8/18/2023 0 Comments Pink martini mas que nada![]() ![]() ![]() The album begins with two requests for your attention. It remains on tour celebrating 20 years of Sympathetique, and that tour brings Pink Martini to The Orpheum Monday night. In 1998, the “small orchestra”-as Pink Martini now calls itself-released its debut album, Sympathetique, which changed Pink Martini’s trajectory to such a degree that it reissued the album last year. The band never played outside the Portland city limits during that time, but it slowly added members, growing to six musicians, then eight as the material required and the money allowed. The first incarnation of Pink Martini involved four musicians playing a lot of Henry Mancini-“Charade,” “Moon River,” “It Must Be Tonight” among others-and it started by playing a couple of years’ worth of benefits for a checklist of liberal causes-libraries, clean water, public broadcasting, music education, affordable housing, and the like. At the end of the week, we had a big community-wide concert and needed an opening act, so I threw on a cocktail dress and started Pink Martini.” ![]() “I brought them to town to do a series of concerts at nursing homes and hospitals and retirement homes and rotary meetings, and at the end of their sets, they’d say very sweetly, Please vote no on Metro 13. “They were somewhere between the ages of 70 and 80 and wore matching mini-skirts and booties and played ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ and ‘Whip It,’” he remembers. He had recently seen the Pee-Wee Herman Christmas special, which included an appearance by The Del Rubio Triplets, and he brought them to town for campaign events. Lauderdale was fresh out of college and working on the campaign in opposition to the amendment. “There was a nasty attempt to amend the Oregon constitution to declare homosexuality illegal,” he says. No one lucked into a stash of exotica hi-fi albums and stereo test records in a Salvation Army and wondered, How can I make that sound? No, Pink Martini started when Thomas Lauderdale got political. No one watched Robin and the Seven Hoods and said That! I want to be cool like that! No one worked in a secondhand store, saw a few sharkskin suits and thought, Bands have started with less. Pink Martini didn’t become a lounge band for the reasons you might expect. The "small orchestra" that plays The Orpheum Monday night began by playing "Moon River" for equal rights twenty-plus years ago. ![]()
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