BAES Fried Chicken will burn to the ground under mysterious circumstances, but we will all know it’s actually the petty and vengeful spirit of Ash St. Saloon, wreaking havoc from beyond the grave. Any future attempt to sully the piss-and-heroin-drenched hallowed halls of Portland’s downtown music scene will be met with a similar fate. Stay away, trust fund entrepreneurs—you have been warned!
Lizzo will be virtually unheard of among the white hipster music aficionados. They will have since moved on to the latest pop star that checks off several of their marginalized communities’ boxes in one sweep. It should be noted, that in 2021, that same darling pop star w the hipsters declare their new favorite will also be forgotten.
The Network will not reunite to tour their debut (and only) album and it will be a goddamned shame.
The bustling, gentrified strip we know and love as Division Street will become too "mainstream" for the cool kids, so it will be abandoned in exchange for boomer and Gen X tourism (see Hawthorne Street for reference). Construction will begin on Clinton Street, as the new happening boulevard of Portland "weirdness." Clinton Street Theater will be the overpopulated epicenter of this new abomination. The line for midnight screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show will now stretch all the way to Division Street and the old heads will brag about how they’ve attended every screening since 2011, while complaining about how it used to be better (and cheaper) in the 2010s.
After sitting empty for a year—with the nursing home endeavor turning out to be a complete flop—The Tonic Lounge will reopen in August of 2020, this time as The Panicked Raven. The sign will be redone with an unnecessarily cartoonish raven in a state of distress. Gaudy Poe-esque décor will litter the bar’s interior and the venue will pander to goth, emo and scene kids in what will amount to a pathetic east side answer to Lovecraft. After bad reviews and worse attendance, The Panicked Raven will close and reopen as The New Tonic Lounge. A female-fronted band will be given a non-ideal date for a show and the internet will explode with accusations of sexism in the heavy music scene, perpetuated by the misogynist owners of venues like The New Tonic Lounge. Doors will be permanently closed (again) and covered in graffiti by January 2021.
Fender Jazzmasters will fall out of favor amongst the indie darling rockstars of Portland. They will go the way of the Gibson Les Paul and be considered old head boomer favorites. If you are even seen with a Jazzmaster at any reputable venue, you will be immediately ridiculed for worshiping at the alter of classic rock along with all the other nostalgists who can’t let go of the past. Since cheap is cool, the hot new broke vintage gui tar lighting up Instagram will be the Danelectro Shorthorn. Naturally, all the hipster stars will only afford the 59DC reissue models, but you will see them everywhere. This fad will be all but gone once the kids find footage of Jimmy Page using one.
Red Fang will release another album. Sales will be good, but not great.
Against all better judgment, a local strip club will start booking rock bands in an attempt to emulate the same vibe as a club from the movies. Although the gimmick will be appreciated by the customers and garner some media attention, the girls will be mostly annoyed, as the new live music will only draw attention away from them and lower their bottom line. Longtime nemesis of the club and next-door neighbor (another strip club), will retaliate by hosting country, western and bluegrass bands at a makeshift stage in their establishment. The two strip clubs’ longstanding feud will reignite in cheesy rock vs. country headline fodder. Both clubs will stop, once the owners stop paying the bands they book and require the dancers to tip out the bands, on top of their already hefty stage fee and tip-out to staff.
Portland will see its first Dead Moon tribute band, known as OG PDX. They will immediately be booed off the stage at their first performance and issued death threats, should they attempt another show. Although I do not know the name of this young musical group, they will accidentally be booked at Rontoms, because their one radio-friendly Bandcamp single sounded compatible with the other hipster darling groups performing on a certain Sunday Sessions night. The booker, other bands and audience will all be horribly surprised when this young group unleashes a flurry of loud, electric bombast, coupled with raw emotive vocals. Everyone’s cocktails will be vigorously interrupted. A mass exodus to the smoking patio will occur. The band will not be booed, because Portlanders are too passive-aggressive for that. Instead, they will be given the cold shoulder and told "good job" in the most condescending way possible. Heartbroken and distraught thinking that this Rontoms show would be the band’s big break, the band packs up and moves to Seattle, hoping to catch fire there. They are immediately signed by Sub Pop, and in a strange full-circle twist of fate, they become the biggest band on the planet for a hot minute, before imploding because of drugs or some shit. People who talked shit about them at the Rontoms show will brag to their friends about how they were at one of the first shows of said band and were into them before they became famous.
Blazerdamus has spoken.
