Watch Craig Finn and Lifter Puller play "The Bears" on Jenny Jones

Craig Finn performing on Jenny Jones.

The memories of Lifter Puller jostling the Twin Cities in the late '90s can hopefully live on -- via film. The group's guitarist-keyboardist Steve Barone is making one last push to find archival video of the group for a short documentary.

One nugget that he has just shared via YouTube is Craig Finn's scabrous pre-The Hold Steady outfit performing "The Bears" from Half Dead and Dynamite on the Chicago-based The Jenny Jones Show in 1999. Fitting that the episode's topic was "Stripper Wars." View all of the glorious swooping camera work in Ms. Jones' studio below.

See Also:
Why Craig Finn loves Friday Night Lights so much
Local Frames: New videos from Bon Iver, P.O.S., Craig Finn, the Blind Shake, and more




Barone sent us this note:

I just uploaded our performance from the Jenny Jones show in 1999 to YouTube for the first time. It's something our fans have been itching to see for years and I'm hoping it can motivate them to dig out some random show tape in some box in their basement.

Most video footage of the band does not exist online because of the simple fact that the cameras in the '90s were taped based and people didn't really go to the trouble to digitize them when YouTube hit. I'm trying to find the people who actually brought cameras out to shows.

I'm the band's archivist and over the years and especially during the period we were collecting photos for the little 2009 book we put out, I've received tapes from friends and fans and digitized them for safe keeping. The footage I've collected so far has been marinating nicely on my hard drives. Although we have plenty of photos because there were two photogs in the band, I could really use just a couple more video assests to fill in some gaps of time.

Fans are encouraged to e-mail Barone at info@lftrpllr.com with their footage.

---

City Pages on Facebook | Gimme Noise on Facebook | Twitter | e-mail us