Minneapolis / St. Paul Music Blog

Ten years ago, I reviewed local singer/songwriter

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!

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.

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"...

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:

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?

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...

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.)

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

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...

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)...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.