PDX

I love Portland, even though it embraces the whacky side of liberal. It has a gay mayor who admitted (finally) to seducing a minor youth and no one has bothered to kick him out. It proudly hosts an annual naked midnight bike ride. Its large homeless population seems to have more political pull than your average conservative. The bumper stickers that say "Keep Portland Weird" aren't kidding.
But it has an active art and music scene and seems to attract innovative do-gooders of all kinds. And that I like.
After our painfully expensive dinner, we arrived plenty early for the Mark Knopfler concert, so we took another stroll.
Me, I had my trusty camera at the ready.
I am trying to look at objects with a more innovative eye.
What do you think?

Our very own Portlandia, who sits atop the Portland Building, of course!

I liked the tile work and light fixtures in the entryway of this building.

Jeff is always treading close to the line of civil disobedience.

And finally, the concert for which we had been waiting for two years. Because you know, we forgot to go to the last concert, even though we had tickets.
Mark Knopfler.
Named 27th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone.
Driving force behind the group Dire Straits.
Score writer for The Princess Bride.
Owner of about 70 guitars.
Father to twin sons with his second wife and twin daughters with his third.
Plays his guitar right-handed even though he is left-handed.
Fingerpicks his electric guitar.

He and his band of seven gave a rocking, most awesome concert.
Here is one of my favourite Dire Straits songs.


Mark doesn't seem to enunciate as well as he did when he was younger. Jeff and I often looked at each other last night and asked, Do you know what he's singing about?
Nope.
It might have been the sound system, because I can understand him well enough on the videos.
But the performance was stupendous anyway. He has such a tremendous energy and is definitely the Leader of the Band. His band members all play multiple instruments, including percussion, flute, banjo, piano accordian, violin, double bass, keyboards, synthesizer, mandolin, various guitars, ukelele, and probably some others that I missed. They played a lot of instrumental back-and-forth, which was fun to watch and to listen to.
Watch this closely and be awed by his guitar playing. He makes it look easy, but trust me, it's not!

He didn't make much of an effort to connect with the audience, although I'm not sure I would want to connect with women who were shouting "I want to have your baby" either. I'd rather have more music, less talking anyway. It was a tight show, no down time at all, and they played for two hours. Special effects were minimal.
It was all about the music, baby!

I talked a friend into listening to Leonard Cohen a couple of weeks ago. This friend said to me, you always did like those husky-voiced, studly guys.
Guess I do!

Crikey, look at the time. If I told you how many hours I spent on these two posts you would think I had an inflated view of my importance to the blogging world.

I almost forgot. The opening act, which started 15 minutes early and only went for 35 minutes (more time for Mark) was Pieta Brown, with Bo Ramsey on guitar. Now, here's a guy who can make his guitar sing! and Pieta's rather easy on the ears too. Give it a try...it's short! Like me.