Has it already been 10 years? Was it really a decade ago that this Gimme Noise correspondent was being sneaked into the Turf Club, hiding his underage visage behind a bass drum, to see Malachi Constant?
Indeed it has. And today on Modern Radio's website, the label announced its celebratory plans for its 10 year anniversary. Head below the jump for details.
In a decade, when historians of the local music scene are looking back in all fondness, deciding which of the numerous notable locals might eke into the pantheon of all-time greats, the list will shorten considerably.
Sure, there have been numerous flashes in numerous pans. The stand-outs that have seized some print and some big crowds.
But the list of bands with true staying power? It thins to a trickle. And tonight at the Turf Club, two of them--STNNNG and Blind Shake--double team a midweek set that should get every self respecting Gimme Noise reader off their asses.
Wild Rumpus is the kind of place we wish we'd had as children. Not just a bookstore for kids--an imaginative playspace for kids, stacked floor to ceiling with books. A place with a tiny door set into the main entrance with its own handle and deadbolt, perfectly sized for the five and under set.
And on this Monday morning the store is packed with parents and offspring alike to hear Haley Bonar perform her new album, Sing With Me, in its entirety--a children's album. Yes, an honest to God children's album, from the songwriter who even in her earliest recording maneuvers was marked by a maturity beyond her years.
After the quick show, which found a few dozen unruly toddlers moved to pitch-perfect sing along, Bonar spoke with Gimme Noise about her decision to make a children's album, her life in Portland, and her plans for her next release.
It's a great mystery of life, the seeming imbalance between powers of creation and powers of destruction. It takes an oak tree a hundred years to grow and perhaps a minute to be felled.
The hits just keep coming for Owl City. After topping the Billboard and iTunes charts in October, Owl City has announced the logical next step in his illustrious career--footed American Apparel pajamas. Duh.
Odd merch tie ins are a rock tradition. Grace Slick lunchboxes? Check.
Gene Simmons thong underwear? Check. Har Mar Superstar beer cozies?
Well, we haven't actually seen one, but we bet it's in the works.
Anyone who has combed the used CD bins at a local record shop can tell you that the Lifter Puller catalog, which spans the band's career from 1994-2000, has long been out of print and considered somewhat of a buried treasure amongst audiophiles. Luckily, the band has just announced that their complete catalog will be reissued digitally next month, giving those of us who weren't around during Lifter Puller's heyday a chance to hear all of their old studio material. Lifter Puller was fronted by the Hold Steady's Craig Finn, with guitar work by his Hold Steady bandmate Tad Kubler, making these reissues a great opportunity for fans of Finn and Kubler's current work to discover their roots as an influential Twin Cities rock band.
Digital distributor the Orchard will reissue all three full-length studio albums and one EP (Lifter Puller, Half Dead and Dynamite, The Entertainment and Arts EP and Fiestas and Fiascos), along with a new album of rarities and live cuts called Slips Backwards.
In Defence are busy, busy boys. In addition to keeping up a lively recording regimen, the hardcore band just returned from a month tour in Europe, which was directly followed by a month on the road in the states.
They had their welcome home show on Monday at Memory Lanes. Gimme Noise sat with vocalist/daredevil Ben Crew and bassist Tony Hoff to talk out the intricacies of the ongoing war between pizza lovers and taco lovers.
It's been a feast year for Lookbook. After opening for Har Mar Superstar at a sold out Varsity Theater Show this weekend, Electrict Fetus showed that their debut full length, Wild At Heart, is their best selling local album this week.
Better yet? There's nine more! Head below the jump to see who else made this week's top 10 from Electric Fetus.
Following the release of The Interrogation this past March, Mayda is returning with a digital-only EP showcasing a different side of the local pop songstress. The acoustic songs on Eyes On the Water extend back to when Mayda was five and first picked up a guitar; music that comes as a stark contrast to the blazing pop songs that landed her spots on The Rachael Ray Show and Good Morning America.
While Cloud Cult has long since played its last show of the year, the band will be giving its fans some new material before the decade ends. Sort of. Craig Minowa and crew will be re-releasing 2003's They Live on the Sun and 2004's Aurora Borealis as an expanded, remastered double-disc album next month.
Just when you thought that Jeremy Messersmith would never record a Beatles cover, the MN Beatle Project (Vol. 1) has made the dream a reality. The benefit CD, which will also feature the likes of Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, Ice Palace, and the Suicide Commandos, is being released in December with all of the proceeds from its sale going to "rebuild and enhance music and art education for children in Minnesota public schools."
With Owl City's single, "Fireflies," skyrocketing to the #1 slot on the Billboard charts this week, the writers at Pitchfork thought it would be an opportune moment to cash in on some pageviews and take a big ol' dump on Owatonna native Adam Young's sugary electro-pop project. As we've seen before with the tastemaking site, when Pitchfork hates something, they really hate it, and they make no qualms about telling us exactly how insulted they feel by the sub-par quality of today's mainstream pop music.
As part of the "Making Music" series at the University of Minnesota's Whole Music Club, Erik Funk will appear tonight to talk about his experience in the music industry. In addition to years spent playing guitar and singing in the influential local punk band Dillinger Four, Funk co-owns the live music hot-spot Triple Rock Social Club.
From the Making Music website: "Funk will talk about the beginnings of D4 and their most recent release Civil War on Fat Wreck Chords, in addition to what he's got cooking across campus at the Triple Rock."
"Making Music" takes place tonight from 8pm - 10pm. Free for all ages, though seating is limited.
As a tribute to the seminal local punk rock band the Suicide Commandos, newly re-elected mayor RT Rybak is declaring this Saturday, November 7, "Suicide Commandos Day." The band will re-emerge to play three separate shows on Saturday: a pair of "10 and under" shows at the Walker Art Center during the day (one at 11 a.m. and one at 1 p.m.), and a late-night gig at the Dakota Jazz Club that begins at 11 p.m.
Though the band was most active in the late '70s, all three members are still involved in music to this day: Chris Osgood is Vice President of Organizational Development at McNally Smith College of Music; drummer Dave Ahl builds recording studios in the area; and bassist Steve Almaas is an active musician and music teacher in New York.
We recently received this submission via email and found Helm's piece to be a spot-on and heartfelt remembrance of the Uptown Bar, which closed its doors on Sunday, so we're posting it here unedited for our readers to enjoy.
Not Just Another Article about the Uptown By Helm Matthews
When I told a friend that I was going to write a piece about the Uptown bar he smiled and said, "Get in line." I realize there have been many articles already written about this Minneapolis institution, but they all seem to have the same theme: memories. The writers wrote of memories of bands that have played there or memories of what happened downstairs or memories of a first date. And that is fine. I enjoyed reading them.
Head over to MTVu's "The Freshmen" to cast your vote for local hip-hop artist Toki Wright, who just released his Rhymesayers debut earlier this year. Wright is the second Minnesota artist in as many weeks to be featured on "The Freshmen" poll, which features breaking artists; Solid Gold's Bodies of Water was one of the contenders last week.
Click here to vote (it looks like he's in second place so far), and watch the video for "Devil's Advocate" below.
We just received word from Dan Kramer of Estate that another one of their songs will be used in a prime-time TV show. Just the other week, their single "Message" was part of a recent episode of ABC's FlashForward, and tonight their song "Write to Make" will be featured on an episode of the popular CW drama "Gossip Girl."
The episode airs tonight at 8 p.m. Here's a stream of "Write to Make" for your listening pleasure:
Until Owl City, Har Mar Superstar, the hirsute popster extraordinaire, was Owatonna's most successful musical export.
Well, for the time being, Har Mar might have to yield the limelight to Adam Young, the appropriately surnamed musician behind Owl City. Today, he topped the Billboard Hot 100, signifying the current high water mark in a career that seemingly has no visible ceiling.
As the teaser reads on mtvU's site, "Your votes determine which videos get into rotation on mtvU each week only on The Freshmen." Even if you're one of the unfortunates who haven't signed on with a participating cable or satellite provider to get the far-beyond-standard-cable network (myself included), you should still head over to their site and vote Solid Gold's "Bible Thumper" into rotation. Why? Because even if you're not into looking out for the best interests of those around you in our fair Twin Cities, the alternative is some dude named Chalie Boy. Seriously.
In the opening chapters of Here Come the Regulars, Ian Anderson's authorial debut, he comes right out and says what everyone contemplating entrance into the music industry suspects--it's hard, failure is to be expected, and everyone in the industry survives on borrowed time.
But rather than be a hard-knuckled naysayer, Anderson, the head of Afternoon Records, manages to torque these realities into something more than pessimistic determination. In fact, these admissions of the reality of the music industry seem to be arguments of liberation--in a smaller, leaner music industry, the little guy has a fighting chance to do what he loves.
Rock and roll is an affair best left to the young. And when it comes to record label peeps, Shane Vader and Clara Salyer, both 17, are about as young as you'll find.
But there is no shortage of experience in the local music scene between them--Vader heads up local outfit Shoe Shiners, a band with whom he's been performing since he was 10 years old, and Salyer fronts Total Babe, the outstanding rock act, who is featured in this week's music section.
So when it came time for Ian Anderson, who runs the local behemoth Afternoon Records, to start a small imprint that would handle the smaller local releases that Afternoon had neither the time nor resources to put out, Vader and Salyer were shoe ins.
If you've had your ear to the rails in the last few months of the local music scene, you've heard Shahs. If you were around a few years ago, during the heyday of Twin cities DIY venues, you saw Shahs.
But if you haven't, time is running out for you to get a glimpse of one of the most elusive, quixotic local bands in recent memory. Shahs is the solo project of Tom Helgerson, formerly of mathsters Thank You, and it was revived this summer after a hiatus of almost two years, and has beein saturating local bills ever since.
For the Twin Cities, it's all coming to an end on Tuesday evening--after a final local show tomorrow night at the Hexagon, Helgerson will be boarding an Amtrak to Missoula, where he'll take up with Vampire Hands singer Colin Johnson.
Helgerson spoke with Gimme Noise last night over cheeseburgers and beer. Head below the jump for more info.
Aside from being a "band to watch" and having the "flyer of the week," Minneapolis' Kill to Kill have just released a video for the song "Sugar Sugar" which comes from their new Fighter EP (which is being released tonight at the Hex). "Sugar Sugar" comes produced by Northern Outpost, the local video site best known for its slick interview/performance pieces. In the past the site has featured such local acts as Gospel Gossip, Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles and, yes, even Kill to Kill. If you haven't had a chance to browse Northern Outpost's archives, you really need to get on that. Like yesterday.
For years, Skoal Kodiak has been the finest underground export these towns offer. Preferring the dank basement to the blandly legitimate stages of our above-ground venues, Skoal Kodiak's name is written in whisper campaigns, unpublicized shows, and dance parties of such reckless abandon, you can identify their fans by the morning-after bruises.
Well, not only is a new album in the works from the noise-dance savants, but it will bear the imprint of Modern Radio, one of the Twin Cities' most prized and well represented local labels.
At some point during tomorrow night's episode of FlashForward, viewers of the new ABC sci-fi drama will be listening to a new single by local dream-pop band Estate. FlashForward airs at 7 p.m. on Thursdays, and tomorrow's episode will feature Estate's latest single, "Message," off their forthcoming sophomore album. You can stream the new single here:
It pains us to even post this, but Uptown Bar booking manager Brian McDonough has sent out the final list of shows slated to take place at the ill-fatedclub, running up until their last night of business on November 1. Stop in while you still can -- and if you're planning on catching one of the very last shows next weekend, you might want to consider pre-purchasing your tickets on the Uptown's website.
DJ nights at the Hexagon have been a Monday staple for months now. Originally made notable by the DJ duo Hot Roxx, the Monday spots have seen a cycling roster of local musician DJs, populated by members of Thunder In the Valley, Daughters of the Sun, and other local rock notables.
Tonight, the local collective 8Hz is partnering with Hot Roxx to launch a listening party for 8Hz #01, its forthcoming compilation of local music, which features tracks by Fort Wilson Riot, Speed's The Name, and Me And My Arrow.
Don't call it a comeback--Shahs has been here for years. Photo by Nikki Miller.
Tom Helgerson is certainly on a headlong sprint out of our fair state.
After just a couple months of fevered activity following a long remission, his brainchild Shahs has found its way onto just about every bill worth seeing in this town, most recently, and notably, last night's Times New Viking show at the 7th Street Entry.
And just days after countrymen Lookbook scored a favorable (well, largely) review on Pitchfork, Helgerson's "Pablo Picasso" got a mention and a streaming mp3 on the national tastebreaker website. NOTE: Contrary to Pitchfork's statement, and to our earlier acceptance of it, "Pablo Picasso" is NOT a Modern Lovers cover. It's a bonafide Helgerson original.
We received a tip to check out Pitchfork today, where Lookbook's single "True to Form" off of their latest album, Wild at Heart, has received a 6 from the tastemaking site. The review was even penned by a Minneapolis writer (and occasional City Pages contributor), Jonathan Garrett, who had kind things to say about lead singer Maggie Morrison in particular:
Continual Stereogum darlings Jehna Wilhelm and Mark McGee have popped up on the music site once again, this time debuting a new music video from their latest album Marlone. If anything, "In People's Homes" is an outlier in terms of what can be expected from the band, but a diversion that is as enjoyable a listen as the rest of the catalog from the talented Minneapolis-based duo. Alluding to the track as the record's "most surprising" in a review earlier this year, Pitchfork's Joe Colly added that "Homes" is "a buoyant two-minute pop cut that springs up virtually out of nowhere to loosen the seriousness of Marlone's second half." Complementing the comparatively light sound of the short two-minute track is the kaleidoscope of airy visuals cast throughout the video. To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie's next local appearance will come at the Hot Roxx Halloween Hextravaganza which will also feature Invisible Boy, mystery supergroups, DJs Nick & Jen, more.
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