Live Music in Portland

The Kingsmen recorded "Louie Louie" here in 1963, and it hit number two on the Billboard charts. That kind of accidental, DIY landmark tells you something essential about Portland's music culture. The city coined its own genre, Portland Indie, an eclectic collision of folk, rock, punk, and hip-hop built on a DIY ethos, and it earned the label "indie-rock mecca" honestly, producing acts like The Decemberists, Everclear, and Grammy-winning bassist Esperanza Spalding. The hardcore punk scene of the early 1980s, anchored by The Wipers and Poison Idea, left fingerprints on grunge that still get debated. Today, stages at Revolution Hall, Mississippi Studios, the Crystal Ballroom, and the Wonder Ballroom keep that independent current running through an active, genre-spanning live scene that covers jazz, metal, hip-hop, and everything Portland Indie refuses to sit still long enough to define.