March 2006

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Barb Ryman scores one for dysfunctional American Idols everywhere

Filed under: Television , Television

Ten years ago, I reviewed local singer/songwriter Posted by Jim Walsh at March 16, 2006 8:43 AM | Comments (0)

 

The Best of the Twin Cities ballot is now online

Filed under: Stuff

The 2006 Best of the Twin Cities ballot is now online. Set aside those TPS Reports and focus on something really productive: voting for your favorite restaurants, rock bands, bars, sports stars, bike shops, bookstores, and villains. April 26 is the day that City Pages publishes our annual Best of the Twin Cities issue. It is a day when City Pages staffers and contributors shower local restaurants and theaters, blues belters and martini mixers with words of praise and commemorative certificates. Like Administrative Professionals Day, the Best of the Twin Cities is a people's holiday of sorts. You can use the annual readers' poll to pronounce who rolls the best unagi maki and who croons the best karaoke versions of Stone Temple Pilots--all without collecting a sign-off from your senior manager. You make the picks; we tabulate the results. That's all there is to it.

Click here to start voting!

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 15, 2006 3:52 PM | Comments (0)

 

America's Next Top Artist: Who will be the next Alec Soth?

After the 2004 Whitney Biennial, New York art dealers went crazy for local photographer Alec Soth. (Check out Soth's stunning and most recent project, Niagara.) At every Biennial, art dealers and collectors stumble over their Bruno Maglis in a desperate search for the next big thing, and in the last few years, they're willing to prove they found it by forking over more than the average Minnesotan's one-year salary. This year, another Minneapolis photographer, Angela Strassheim, is quickly garnering the attention of critics and collectors.

The 2006 Whitney Biennial, which runs at New York's Whitney Museum through May 28, includes three up-and-coming Minneapolis-based artists: Thirty-year-old multi-media artist Jay Heikes, 39-year-old painter Todd Norsten, and 36-year-old Strassheim are among the Biennial's 100 or so select artists. And the show has another connection to the Twin Cities art scene: Philippe Vergne, the Walker Art Center's chief curator and deputy director, was the exhibit's co-curator.

New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman says the fashion-tied show lacks beauty, among other things, and dismisses some of the pieces as "ad-hoc," "cantankerous," and "insular." But Kimmelman found the images by Strassheim to be "painstaking, surreal, and strangely loving." The Village Voice also said Strassheim's photographs stood out, calling her images of people living more in the next life than this one "penetrating;" and the New York Sun also was taken with the works by the Minneapolis artist.

Strassheim received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1995, and her MFA from Yale in 2003. She spent time as a forensic photographer, which resulted in her first exhibited piece, an image of a naked suicide victim strewn across a bed. While hardly morbid, her current images instead have an oddly beautiful and magical quality, like perfectly lit movie stills of dysfunction and detachment showcased in hyper-rich color, where every piece in the curious scene has been meticulously groomed and arranged by the hands of a keen director. Strassheim's photographs, including the eerie and provocative image of the father and son mentioned in the NYT piece, can be viewed here.

Curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne will discuss the Biennial at the Walker Art Center's Cinema on Monday, April 3. The event begins at 7:00 pm; $5

Posted by at March 15, 2006 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

 

Gordon Parks, 1912-2006

Filed under: Film , Film , Film , Film , Film , Film , Film , Film

Gordon Parks "once took a ride tailed by the cops with some young L.A. [Black] Panthers with guns in their laps," writes Greg Tate in today's Village Voice obituary. "One asked him if he would still choose the camera over the gun, as he'd declared in his 1967 memoir, A Choice of Weapons. Parks reiterated his belief. Two weeks later the Panther was dead." Parks, who was the first black staff photographer at Life in the '50s and the first ever to direct a studio film (The Learning Tree, in 1969), lived life alongside his subjects, from blacks in the Twin Cities to Malcolm X. Born in Kansas in 1912, the future writer, jazz musician, poet, painter, choreographer, and composer moved to St. Paul as a stunned teenager after the death of his mother, according to his autobiography Voices in the Mirror, and was promptly thrown out into the subzero weather by his brother-in-law. He spent a week homeless, "bouncing between Jim Williams's pool hall during the day and the trolley cars at night," writes Michael Tortorello in a 1998 City Pages appreciation. "One morning, hungry and broke, Parks drew a knife on one of the conductors, and then, in shame, offered to sell it to him in exchange for breakfast"...

Parks played piano in a local brothel, bused tables at the Minneapolis Club, and reluctantly dropped out of St. Paul Central High School before moving to Chicago, New York, and back again. He was working as a porter on the North Coast Limited in the '30s when he became inspired by the great Depression-era documentary photographers, whose pictures he found in train magazines. Parks invested in a used camera, what he would call "his weapon against poverty and racism," and began taking photographs for the Minneapolis Spokesman/St. Paul Recorder. 50 years of work in a half-dozen mediums followed, though he's still best known for directing Shaft--he once told City Pages it was "nowhere near blaxploitation." (Parks's film biographer, Craig Rice, says he applied to film school the day after seeing the movie.)

"I don't make my poetry or my music just for people in Harlem or Kansas or any one place in between," Parks told Rob Nelson in a 1996 City Pages interview. "I think it's about reaching as many kinds of people as you can." He stayed prolific to the end, publishing two books on Atria in 2005: A Hungry Heart : A Memoir and Eyes with Winged Thoughts: Poems and Photographs. He died last Tuesday at age 93 in New York. (Read the New York Times obituary and the one in the Kansas City Star.)

In an interview with the Spokesman-Recorder last year, Parks said: "I let my heart persuade me toward whatever I needed at the moment; that's where I went. That's why I was successful, or why I failed."

(View a video at MNStories.com, a discussion at MNSpeak.com, and more Parks photography here, here, and here.)

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 13, 2006 5:35 PM | Comments (1)

 

Was it the Bloody Mary?

Filed under: Television

Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist, announces he will leave "South Park" because of recent episodes that have embarked upon what he calls "inappropriate ridicule of religious communities." Press release after the jump:

ISAAC HAYES REQUESTS RELEASE FROM "SOUTH PARK"

Legendary soul man Isaac Hayes has officially requested a release from his contract with the "South Park" television show, and the Comedy Central cable station. Mr. Hayes has been a cast member of "South Park" since 1997 as the voice of "CHEF".

Mr. Hayes has decided to part ways with "South Park" because of recent episodes and press that have embarked upon what he feels are inappropriate ridicule of religious communities. While fully acknowledging "South Park's" right to freedom of speech, Mr. Hayes is disappointed with what he perceives as a growing insensitivity towards personal spiritual beliefs, not only with "South Park" episodes but also the recent Danish cartoon controversy.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins." Mr. Hayes adds, "religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

Posted by at March 13, 2006 11:25 AM | Comments (11)

 

Black bunny habit

Filed under: Spotted

Stenciled black bunnies have been popping up around Minneapolis for a little more than a year now. Last spring, we spotted their one-dimensional spray-painted bodies on public trash cans along Cedar Avenue and on the outside of electrical boxes on Washington Avenue. The little rabbits always are in mid-leap, and the stenciled images seem to disappear as quickly as they came, as if overflowing trash cans of gravel can't contain these little bunnies on the run. Until now, the rabbits have appeared alone and without any clues about their purpose. Recently, however, a flier featuring the sprinting bunny sprung up at Washington and Third Street with the claim that the rabbit "is the new black."

Public art of this kind is hardly new in Minneapolis: Shepard Fairey's Obey still stares back at drivers along Hiawatha almost 17 years after his birth as one of the original grafitti icons, and who can forget local tattoo artist Brian Kelly who created his own little army and whose face was plastered all over the Twin Cities?

The rabbits can't help but remind us of some of the work by Bristol stencil artist Banksy, who's famous for the rats he painted all over London. Still, Banksy's images always were subversive, forcing viewers to question their surroundings. His most moving graffiti art is of a pig-tailed little girl holding a handful of balloons to sail herself over a segregation wall in Palestine. The meaning of the rabbits around Minneapolis isn't quite so clear: They're either running from or toward something, and we haven't determined what that is. Or maybe it's neither, and the black bunny is simply nothing more than the new Blackberry.

What do you think the rabbit means? And what is your favorite piece of public art?

Posted by at March 12, 2006 5:44 PM | Comments (0)

 

5 Silly Questions: Garrick Van Buren

Filed under: 5 Silly Questions

When it comes to podcasting in the land of 10,000 lakes, the first name that comes to mind is Garrick Van Buren. Garrick has produced over 70 podcasts since debuting The First Crack Podcast back in October 2004, featuring episodes on wine tasting, exotic peanut butter, and pontooning. Van Buren has expanded his empire to include Podcast Minnesota, MNInteractive, and the WorkBetter Weblog. I decided to see if he could still type, so I sent him 5 Silly Questions and this is what he wrote...

1. Which talent would you rather have: the ability to play the banjo with your toes, or the ability to guess other people's middle names?
Middle names. It's much more acceptable in mixed company than removing your socks.

2. What was the last thing you put in your mouth that you sincerely regretted?
The mic I use for podcasting. Tip: It doesn't improve sound quality.

3. If you could play donkey basketball (one-on-one) with anyone in history, who would it be? Grizzly Adams's friend Mad Jack the Mountain Man. He'd be a formidable competitor on the court.

4. If your life were a comic strip, would the final panel be more likely to have a woman in a bathrobe holding a rolling pin or an obese cat with lasagna residue on its face?
There's a comforting making-fun-of-your-own-faults quality to lasagna residue.

5. Who should have stopped doing what they do a long time ago: Stephen King, Bon Jovi, or Alan Greenspan?

Stephen King. He's jumped the shark so many times I recommend he start a water stunt touring company.

Thanks, Garrick! I'm sure we both agree Bon Jovi's music is timeless and the dulcet tones of Sir Jon will enhance senior proms for decades to come! Read and listen to Garrick at The First Crack Podcast and check out 75 other Minnesota podcasts at, yep, Podcast Minnesota.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 10, 2006 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

 

Old computers replacing TiVo, but not for long

Filed under: Media

Wired has news about the new trend in video recording: revamping old computers to replace TiVo and its subscription fee. For about $200, an out-of-date PC can be turned into a state-of-the-art digital recorder that will also turn any television into a media center with music, video, and games. The unfunny punchline to the piece: the record and movie industries are pushing hard to have the cables used in home installations changed so that the signal can only be recorded by TiVo. (In other digital news of the day, an anime site is reporting that Sony's Blu-Ray hi-def video discs will be region-coded like DVDs, preventing cheaper discs from Asia from being sold elsewhere.)

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 9, 2006 4:04 PM | Comments (0)

 

Nightstand confessional

Filed under: Books

Spending night after night in darkened bars and coming home with ears ringing is hard work. We tracked down some local venue bookers and asked what they're reading to unwind.

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer
I just finished it because the Mormon religion is fascinating to me. It was really good in that it gave a lot of background history on how it all started and what the basic fundamentals of their religion are. I'm still reading Companeros, about Che Guevara's journeys through South America and when he hooked up with Fidel. It's kind of a hard read so I've been in the process of that one for quite awhile. And then I just got On Michael Jackson, which I hadn't heard of until a friend loaned it to me today. He said it tells a lot about why he's the way he is. --Kim King, Fine Line Music Cafe

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
I was told this was a prerequisite to Fargo Rock City (which is next on my list). History may not reflect the X-genners as the world's greatest generation but maybe they are the most loveable slackers in our short history. --James "Taco" Martin, the Cabooze

Only The Strong Survive: The Odyssey Of Allen Iverson by Larry Platt
It details his rise from underground legend to cultural icon. It's hard not to be intrigued by the life story of a player as awesome and controversial as Iverson. It's a shame he wasn't selected for the national hoops team. --Sonia Grover, First Avenue

Now I Can Die In Peace by Bill Simmons
It's a collection of some of his columns he wrote for ESPN.com between 1998 and 2004 when the Red Sox finally won the World Series. Being springtime, all I can think about is baseball. --Nate Kranz, Seventh St. Entry

The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork by John C Maxwell
This book is really good at getting you to think introspectively. It constantly challenges me in personal growth and seeking to better appreciate those working around me.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
I just finished rereading this series. I have to say that I enjoyed it much more this time through than when I was a child. It helped me remember what it's like to think "like a child."
Proverbs: King Solomon
This book always challenges me to stay ethical, moral & keep my focus on what truly matters in life: God, family, friends. --Mike Pappas, Club 3 Degrees

Posted by Lindsey Thomas at March 9, 2006 2:12 PM | Comments (0)

 

City Pages cover trivia

Filed under: Media

This week's women-in-MN-music cover and the June 8, 2005 summer issue share cover model April Lindner, of the rock band Bounce...

The May 26, 2004 abortion issue and the Dec. 17, 2003 "Year in Music" issue share cover model (and City Pages associate art director) Jane Sherman.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 9, 2006 1:30 AM | Comments (0)

 

Record collectors, do you have these Stax albums?

Filed under: Music

When I last passed through Memphis, TN, in 1998, the place where the legendary Stax studios once stood was a grassy, empty lot. Today the Stax Museum of American Soul Music stands there, with the adjoining Stax Music Academy serving youth in the surrounding (and still impoverished) neighborhood of Soulsville, U.S.A. The three-year-old museum features many cool things, among them a hallway displaying every last Stax-related vinyl LP and single. Every one, that is, except those few still missing: If you'd like to help out, track down the following albums and consider donating them to the museum to complete the collection. The list of outstanding LPs, interesting in itself, was provided by Soulsville Foundation president Deanie Parker (I added the corrections and links)...

Missing LPs:

Stax '61-'68
706 Carla Thomas - Comfort Me
707 The [Mar-Keys] - The Great Memphis Sound
711 Booker T. & The MG's - And Now
1045 Booker T. & The MG's - Union Extended [UK only]

Stax '68-'75
2022 Rufus Thomas - May I Have Your Ticket Please (unissued)
2035 A Very Good Year 1972 Memphis Music Inc., Second Annual Awards Program
5513 [Glenn] Yarbrough & The [Limeliters], Reunion
5524 Mike Douglas - Mike Douglas[,] Today

Atlantic
8047 Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz
8120 Don Covay - See-Saw
8129 Wilson Pickett - In The Midnight Hour

Volt '64-'70
417 Bar-Kays - Soul Finger [hard to tell which versions are reiusses]

Volt '68-'75
6021 The Emotions - Song[s] of Innocence and Experience (never released?)
9502 Hot Sauce - Good Woman Turning Bad (never released?) [read the full story here]

Enterprise '68-'75
7508 Cliff Cochran - The Way I'm Needing You

Gospel Truth
2702 Rev. Lee Jackson - Rev. Lee Jackson at Calvary
2720 Operation Push - People's Choir of Operation Push [click photo to enlarge--yep, that's Jesse Jackson's Operation Push; apparently it sold on eBay for $20]

Partee
2401 Clay Tyson - Laugh Your Ass Off [hey, it's available on eBay! Click photo to enlarge]

Ardent
2803 Big Star - #1 Record

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 9, 2006 1:00 AM | Comments (0)

 

Supplemental She Bop

Filed under: Local Music

In this week's cover story, I compiled a 75-year timeline of women in local music. Of course, we didn't have room for everything, and that's where you come in. Got a local favorite you think should've been included? Tell us all about her in the comments.

Posted by Lindsey Thomas at March 8, 2006 1:29 PM | Comments (2)

 

The day after Oscar: "Download day"

Filed under: Film

Being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar not only increases the film's popularity at the thater and the DVD store, it now insures that it will be downloaded like never before. A website called Torrentfreak, devoted to the super-popular file-sharing program BitTorrent, refers to the day after the Academy Awards show as "Oscar winner download day." Some in the d/l'ing community believe that the Oscar-inspired downloads are a sure way to get caught precisely because of their known popularity. (Maybe now's the time to snag those episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. instead.) Ironic note: currently, the most downloaded video related to the Oscars is the award ceremony itself.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 7, 2006 2:29 PM | Comments (0)

 

But Ringo will still sound like Ringo

Filed under: Music

Vinyl purists who believe analog still rules and digital fans who think music is best played by laser agree on one thing: the original CDs of The Beatles' catalog suck. They've never been redone since they were first released to mixed reviews in the late '80s, and nearly 20 years later, their sonics seem worse than ever and long overdue for an upgrade. According to vinyl guru Michael Fremer, it may be around the corner: in a piece for his webpage Music Angle about the next Capitol Beatles box, engineer Roy Jensen tells Fremer "rather casually, that EMI was working at Abbey Road on the long overdue remastering of the entire UK Beatles catalog." No word on any vinyl reissues, but savvy turntable owners avoid the Japanese albums still sold for $35 to $60-- they were sourced from those same rotten-sounding CDs, not master tapes.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 7, 2006 12:26 AM | Comments (0)

 

Atmosphere mashed up with 50 Cent

Filed under: Local Music

There's Slug again on the cover of Urb, between DJ Craze and Princess Superstar (click photo to enlarge). Meanwhile, MTVu is filming an episode of Backstage Pass with Atmosphere at SXSW next week (submit your own questions via the show's link). Even better (and beyond this bit of previously reported mashup), some of Ant's tracks for Atmosphere and Felt have been variously combined with Amerie, Gwen Stefani, and 50 Cent on DJ Five & Pizzo's recent Backpack Thugs 2005 Megamix (buy here or here; read about it here). Listen here to Fitty rapping "Just a Lil Bit" over "Smart Went Crazy" as we round up other local rap news: Rhymesayers labelmate P.O.S. is getting nationwide press play for his new album (reviewed here in City Pages; scroll down)--including an "A-" in Spin. I missed his show a couple weeks ago in New Orleans, but my friend Machelle told me he faced a crowd of less than a hundred at the Howlin' Wolf, and made the event special by getting down offstage and performing his whole set on the floor. (Check out photos from the San Francisco show.) Closer to home, Truthmaze's Saturday Varsity set was well-attended and fun as hell, while the Unknown Prophets' ID show the same night at the Triple Rock was sold-out chaos (at one point, DJ Willy Lose appeared in a chicken suit--'nuff said). Oh, and Trama is going into the studio this week with Cheap Cologne to work on a new album.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 6, 2006 5:02 PM | Comments (0)

 

A triple-feature just for Oscar night

Filed under: Film

After spending hours watching tonight's Academy Awards, what could be better than ending the evening with a triple feature devoted to the event?

1) The Oscar (1966), starring Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett. One of the best bad movies ever made, which is only fitting. Stephen Boyd seems in on the joke as he plays a scum-sucking, back-stabbing actor hellbent on winning the big prize, and he's a riot. The rest of the cast is funny for other reasons. It's written by Harlan Ellison, and does it ever show-- listen to this beautifully awful Ellisonian speech that was forced into Tony Bennett's mouth (his first and last film appearance). "I was twitchin', just like a spastic!"

2) A Star is Born (1954), starring James Mason and Judy Garland. Doesn't everyone really watch The Oscars hoping for a moment like this movie's most famous scene, where Mason drunkenly crashes his young bride's spotlight moment and roughs her up? And Mrs. Jon Stewart really missed her chance last night.

3) I'll Do Anything (1994), starring Nick Nolte and Albert Brooks. James L. Brooks' follow-up to Broadcast News about what happens to an actor who doesn't get the award. It was also a movie about striving for artistic integrity in Hollywood that allowed all eight musical numbers by Prince to be completely cut after they were panned at screenings.

Posted by Steve Monaco at March 5, 2006 9:44 PM | Comments (0)

 

Springsteen to release album of TV theme song covers

Filed under: Music

Habitues of fan sites like Greasy Lake and Backstreets have already heard the buzz about a forthcoming Bruce Springsteen record, and as of this morning it's official: Next month (April 25, to be exact), Springsteen will release The Youngest One in Curls: The TV Tunes. The album's 13 tracks will include beloved standards such as "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" and "Ain't We Lucky We Got 'Em (Good Times)" as well as interpretive readings of less-familiar classics: a calypso version of the Patridge Family's "Come On, Get Happy!" and a rockabilly rendition of Donny Hathaway's "And Then There's Maude," which Springsteen calls "sort of a pre-feminist anthem." (Purchasers of the DualDisc format will get two extra tracks, including Springsteen's first whistling duet, with Steve Van Zandt on "The Andy Griffith Theme.")

"I was watching a lot of old TV shows with my kids," said Springsteen from his New Jersey home, "and I was just struck by how enduring some of those old theme songs are. 'These happy days are yours and mine' speaks in some fashion to a dream a lot of people still harbored in the '70s, even after the idealism of the '60s had started to turn back on itself and die away. 'Green acres is the place to be,' same thing. It captures a strain of agrarian utopianism that has very deep roots in America.

"As an artist, it's my job to preserve a little bit of that if I can."

Springsteen is expected to follow with a short tour beginning in May, backed by a satellite dish, 13-inch Magnavox, and remote control. "We're looking at small venues, mostly," he added. "Places with that living room sound, that living room feel."

Read the press release.

Posted by Steve Perry at March 3, 2006 11:07 AM | Comments (4)

 

5 Silly Questions: PZ Myers

Filed under: 5 Silly Questions

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. For almost three years he's been blogging on culture, politics, and most notably, the evolution/Intelligent Design debate at Pharyngula. It's the resurgence of the debate over evolution and Myers's intelligent, humorous, and, at times, incendiary commentary on the subject that quickly made his blog a popular destination. His being a biologist and a professor, I thought it necessary to send PZ five really stupid questions to get his thoughts on subjects ranging from Tony Danza to dogs and monkeys fighting. Here's what PZ had to say...

 

1. If you could have anyone in history on your Pictionary team, who would it be?
Gary Larson. And I would hope that many of the questions would involve cows. I suppose my team would be saying, "I don't get it" a lot, but it would still be worth it.

2. Who's luckier - those Powerball-winning meat packers or Tony Danza?
Don't meat packers use really nifty power tools on large dead animals, scooping out piles of entrails and splattering walls with blood, playing with very sharp knives and hacking and sawing through bone and tendon? Who cares about this Powerball thing... I'd rather do that than be Tony Danza.

3. If PZ Myers fell in the woods, and no one was around to hear him, would he make a noise?
Oh, I've done that. It was a lovely Spring day in the Hoh rain forest; it was drizzling -- it's almost always raining there, of course -- and I slipped while clambering over a slick and mossy fallen tree. There was a soft squelch and a kind of soggy crunch as the rotted wood gave way, against a background of hissing rain and soughing wind and the burbling of the river nearby. There was also a delightful scent of cedar. It was a glorious sensory experience which, unfortunately, you missed... because you weren't there. Don't you regret asking, now? There was a moment in time which you did not share, a small, perfect event which no one but I witnessed, and the rest of the universe must lament missing.

4. You're an animal guy, if a dog and a monkey got into a fight, who would win? The monkey, easy. The dog would have some dignity, while the monkey would fight dirty. Real dirty. You'd feel filthy and ashamed just watching it. You ought to feel embarrassed for even proposing it. Do you hate puppy dogs or something?

5. If you could drive 500 miles in any direction from Morris, where would you prefer to end up?
Dang. I had to look it up on a map to see what was 500 miles away from me. It looks like that would put me in Rockford, IL, or northern Missouri, or in Rapid City, SD, or somewhere in the howling wilderness 150 miles north of Winnipeg. Can I just stay home?

Feeling filthy and ashamed reminds me I'm still alive, PZ! Thanks for answering these silly questions! Read PZ everyday at Pharyngula and check out Mike Mosedale's cover story on Myers here.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 2, 2006 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

 

Truth Is

Filed under: Local Music

Truthmaze (a.k.a. Truth Maze, a.k.a. B Fresh, a.k.a. IBM) has one of the longest-running careers in Minneapolis hip-hop. He beatboxed with the groundbreaking I.R.M. Crew in the mid-'80s, rapped with the Micranots in the early '90s, and has since played percussion or performed spoken-word with a number of bands (read more about him here, here, and here, or check out his pages at myspace and mnartists.org). Dubbed "the Afrika Bambaataa of Minneapolis," Truthmaze is one of the few MCs who could credibly rap, "North Side full-throttle/Mister Influence, I taught Aristotle," as he spits on his new, long-awaited solo debut, Expansions + Contractions (Psoems 1:1) (Tru Ruts/Speakeasy Records). The album is a true event, combining the full range of his past live music and electro into a carnival of poetry, hard funk, and raw rap, with guests ranging from multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker to fellow ex-Micranot I Self Devine. I caught up with Truthmaze via cell phone in England.

CTG: What are you up to there?

Truthmaze: I'm outside of Leeds, exchanging and sharing with young poets here. I've done three performances so far, mostly [songs] from the album, with DJ Fundamentalist from Hecatomb. I went to the illest dub party. It was dub and drum-n-bass, and I got to meet LTJ Bukem's brother, King Chris. I'm recording down here with him and his partner.

CTG: A lot of old fans will be surprised to hear you as a real soul singer on this new album.

Truthmaze: Man, I can't sing. I'm just finding what feels really good and learning how to hold that as a note.

CTG: Is this your first straight-up rap music since 1993's Hoods Pack the Jam [the Micranots cassette]?

Truthmaze: I guess you could say that. But in certain circles, you could still hear me freestyling like it ain't nothing.

CTG: Since you moved to Atlanta and back in the mid-'90s, you've been kind of out of the spotlight. What have you been doing?

Truthmaze: Trying to keep my fucking sanity. I'm being real honest with you. I mean, the best way I can put it is, I've been doing a lot of different things because all these different genres is just a part of me. I decided a long time ago that I'm not going to be stuck with making what people want to call hip-hop.

CTG: Last question: Where and when were you born?

Truthmaze: I was born in Hennepin County Hospital, my brother. I don't want my birthday in there. Just put a question mark for my age. Either a question mark or an infinity symbol or a dolphin or something.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at March 1, 2006 2:36 PM | Comments (5)

 

Watch The Hold Steady instead of working

Filed under: Music

Craig Finn and crew filmed a video for their single "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" from their second album Separation Sunday. The video features bandmates Finn, Bobby Drake, Tad Kubler, Franz Nicolay, and Galen Polivka crammed onto a tiny stage amongst 1950s basement accoutrements, rocking for a couple dozen head-bobbing fans. You can also watch the video for "The Swish" off their debut, Almost Killed Me, here. Check out "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" and let us know what you think.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 1, 2006 12:50 PM | Comments (1)

 

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