​Pants-doffer and STNNNG frontman Chris Besinger is releasing a book of selected lyrics and poetry (what's the difference?), titled The Usual Beast, tonight at the Washington Avenue Grumpy's and kinda out of nowhere.

They have never included a lyric sheet with Besinger's fractured narratives and satiric caterwauls, indecipherable as they sometimes are (unless you spent a lot of time figuring out what the hell Napalm Death or whoever were screaming), feeling it would unnecessarily cleft the whole of the band. "It seems like the words are tied into the music really closely, so I was a little sketchy at first doing the book - it's hard to divorce the words from the songs themselves. But for some people it's hard to understand what I'm ranting about." I said I thought songs like "Grand Island, Neb." would hold up fine under the comb of print. "There are a few songs that I didn't put in just because they just don't look good. When I finally looked at them printed I thought 'nobody's going to be interested in seeing how many times I say yeah.'" Which is fair.

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B Fresh Photography for City Pages

​ The Twin Cities would not be the same without e.g. bailey. Even if you've never met him, you've most likely heard his voice on the radio, experienced one of his many theatrical productions or concerts and albums he has produced through Tru Ruts Endeavors/Speakeasy Records. He is co-owner of these organizations with his wife, Sha Cage, another staple poet in the community. There is never a lack of excitement in e.g.'s life, so Gimme Noise went behind the scenes to share in his journey to the release of his debut full-length album American Afrikan this past Saturday (pics here).

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This week I headed over to St. Paul to the Artist's Quarter, an awesome little basement space and the home of the Soap Boxing Slam. Soap Boxing is one of two competitive slam teams in the Cities, and they draw impressive talent to their stage. This month was their America Idol Slam competition, so the rules were changed a little for the occasion.

First round, poets performed a bad poem as poorly as they could--and these were pretty rank, culminating in Wonder Dave's stunning parody of weirdo-about-town Reverend Pat D. Second round the poets covered another poet's work--and my recorder cut out after two poems, not returning till the third round, where the poets performed an original poem as well as possible.

Here are some highlights--and be sure to show up next month, when eight top poets will compete to earn the right to represent St. Paul in this year's Individual World Poetry Slam Championships.

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