photo by Tony Nelson

Since he started as the CC's day bartender in 1978, Bobby Bell has lost some memories to the years.

For every tale that regulars past and present recollected for this week's cover story about the CC Club, there were a handful more that they couldn't remember.

Some of these were simply lost to the intervening years: The story begins in the early 1970s, and many of the regulars included in it have been going to or working at the bar for decades. Some of the memories, though, just weren't there to begin with, claimed right as they were happening by pitchers of beer and late nights.

Here are 11 of the best memories -- and half-memories, and missing memories-- lost to the CC Club's beer-soaked walls.

See Also:
- COVER: Here Comes a Regular: An Oral History of the CC Club
- An oral history of the CC Club jukebox
- Slideshow: Behind the scenes: The CC Club, an oral history

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photo by Bonnie Schiffman

The Replacements in 1989, with Tommy Stinson at front right.

Tommy Stinson learned to play bass at age 11, and just a year later started strumming with the musicians, including his brother Bob, who would make up the Replacements. For this week's cover story on the CC Club, Stinson -- who now juggles multiple projects, including solo albums like 2011's "One Man Mutiny," the recent "Songs for Slim" release, and a "day job" as the bassist with Guns N' Roses -- shared some of his memories about the days and nights he spent inside the bar.

For all the Stinson fans out there, here's the full conversation Gimme Noise had with the lifelong bassist about his years as a CC Club regular.

Gimme Noise: The French Meadow's owners are taking over the CC Club on May 1, so we figured it was a good time to look back.
Tommy Stinson: Yeah, what's the deal with that, they're going to turn it into another bakery?

See Also:
- COVER: Here Comes a Regular: An Oral History of the CC Club
- Contest: We want your best CC Club stories
- An oral history of the CC Club jukebox
- Slideshow: Tommy Stinson at First Avenue
- Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg plan studio time later this year

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Photo: Tony Nelson.

Tell us what taking too much of this stuff made you do.

In this week's cover story, we comb through the history of storied Minneapolis landmark the CC Club. The bar has for decades been a hub of converging scenes in the Twin Cities, and has counted such regulars as Tommy Stinson of the Replacements, Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner, actor Tom Arnold, and many, many more.

Of course the CC Club stories are endless. We know many of our readers have their own tales of glory and debauchery, and we want to hear them.

SEE ALSO:
Here comes a regular: An oral history of the CC Club
Extra: An oral history of the CC Club jukebox
Slideshow: Behind the scenes in the CC Club

More »

The upcoming documentary Downloaded takes a look at the rise and fall of Napster and includes interviews with a Who's Who of the music industry.More »

Sab the Artist

This month marks ten years since the release of Twin Cities hip-hop veteran Sab the Artist's Respect the Life on Rhymesayers Entertainment. Known then as Musab (and before that as Beyond), his album both captured the Southside sound as well as introduced production and stylistic elements that proved to be years ahead of their time. We spoke to Sab about the making of the album as well as how he feels about it a decade later.

See Also:
Sab the Artist takes us record shopping at Fifth Element
City Pages Best Hip-Hop Artist - 2001

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See Also:
Atmosphere unveils remaining 2012 U.S. tour dates
Top 20 best Minnesota musicians: The complete list
Top 20 best Minnesota songs: The complete list

Today, hip-hop fans across the globe are wishing our homegrown indie-rap superstar Slug a happy 40th birthday. To mark this momentous occasion -- since most of you Slug fans probably already own the entire Atmosphere discography (including the elusive Sad Clown Bad Dubs) -- we at City Pages decided to round up of some stand-out Slug verses you may not be aware of. As a rule, we chose nothing that's been on an official Rhymesayers/Headshots release and stuck to guest appearances and obscure early work. Though this stuff might not figure into Atmosphere's headlining show at the Cabooze tonight, it's a great trip back through the years.

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Prince performing "Gett Off" at the 1991 Video Music Awards. This was the most appropriate image of it we could acquire.

The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards take place this evening. For almost 30 years, the show has honored the best clips that the medium of music video has had to offer. Of course, no conversation about music videos would be complete without the purple Yoda we affectionally know as Prince.

A fixture of the channel for much of the '80s and '90s, the Purple One's 20 year presence at the awards resulted in eight nominations, three wins and one historic performance. We've rounded up his most celebrated clips from the show, as well as his landmark 1991 take on "Gett Off" in our look back at what makes Prince one of the greatest video artists of all time.

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Photo By Don Hunstein

​For all of the profound mythologizing that is done over the illustrious music career of Bob Dylan, he began the process just like any other musician with the bold but tentative first steps of a debut record. While very few Dylan enthusiasts will list Bob Dylan as among their favorite (or even top-10) studio albums from Bob, it still represents a fledgling twenty-year-old artist's striking initial musical statement to the world at large, one that was released 50 years ago today on March 19, 1962.
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