Frequency blog: Music news and reviews from Bend and Central Oregon, by Ben Salmon | The Bulletin

(Note: Local rapper Amsterdam and his crew, The Garden, are on a short tour through California, Arizona and Idaho, and the guy knows how to tell a tale. So Frequency asked him to spend a few minutes each day writing down stories from the road and his observations about life on tour. Below is the second installment, and the first is here. More to come in the next few days.)

Friday, June 26, 11 a.m.

Morning, folks. When we left off last, myself and the rest of the Garden crew had just finished up a great afternoon touring Universal Studios and were headed to our show in L.A. at The Londoner. While we had a few sound issues at the show — namely that the venue didn’t have a mixer, not necessarily a minor issue — the concert was cool and everyone had a lot of fun.

We got up early the next day and started driving to Tucson. I was excited to see the University of Arizona campus but a little skeptical of my ability to handle the heat. It was 107 degrees when we first arrived to the state and it never let up. It’s actually pretty bearable since it’s dry heat and not at all humid, but it was certainly a little draining until we got used to it. We got into Tucson around 7 p.m. and found an incredibly delicious and inexpensive Mexican restaurant called The Taco Shop. Lets just say the $2 tacos were substantially more impressive than the name of the restaurant.

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(Note: Local rapper Amsterdam and his crew, The Garden, are on a short tour through California, Arizona and Idaho, and the guy knows how to tell a tale. So Frequency asked him to spend a few minutes each day writing down stories from the road and his observations about life on tour. Below is the first installment, with more to come in the next few days.)

Monday, June 22, 6 p.m.

Our week-long adventure started on Friday night at The Crown Room in Portland. Fresh off work and armed with the knowledge that we would be responsibility-free for 9 days, everyone in the group wanted to let loose a little bit. The turnout was pretty good (packed by the end of the night) and the crowd was filled with a lot of old friends, hook-ups and of course other supportive Portland rappers. I thought that everyone who performed pretty much killed it.

Portland duo Levelheaded started off the night with a dope set, then Top Shelf and Wright Family did their thing. A cute girl from the crowd was even nice enough to bring me a shot of Patron while I was up on stage, which was sweet because I really don’t like paying $10 for shots of Patron. Although that scored her major points in my book, I spent most of the night catching up with a bunch of Portland friends I hadn’t seen for some time. The Crown Room is unusual in that there is never any security in front of the green room, so you never know who’s going to pop their head in. Gotta stay on your game.

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