Minneapolis / St. Paul Blog

Get free media from City Pages' favorite artists

We're happy to announce the release of our new Media Taster! The City Pages Media Taster lets you actually hear the great music you read about in City Pages—just launch, click, and listen. Simply download the Media Taster and you'll automatically receive a digital mixtape of music on a semi-regular basis (including free MP3s), legal and free of charge. If you discover artists you like, the player allows you to purchase their music directly, track their new content and even send an email to recommend them to your friends.

What your taster will look like...

Download the City Pages Media Taster to start hearing music from local artists (like Haley Bonar and Mark Mallman) and national acts (like the Flaming Lips and the Hives):

UPDATE: The InRadio servers are getting hit pretty hard, so you may find the download slower than usual.

Jus Rhyme, 27, was the first contestant to mention "white supremacy" on Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show, a satirical reality program in which 10 aspiring (white) MCs from around the country compete for $100,000 while living together in the South Bronx. A native of Austin, Minnesota, the real-life Jeb Middlebrook has yet to embarrass himself too badly on national TV, though he maintains the onscreen persona of an earnest camp counselor amid "challenges" from hip-hop legends such as Prince Paul, Sadat X, and (white) host MC Serch. After a stint with AmeriCorps in San Diego, Jus spent a few years in the Twin Cities attending college and rapping under the name Privilege as part of the activist Hip-Hop Co-Op. He's now studying for his Ph.D. in L.A. and can be reached via www.myspace.com/ar15hiphop.

Remember when Law & Order was good? Remember when Minneapolis bands wrote great dream-pop hooks? The writing on the original TV series tanked not long after the show decided to kill off actress Jill Hennessy's character in a traffic accident in 1996. The local band Mollycuddle broke up four years later, but Hennessy loved the group's 1998 song "The Ballad of Jill Hennessy" enough that she's still talking about the band on national television years later. Hosts on The Today Show asked her about the tune last Friday, and the State subsequently reported that the song was played on the soundtrack of Hennessy's final episode (though this can't be right, can it? unless we're talking a re-edited version of the show--Hennessy didn't hear the song until 1999). Listen to the track here at www.guiltriddenpop.com.

That headline sounds a lot like a spam email subject line, but it's actually a pretty cool (if long time comin') feature at CP.com. Music to Go aggregates all the local music (plus a few non-local artists) that City Pages covers, with links to the articles and one free MP3 for your downloading pleasure. Free local music, and no RIAA goons knocking down your door? Gotta love that.

Dear Prince from Minneapolis

Please represent

No moons over Miami

Or product-placed breasts

Just play your guitar

For your pests from the Midwest

Do it for Lovey and Dungy

And Obama and Oprah

The Rainbow Children

Of the now and

Not-distant future

We'll be rooting for the home team

The Purple and the Gold

T.C. and Jackie and Arnellia

Shout-outs to St. Paul

Northside and Southside

And everyone in between

Can't hardly wait to see you

Do your sex machine thing

Yes, my twin brother

We've all still got faith

That you'll get our tongues wagging

And send us to bed

Then at the water cooler on Monday

We'll talk about "Head"

Dear Prince from Minneapolis

Please represent

Please represent

Please represent

The Minnesota Daily gossip column Holla Backlash reports that "tiny 21-year-old Brit rapper Lady Sovereign, who put out a record on Jay-Z's Def Jam label last year, was spotted downtown at the Gay '90s on Sunday, Jan. 14." Without a concert to play, apparently: "The real reason Sov made the trip, according to several eyewitnesses who saw the pipsqueak out clubbin', was for a little face time with someone supposedly named Andrea--yes, as in a female, Andrea. And by face time, we mean more like sucking face (or snogging in Brit-speak)." Lady Sovereign's personal life is her own, and everybody hates a stalker; but we can't help wonder if she'd be interested in working with local hip-hop producers or rappers while she's in town. SOV, hit me up. (Hat tip Keri Carlson.)

Just in time to relieve your pre-Super Bowl football withdrawal, local artist David Rathman's new show at the Weinstein Gallery carries on his usual work of sending up the mythology of American masculinity. Having already trained his reverant but blackly humorous sights on cowboys and boxers, he now (ahem) tackles football players, specifically the high school team of his small-town Montana alma mater. Images from the show, "Home and Away," after the jump; the artist's reception is tonight at 6:30 p.m. Weinstein Gallery, 908 W. 46th St, Mpls.

This just in: Ice-Rod, the absurdist, rat-tailed battle MC famous for rapping paper airplane instructions, instigating food fights, brushing his teeth onstage (then chugging orange juice), and battling to a tie with odds-on favorite Sage Francis, will make a rare appearance tonight at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

The man behind Ice-Rod's mustache, Michael Gaughan (a.k.a. Brother of Brother and Sister), is marginally famous for subverting the "serious" art of rock 'n' roll, rap, and even sculpture with witty charisma and balls-out goofiness. Ice-Rod is no exception, as evidenced by the legend his short career has become. Go here for a more complete history, then show up to the 331 and become a part of it.

Thursday, Jan. 25. 9:30 p.m. Free. 331 13th Ave. NE.

On January 6, we received a disturbing email from Michael Yonkers (one of City Pages' artists of the year, and a double honoree, whose '60s music I wrote about here last week). Yonkers gave permission to reprint the message, and sent along a link about "Pantopaque- (Myodil-) induced adhesive arachnoiditis": "I cannot even tell you how much misery this [disease] has caused to me," he writes, "and many others around the world. The link is from Australia, where they are pissed as hell. Geraldo Rivera did a story on it years ago, but the makers of the chemical have spent huge sums of money in America for a dis-information campaign. Most people in America that are suffering with it do not even know what is causing their problems, as almost no doctors are qualified to diagnose it correctly. It is a huge hidden story that no one wants to touch." Here's his email, with more about the controversy below*:

Post Secret, a website that encourages people to send their anonymous secret admissions via postcard, originally started as a community art project and gallery show. In the years that followed, it has rapidly spawned one of the most-read blogs on the internet, as well as two books. Frank Warren, the man behind the project, receives between 100 to 200 confessions a day. Recent cards included: "My Husband can't find his car keys because I hide them," "Sometimes I go shopping at Wal*Mart just so I'm not alone," and "My nightmares involve exploding showers and toilets."