May 2006

Summer Reruns Early...Go see Drag the River

Author's Note: This first appeared in this column on July 26th, 2005. Drag the River will be appearing at the Triple Rock Social Club, tonight, Wednesday, May 10th, 2006.

"Well," I said. "All this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD." He said nothing: Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on it. A very gross tableau. I wondered what would happen if some Kingston Trio/young stockbroker type might wander in and catch us in the act. Fuck him, I thought. With a bit of luck, it'll ruin his life--forever thinking that just behind some narrow door in all his favorite bars, men in red Pendleton shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know. Would he dare to suck a sleeve? Probably not. Play it safe. Pretend you never saw it...

--From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson

Gregg Swedberg went to bed Sunday night, comfortable in the knowledge that his music director is too stupid to play, or even be aware of the band Drag The River. Which is the way things go in Mainstream Country Radio. The point I hammer home, ad nauseam, in this space is that Country music is many things to many people, and, comes from many strange and varied locales. When you work at a Mainstream Country Radio station, you stick your head into the sand, all the way up to your asshole, and buy the line that nothing is worth throwing on the radio unless it comes out of Nashville. Not only is Drag the River better as a band and a concept than anything coming out of Nashville right now, I'm sure they would overwhelm all those "Music City" acts with brute force, if not by smell. They drink before the show, during the show, and after the show; and like Dr. Johnny Fever, it just seems to make them stronger.

Chris Riemenschneider went to bed Sunday night, comfortable in the knowledge that Jon Bream had done a thorough cataloging of the lyrics of the last Mariah Carey album, but had never stopped to consider the 8 year odyssey of boozey road songs of regret and redemption that Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass seem to be able to churn out at will. There was a rough crowd at the Triple Rock Cafe Sunday night, and the two fisted out-state boys were shouting the words back at the band with bottles raised in the air, jumping up on-stage at roughly 2 minutes to 2, to slog through "Modern Drunkard" in perfect inebriated harmony, with guitar and pedal steel. Normally, a crowd with Asian chicks sporting tattoos in the shape of Texas, colored in with the pattern of the state flag, is Riemenschneider's gig. But, he's had enough of punk bands going country, so it's no wonder he misses the gems in the rock pile.

Ed Benson and Buddy Canon went to bed Sunday night, too fucking paranoid and stupid to give any thought whatsoever to anything but Big & Rich, and whether Faith Hill's bullshit attempt to go straight and play it twangy was going to bring the money rolling back in, now that Garth has retired to full time Dad-dom. While they spend every waking hour trying to squeeze any little bit of creativity in the genre through large product grinders with fine mesh dies, until there's nothing left but shapeless meaningless pulp that looks like the same shapeless meaningless shit they churned out last year, Drag the River charges around the country playing small clubs to rabid fans, most of whom are tangential travellers to the twang, having grown up worshipping at the altar of ALL as they charged their skateboards down the railings of the local public library. This tap into the vein of the demographic is organic and real, and their metamorphosis into Drag the River was a natural process that breeds lifelong loyalty, or repeat business...Ed.

Fuck them, I think. With a bit of luck, it'll ruin their lives--forever thinking that just behind some narrow door in all their favorite bars, men in skateboard shirts and Asian chicks with Texas tattoos are getting incredible kicks from things they'll never know.

Posted by Jack Sparks at May 10, 2006 10:21 AM | Comments (3)

Zzzzz....What? I coulda rode the train?

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Okay, now my ears are perked up.

To understand where I'm coming from on this, you need to understand the topology of Minneapolis, right now, in the Year of Our Lord, 2006.

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The current light rail line in this town goes from the Airport and The Mall of America to the Western edge of Downtown. For you club goers out there, the Franklin stop is right next to the Cabooze. The Cedar/Riverside stop puts you onto the 400 Bar, the Nomad, The Cedar Cultural Centre, the Viking Bar, and the Triple Rock Social Club. The Warehouse District Stop puts you close to First Avenue & the Entry and the Fine Line, and, just a perilous walk or cheap cab ride to Lee's Liquor Lounge.

In other words, if you want to crawl to clubs in this town, and you live near this line (like I do), you can literally crawl to clubs in this town. Especially if you load up your phone, blackberry, or a cocktail napkin with the station stops for each, so you know how much time you have to hop from place to place. In other words, it's nigh on perfect.

Some of you out there have been on this train at 1:21am, too, so you know that the ride "home" is half the fun of the thing. To say a train full of jiggly giggly girls being sloppily propositioned by everyone from Trevor, the dew-ragged hip hop king of Lakeville (getting off at the Mall of America to drive his dad's car home), to Bob, the somewhat homeless guy praying for the transit cops to throw him in jail so that he doesn't have to sleep outside...is good "people watching"...is an understatement.

But, let's return to the beginning...the proposed NorthStar Line. I know some people who know some people and I've had two State Senators tell me that because of various footdragging, proposed stops in Northeast Minneapolis were removed from the line because they would be "too expensive to build." This is stupidity on a colossal scale. If you drill down into the website for this thing, you see that it hops across the creek somewhere down by the warehouse district and knifes through Northeast on some old tracks. Stops at Broadway and Lowry would not only be easy, they'd be organic.

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Now, let me paint a picture for you...if you got off at the Broadway stop that doesn't exist because a handful of people are fucking morons, you could easily walk to the 331 Club and Mayslack's for music. You could also have dinner at The Modern Cafe or Erte. You could also easily walk to Elsie's to throw a few. Note, I'm leaving out about 6 plain old brown wrapper bars that your dad and/or your granddad went to nightly back in the 70's, when men wore moustaches, drank hard liquor and smoked filterless cigarettes.

Like your Econ 101 professor once said, "assume a Lowry Avenue Station." Get off there and you could walk to Jaro's, Psycho Suzie's, Stasiu's, Grumpy's, The Double Deuce, Mario's Kellar Bar, Jax, and several others.

Do you understand that these stations will pay for themselves?

The problem, as always, is that roughly 90% of the people who control 100% of public money are fucking dildos. They do things that don't make sense first, then they over-correct, and it all ends up costing us more money in the future. Why did the train cars get ripped up in Minneapolis in the first place all those years ago? Politicians, lobbyists, and crooks is the answer.

Ask the cops what they think of a train line that eliminates a great deal of the drunken traffic on a Northwest to South route through the heart of the Metropolis.

Twin Cities area transit customers boarded Metro Transit buses and light-rail trains 69.7 million times in 2005, an additional 4.7 million rides over 2004. The increase was slightly more than 7.2 percent.

Bus rides on regular routes — the heart of the system — grew 1.5 percent to 59.5 million. But overall bus ridership for the year was 61.8 million, down a half-percent (or 275,000 rides), according to Metro Transit officials. Areas where bus ridership was lost include shuttle service at the airport — where trains now do most of the trips between the two terminals — and on contract routes, where less service was purchased from Metro Transit by the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority.

Rail rides reached 7.9 million last year, 170 percent higher than 2004, when only a portion of the line was open for five months and the entire line was open starting in early December.

Customers took 5.7 million transit rides in December 2005, 5.5 percent, or 296,000 rides, more than December 2004. Bus ridership in December was up 3.5 percent, or 165,000 rides higher than the 4.8 million rides recorded in December 2004. Rail ridership jumped 22 percent, an additional 130,000 rides, from December 2004.

So, let me get this straight, a public transportation sub-system that has been hugely successful through one portion of the main city out to a big suburb spur, gets me to most of the clubs where I see music safely and without hassle. To their credit, the "Public Good" bonheads are trying to build another route the other direction. But, rather than take advantage of the money that would be instantaneously, assuredly, and organically generated by TWO (2) fucking stops in a historic section of town, they're going to ditch them over the added cost. If you're reading this and you had something to do with all of it, and you're offended because I'm calling you a dildo, well good, because you are a dildo. Dildo.

My two friends the Senators both said, "YOU could be riding the NorthStar Line RIGHT NOW if it weren't for..." Being part of the other 10%, they both said something more appropriate, but what they meant to say was, "...if it weren't for all the dildos."

Posted by Jack Sparks at May 9, 2006 2:03 PM | Comments (1)

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