a "You Probably Haven't Heard Of Them" duel. Be aware that merely identifying semi-obscure musicians is not enough to win the duel most of the time, so come prepared with bonus facts and opinions: Be ready to name all of their albums, ordered correctly best-to-worst, and identify which of these albums you own on vinyl. Then explain when and how that artist sold out to The Man (because everyone does eventually) and discuss why their early work up until that point was better. Score even more points for each artist on the mural who is totally overrated and doesn't belong there, and for ranting about exactly who should be up there instead, double points if your opponent hasn't heard of them. Whoever loses the duel has to skip town on the next Greyhound to Boise, while the winner gets to stay, for now. But the price of victory is eternal vigilance; new bands you probably haven't heard of are constantly forming in garages all over town, even while you're asleep, and some might escape detection for a while by not putting out a vinyl EP right away. And inevitably, one of these days, a younger, hipper challenger will say a name that doesn't ring a bell, and it'll turn out to be a 15 year old beatboxer from Hillsboro who also raps in Tamil and has over 10 million TikTok followers, and she's never even touched a music CD or a vinyl record, and has no idea why somebody would want to make one in 2024. Therefore, send not to know for whom the Boise bus rolls; it rolls for thee.