Mark Ransom is turning 40 this weekend and he’s just fine with that because he’s having a big damn party to celebrate.

While he once dreamed of skiing in Chamonix, France, to celebrate his summitting of the proverbial hill, Ransom says Saturday night’s throw down at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, which features his own band, The Mostest, and an impressive who’s-who list of other local musicians joining in for an acoustic song circle earlier in the night, will suit him just fine. And this makes sense because this guy is the face of local music in Bend, even if he might not exactly agree with that assertion.

At Saturday’s Portland Indie Invasion, there was something different, something special, and something fun – all the qualities needed for a solid show.

First up was the “something different,” which meant a set from father/daughter duo Alexandra and Hilary Hanes who performed as Tortune and took the stage to share their brand of self-described death pop. An innocent-looking Lex headed the duo on guitar and vocals and brandished some stellar pipes in near opera style while Dad plucked away at the bass and pressed play on the drumbeats.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Johnny Clay is eating lunch and he feels like it’s about to start raining. He’s on a break from his job fixing printers for Hewlett Packard in Vancouver, the gig that keeps him occupied when he’s not serving as lead singer and songwriter for Portland’s indie folk-pop outfit, The Dimes.

Clay, a Texas native, moved to Portland from Austin to follow a girl, the age-old story. Don’t worry, he assures me, he married her and they are now expecting their first child, a little girl. In December, The Dimes released their second album, The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry, which if you didn’t catch from the title, alludes to the Boston Tea Party. The concept album centers on the city of Boston and it’s immense role in American history. You can toss those American history textbooks aside, as this LP is an audio guide through one of the most instrumental cities in America’s development.

There was a time when the Slackers album, The Question, would spend weeks at a time in the car stereo. The record is a pure recreation of authentic Caribbean ska music, not dressed up in punk accouterments, as was the case with so many other “ska” bands that were on the airwaves in the mid-1990s. Some might find what the Slackers do closer to reggae, and maybe they’re right, but classifications aside, The Question is decisively my favorite album of the genre.

But in the past eight years or so, I couldn’t even be positive that the disc was still in my possession. That was before I heard that the Slackers were the next in a continuing line of ska bands to, somewhat oddly (but awesomely) play the Mountain’s Edge Bar on the south end of town on Tuesday night. Further evidence of the Mountain’s Edge’s plan to become Oregon’s integral ska venue (if that’s possible) is the fact that just before The Slackers arrive, the Voodoo Glow Skulls play the joint on Friday night.