How do I love Portland? Let me count the ways... #1!

I've been slacking! Oh well, I never promised how often I'd write. I've been wanting to do sort of a series of blogs about Portland. I think that Portland is the best city in the world and I'm going to document the cool things I've found here (and continue to find!).
One of the first things I fell in love with here is Storm and the Balls. This is a local band, lead by Storm Large (her real name) and backed by former members of Everclear as well as other known bands. Here is a review I wrote on another website about a year and a half ago:

When you see her you will you be put into a trance instantly, you will be physically unable to avert your eyes. You will question whether she's real or not, it's not typical to be able to get so close to perfection. This will continue during the entire first set. During intermission you will vehemently express graditude to your escort for bringing you there, and you will ramble on aimlessly about how fabulous she is (not to mention that fucking band!). In the back of your mind you will have thoughts of times gone past when you had been invited but had declined, regardless of your trustworthy friends prodding. You had read the reviews. You knew. But you wasted so much time. So much time that you will never get back.

Dramatic, I know, but seriously, she's good. Everyone that goes to see her has that same experience.
About a year after the first time I saw her, she announced that she would be leaving us temporarily to appear on the show Rockstar Supernova. With the restricted material and editing, Storm certainly couldn't show her full potential. But she still rocked, still made it to the top 4 or 5, and nothing came of this 'new hot rock band' anyway. In fact, Tommy Lee is suing his manager over it. Whatever, Storm is back with us now, sort of, no more $5 Wednesdays at Dantes. She's touring a lot more, she's been to Iceland and New Zealand and I think she's in Canada now, but she manages to sneak local shows in here and there. The problem is that now she has so many fans here that they have to keep the shows almost secret, with cryptic ads in the weekly paper, so you gotta hear about them. Recently I attended her CD release. Here's a picture I took:




So that's Storm. I was going to put a video on here, but none of them really do her justice. If you want to see her do a search on YouTube, there's tons.