Minneapolis / St. Paul Blog

The Mekons, Greil Marcus
March 28, 2008
Fitzgerald Theater
Review by Peter S. Scholtes
Photos by Daniel Corrigan

The Mekons take up dozens of pages in Greil Marcus books on punk, and even shelf space among my CDs and records, but I couldn't have hummed you one of their tunes until Friday night. The Mekons were always a great sound first -- kind of a hootenanny version of "All Tomorrow's Parties" -- with songs that seemed worth the trouble once I got around to the lyric sheet at some future date. I've withheld judgment because I'm an admirer of Greil Marcus, whom (full disclosure) I know slightly, and who made me a Sex Pistols fan 18 years ago at a Hungry Mind reading of his book Lipstick Traces.

Both Marcus (of the Bay Area) and the Mekons (of Leeds, Chicago, and elsewhere) have ties to the Twin Cities: Marcus through family and former City Pages staff, the Mekons through their former record label Twin/Tone. So it's no fluke that an onstage get-together of band and rock critic should occur here, at the Fitzgerald, hosted by radio star Maria Lucia and taped for her talk music program The Current Fakebook on 89.3 the Current, coinciding with Mekon Jon Langford's art opening the same night at Rogue Buddha in Northeast.

In Mary Oliver's world, prayers are made of grass.

The legendary poet read from her new work, Red Bird, at the State Theatre on Sunday. Because we are, in Oliver's parlance, on the shoulder of two seasons, many of the poems chosen were spring-themed. This is not a stretch for the Pulitzer Prize-winner: she has a poem entitled "Spring" in every book, a cyclical renewal where form mirrors content.

ARENA Bikini fundraiser
March 29, 2008
Review by Carl Atiya Swanson

Dance is sexy. Bikinis are sexy. Put the two together and you have ARENA Bikini, a Macy's sponsored fundraiser for ARENA Dances, one of the Twin Cities' premier dance companies. This first-time event, held at the 414 Sound Bar in the warehouse district, was designed to promote ARENA’s upcoming show waterBRIDGE at the Southern Theatre, and to pay their dancers -- something that is always appreciated.

Lightning & Thunder CD Release Show
March 28, 2008
The Varsity Theater
Review by Jordan Selbo

Better Than: Another rap show trying to look tougher and/or more hardcore than the next dude

The reggaetón/dancehall/hip hop/whatever you wanna call it ass-shaking revolution has officially arrived in the Twin Cities. With a core group of talented local artists co-opting, reinventing and reshaping the various mash-ups that are possible when musical roots plant in Caribbean soil, the relatively young scene is nevertheless already solid and diverse, as plainly evidenced by the recently unveiled CD comp "Lightning & Thunder" and its release party Friday. The disc, full of infectious and incessant jams featuring a slew of established vocalists alternately rapping, crooning and chanting in English, Spanish and Spanglish translated even better live, as the "Lightning & Thunder" band owned its grooves and blasted wicked stylee all night. The obvious sense of community felt amongst the artists and most fans of the small but vital scene solidified the night's electricity and hinted at the potential for something even bigger and better to come.

One needs to look no further than the Norling Photos at the Minnesota Historical Society or the Worlds Away exhibit at the Walker to see that the suburbs can serve as a prolific creative muse. Those that venture out to the fair town of Roseville this Saturday night will be treated to a hip evening of culture when Grumpy’s (2801 Snelling Ave. N.) hosts “Art Attack on the Suburbs.”

You don’t have to be an artist to make a statement. And, you most certainly do not have to spend your time like Jim Proctor, creating giant faux dandelions to fix a problem.

Hopkins City Council gave a State of City address at the Hopkins Center for the Arts on March 18 like none other. City Manager Rick Getschow addressed Hopkins residents acting as Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, allowing community members to provide questions to council members answers about city issues.

A con man hornswoggled the LA Times into believing that Sean "Puff P Diddy Daddy Whatever" Combs was involved in the shooting death of Tupac Shakur.

Corner bar owners who hoped the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers would use their lawyers to target only the bigger fish got a wake-up call yesterday. The ASCAP filed another suit against businesses where copyrighted music was performed without permission--aka, karaoke-ing without a license. Northeast Minneapolis tavern Scott's 1029 Bar was one of 22 establishments named in the complaint.

How did a random Nordeast cop bar make it into the national dragnet? Vincent Candilora from the ASCAP broke it down for me.

"We have licensing managers who work on teams. They go out, look for new establishments, and explain what we do." If the foot soldier can't convince a 90-person-capacity bar to cough up the $460.75 yearly license fee for performing the works of ASCAP artists, the bar could find the details of its next karaoke night commemorated in court documents.

For Scott's 1029 Bar, a well-loved refuge for Minneapolis' finest, that night came on September 6, 2007. The offending songs? "I Want to Know What Love Is," "Looking for Love" ... and "Runaway Train" by David Pirner (whose "Fuck you, man" to cops busting up a warehouse party was famously preserved on the Replacements EP Stink).

Messages left for the owners of the 1029 Bar, "A place to come have some fun, relax after work, get away from the kids, or just get drunk and be somebody!" were not returned.

El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment
Review by Jordan Selbo

El Guante's Haunted Studio Apartment, the new disc being promoted at Friday's Blue Nile show and only available at shows until this summer, is a megaton bomb on local indie rap, bound to be the heaviest breath of fresh air hip hop heads will suck in all year. And it succeeds despite itself. Any other rapper who used such potentially pretentious setups as modeling their art conception on Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, dividing their album into three "sessions" (one of which is spoken word...usually a clear warning to stay away), and including about 80 minutes of lyrical and conceptual denseness would inevitably drown in surface-level coffee shop boho-isms.