Bohemian-rep city

>> Classic alt-rock eats itself in a Dandy Warhols hometown haunt

by CHRIS YURKIW

A late-night restaurant called the Roxy was recommended to me and my left-coast dealer Big Dave, during our "dirty weekend" getaway to clean Portland from clean Seattle, and as soon as we gazed past the neon window sign and into the black hole with high ceilings, we knew we'd found a home. There was the aforementioned black. The jukebox with indie rock. The Tarantino posters. The now-ironic wall signs from pre-ironic decades ("No Spitting"). The pierced, short-order cook...

In short, the Roxy was a shrine to Generation X. Correction: the Roxy is a shrine to Generation X, and upon becoming conscious of this I felt another layer of irony collapse the one I was sitting in--felt distance from a certain brand of dated ironic distance. Nevertheless, on the surface of it the place was like comfort food--and that's just what they served.

I wish that Portland, Oregon's premier rock outfit, the Dandy Warhols, had released their third album at that point, because it would have fit well in the jukebox. Leader Courtney Taylor-Taylor picked a clever press angle in billing Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia as "the last classic rock album," because he's right: the Reed, Iggy, Parsons and Wire that are all over the album is just as classic for the urbane bohemian subset as Morrison, Floyd, Zep and Kansas are for others.

"Yeah yeah," says Taylor-Taylor, when the Roxy is broached. "Gothic kids and transvestites. That place is pretty old-school Portland. Kind of weird and groovy and a little bit depressing."

Uh huh. And does he like it?

"I love it!"

When journalists press this obvious, latter-day bohemian angle with Taylor-Taylor he can speak quite sincerely about a life chosen to be lived without television or much money or even direction. But check the (loosely) title track of the new album, "Bohemian Like You," and what you get--over a great, lost Stones tune--is a lotta little, if loving, pokes at hep haircuts, vegan restaurants and fledgling bands. So which is it? Oh yeah, I forgot: latter-day bohemians, or classic-alternative rockers, or Gen-Xers, like to have their cakey world and laugh at it too.

"Yeah," sputters Taylor-Taylor, on the song. "I don't think I'm being cynical. I think... it's just funny. I mean, it's true. It could be looked at as not poking fun at all. It's straight-up without judgment--just reciting many, many stories from my friends and peers. It's just that, when you string it all together, the funny ones stand out." He laughs.

"Our fans tend to look the same and talk the same all over the world. I really think we're doing the right thing, because I generally seem to like almost everybody I meet that goes to our gigs."

So describe them.

"Slightly intellectual, maybe a little bit good-looking, enough to be too self-conscious, but not so good-looking that they don't have social skills, and not so hip that they aren't friendly. Probably a really cool haircut, but then they've got the wrong shoes--they just didn't pay attention. Or really cool shoes, but didn't quite get the hair right. That's our crowd." :

With Creeper Lagoon at Club Soda on Monday, Oct. 9, 8pm, $12.50