A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN MUSIC 
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 5TH
Hollywood Theatre 
7:30 PM

Thirteen years ago Mississippi Records started putting together, what we call for lack of a better descriptive," psychedelic slideshows/films". The first was called I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE. It was a meditation on cultural extinction and a history of a bunch of artists on the Mississippi Records label. The presentation ended up touring around the world.

At the time of that first show's tour, there was no information about Mississippi Records available outside of Portland. We were an internet black hole. The only way to get in touch was to write us a letter or call us on the phone, which we picked up maybe 20% of the time. We never talked to the press - hanging up on everyone from Rolling Stone to the New York Times. 

Miraculously we were selling around six thousand of our labels releases per month without any promotion, press or social media. Suddenly appearing in towns around the world in person felt like the right and only way to make a first reveal of our "world vision."

That was thirteen years ago - before Trump, the pandemic, and the genocide in Gaza. The "world vision" I presented back then could be considered too precious for the current Portland populace. The modern Portlander might ask, "How can you wax on about the importance of culture preservation, how fun music is, and living outside capitalist norms in the face of the bigger fish we need to fry?" 

After the last few years of watching folks burn out on whatever front line they have chosen to fight on, it's only reinforced our belief that the best refuel is to immerse ourselves in culture. we're doubling down on our beliefs with this new presentation - a telling of the entire history of North American music.

To be honest, it's a pretty ridiculous show. It races through time and goes on unexpected tangents about things like Octopus intelligence, The Church Of Scientology, and my personal life. The show's definitely trying to be fun more than anything. But, you can't talk about the history of North American music without talking about injustice, oppression, and exploitation. So the darkness of America comes up, but not without some constructive and weird ideas on how to deal with it.