Recipe for a nearly perfect evening

1. Idly browse YouTube for bands covering your favorite band.

2. Discover the Heathers version of “This Year”:

3. Immediately go to their MySpace.

4. Realize that OMG! They’re coming to Portland! Really soon!

5. Go.

I need to talk a little about the fantastic venue, The Coop. For those of you who’ve read Rules, it was like attending a concert at Forest House, except the greenery was confined to the back yard, and there were ducks.

Oh yeah, we were definitely the oldest people there, but it entirely failed to matter. Steve and I both saw people we knew (connections: Stumptown and the Multnomah Youth Commission). It was a sweet, friendly crowd, many of whom seemed to know each other. At first I thought, “Man, if there’d been a scene like this in Ann Arbor when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I would’ve gone to shows all the time.”

But if there had been (and who knows? maybe there was) I would’ve been shy and self-conscious, worried about what I was wearing and who I was with (or not). At the show last night, we didn’t have anything to prove. We were inside, but outside —

— literally outside, in the back yard, for several of the acts. There was the awesome lady with multicolored hair who began the show, and improvised her final song based on audience suggestions — I didn’t catch her name, alas– and the Taxpayers, Hey Tiger, Craig Salt Peters, and I think there was another whose name I didn’t get. Heathers played in the house, though, so we sardined ourselves in for the short but amazing set. It was too crowded and dark for cell phone photos, but here’s one I found of them in Dublin:

Why was it only “nearly perfect”, you ask? Two reasons: first, it being a school night, we took off before the Ghost Mice set, which I’m sure was excellent, too; and second, for our late-night dinner, we decided to try the latest establishment to occupy a cursed space on Alberta. I’m not gonna link, but, Portlanders, suffice to say that three different restaurants have occupied it in the five years we’ve lived in the neighborhood, and I don’t think this one’s gonna make it, either.

Still, it was one of those nights that made us both feel so lucky and happy to be living here, now, summer in Portland, two double ought eight.

Everyone: what’s the best and/or most surprising show you’ve seen lately? Or ever?