Portland, Oregon, USA - June 12, 2002
Live Slabtown.net review
at Conan's
By Justin McGrotty (slabtown.net)

Please bear with me. I am very bad at writing show reviews.

The Dandy Warhols, notably absent from any full live appearances for the last 6+ months finally made their return at a small show in Southeast Portland under one of their pseudonyms, “Fags Like Us.” Officially billed as the supporting act for another local band, Television Eye, the lack of promotion for the set showed, with only the extended Dandy Warhols “family” being present. Really, this came as little to no surprise, as the general purpose was to get a gig in before they did the much larger and publicized June 13, 2002 Portland show the next night, and to make sure that they were feeling good together as a full band. And in this they succeeded.

Finally making my way to the show 20 minutes before they hit the stage (which itself was followed by the all-day task of finding out where the show was even happening at), you could feel in the air that everyone was pretty into seeing the conquering hero’s as much as they can before the band left for the European festival circuit later this month. So, after about 20 minutes of sitting and waiting, Courtney decides that it is time to start and jumps up on the stage to set things off with 3 solo performances on an electric guitar. Starting out, he played “Every Day Should Be A Holiday,” which precluded with his now-common declaration of the fact that the first verse of “Holiday” is the best verse ever written in rock and roll history, which he also demonstrated by playing the opening verse a second time. He followed this performance up with a cover of Kristen Hirsch’s “Your Ghost,” which came out very nice as a solo effort and really got the crowds attention. Last but not least, for his solo performances, Courtney played what may or may not be a new song, but I sure didn’t recognize it, and unfortunately the only thing I can remember about it right now is that it had something to do with knowing a girl by a certain name. If anyone can fill me in on what this was, I would love to know.

After the third song, the rest of the band decided to join Taylor on stage and start the show in earnest, promptly jumping into “Be-In” and continuing on through many older songs, with pretty much as many songs from Come Down as songs from 13 Tales. The band all sounded good and playing as a group really well, and all the songs came off good, if not just a bit too familiar. Again, it really made a lot of sense to have them play all of their standard pieces, considering this was a small warm-up gig, but it would have been a very pleasant surprise to whip out some other surprises, such as “Hells Bells,” “White Gold” or even “Rave-Up.” But, they did break out one DROK-era song, when they played Grunge Betty.

Throughout the set, there were a few interesting notes and happenings that stood out. Most notably, for the time being, Courtney has lost the semi-glam look he was sporting from the Thirteen Tales era, and really looked a lot like he did in photos from Europe earlier this year, but with a (mostly) full beard. Other changes to the band, though from a musical side are the facts of Zia playing harmonica during “Country Leaver” and having the trumpet section of Godless played by the insanely pretty Liz from Television Eye.

Overall, the show sounded really good and the crowd was way into them, but it could have been much more and memorable. With their song selection (see setlist at slabtown.net), little chance was taken and at times it came off as the same show they have been playing for the past 2 years.

Not that this stops me from standing in awe every time the band plays live. In the end, the show was a great warm-up for the show the next night, and is a great first step towards the Dandys having one hell of a year.