We'd get in a photo booth with these guys.

It’s the obvious angle to take—hometown kids learn to play guitar, move to the big city, form a band, eke out a living, get discovered, make it big and then get rich.

The six guys of Portland band Adventure Galley—comprised of 67 percent Mountain View graduates from Bend—are somewhere between struggling to survive and getting discovered on that arc. The cool part about this story, though, is Adventure Galley has all the rock-n-roll tools necessary to eventually snatch that happy ending.

You. the oxford. jazz. it's all coming together.

Kicking off this winter’s Jazz at the Oxford series, Bend will be treated to performances from renowned blues singer/songwriter/harmonica player Curtis Salgado and rootsy jazz crooner LaRhonda Steele.

Salgado was the inspiration for John Belushi’s The Blues Brothers; you can’t get much more legendary than that. Belushi and Salgado even palled around on stage a time or two, performing Salgado’s revivalist blues and soul. Salgado has been praised as one of the most passionately soulful singers of his day and his vocal and harmonica skills are always backed by a smoking hot band of top-notch musicians. In 2010, he was awarded the Blues Foundations Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year award.

Whatchewlookinat, sucka?

Fox and Women, who will play The Horned Hand on Oct. 18, derive as much inspiration from the words of existential writer Simone de Beauvoir as they do from any musical muse. Deeply rooted in the lyrics and string-laden music of this folk-pop band is the poetry of de Beauvoir’s writing, such as these lines from the novel “The Mandarins.”

“The streets would smell again of oil and orange blossoms, in the evening there would be light, people would sit and chat in outdoor cafes, and he would drink coffee to the sound of real guitars.”

Pastels are super in right now, yo.

Hip-hop newcomer Macklemore has an edge when it comes to being a successful rap artist. The 29-year-old, born Ben Haggerty, stands out in the genre by resisting the status quo—he does not conform to an image in order to sell records.

One could argue that the deck was stacked against him when he started rhyming in high school. He was a scrawny white kid listening to Wu Tang Clang in Seattle, a city known more for grunge rock than an emerging hip hop scene. Yet, Macklemore developed a wicked quick flow and wrote personal lyrics about experiences in his neighborhood that eventually landed him regular performances at Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party.

If you're feeling nostalgic, they sell tapes, too.

A couple weeks ago, a curious Craigslist ad about a new record store opening up in Bend was posted and just like that, our town doubled the number of places to buy quality vinyl.

Recycle Music L.L.C. opened the doors to their store—located at 3 NW Bond St. across from Strictly Organic Coffee on Saturday Sept. 29. So far, owner Keith Schuman has been pleased with the response.

“You never know if it’s going to be a stampede or a trickle,” said Schuman about the opening. “Usually the reality is somewhere in the middle and so far I’ve been very happy.”