My Q&A with Tori Fixx is live at citypages.com. (Reactions at DUNation and ILM. Also, read Riemenschneider's profile.) Here's his website and myspace. He appears in a new documentary about GLBT peoples in hip hop, Pick Up the Mic (Dylan Hicks review here), screening in Minneapolis this Friday at 9:00 p.m. at Suburban World Theater (with live performances); Saturday at 5:00 p.m. at District 202 (above Nicollet Village Video), and Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. at Suburban World as part of the Flaming Film Festival (myspace)--read the full overview in City Pages. Then Fixx performs on Sunday at the 7th St. Entry with Soce, Aggracyst, Nicky Click, Deadlee, Johnny Dangerous, and Katastrophe (though no Deep Dickollective) as part of this:

Lesbians Love Sandez Rey

On Monday I got a call from a lesbian rapper who wants Sandez Rey to illustrate her album cover. Good to see a couple stories coming together like that.

Recently posted elsewhere:

New NOFX song and video about the Triple Rock (cpculture.com 5/12/06), Dancing in the Streets now legal in Minneapolis (cpculture.com 5/15/06), Local rock stars release children's CD (cpculture.com 5/16/06), Suicide Commandos reunite at MN Rock Hall of Fame (cpculture.com 5/16/06), Dirty Sandez: When it comes to giving porn consumers what they want,
the creator of Crimson Gash comics refuses
to color between the lines (citypages.com 5/17/06), Body Worlds: "Bring out your dead" (cpculture.com 5/17/06), Boredoms to play Endtimes Music Festival June 23 (cpculture.com 5/18/06), Circus Magazine, R.I.P. (cpculture.com 5/18/06), Friday videos: "Always be closing"/"cobbling" (cpculture.com 5/19/06), EW's Top 25 music websites (cpculture.com 5/22/06), Art-A-Whirled: Scenes from a weekend in Northeast (cpculture.com 5/22/06), More scenes from Art-a-Whirl Saturday (complicatedfun.com 5/23/06), Mark Mallman and Chuck Klosterman team-up (cpculture.com 5/22/06), Late pass: Return of the Blues Saloon, sort of (cpculture.com 5/23/06), Late pass: Sicbay break up (cpculture.com 5/24/06), No more "no homo": Tori Fixx won't be trapped in the hip-hop closet (citypages.com 5/24/06), Your first TC summer concert and festival guide of 2006 (cpculture.com 5/24/06).

(Click most of these photos for larger images.) As described here at cpculture.com: Pillow Fight Club Minneapolis aftermath during Art-a-Whirl; "Mean Doll/Martha" by Kristen Short; Pam Valfer (Saucer/Kitty Craft) poses with painting of "Alyssa"; "That Special Lady" by Craig Grabhorn; the Floor Shakers play parking lot in front of Elias Metal. More pillow fight photos at flickr, and here, and here.

My friend Machelle Lee came to town this week and took these great photos. We went to an underground music show "the Church" in Minneapolis with Toasty to see Oakland's Faun Fables (below). It was a kind of rock opera with video projections, about being on a train, missing your stop, being late, and not being able to get off the train. I also liked opening band Fuzzy Cousins, with two of the same musicians. (Click some of these for larger images.)

My crayon drawing of Machelle at Little T's, where Toasty and I took her after the show. Then Machelle's self-portrait from earlier in the day, with her friend Andrew Schiff in the background.

(Click for larger image.) My profile/appreciation of Minneapolis sex comix artist Sandez Rey, "Dirty Sandez," is live at citypages.com. (New Times wants tits? You got tits.) An excerpt about the cover above:

If this new pornographer in comics has a unique charm, it lies in the quaintness of his transgressions. The most notorious Rey cover, for last year's The Crimson Gash #1 ("The Crimson Gash Vrs. Hitler"), feels almost nostalgic, what with all the monsters and missiles and Hitler. Its most contemporary touches are the syringes hanging from the left breast of Sheriff Judy, another Gash regular. (She gets her stabber back with a needle to his eye.) Yet the artist's motives for even that bit of unsightliness are supremely fan-boyish: Comic-book price guides routinely identify covers featuring Hitler as collectible. Ditto eye injuries, drug use, protruding breasts, bondage, torture, or atomic blasts. Says the illustrator: "What I did with this cover was try to hit every category."

Here's the full photo of Sandez Rey by Richard Fleischman (click for larger version):

The Crimson Gash stomps her conscience in Blowjob # 8

My emusic guide to the best 12 albums put out by K Records (myspace here) is live. Feel free to post your disagreements here. I have to revise one choice, anyway, because of evolving distribution rights for Snuff. Banging this out let me appreciate Beat Happening again (yep, they're on myspace), and made me check out all the K artists I'd only read about. If anyone ever tells you something "sounds like a K band," send them to this piece. Good to be working for Michaelangelo Matos and, indirectly, Michael Azerrad, whose Our Band Could Be Your Life was indispensable for the article.

Recent posts elsewhere not completely out of date:

Tell me something good: 5 Things to Remember About Race and Hip-Hop (MNArtists.org 4/3/06), Big Proof's music-video death (cpculture.com 4/12/06), The club formerly known as the Quest is now Heaven and Earth--no, really (cpculture.com 4/24/06), Sex machines: Phone me again! Over and over! (cpculture.com 4/25/06), To the tune of "Dust in the Wind": "Snakes on a plane/All we are is snakes on a plane" (cpculture.com 4/27/06), The Keep Aways, a reason to go to Duluth next weekend (cpculture.com 4/228/06), CD review: Mazta I, Thank the Lord and the Sword! (Citypages.com 5/3/06), Late Pass: Video of Atmosphere on Jimmy Kimmel (cpculture.com 5/3/06), Name the new band of Prince/Flyte Tyme vets (cpculture.com 5/5/06), Wanna get married onstage? At a rock show? By robots? (cpculture.com 5/5/06), Grant McLennan of the Go-Betweens: 1958 - 2006 (cpculture.com 5/8/06), Top ten blurry highlights from Homegrown (cpculture.com 5/9/06), First Geek Prom, now Goth Prom--and Punk Rock Prom (cpculture.com 5/11/06), PM Dawn at Club Underground Saturday (cpculture.com 5/12/06), Art party: Negativland at Creative Electric tonight (cpculture.com 5/12/06), Late pass: The Quest is still the Quest, with new web site (cpculture.com 5/12/06), CTG: Smiley faces lied well before Wal-Mart tried to trademark them (cpculture.com 5/12/06), The E Music Dozen: K Records (emusic.com 5/12/06)

Listen to this 55-minute radio broadcast of Pauline Kael attacking the auteur theory in 1963, speaking at San Fernando Valley State College, and unearthed by tsutpen.blogspot.com (thanks to Matos, via Rockcriticsdaily, which also links Kael talking to Jean-Luc Godard). I've read Kael since the early '80s, and this is the first time I've ever heard her voice. Am I surprised it sounds nothing like I imagined? For more Kael audio, slightly closer to how I'd imagine her, here's NPR's 2001 special after her death, with links to various radio appearances over the years. She's the reason I do this, so I'll always go back to her. Here's the entire Pauline Kael Archives at rockcritics.com.

Above: (click most of these photos for a full image) Scenes from the ballroom above the Electric Fetus on Friday, with Anti-Anne, a.k.a. "Bob Saget." See "Top ten blurry highlights from Homegrown" at cpculture.com for more details, as well as the festival's official site, its myspace page, and various posts at perfectduluthday.com. Below: Boy Girl Boy Girl at Pizza Luce on Friday, Bone Appetit at R.T. Quinlan's, the Black Labels at the Tap Room, and dancers behind the Black-Eyed Snakes at Pizza Luce.

Then, on Saturday...

Above: Friday Night team poses after losing kickball, with Saturday team in background (lounging in the middle: HotRod HeartThrob and Alan Sparhawk). Bear Garden at the ballroom, the Undesirables at the Red Lion, Sara Softich Band at the Brewhouse (where Toasty caught up with Mary Bue), and Farewell Tour at the Red Lion. Below: Crew Jones at the Tap Room, the Little Black Books at R.T. Quinlan's, the Keep Aways at R.T. Quinlan's, NorShor marquee from Thursday night's Low show. On Sunday, a long article on the NorShor appeared in the Duluth News-Tribune. My friend Tim Nelson, of Boy Girl Boy Girl, and others said it was skewed against the owner, never mentioning that he frustrated developer plans to turn the NorShor into a parking lot years ago.

Postscript: Had breakfast at Luce with Tim and Veronica from Boy Girl Boy Girl, and Simon Grey, a.k.a. Jay Nailer, whom I wrote about at 2003's Homegrown. His song, the one with the chorus "Stick that cell phone sideways up your ass," is now available as a ringtone. Sell-out.

Watch part one and two of Rhymesayers Slug and Eyedea on the Wake Up Show at ever-beloved Youtube.com (thanks to this thread at DUNation). I guess this has been kicking around the internet for a while, at least since 2005. Anyone know the date? The context? On an entirely different plane, I'm digging the Myspace songs by new old-timey duo Roma Di Luna, featuring Crescent Moon of Kill the Vultures/Oddjobs on guitar. With these guys, the Roe Family Singers, and all the Duluth roots bands, there seems to be a genuine movement underway, though maybe it was there all along and I never noticed before.

As he came in the McNally Smith building this afternoon, a laptop DJ played the Isley Brothers' "Footsteps in the Dark" (sampled on "It Was a Good Day") and cameras flashed--a genuine rock-star moment. Then, when he walked into the auditorium, a live quartet of students was onstage, playing the same song! Sitting in the front row, Cube bobbed his head appreciatively.

Here's my preview of tonight's show. Was I harsh to bring up the old controversies? Maybe not: When asked if he had any regrets earlier today, Ice Cube pretty much said no. Nice guy, though, good with the crowd. He said being at the school, and being honored by the new annual scholarship in his name, was the highlight of his career. Tonight's show at First Avenue (he goes onstage at about 9:00 p.m.) shouldn't be missed.

As for the rumor that Cube once lived in Minneapolis, contrary to reports here and here (and--oops--in the A-list), this is what he said when I asked about it during a brief press Q&A at the school:

I heard that you lived in Minneapolis.

Nah, nah. Never.

Did you record here?

Nah, I just wrote about it in a song.

You didn't live in Minnetonka. How did these rumors get spread?

I don't know, man. You know how rumors are.

You never had a girlfriend on the North Side?

Never had a girlfriend on the North Side. I'll take one. [everyone laughs]

How did you end up writing about being here?

It was at a time when a lot of guys I knew were fleeing Los Angeles looking for places to set up and be. And Minnesota, nice place. Sounded right. That's how I picked it.

[Lars Larson of DUNation--and I'll correct this if it's wrong, it was hard to hear] You directed the "Bop Gun" video, right? With Prince...[??] Do you want to get back with him?

Yeah, it was cool. That was my first time getting a chance to even meet and talk to him. It made me decide to go ahead and do a movie.

[Lars] Is anything going to continue with that now that Prince is all open [??] to other artists and stuff?

I hope so. You know, I'm trying. You got his number?

[Everyone laughs.]

When asked, during his earlier Q&A with students in the auditorium, who's the one artist in film or music he'd like to work with, Cube said Prince. Now that Prince is out in L.A., at least until his lease runs out this month, maybe that'll happen. (For a glimpse of Prince's new mansion, pick up Kevin Powell's cover story on Dave Chappelle in May's Esquire.) Today was also graduation day, and another Minneapolis-L.A. musician, Willie Wisely, was the commencement speaker.

Here's the 2006 video for "Race Card," promoting the FX show Black.White.--which I missed. (Also on the FX Network, which I don't have: a series starring Andre Braugher and set in New Orleans? Why was I not informed!)

Sunday update: More on Ice Cube at Saucydame. (Above photo courtesy of the school. Below: "The moment frozen in time"--me asking Ice Cube stupid questions. Another photo of the same thing, from Patrick Whalen. Surreal.)