Minneapolis / St. Paul Music Blog

Here are my least favorite songs of '05. The coming of a new year has a tabula rasa effect on radio, right? Please?

"My Humps" Black Eyed Peas
Fergie turns in this year's least sexy performance, with the nyah-nyah vocal delivery of a prepubescent boy and vernacular that reminds women to schedule regular mammograms. Not a bad PSA, I guess.

"Just the Girl" The Click Five
Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger generally knows his way around a pop song. So why'd he write this groaner about falling in love with a total bitch? The lyrics are particularly maddening: "'Cause she's bittersweet/ She knocks me off of my feet." Dude, it's your feelings, not the girl, that should be described as bittersweet. Buy a dictionary.

"Don't Cha" Pussycat Dolls
Another supposedly sexy song that misses its mark by several lengths of Astrolubed vinyl. Radio's grimiest offering since Xtina's "Dirrty" makes an Herbal Essence shower sound genuinely orgasmic.

"Cater 2 U" Destiny's Child
This one's easy. Every time it comes on the radio, my boyfriend starts up with the "Tie my shoes! Beyonce would!" It's funny. Really. But I guess if a woman expects a guy to pay her "Bills, Bills, Bills," he should be getting something in return. Hey sweetie, pay my rent! Jay-Z would!

"Beverly Hills" Weezer
It's weird how the absolute worst track on an otherwise innocuous album gets picked as the lead single. I'm not sure which is a bigger geek-rock faux pas: recycling a Steve Miller Band riff or the pretend-I'm-not-a-millionaire-and-pity-me lyrics. Makes you wonder just how bad the hundreds of unrecorded River Cuomo songs are.

Today 89.9 KMOJ-FM aired its top 89 most requested songs of 2005, including Mint Condition's "Whoaa" at number 55. Here's the entire list (thanks to Bianca Tebbs for faxing it over):

89. "Like You" Bow Wow f/ Ciara
88. "1, 2 Step" Ciara
87. "Gold Digger" Kanye West f/ Jamie Foxx
86. "I Should've Cheated" Keyshia Cole
85. "Only you" Ashanti
84. "One Wish" Ray J
83. "Victory" Yolanda Adams
82. "Where I Wanna Be" Kindred the Family Soul
81. "Tell Me" Bobby Valentino
80. "1 Thing" Amerie
79. "All Because of You" Marques Houston
78. "U Already Know" 112
77. "How Could You" Mario
76. "Baby Mama" Fantasia
75. "Ain't No Need to Worry" Rueben Studdard
74. "Ain't Gonna Beg You" Fantasia
73. "Jet Lag" Joss Stone
72. "Confessions Part 2" Usher
71. "Trippin'" Toni Braxton...

The Minnesota Fringe Festival is taking applications for shows through Tuesday, January 31, at 6:00 p.m. sharp. Prospective producers have to get the form physically into the office by then, and forms postmarked before the drop-dead date but arriving after it will be burned for fuel in the Fringe's vast late-application-powered energy plant (all true except for the last part). Forms can be downloaded at the Fringe's web site, and the subsequent lottery will take place on February 6, with shows randomly drawn via proxy ping-pong balls. Those prone to artistic indecision needn't fret: show titles and descriptions can be changed after applications are received. So if you're putting the finishing touches on your Marxist tapdancing erotic parlor mystery, act sooner rather than later.

Not since Priceline.com has there been such a deal, or spokesman: The William Shatner DVD Club is open for business. "William Shatner has culled the thousands of films he has seen into a collection of the best Sci-Fi, Horror & Fantasy movies available." And for only $47.99 a year, you can own 12 of them, featuring some of Bill's favorite actors, like Daniel Baldwin and Judd Neslon [sic]. Better still, you can "Get William Shatner's opinion before you go to the theatre or watch it on DVD!" as well as vote on his best Star Trek performance. (ST III: Search for Spock is already checked for your convenience.) Too bad there's no mention of some of Shatner's best films being in the queue, like Incubus, the only film to date in Esperanto, and Want a Ride, Little Girl?, where he wears both a tank-top and a leisure suit.

The bad news first: a new film based on Charles Bukowski's Factotum, which was shot around town and even guest-stars a City Pages writer, has been dropped by its theatrical distributor right before its American premiere. Picturehouse, a distributorship owned and run by New Line and HBO, made the announcement just as the film was scheduled to be shown at Sundance. (Matt Dillon plays Bukowski/Chinaski, and it was directed by Scandanavian filmmaker Bent Hamer-- both have been singled out in the positive European reviews.) The good news is about another indy film with Minneapolis roots: Hoop Dreams, the 1994 documentary, was one of the 25 films added to this year's National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Films are added "because of their cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance." It's always a good list, and you can see this year's picks here.

With 2005's best concerts still looming large in the rearview mirror, I'm already prepping my 2006 list. (An Archers of Loaf reunion at the 400 Bar?!?) Here, in chronological order, are my top 10 favorite shows by out-of-towners. I'm predisposed to the indie rock, so feel free to throw your own suggestions in the comments.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - 400 Bar
Menomena - 7th St. Entry
Stars - 400 Bar
Weezer - First Avenue
The Hold Steady - Grand Old Day
Eels - Pantages Theater
U2 - Target Center
The Arcade Fire - First Avenue
M.I.A. - Fine Line Music Cafe
Metric - Quest Ascot Room

Spin Magazine is reporting that St. Paul-born comedian Mitch Hedberg died accidentally in March of "multiple drug toxicity," including cocaine and heroin, citing reports obtained from the New Jersey medical examiner's office. Hedberg was 37 when he was found dead in a hotel room in Livingston, New Jersey, while on a club tour. Hedberg had been diagnosed with a heart defect, and the initial belief was that he died of heart failure. Hedberg cut his teeth at Acme Comedy Co., which led to numerous stints on "The Late Show with David Letterman" and Howard Stern's radio show, as well as a small role in the Cameron Crowe film "Almost Famous."

Jim Walsh previews tonight's Flamin' Oh's comeback in City Pages. And this just in our email from Rich Mattson: "This Friday, December 23rd, a very special event: Flamin' Oh's--CD Release Party! with special musical guests: 11:30 Flamin' Oh's, 10:30 Ol' Yeller, 9:30 Blame, 8:30 The Hard Left at the FINE LINE, 318 1st Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55401 612-338-8100. Now, let me tell you all a little story about my love affair with the Flamin' Oh's. Way back in the summer of 1980 I was a 13 year old rock and roll fan without a clue in tiny West Eveleth Minnesota. I was listening to Ted Nugent, Van Halen, Kiss, and just starting to find bands like the Cars and the Police. I was leaving my friend Timmy Leseman's house one day and heard this punchy, poppy, completely infectious rock and roll music playing out of his neighbor's window. The neighbor was one of the big bullies of the village, of which there were so many back then..

Here are the top-selling DVDs heading toward Minneapolis just in time for Christmas, according to Amazon.com:

1. Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Widescreen Edition)
2. Batman Begins (Two-Disc Deluxe Edition with Comic Book)
3. March of the Penguins (Widescreen Edition)
4. Firefly - The Complete Series
5. Madagascar (Widescreen Edition)
6. Lost - The Complete First Season
7. Arrested Development - Season Two
8. Cinderella (2-Disc Special Edition)
9. Bob Dylan - No Direction Home
10. Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story

2003 saw the oddly inexplicable reappearance of Wire, influential British abstract thrashers from the late '70s who had resurfaced for a time a decade later as an unsatisfying electronic band. Odder still was the fact that the album they came up with was quite good. Now stockings can be stuffed with Return the Gift by the Gang of Four, in which another batch of late '70's Brits return. This time out they take the step of re-recording a batch of their best early stuff, which is either nicely inspired or appallingly cynical. Anyway, it sounds good. And this is the time of year when a Marxist rant set to a tricky funk beat laced with buzzsaw guitar can do the trick. Click here for a vintage interview with the Gang of Four.

Here are the top-selling CDs heading toward Minneapolis just in time for Christmas, according to Amazon.com:

1. X&Y by Coldplay
2. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall [Live] by Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane
3. Breakaway by Kelly Clarkson
4. American Idiot [Enhanced] by Green Day
5. Confessions on a Dance Floor by Madonna
6. Amarantine by Enya
7. At Folsom Prison [Extra tracks] [Original recording remastered] [Live] by Johnny Cash
8. Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3-Disc Set [Original recording remastered] by Bruce Springsteen
9. Monkey Business by Black Eyed Peas
10. Late Registration by Kanye West

Here are the top-selling books heading toward Minneapolis just in time for Christmas, according to Amazon.com:

1. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
2. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
3. The Chronicles of Narnia Boxed Set [Box set] by C.S. Lewis
4. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
5. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
6. The Truth (with jokes) by Al Franken
7. Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter
8. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
9. Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats--A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners by Rachael Ray
10. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Local theater troupe Live Action Set, the group behind this year's most-attended Fringe Festival show, Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban, is in search of participants for its Zombies on Ice performance, which will take place on Medicine Lake in Plymouth as one of this year's many Art Shanty Projects. The first show is January 13 at 3:00 p.m., and 50 to 100 participants are still needed to fill the roles of zombies, make-up artists, and zombie team leaders.

Those interested need not be skilled at playing the undead on a frozen body of water: Galen Treuer of Live Action Set says the only thing you need is an ability to "propel across the ice in a jerky, zombie-like manner," and the desire to have your frozen and snot-encrusted face "made up in the gruesome style of violent decay." Of course, a love of blood-red icicles dripping from your numbed little nose doesn't hurt anything, either. Anyone desiring to play the winter dead should contact Treur at gtreuer[at]gmail.com.

The Associated Press is reporting that actor John Spencer, who plays vice presidential candidate Leo McGarry on "The West Wing," has died of a heart attack at age 58. Ironically, McGarry left his chief of staff position to recover from a heart attack. Spencer won an Emmy award in 2002 for playing McGarry and was also familiar to fans of "L.A. Law" as lawyer Tommy Mullaney during that show's later seasons. His film career included supporting roles in Forget Paris, The Rock, and The Negotiator. Read the AP story here.

Honeydogs's leader Adam Levy went into the hospital Thursday night and is having an emergency appendectomy today. Levy is reportedly fine, but the Honeydogs have cancelled their shows at the 7th St. Entry this weekend. The line-ups for the shows ($6 at the door) are now:

Friday
The Sirachas
Rattletrap
Ellis

Saturday:
Byzantine Generals Problem
Coach Said Not To
Joanna James

Just look at that perfectly artificially-lit babyface on the left: Ellen Pompeo (Grey's Anatomy) looks so angelic and unassuming with that faraway Christ-baby gaze and those enviable cheekbones you could rest multiple copies of the Oxford English Dictionary on. And fans of Grey's (and Old School) like her that way: delicate and dainty and incapable of plucking the head off a dead dandelion. (It aches, you know.) Last week, though, they got a taste of Pompeo's offscreen persona when she was on Punk'd, and now they're saying the bitch is crazy.

The print version of today's Culture To Go features a rock and roll crossword puzzle with a local flavor courtesy of Jeremy Grace, mandolinist with Murzik. If you're tearing your hair out over 66 Across, look no further than the jump to find all the answers.

Hey everybody, here's a fun new game to play in the comments! Connect bands via cover songs and try to make the longest chain possible. Style points awarded for variety. A good way to start is to think of some established artists who are down for the occasional cover (e.g. Johnny Cash, Devo, David Bowie) Here's a sample:

Bob Dylan
XTC "All Along the Watchtower"
Joe Jackson "Statue of Liberty"
Goldfinger "Is She Really Going Out with Him?"

Unfortunately, this one stops short because really, who's going to cover Goldfinger? I haven't been able to get past a sixer (see comments.) Think you can do better?

Fox cut Arrested Development's current season from 22 episodes to just 13 last month, giving the critically acclaimed show little hope of ever garnering an audience beyond its cult following before its yanked from the network for good. But Hollywood Reporter announced today that the Emmy-award-winning show might get picked up by Showtime.

Arrested Development has never been on sure footing with Fox, despite the critical acclaim its received: The show's been in danger of cancellation since it first premiered in 2003, and when news hit this year that the series would indeed be cut back before becoming a Fox footnote, fans organized a petition to save the show. Unlike a decade or so ago, when comedies ruled the roost, only two comedies have consistently landed in the Nielsen Top 20 this year: My Name is Earl and, perhaps one of the worst shows on TV today, Two and a Half Men. Why isn't anyone watching comedies anymore? If we supposedly have shorter attention spans and a need to escape from current events, why are hour-long crime dramas so popular? Leave your answers in the comments.

XM Satellite Radio has signed Bob Dylan to do a weekly hour-long broadcast beginning in March. The network offered Dylan a completely open format, commercial-free. So far, Bob plans to fill the time talking, playing music and interviewing guests, although most intriguing is the announcement that he'll also answer email he gets on the air. What's not announced is how much he's being paid, but it couldn't come close to the $500 million Howard Stern is getting from rival Sirius Satellite Radio. How either network affords anything would be the most interesting announcement of all, since neither has made a profit since they started: 1999 for Sirius, 1994 for XM.

Slate has joined a growing chorus (that includes Dylan Hicks) in declaring the Black Eyed Peas's "My Humps" possibly one of the worst pop songs ever written, recorded, widely distributed, and frequently downloaded. In the May 2004 issue, Blender Magazine published what it considered the 50 Worst Songs Ever, including such stalwarts as Starship's "We Built This City," Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and The Beach Boys's "Kokomo." So, does "My Humps" really deserve to be placed in this pantheon of musical poo? Give us your two cents in the comments section, as well as, you guessed it, the pop song you believe to be the worst ever exposed to human ears.

A company hired by record companies to pollute file-sharing networks with "spoof" audio and video files has just gone out of business. Overpeer was one of the first companies contracted by the music and movie industries to foul up peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa by flooding them with phony files. The logic was that the constant, overwhelming amount of spoof files would bring down the networks and discourage users from bothering to download anything. All it really did, however, was drive dowloaders to more sophisticated, and harder to track, BitTorrent networks, where fake files like Overpeer's practically never show up. Hence, the going-out-of-biz sign. (P.S. When Overpeer logged on in 2003, there were an estimated 3 million downloaders on the p2p networks-- today it's 10 million.)

The biggest name in stand-up comedy during the 1970s, Richard Pryor, died today of a heart attack. Spike Lee: "For me, Richard was a great. He was an innovator. He was a trailblazer, and the way he showed social commentary in his humor opened up a universe for other comics to follow in his footsteps." In addition to his stand-up, Pryor also appeared in movies such as "Lady Sings the Blues," "Car Wash," "Silver Streak," and "The Wiz," and co-wrote the script for "Blazing Saddles." Read the obit at CNN here.

A new documentary about the movie ratings board, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, has gotten the dread NC-17-- the current equivalent of the original X-- from its irritable subject. The official reason for the box-office kiss-of-death is that the film includes scenes from other films that were given the rating, or were cut to avoid it. Director Kirby Dick (whose name alone would have gotten it rated at least PG) claims that his film "deals with an insidious form of censorship resulting from a ratings process that has been kept secret for more than 30 years." It also questions the board's ratings decisions regarding violence and sex, and whether gay-themed films get more restrictive ratings.

75-year-old British playwright Harold Pinter won't be able to attend the ceremony for his Nobel Prize this Saturday, but he's already videotaped his acceptance speech. He describes the Iraq War as "blatant state terrorism," and reserves extra tongue lashing for the "pathetic and supine" Tony Blair, suggesting that Blair be tried as a war criminal. Pinter points out that he'd see President George W. Bush tried as well, but the crafty W. has made the scenario impossible by refusing to recognize international courts. The White House has released no immediate word whether Pinter will be included in this year's Christmas card list.

Ted Rall is one of the most controversial and talented editorial cartoonists in the business. He depicts President Bush as a wild-eyed, dictatorial generalissimo and Iraqi war vets as Abu Ghraib-inspired sexual deviants. Rall is extremely forthright in his political opinions, expressing them as a Pulitzer Prize-nominated cartoonist, an op-ed columnist, and a globe-trotting radio commentator through various periods in his life. The current administration and its actions have given Rall more than enough fodder, so why in Monday's cartoon did he feel the need to take a shovel to the head of fellow cartoonist Chris Ware?

The New Oxford American Dictionary editors picked "podcast" as 2005's word of the year. Over here, the folks at Webster's chose "infosnacking," a word most likely only to be found in a "Cathy" cartoon. Webster's isn't known for being ahead of (or even on) the curve: The big new word of 2004 was "blog," and a few years before that "bootylicious" saw its way into the word bible even though the term had already gone the way of "jiggy" before it--to the Land of Lucinda Dickey. If the name doesn't ring a bell, look it up, er, infosnack that girl. Because according to Webster's, if you're reading this right now you're already guilty of "infosnacking." We feel a snack attack coming on, or have we just discovered the subject of next Sunday's "Cathy" comic strip--the annoying co-worker who's so busy infosnacking poor Cathy is left to eat her bagged lunch alone?

Editors of Webster's New World College Dictionary Select "Infosnacking" as Word of the Year for 2005

A phenomenon that's taking place in offices all over the world now has a name.

Maybe NBC's "must-see" Thursday line-up should include a show about sock puppet from 2003. As NBC continues to take a precipitous fall in the ratings, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog became the peacock channel's top iTune download after the network announced its partnership with Apple on Monday. Meanwhile, NBC has been struggling to crack the Nielsen Top 10: According to the latest Nielsen ratings, only three NBC shows even land in the Top 20, and one of those shows is E.R., which is barely breathing at 11-years-old.

Whether the Insult factor is a reflection of NBC's lack of imaginative programming or America's tastes is to be determined. Do we really want to spend two bucks to download an entire program to watch on matchbook-size screens when we can DV-R it for free? Why does this sound like the ultimate rip-off? But there is some good news for NBC, or at least viewers vying for smart (and free!) comedies: The network announced last week that My Name is Earl and The Office are moving to Thursdays in January, a sign that the network is willing to support these fledgling but clever shows. Let's just pray the opportunists at NBC don't call for Triumph to make sweeps-month guest appearances as the office's new temp.

There's something very "college" about Reticence's ReMedial. Maybe it's the way the local trio draws inspiration from early emo volume knob-twiddlers like Sunny Day Real Estate and Hum. Appropriate to their sound, the band usually tackles serious subject matter like domestic abuse, divorce, and that age-old story about the musician who sacrifices his privacy in a quest for fame. (And indeed, one nice thing about being a no-name Midwestern band is that people generally leave you alone.) But the track that will perk up most twentysomethings' ears is "Up Up Down Down," a serene love song encrypted in a video game trick. The old-school Nintendo fans among us will recognize up up down down left right left right B A select start as the Konami code used to begin games like Contra and Life Force with 30 lives--in two-player mode. If that ain't the most sincere sign of young love, I don't know what is.

Sociologist, historian, and author James Loewen will speak at the U of M's Coffman Memorial Union Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. The event is free. The author of the critically acclaimed Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, released his most-recent book, Sundown Towns, about the creation of whites-only communities, in October. Lest anyone forget that those kinds of ordinances didn't just happen below the Mason-Dixon line, the 500-plus-page tome about the hidden history of racism reveals Edina, Minnesota's origins were as a segregated town whose antiquated rules were enforced well into the 1960s. A typical restrictive covenant for Edina property as outlined on page 116 of Loewen's book:

"No lot shall ever be sold, conveyed, leased, or rented to any person other than one of the white or Caucasian race, nor shall any lot ever be used or occupied by any person other than one of the white or Caucasian race, except such as may be serving as domestics for the owner or tenant of said lot, while said owner or tenant is residing thereon. All restrictions, except those in paragraph 8 (racial exclusion), shall terminate on January 1, 1964."

In other words, Loewen notes, the restriction to the "white or Caucasian race" was to continue forever. Today, Edina's African-American population hovers around one percent.