This week's LivePDX.com music blog.

News and Gossip: LV's Goes Silent (For Now), Summer Dreams, Potential Awards Train Wreck

While I continue to devour Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, the best book on the history of jazz I've ever read...

The first glimmer of warmth and sun is in. Negotiations are underway for the 2008 Waterfront Blues Festival. They're working on getting the Pine Leaf Boys, the Cajun/Creole band from Southern Louisiana and featuring the amazing fiddler/accordionist Cedric Watson. Other New Orleans bands in the plans are a Stanton Moore trio and Alan Toussaint, who is in San Francisco on July 6. Money might keep him away. He's expensive. Nobody's confirmed. We can hope.

I have been lobbying/begging for Bonerama, Washboard Chaz and any band with Skerik in it.

Willamette Week broke the original story, but the Craig Marquardo saga continues. You may remember him from when he was caught in several lies when he was involved in trying to bring a major league baseball team to Portland. Turns out, lying is a full time business. Read the comments with each of those stories.

He now publishes Music Spectator Magazine and is behind the Portland Music Awards planned for the Roseland on Monday, January 28. Apparently he's up to the same old monkey-business. One broadcaster said, "We…have been in contact with some of the performers and musicians listed on his 'Nominee List,' and they're beginning to drop out like Poll numbers. Let's hope this isn't another of his 'Big Plans.'"

Another music insider told me, "…a lot of the bands who he says are playing never agreed to play." And yet another said, "…he’s way out of touch based on my ‘conversation’ with him — he talked for 25 minutes. I listened."

Also turns out he has started booking music at the Pine Street Bistro (formerly Abu Karim), which has been struggling since it changed hands. Someone who is involved confirmed that, "[The new owner] now has Craig Marquardo doing the booking and promo for him, of all people."

He's on the wrong track and headed for you.

The guitarist I mentioned a few weeks ago who is starting his own label? Terry Robb. The name of the label? PsycheDelta. It will be distributed by Allegro. The diva he's about to sign? Still embargoed. Robb produced John Callahan's album Purple Winos In the Rain. John self-released at first, but now it'll be on Terry's label.

What you learn when you hang around the NW Film Center's Reel Music Festival on opening night: 1) the very well dressed NW Film Center Regional Services Coordinator Thomas Phillipson is a closet accordionist who prefers Western Swing and wouldn't be caught dead playing polka; 2) the two Dylan films reinforced how mean and arrogant he was back then; and 3) people who come to music films and insist on humming along with the tunes should have their own private section. It isn't karaoke, idiots.

Pi-Rem is back open. Two of the owners are gone and the third has returned to his studies in Berkeley, but the show goes on! A new entrance around back replaces the riot-lighting in the old lobby entrance. Don't bother checking online, their site hasn't caught up yet.

The rumor is the sad truth: LV's is silent. Here's what Darrell Grant emailed: "For the moment, it is clear that LV's Uptown, as we knew it, is no more. While I sincerely hope the [new owners] choose to make music a part of the vision for the restaurant, and believe it would be to their benefit to do so, they are (rightly, in my opinion) focused on completing their remodel, and getting the restaurant in shape to promote it to the public and attract patrons. They have left the door open to future discussions on music at the restaurant, (and they kept the stage.)

I also have to take some responsibility in this transition, as it coincides with my desire to take a break from the ongoing weekly responsibilities of booking, administering and promoting a live music venue, which I've been doing for almost three years."

Was that Pink Martini I heard in an American Express TV spot?

Biggest regret of the week: New Orleans Saxophonist Reggie Houston invited me over for his red beans and rice, plus the BCS championship football game on TV, and I couldn't make it!