The Wake

There is a musical note fit for nearly every human emotion. Life’s ups and downs just wouldn’t be the same without melodies and rhythms to accompany them. Celebration? Music is the star. Tragedy? Music consoles. And exactly one year after the untimely death of one of Minnesota’s most beloved senators, thousands agreed that music, as a metaphorical shoulder to cry on, never sounded so sweet. “I want to remember October 25, 2002 as the day the music died, and October 25, 2003 as the day when people who’ve spent their lives attending anti-war rallies and teaching kids and championing local music and independent films got together via the great big antennae of music and took another shot,” wrote Twin Cities writer, Jim Walsh, in an e-mail calling for participants in the first ever Wellstone World Music …

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Though their logo states “Come for the eye candy, stay for the music,” Possibly Bailey has a large fan base who come for the music; well, maybe they come for the eye candy, too. The band consists of four University of Minnesota seniors: Ryan Rentmeester on lead guitar and vocals, Rob Johnstone on rhythm guitar and vocals, Ryan Muetzel on bass and Dave Hansen on drums and percussion. Describing themselves as “funk jam,” their music is influenced by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ben Harper, and 311 among others. Inspired by Harper’s beats and Hansen’s experience in a steel drum band, the group integrates congas and bongos into their sound. Possibly Bailey has been performing together for a little over a year, though band mates Rentmeester and Johnstone have been playing together since high school. Muetzler …

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The life of skateboarding legend Mark “Gator” Anthony reads like more of a made-for-television movie than a documentary. A young kid from a broken home decides to take part in a counter culture and ends up bringing that culture into the public arena only to forget where he came from. The difference from a television movie and the real life of Anthony is a far more tragic ending than could not have come from the minds of most Hollywood writers.Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator is the real story of Mark “Gator,” as told by documentary filmmaker Helen Stickler. Stickler uses extensive on-camera interviews with several people who were close to Gator to recount his rise to fame and eventual incarceration for rape and murder. Also, phone interviews with Gator himself are used throughout …

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Hip hop culture oozed from every orifice of First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis as the Seven’s Travels Tour made its way back home to Minnesota. The Oddjobs and the Rhymesayers Entertainment crew, consisting of Musab, The Micranots, DeeJayBird and headliner Atmosphere, spun, freestyled, and rapped to a full house for their second hometown show in as many days.The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis rap group The Oddjobs gave a tone-setting performance that left the crowd eager for what was to come, coming out energetic while making sure that the audience knew they are still a product of the local hip-hip scene, taking time to pay respect to former Senator Paul Wellstone. Rhymesayer Musab followed The Oddjobs by playing a mixture of danceable pop songs and self reflective raps. Not to be outdone, veterans The Micranots brought the audience to …

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Much of the work that has been presented so far at Emerging Digerati has been web-based. If you’re like me, you’ll spend the weekend in your jammies, digging these phat websites instead of reading your fat Mass Communications Law textbook.• www.digidiva.net/uc/old/UnoffComm
In her project titled “Unofficial Communication,” Collette Gaiter explores those unsanctioned, often unsigned messages that we often walk past because we don’t ascribe authority to the communicator. “Not all unofficial communication is illegal. However, it is the ubiquitous illegal urban graffiti that gets the most attention,” Gaiter writes.• www.ruinedeye.com
Art graduate student Kessie Wheelock’s work is presented on this extensive website. It includes texts and images on the theme of the human eye, as well as The Museum of Make-Believe, which showcases personal objects that belonged to fairy-tale characters with explanations of the research …

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Perhaps you’ve seen the Matrix-y blue posters in university halls and found them slightly vague: “EMERGING DIGERATI A showcase of UM students’ new media work.” Digerati is a millennial twist on the word literati, which referred to the elite class of educated people, often in the aristocracy, before wide-spread literacy. As someone who is electronically inept, I did not think these events would interest me. I’m “idigerate.” As it turns out, new media is a broad term including things like electronic music, artwork that reaches its audience via websites, and digitally recorded documentaries or animations. And Emerging Digerati is a series of presentations where students and faculty present really cool stuff that they made with new media.Of course, presenters are hoping for feedback from fellow techies or artists, but anyone can go and watch.The network …

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Jonny Greenwood has a lot of talent. With Bodysong, Greenwood’s debut solo release, he proves just how much talent he has. Frolicking in music genres such as jazz, rock, avant-garde, classical, and electronic, Greenwood constructs a makeshift sculpture out of these conflicting elements, sounding like Ornette Coleman covering an Autechre song with Philip Glass conducting. Speaking in binaries, there are two corollaries to this mode of songwriting: (1) the opposing elements synthesize into something unique and fresh, or (2) the hyper-eclecticism ends up sounding fragmented and misguided, like a song with an identity crisis. Luckily, Bodysong is the former. The album was recorded as a soundtrack for a dialogue-free documentary of the same name. Directed by Simon Pummel, the documentary is a visual collage, compiling sourced images spanning the past 100 years. However, without having …

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My friend Perry’s stereo was broken last month. For some reason, the bass on the album he was listening to was not playing through the speakers. His roommate Alec, a good friend of mine, decided to test another CD to see if it was perhaps some glitch exclusive to Perry’s CD. He grabbed Elliott Smith’s fifth full-length album, Figure 8. When the sparkling guitar and complimentary piano hits of first track “Son of Sam” kicked in, Alec and I suddenly realized just how long it had been since we had heard the album. Within a couple minutes, Alec had fixed the stereo and we were able to hear the CD’s full splendor. Instead of switching back to Perry’s CD, we listened to the next few tracks, continually expressing our astonishment at Smith’s songwriting abilities. It’s …

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How is alt-country treating you? Are you still in love? Of course you are, thanks to albums like, Neither Here Nor There, the debut release from Los Angeles five-piece Gone Done Wrong. If more banjo is what you want, then, by golly, more banjo is what you’ll get, served with harmonica and pedal steel on a homemade pottery plate. Neither Here Nor There is beautifully dark, beautifully simple, beautifully sloppy, beautifully raw, and a definite “must check out” album for alt-country fans. Don’t forget to season your dish with warmly delivered lyrics and choppy, self-taught guitar strumming. Co-lead singer Melissa Mednick’s lazy vocal melodies are graceful and true. It is, in fact, the lack of blaring vocal presence that makes her voice so attractive. Album highlights include “In the Dark,” a rocker with a great …

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For more than six years, director Quentin Tarantino has been quiet. The long break, following his underrated last movie Jackie Brown, ended with a 222-page script for a two-part film that was originally intended to be one movie.The long-awaited film Kill Bill brings back that in-your-face, mouth-dropping sense of grotesque realism that all Tarantino films embody. Yet, this time, Tarantino bends the rules by using a different form of expression: hyper-martial arts.The 110-minute film is packed with dark humor, samurai swords, high-flying martial arts combat, gory decapitation, an amazing animé cartoon and a sweet story of revenge. Even during the opening credits of the film, Tarantino humorously quotes from Star Trek, “Revenge is a dish best served cold” – Old Klingon Proverb. Kill Bill is drastically different from the classics Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, which …

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The Guthrie Theater’s recent production of The Night of the Iguana is a true visual work of art. The play is solid with both strengths and weaknesses in its performance. Written by Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana is an evocative play. This celebrated writer of American Theater is famous for many productions including A Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Unlike many of his plays, The Night of the Iguana has uncommon consequences for his tortured hero in comparison to the typically violent endings experienced by his other characters. The Night of the Iguana addresses an individual’s search for self-purpose and meaning within a life time, no matter how short or long. It tells the story of a day in the life of Lawrence Shannon, a discouraged …

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“Everyone wants to be found” is the tagline used in the advertisements for Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola’s follow-up to The Virgin Suicides. The irreverent look at relationships and culture stars Bill Murray (Rushmore) and Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World). Usually, advertisements do not tell the prospective consumer a thing about the film, but in this case it boiled the essence of the film down to a bite-sized morsel. Both of the main characters are very lost in life and in Japan as they attempt to fight their way through life’s many transitions. Johansson (Charlotte), a recent college graduate that has been married for two years, is in Tokyo on vacation with her husband. The problem is that her husband is too busy working on his photography career to care that she is sitting in …

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From stories of one-man bands that play kitchen sink tubas and Game-Boy electronica to the story of a man that has amassed over 35,000 artworks in his home and yard, the Weisman’s new film series, New Films Independent Artists, guarantees an intriguing look into the world of quirky underground artists. Expect unusual stories of musicians, filmmakers and visual artists that possess innovative vision and unchecked passion. Several of the films have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and one comes directly from the “Oregon Department of Kick Ass.” The series, which begins October 16th and runs through November 20th, will showcase seven documentary films from the last two years. Films are once a week, every Thursday, with the exception of one showing on Saturday, October 25th, instead of Thursday, October 23rd. The opening night brings the Jury …

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Harry Shearer makes people laugh their asses off. Creeping into your system like some kind of narcotic substance, Shearer’s work slowly unravels your composure, eventually reducing you to a hysterical, laughing shadow of your former sane-self. For over 30 years, from his role as Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap, to his tenure as a voice on The Simpsons (Shearer plays Mr. Burns, Flanders, and Smithers, among others), Shearer has been entertaining the masses with his excruciatingly funny blend of humor.
Last month I was able to speak with Shearer about college, comedy, and cross-dressing. The conversation that follows is typical Harry Shearer: comedic, intelligent and witty in a manner that only a man who has performed as a cross-dressing, folk singin’, crotch-stuffing, bottom-loving, ambiguously homosexual man can muster. The Wake: What have …

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The Return of Captain Invincible is a film that has sadly gone virtually unnoticed since its release. This is a film I bought used with nine other movies for five dollars. That haul contained the worst film of all time, The Jar (1984, director Bruce Toscano), but The Return of Captain Invincible, on the other hand, has become one of my favorites. It is a piece of campy cult-musical brilliance! Director Philippe Mora has shown the world what happens when Captain America meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Alan Arkin stars as Captain Invincible who as we see through black and white film reels in the films beginning, helped bail America out of trouble time and time again during the early part of the century. The Captain’s glory disappears, however, as during the McCarthy witch …

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