Oh! 'Twas a stormy sea of unpredictable moods that night at the lonely Douglas Fir Lounge. One solitary bike clung indifferently to the otherwise deserted bike rack outside the venue. Raindrops fell with a shrug as if to say, "I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here in August either." The box-office lady sat bored and disappointed, chin-in-hands, behind the will-call window. The ticket-takers chatted amongst themselves between the odd straggler demanding an ID check and the Doug Fir's signature 'antler' wrist stamp. The sleepy eyed bartender was actually brushing his teeth and putting on pajamas just as we walked up, but kindly diverted his attention away from bed-time preparations to assist us with some beverages. He even suggested we call our friends to come out and help populate the place before the bands run screaming out the door. I must say, it’s a bad sign when a concert venue is nearly empty twenty minutes after the opening band should have started, but it’s a good sign (and welcome compensation) when there is still dancing after the headlining band leaves the stage and all have forgotten about the place feeling as desolate and irrelevant as a Christmas-trinket store in summer. Fortunately, a modest congregation formed during the opening band, Kidcrash (who we'll say nothing about other than they seemed fond of arguing onstage, knocking cymbals on the ground, and rendering the whole place deaf with a tsunami of cacophonous noise) and was more than ready to welcome the Casiokids to Portland.
Evidently these guys like to stage shadow-puppet shows during their live performances, but tonight we were afforded no such shadow doll festivities; only a 3-D quartet of handsome Norwegian boys singing in their native tongue about who-knows-what (they, possibly facetiously, claim they sing about love, dogs, and the rainforest).
The Casiokids' stage decor looked like an impromptu rave party. A giant day-glo green tapestry with "Casiokids" and a big speaker-box drawing hung on the back wall as they began pounding away on their little keyboards and drum sets. The guitarists spilled high-pitched melodies into the microphones and jumped and skipped around the stage like children at recess.
The bow-tied, purple-skinny-jeaned keyboardist demanded the most attention as he balanced on speakers and strutted across the stage with the coolness of a young Mick Jagger. A yellow pineapple-maraca stood proudly atop the front-and-center keyboard, waiting patiently until its time came for some shaking. A pink feather boa spiraled up the cymbal stand and stood out prominently as the final touch in a rainbow canvas of a stage set-up that could just as easily be mistaken for a child's birthday party. But despite all the kiddie colors and flighty dance-jams, this quintet knows its craft and presents a professional and engaging live show.
Hell, they even present a professional and engaging after-show. We approached the 'kids at the merchandise booth and chatted them up about Norway, riding in buses, and Maker's Mark Whiskey. Twenty-dollars in merchandise and several stolen swigs of Maker's Mark later, we were sufficiently charmed and fled the scene with a newfound admiration for Norwegian electro-pop.
