Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The Replacements have a great song called Portland.
It is an early, aborted version of a song that got eventually released on Don’t Tell A Soul called Talent Show.
Listening to Portland back to back with Talent Show is a trip. Same song but a different song.
The Orpheum used to have that same sign design. Same aesthetic, same basic construction. I walked by it a billion times. To and from work every day. The image is stung into my brain.
Nice. Very Edward Hopper.
@CSK: Thanks–I’ll take the comparison!
@Steven L. Taylor:
It was my immediate reaction: the lone figure, the framing, the overall darkness, the occasional shafts of light.
Dude! I missed you at breakfast. You missed a great cuppa coffee!
BTW, really really nice work!
Cool. Makes me wish I had a camera capable of night time photography.
The Replacements have a great song called Portland.
It is an early, aborted version of a song that got eventually released on Don’t Tell A Soul called Talent Show.
Listening to Portland back to back with Talent Show is a trip. Same song but a different song.
The Orpheum used to have that same sign design. Same aesthetic, same basic construction. I walked by it a billion times. To and from work every day. The image is stung into my brain.
You are whipping up major nostalgia.
Portland was written as an apologia. They had a show there (Oregon, not Maine) where they famously flamed out.
Showed up drunk to the gills, flailed about for twenty minutes trying to perform but incapable of doing so. Walked off.
Westerberg felt bad after. Wrote Portland as an “I’m sorry”.
Portland is deep track shit. An obscure oddity. Literal apochrypha. Turned up when the demo versions of songs got released.
Oh, very fine. My first impression wasn’t Hopper but a high quality Noir film.