Blog: Go West Young Tex

RIP Alex Chilton

Mar 18, 2010, 1:43pm Go West Young Tex

No text

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Yelapa

Mar 14, 2010, 2:14pm Go West Young Tex

I just spent the last week tucked away in the remote Mexican coastal village of Yelapa . No computers, no cars, lots of tacos, donkeys, various insects, isolated beaches, and excellent company. We rented a place at Casas Isabel which amounted to an arrangement of cement platforms covered by palm fronds that some might call a casita, but I thought of as a vast jungle porch. We had a kitchen, an outdoor shower, a hammock, scorpion issues, and a fantastic view of the Pacific ocean. I read the short stories of ZZ [...]

• Dinosaur Feathers - Vendela Vida

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Artist:	Dinosaur Feathers
Title:	Vendela Vida
Link Text:	Vendela Vida - Dinosaur Feathers
File Name:	02 Vendela Vida.mp3
Bitrate:	160 kbps

He is making cups

Mar 5, 2010, 1:02am Go West Young Tex

I came across an interesting artist tonight named Ehren Tool . He makes cups. I didn't actually come across him, or his actual cups, but a depiction of a performative work. It was at the Museum of Contemporary Craft and involved 1) a letter from Ehren to Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, a defense contractor, etc, explaining that he was a marine for several years during the first Gulf War and that he had made them a cup. The letter also contained a personal statement to the subject of the letter about the [...]

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Wallowa

Mar 2, 2010, 12:29am Go West Young Tex

Way the heck out in the northeastern most corner of Oregon lays the Wallowa County. I had the pleasure this weekend of being invited to a big fun party there called the Thrift Store Formal that involved a lot of beautifully decked out local yahoos whooping it up and carrying on. I met a retired 60's go-go dancer turned jazz drummer, a butcher, a documentarian , a baker, a brewer, a sheep rancher, and a modern day fur trapper. Earlier in the day, the fur trapper was messing around with a grinder or some metal [...]

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No Title

Feb 20, 2010, 11:37am Go West Young Tex

Nicole Reynolds- "call the guard" performing in the western pennsylvania snow on a traveling pump organ in january, 2009.

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winter games

Feb 16, 2010, 8:59am Go West Young Tex

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California Weirdness

Feb 6, 2010, 7:33pm Go West Young Tex

I was in California this week and stumbled upon this van sitting near a vacuum repair shop. I fancy myself well-schooled in various conspiracy theories but I had no idea that Stephen King had anything to do with the CIA. This disturbing realization was mitigated by my trip to the Charles Schultz Museum . It featured an exhibit on the history of newspaper comics from way back. I saw a few old classics that were still in publication when I was a little kid and read the funnies. I was close to forgetting [...]

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From my office window

Feb 2, 2010, 2:46am Go West Young Tex

I'm going to be able to lean to the left and spy the new verdant facade on an ugly old federal building. Its been getting national press . I saw something a lot like it, though smaller, in a few towns in France last summer on the central market in Avignon and perhaps Nimes. A lot of the talk around here, or in the news seems to be about the cost of the vertical greenery, whether it is a good method of insulation, etc etc. I think it is art and it is high time [...]

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Tweed Ride!

Jan 31, 2010, 12:46pm Go West Young Tex

Oxford shirt, sweater vest, vintage tie, herringbone pants, argyle socks, cap with ear flaps, canvas jacket. This is how I attired myself for the Tweed Ride yesterday. It was a parade of biking woolens, ladies in hats, vintage bicycles, and deep Portland weirdness. We started out at Skidmore Fountain with about 200 riders and then went to the Overlook Park house for tea. Really good tea, with scones to go along. Lots of folks had wicker and leather bicycle baskets outfitted with picnic materials and I spotted a few proper bone china tea [...]

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Oh my god, Herman the Sturgeon!

Jan 26, 2010, 1:34am Go West Young Tex

There's a giant giant white Sturgeon that is over 70 yrs old at the Bonneville Dam fishery! You can look at it in an underground viewing area for free. This is the most fun you can have on a rainy day in Oregon. I hit this tourist spot on the way back from cabin camping up at the Government Mineral Springs Guard Station . Very interesting to stay in a place that is all lit with built-in propane gas lamps, dark even the the day because it is surrounded by deep, thick, mossy forest. [...]

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Awwww

Jan 21, 2010, 2:20am Go West Young Tex

It isn't just because I saw Faye Dunaway at a vietnamese place last night, or that the Gossip played a secret show, or that it stopped raining in time for me to walk home. No, the number one reason I love Portland today is because I went to a one-of-a-kind mindblowing show at Holocene. It was a benefit of sorts for T om Tom magazine , which is all about female drummers. Boy do they have a lot of great female drummers in Portland. The women performed in pairs and played songs they composed [...]

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Thank You for Making Soul Night Special

Jan 16, 2010, 7:33pm Go West Young Tex

I am a VIP. On Thursday night I did one of my all time favorite Portland things which is to go to Hole in my Soul night at Rotture. This week was special for two very bad ass reasons: 1) Ian Svenonius was the guest DJ. 2) The regular DJ and brilliant founder of Hole in my Soul Night, DJ Beyonda, called bullshit on the night fading into some plain old dance party scene where people don't get where she's coming from. She's spinning one of the greatest working collections of Sixties soul 45s on [...]

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Blanchet House

Jan 13, 2010, 2:20am Go West Young Tex

In the old town part of Portland, near the train station, there are about five square blocks that are frequently occupied by down-on-their-luck homeless adults. On a particular corner on Glisan Street, I am accustomed to seeing a queue of bundled up cold-looking people waiting in line. This saturday I found out that the line was for Blanchet House , a "hospitality house" as I was told, that serves three square meals a day to anyone looking for something to eat. A friend from a lawyer group that I'm in suggested that we go and volunteer [...]

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Weekend of Winter Wonder

Jan 7, 2010, 10:55pm Go West Young Tex

My mother is going to be here any minute, in town for a Mary Kay function, staying for the weekend. I had a massage today and tried to relax. I don't ever go get massages but I think I might be coming around. I'm going to try and take my mom snowshoeing up on Mt. Hood. I learned to snowshoe recently. (Not like it is some major achievement or something. I mean, it is just walking. I know). Maybe we will see the abominable snowman. Which begs the [...]

• The Old Graveyard - Karl Blau » Gigi - The Old Graveyard (Feat Karl Blau....mp3

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Link Text:	The Old Graveyard - Karl Blau
File Name:	Gigi - The Old Graveyard (Feat Karl Blau).mp3

Hello 2010.

Jan 4, 2010, 11:33pm Go West Young Tex

There's a whole lot of shakin going on in the house of Tex this holiday season and I have had nary a moment to catch my breath and be terribly reflective about passing a decade. Here's what I can say for sure: I didn't get a tattoo. I quit smoking. Music makes everything better. Good friends are really important. I'm vulnerable and imperfect. I'm mostly glad I spent the last 10 yrs busting ass at work so I can spend the next 10 years fine-tuning balance and stretching to wrest just [...]

• Look at Miss Ohio - Blind Pilot (Gillian... » Look At Miss Ohio.mp3
• The Builders and The Butchers - Short Way Home

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Link Text:	Look at Miss Ohio - Blind Pilot (Gillian Welch cover)
File Name:	Look At Miss Ohio.mp3

Artist:	The Builders and The Butchers
Title:	Short Way Home
Link Text:	The Short Way Home - The Builders and the Butcher
File Name:	TheBuildersAndTheButchers-Shor tWayHome.mp3
Bitrate:	160 kbps
Year:	2009

Vic Chesnutt

Dec 28, 2009, 11:51am Go West Young Tex

I have listened to his songs, off one record in particular ( West of Rome ), probably once a week since my friend Jason gave it to me in college in 1992. Of all the musicians I love, he was the most poetic and hard working on his songcraft. Very sorry to hear he died.

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Xmas Adventures

Dec 24, 2009, 4:05pm Go West Young Tex

I am having a very Christmasy Christmas so far, albeit without family or any religious observation whatsoever. Somehow not longing for my Texas childhood of having to sit at the feet of a gasbag to hear the book of Matthew read aloud so that the next morning I could open gifts purchased at the Christian bookstore at the mall. No, this holiday season is something altogether different. I got to go to a cabin up on Mt. Hood for a the soltice and hang out in a hot tub surrounded by spectacularly tall Douglas [...]

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Bowling Night

Dec 20, 2009, 10:16pm Go West Young Tex

When I was 16 years old, my most prized possession was a vintage black bowling shirt that I got on a trip to New York City at the Antique Boutique. The name "Stan" is stitched above the pocket, it identifies the wearer as an "alley master" and I have kept it with me over the course of about 27 different closets. On Thursday night, it saw the light of day again. I'm pretty sure I hadn't worn it in 10 years. But dammit, I had an occasion. My upstairs neighbor is in a bowling league [...]

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Cyclocross

Dec 15, 2009, 11:27am Go West Young Tex

My fun and exciting weekend included traveling to Bend, OR to see the National Cyclocross championships . Here, pictured above, is a photo I took of the women's collegiate race. I think this rider is Ashley James. And that's the Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers behind her, playing their hearts out in the cold and keeping the beat for all the racers.

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Staying tuned...

Dec 10, 2009, 9:58am Go West Young Tex

There's something stirring in Yellow Springs. Hoping it isn't a psych out.

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