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[September 28, 2006] After "Bit Torrent: Bring Us Together," I went to see my old buddy Ryan's band at Mississippi Pizza in the northeast. Ryan moved to Portland from Anchorage with his noisy garage rock group The Born Losers three years ago. The Losers broke up this winter, and I'd been looking forward to seeing Ryan's new bands.

I was not prepared for The Builders And The Butchers. They shunned the stage, and set up in the middle of the restaurant floor. They performed unplugged and unmiced, hammering on their guitars, banjos, mandolins and more to make up for it, and Ryan sang without using a microphone. And the music they played? You know alternate histories, stories where the Confederacy got the A-Bomb and stuff like that? The Builders And The Butchers are like an alternate history of music, where rock and roll was invented by poor kids in the South in the 1940s.

When they started, the audience had a general sensation of "... What the fuck is this?" After a song or two, that turned into "This is awesome!"

On some nights, the band ends the show by leaving the building one by one, and wandering off down the street, still playing their instruments. I was a little disappointed that they didn't close the show that way when I saw them, although Ryan did take his megaphone up to the stage during the last song. I'm also a little disappointed that they no longer set themselves up under covered bus stops on rainy days and play random shows around town like they did when they were first starting out. (Ryan told me about one rainy Halloween when they were playing a show at a bus stop -- and a guy walked up with an upright bass and started playing with them.)

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music , bands