Minneapolis / St. Paul Music Blog

From the City Pages:
-- Har Mar Superstar on rock-stardom, HBO show, and Drew Barrymore
"Sean Tillman never stops living the American Dream."
-- Sharp Teeth bite off Lines and Stars
"It's the grunge-pop trio's second album."
-- The Songs We Can't Escape feat. Shakira, Battlehooch, Alison Iraheta, Social Studies & Warpaint.

Slideshows:
-- Uptown Bar: The Final Show
-- They Might Be Giants bring the nerdery to First Ave

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OPENING

FLAME & CITRON: Two assassins in the Danish resistance kill Nazis and their sympathizers, in a film tinged with moral ambiguities. (Uptown Theatre)
City Pages: "Flame & Citron is less about the battle between good and evil than about losing one's way in the fog of war, which makes it hard to tell friend from foe and complicates the heroic honor codes of movies about the 'good war.'" (Edina Cinema)
Star Tribune: 3.5 stars Pioneer Press: 1.5 stars RottenTomatoes.com: 84% positive

B FRESH Photography

​You may know Lady Of Rage from her famous early-'90s hit single "Afro Puffs" that came out like a warning siren from a tough-as-nails sister and featured Snoop Dogg. Her deep, fearless voice bellowed through the speakers on said hit unexpectedly at Epic in Minneapolis on Thursday when Snoop surprised everyone with her introduction. It made the Wonderland High Tour truly memorable and had Twitter going crazy.

Lady of Rage has made quite an impact on hip-hop's timeline with her lyrical style, but has been in hibernation cooking up her next album, Verbal Abuse. Even with her absence from the scene, there was no need for her to don a dark blue prison jumpsuit or have buff men dancing behind bars (circa 1995 Source Awards) to demonstrate how fierce she still is.

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Just when you thought that Jeremy Messersmith would never record a Beatles cover, the MN Beatle Project (Vol. 1) has made the dream a reality. The benefit CD, which will also feature the likes of Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, Ice Palace, and the Suicide Commandos, is being released in December with all of the proceeds from its sale going to "rebuild and enhance music and art education for children in Minnesota public schools."

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​(Photo by Ann Marsden)
This week is a good week for parents who are fans of punk rock as the Suicide Commandos will be playing a family-friendly set at the Walker. Punk rock not your thing? There's plenty more to do after the jump. 

www.​shanemccauley.​com

​Back in the early 2000s, there was a duo called Hollertronix out of Philadelphia that experimented with splicing all sorts of party jams together -- from rap to dance to balie funk and beyond -- creating what would become a new culture of tastemakers. One of the two went on to pretty much discover (and date) M.I.A. and become the king of the skinny-jeans-wearing dance party contingency. His name is Diplo. The other, Low Bee, took a slightly quieter path and aside from commanding dancefloors across the world, launched a web site that ended up uniting the whole damn scene with a hugely popular message board called The Hollerboard.  

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Radio K: Singles chart for the week of 11/2/09

1. A Sunny Day in Glawgow, "Shy"


2. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, "Easy"


3. Atlas Sound, "Logos"


4. Kurt Vile, "Freak Train"


5. Fuck Buttons, "Surf Solar"


6. The Flaming Lips, "Silver Trembling Hands"


7. Karl Blau, "Dark Sedan"


For a comprehensive chart of the week's top album as well as additional information on the station, please visit Radio K.

​Famous Hollywood dermatologist (I know, what?) Arnold Klein sat down with TMZ last night to dish up some dirt on the late Michael Jackson, including a little tidbit about Minnesota's own Prince:

Bad was supposed to be an M.J.-Prince duet, Klein says. But it fell through when Prince showed up at Jacko's house and wouldn't shut up. Guy just talked and talked and talked and then, when he finally left, Jacko didn't bother calling him back and the two-man version of the song never happened.

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There's a fine line between boredom and confidence, and last night at the Triple Rock, Har Mar Superstar and Kool Keith spent the evening teetering on that razor's edge in a mercurial, uneven show. At times raptly entertaining, at times stunningly flat, both performers seemed to beg the question of themselves: were they letting their well-earned stage presence carry the show, or were they just phoning it in?

There's a follow up question: if you've paid $20 for the privilege of watching them, is there a real difference?