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At 6 PM on October 5, 2017—just 35 days before Fred Cole’s death—the City of Portland officially decreed the date, and all following October 5’s into perpetuity, an official City holiday: Dead Moon Night.
That first Dead Moon Night was celebrated with performances at City Hall, including appearances by Michael Hurley, Ural Thomas, Marissa Anderson, along with members of Wipers, Poison Idea, and Napalm Death. Artists got up on stage, performed their versions of Dead Moon tracks, and hopped off, making room for the next tribute.
Husband-wife duo Fred and Toody Cole, along with Andrew Loomis, are the driving forces behind Portland’s greatest rock & roll band. Forming Dead Moon in 1987, the three—as of the writing of this article—have released ten studio albums, six live albums, three compilations, numerous singles, at least one book, and are the sole subject of one documentary.
They also toured the world many times over, even famously turning down an opening spot on a Nirvana tour. Instead, Dead Moon kept a promise they made to fans in New Zealand by going through with their already booked tour down there—showing, yet again, who they are as people of community.
Without doubt, opening for Nirvana on tour would have launched the Coles and Loomis—already decades into making music respectively—into a stratosphere of fame not often occupied by Portland artists, and that’s the Coles’ ethos to a T. DIY on a molecular level, Fred and Toody did it all themselves: Homesteading multiple times, raising a family, starting a record label, creatively leading multiple bands, opening a gear shop in downtown Portland, tour booking, and on and on. A whole lifetime of DIY packed into a 50-year marriage, a milestone the couple had celebrated just before Fred’s transition from this temporal plane.
Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records—a champion of the band—points to eight as being an auspicious number in Dead Moon numerology. This being the eighth year of Dead Moon Night, Isaacson shared what the mystical number means to the band: Both D-E-A-D-M-O-O-N and F-R-E-D-C-O-L-E have eight letters, both Fred and Toody were born in ’48, etc. Eight also holds deep symmetry within its never-ending curves, an ouroboros of life and death and art. Unending love between Fred and Toody, between the band and fans across time and space.
If you partook in the original Dead Moon Night celebrations or attended Michael Hurley’s memorial concert earlier this year, you know what to expect: A heap of Portland talent coming together in celebration of singular artistry in Cherry Sprout Park, playing one Dead Moon song, and shuffling off stage to make room for the next artist. Though the artist lineup is a secret, we do know that Toody is in the mix, and Red Fox will be spinning Dead Moon all night long.
Dead Moon Night is FREE and open to the public, starting at 5 pm on Sunday, October 8 at Cherry Sprout Park, AKA Sumner-Albina Park.
Related: Read our 50 year anniversary review of Fred Cole’s ’70s hard rock heater, Zipper.
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Nolan Parker
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