On a day when you feel like you’re losing touch with what it is that makes you human, there is nothing that peels back the emotional layers more effectively than perusing through your high school CD collection. No matter what your taste, there was something that you discovered when you were thirteen that broke your heart and tangled it back together. Years later, when you smooth out the scratches with your shirt sleeve and push play, you are reminded of just how raw that connection can be. Though it was released just this year, Jenny Dalton’s Fleur De Lily made me feel like I had unearthed one of those long forgotten albums. She’s a twist of Tori with a splash of the Cranberries chased with a chilled glass of Kate Bush and with a tenderness and honesty all her own.

The songs on this album are intimate and courageously candid, many of which were inspired by Dalton’s relationship with an American soldier deployed for a year in the Iraqi war. She details the most private heartache about a very public situation with unedited bravery. “I forget that it’s a diary entry,” says Dalton. “People relate to it in completely different ways.” The album art’s vintage design is evocative of the 1940s wartime era, making the album resonate with the timelessness and intrigue of a trunk of dusty photographs.

The Fleur De Lily CD release party at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown showcased Dalton’s elegant vocals and passionate keyboard backed by members of Cloud Cult (who also contributed to the album). Their combined effect was unremitting and unavoidably visceral. They could have formed one beautiful living creature, the guitars and drums as two breathing lungs and a pounding heart, and Dalton as the tongue and teeth, delivering immutable truths of heartbreak and hope. Her presence was at once vulnerable and fearless.

The evening’s lineup (which also featured performances from These Modern Socks and Coach Said Not To) attracted a diverse crowd, and every set of eyes glistened as Dalton wove her story of two war-torn lovers. Lyrics like “Siamese, you and me / Iraqi sky, another blade to separate us” show her unbounded honesty that gives her widespread appeal.

Her performance was as delicate as it was driven, delivered with an endearing humbleness. “This is my first encore,” she confided, smiling coyly. With such a powerful album to support and cries of, “Jenny Dalton kicks ass!” from the back row, Dalton stands to see quite a few more.

“I really was just banging on the keys,” says Dalton of her earliest childhood experiments in piano. “I loved it, and I thought it was the most beautiful sounding thing ever. Eventually I got this tiny little Casio keyboard and started writing music right away.” Dalton has no formal training as a pianist. “The first song I picked up by ear was ‘Chariots of Fire.’ After that I just kept playing by ear and making up my own little riffs.”

Dalton seeks inspiration as a regular habit. “When you take out of the creative bank account you have to put something back in. A lot of songs have come out just from driving around, or going to a used bookstore and just grabbing weird books off the shelf. I go for a lot of walks.” Dalton is also an avid supporter of local music. “I go to a lot of shows.” She lists some of her favorite local performers as Cloud Cult, Thunder in the Valley and Mark Mallman.

Dalton has been paying her dues at local coffee shops and dive bars for years. “I’ve done the meat raffles,” she giggles, scrunching up her tiny nose. “I’d be playing for a blue collar crowd who’d been drinking there since two in the afternoon, and I’m thinking, oh great, these people are going to throw their beer bottles at me.” Dalton’s not sporting any scars, though. With a sound so decidedly classic, she has always been well-received, even among the most unconventional of crowds. She recalls how terrified she was at her first open mike night at the Terminal Bar. “Before that I was just playing for my cat …”

Her drive has paid off and her ambitions are clearer than ever. “In the next five years, I’ll hopefully put out at least three, or four, or five CDs. I’d like to keep doing more CDs as often as I can. I’d like to be touring a lot more. It’d be nice to do this for a living.” By day, Dalton works in communications at the university and runs her own record label, Glossy Shoebox Productions. “I like doing it all,” she says.

Fans are taking notice, and this Minneapolis artist has prompted an outpouring of support nationally and internationally. She is currently scheduling live performances in New York City and London. If you’d like to catch Jenny Dalton live and local, she will be performing with a full band at Mayslacks on April 29.

Nothing about the Beastie Boys’ MCA, Adrock, Mike D and DJ Mix Master Mike is conventional so why should their concert film Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That be any different? At a 2004 sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden, the band handed out 50 video cameras to fans to capture the concert from their viewpoint. Yauch, who directs the Beastie’s videos under the alias Nathanial Hörnblowér, spent a year editing the footage of the concert. The end result is a mind-blowing kaleidoscope of images that captures the experience of a Beastie Boy’s concert. It’s an emotional film that is represented by a camera operator who turns the lens toward his cheering face, and another who films a girl that is engrossed in dancing. We’re taken along beyond the concert as a fan makes a run for the toilet and when a couple of fans, equipped with a camera, try to sneak backstage during the concert.

But it’s not just a series of randomly assembled shots. Awesome! is a 90-minute hybrid of a music video, documentary and of course, comedy. The editing of Awesome! is unbelievable. The audio synced up with the images is impeccable and graphic effects enhance the overall experience of the film. The visual effects employed in Awesome! create another dimension and eliminate the cheesy close-up shots of the performer or swooping shots over the audience typically seen in concert films. Obviously graphic effects aren’t part of the reality of the concert but despite that, such amazing editing can make one forget that they are sitting on the couch or in a movie theater.

The Beastie’s perform a blend of their material, from the old to the newest album. At the end of each song I felt a strong urge to stand up and cheer, but realized that I was in a movie theater in Brooklyn Center, one of the 200 theaters that showed a special sneak preview on March 23. In addition to the special sneak preview, the film was enhanced with a short film by director Nathanial Hörnblowér, which will never be screened again. The short features David Cross as the fictitious director who embarks on “A Day in the Life of Nathanial Hörnblowér.” Hörnblowéris just an ordinary man who favors dressing in traditional German clothes and prefers to transport himself by way of cross country skis, despite the fact there is no snow on the ground. He makes his way around the city to the coffee shop and a chocolate haven, where he insists on dipping his finger in the chocolate. Hörnblowérreferences his German heritage as well as Irish background, all in a Scottish accent. It’s a worthwhile short film that further demonstrates the talent of the director, Yauch.

Even for people who aren’t totally into the hip-hop group, Awesome! is a concert film masterpiece that can be appreciated not only for the subject choice, but the quality of editing and production, and above all the unconditional love that the fans put into shooting the Beastie Boys and one day when they look back on this film they will indeed say, “Awesome! I fuckin’ shot that.”

Smokers, non-smokers and those who somehow fit in some third category: go out and see Thank You for Smoking. Don’t be afraid; this movie won’t teach you anything you didn’t already know about smoking or the tobacco industry. It works as well as it does because the film skewers those who attack big tobacco equally as those who defend it. Hollywood, humanitarians and Congress all receive pointed jabs. Equality hasn’t felt so refreshing for a long time!

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart, a great underrated actor when given the right material) is the master of charm and spin; he’s the top lobbyist for big tobacco, getting this job not through a fancy Ph.D. but because of a certain “moral flexibility” he possesses. He’s not evil; he’s just the spokesman for it. Naylor works as the vice president of a firm called the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a research group whose star scientist is so brilliant that he found no connection between smoking and lung cancer. Throughout the film, Naylor juggles pushing forward the tobacco industry’s goals and raising his 12-yearold son, who uses his father’s teachings to win school debates.

It made me unendingly happy that the film didn’t force our hate-ably lovable hero to undergo a Jerry McGuire-esque moral awakening. In fact, despicable as he is, I pretty much want to be Nick Naylor. He’s the most genuine, smooth-talking anti-hero to come out of Hollywood in ages. The film lacks a certain bite due to its universally accepted premise but there are plenty of great scenes, such as when anti-tobacco extremists kidnap Naylor and try to murder him with an overdose of nicotine patches. They inadvertently turn him into a figure of public sympathy when he survives due to his advanced tolerance built up through years of smoking. Naylor even spins his unlikely survival: he tells the press nicotine saved his life.

The writing in Thank You for Smoking is wit and sarcasm at its best. The only thing more impressive in the film is the cast that delivers the lines. From J.K. Simmons as Naylor’s unscrupulous boss (“We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us.”) to Sam Elliott as the former Marlboro Man, the cast is top notch and each fits their part amazingly well—except Katie Holmes as a seductive reporter. Maybe it’s the fact that she looks like a teenager to me. Maybe it’s that she can’t act (proven to us before in Batman Begins, Phone Booth, The Gift and her relationship with Tom Cruise), but whatever it is, she was the only letdown in a movie with nothing but let … ups.

I can’t imagine someone not enjoying this movie. Okay, I can. I understand that some people just don’t like cynical humor, and the message of personal choice isn’t for everyone—fascists and commies namely. Regardless, Thank You for Smoking is cleverly written, perfectly cast and well acted (if you ignore Katie Holmes any time she opens her mouth). I’m running out of adjectives here so I thought I’d get this out of the way: this movie is a smoking satire! Pun intended, you know? Yeah, that’s why I really shouldn’t be paid to write.

The Unknown Prophets is a telling name for the Northeast Minneapolis hip-hop group. Local hip-hop veterans Big Jess (producer/emcee), Mad Son (emcee) and Willy Lose (DJ) will lay their hearts and souls out for any listener willing to listen. In such a bling-bling, MTV hip hop era, it’s refreshing to hear a group like the Unknown Prophets that actually offer poetic lyrics.

The Unknown Prophets’ latest album The Road Less Traveled carries on with the same attitude. It offers tight production and lyrics that mean something. The title is appropriate considering the group’s ambition for reaching ears that are brainwashed by mainstream hip-hop. The album considers and comments on the mainstream music industry, mobilizing against the grain, and shedding light on the misfortunes in life that we can never predict. While playing with the unpaved road theme, the Unknown Prophets manage to express mad love for the Midwest, and in particular their home state of Minnesota. They also never forget to show appreciation for the supporters—creating a much more personal listening experience.

The artwork is also noteworthy. The artist, Chris Allen, (a.k.a. Inkproof) creates a sharp, professional and overall very attractive cover design. So if you were going to judge an album by the quality of the cover, it would be safe to bet on The Road Less Traveled. The attractive cover is only the surface to an album that is sincere in the face of the mainstream music industry puppets.

In the world of “bigger is better” rock music, bands with lineups in the double digits reign supreme. Amidst these giant ensembles, it’s the husband and wife duo Mates of State who ironically produce the most colossal sound. One listen to “Think Long,” the opening track on Bring It Back, will leave your head spinning.

Bring It Back is Mates of States’ fourth full-length release and their first for Barsuk records. Without betraying their easily-identified sound, the band explores the potentials of the studio more than they have on previous records. Additional vocal layers and even a guitar or two find their way into the mix of the new album.

The new songs show all the elements of the Mates of State repertoire: happy organ riffs, danceable drum beats, and insane vocal harmonies. Kori Gardner (keyboards, vocals) gives more emphasis to her piano playing with great results. “Like U Crazy,” a slower song with a lot of piano work is one of the most well-crafted songs the duo has offered to date.

With help from producer Bill Racine, Mates of State have released an album with an incredible sound. While the layering of multiple tracks and use of effects on the vocals takes away from the organic feel of their early records, it’s hardly a step in the wrong direction. If anything, it amplifies the energy that this duo brings to their CDs and their live shows.

It would be moot to point out that Richard Nixon had no idea what his compulsive habit of recording conversations would get him in to. But this is fucking ridiculous, and fucking great. A group of actors resurrect Tricky Dick through 30-year old transcripts, so we get to see the overwhelmed and emotional “crook” beseeching Donald Rumsfeld to watch Brian’s Song for the films portrayal of race relations. He also lectures about drug use in America while smoking a joint with a confidant on the White House roof.

This is the basic format of Minneapolis native Michael Martin’s Verbatim Verboten to gather “private” transcripts of the rich, famous and powerful and give them to actors who recite them, word-for-word and tongue-in-cheek, in what amounts to a potent pop culture lampoon.

Started in Chicago in 1999, Verbatim Verboten has collected over 200 transcripts. Court proceedings, TV interviews, e-mails, phone messages, off-mic public events and 911 calls have been tossed like a lamb to the wolves of these actors’ calculated performances. “Most manuscripts are read completely,” said Martin, “but we screw around with the interpretation.”

Growing up in the Watergate era, and being buried like most in the Lewinsky fascination, Martin didn’t have to go far to find material and direction. And last year Martin, a resident of New Orleans, was delivered another load of epic governmental ludicrousness in the horrendous display of FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

As for other content, Martin need only pursue a few inquiries on the web to find lavish and opportune bait for a frenzy of celebrity. Last year, Paris Hilton’s portable Blackberry was famously hacked and information sewn through all of cyberspace. Through a patient combing, the text-messaged details of Paris’ daily life bellow from an actor playing the part of a slam poet.

Even though Martin says, “We make no effort to keep current,” gems like a drunk Ashlee Simpson crawling over a McDonald’s counter are too good to pass up.

Martin succeeds in tugging on the instinctual draw of another (in this case a famous one) person’s misfortunes and/or private goings-on and relishes the comedy behind the cult of celebrity and power all the meanwhile skipping along the line of outright offensiveness and well-deserved ridicule.

Verbatim Verboten has evolved and expanded since its’ conception in Chicago, and has shocked audiences into laughter in Seattle, New Orleans and New York. Now, in its first full production in Minneapolis, 12 brand new transcripts glisten and gleam waiting to be devoured by guest actors and new witnesses.

And as the content rotates, every show will different than the last. And in Verbatim Verboten’s scheduled run through April here in Minneapolis, that leaves plenty of mockery to be had.

It happens every time. You hold your breath and tiptoe into the concert hall to take a seat just as the pianist flips their tuxedo tails over the piano bench. Parched, you reach into your sack and fish for a cold beverage. You lean forward, holding the can of Grain Belt inconspicuously near the floor as you slip your fingernail under the metal tab. Unfortunately, there is no feasible way to mute the telltale crack and foam sizzle. You raise the can to your lips to slurp off the golden river, but, suddenly, whatever buzz you were about to enjoy is prematurely killed by hundreds of simultaneous dirty looks. All you wanted to do was get your Chopin on, but once again you find yourself stifling the urge to mutter even the faintest catcall, slamming beers in the bathroom stall between movements. You’re not impolite or uncultured, and you’ve lived in shame for too long.

This is where Salon 3136 comes in. Their mission: to offer “concert music” for the rest of us. The venue is welcoming and geared toward the events at which a younger, more relaxed audience would typically show up. Walking through the front door, it seems you’d be just as likely to stumble upon a game of beer pong or a poker night as you would an evening of concert music. They’ve hosted a series of events aimed at reinventing the image of concert music as something approachable, free from the potential pretentiousness of typical concert halls.

Their latest premiere, Rock Rite, featured a collaborative electronic remix of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the salon’s fourth 24-hour concert. No, you can put away the No Doze, the concert doesn’t last 24 hours. The standard rules are as follows: beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday night, composers are given 12 hours to write a piece for a randomly selected ensemble. Performers then have 12 hours to prepare beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday morning for an 8 p.m. performance Saturday night. This latest incarnation had a slight twist—it was the groups first all-electronic 24 hour concert. The fourteen movements of Stravinsky’s controversial ballet were randomly assigned on Friday night to seven artists, including five University grad students (J. Anthony Allen, Noah Keesecker, Zachary Crockett, Elliot Miles McKinley and Matt Dorn), and two local DJs (Oliver Grudem and Holly Hansen) to be remixed as they saw fit. There were no external samples allowed; source material could only be extracted from a shoddy 1950s RCA classic recording. The remixes were showcased Saturday evening along with a crudely edited video of the original performance in which each movement was sped up or slowed according to the length of the remix. The results were oddly poetic, ranging from moshpit-inducing to tensely ambient.

J. Anthony Allen’s thick textures and intense bursts of rhythm morphed from intense soundscapes to an exhilarating climax, and his second movement had the kind of pulse that sends most children into epileptic ecstasy. Josh Clausen extracted excruciatingly blunt samples and used them to build fiery textures reminiscent of Aphex Twin. Noah Keesecker’s movement held onto static texture while embellishing on the piece’s original motives. Zachary Crockett says, “I wanted to accentuate Stravinsky’s intentions, so I made the shorter movement ‘Abduction Ritual’ even shorter, more fleeting. The ‘Ancestor’s Ritual’ was relatively long and intense, so I stretched it out and made it more highly charged.” Oliver Grudem’s comfort with electronica and electronic music were evident in his remixes, which, completely unrecognizable from the original piece, sounded more club than classical.

The Salon 3136 experience bridges an uncomfortable gap for a more humble music listening audience. The musical line-up might involve a work from Bach followed by a piece by Elliot Smith. Sporadically inspired applause and trips to the fridge for a Leinie’s are encouraged. “We’re trying to say, that’s okay,” says Keseeker.

Salon 3136 will be hosting one more concert at their current location, after which they will be in transition to a new venue and seeking new sponsorships. For information about upcoming shows or about how to get involved as a composer, performer, or a sponsor, visit .

The stage is full of them; writhing bodies mobbed by sexual energy. Heads are smothered in breasts, legs are flailing, and partners are swapping, each empty soul beckoning an invisible audience from any grim outside tragedies into their seedy underworld of hedonistic pleasure and delicious debauchery.

It is not until the stage manager halts the singing and dancing to give notes that these assorted riffraff become University students once again, merely actors and actresses taking a break from their rehearsal of Cabaret, the closer for the University Theatre’s 75:20 Mainstage season. But when things are in motion and attention is held, you get the idea: Visits to the nightclubs of 1930s Germany were as fantastical an escape from real-life horrors as was humanly possible.

“We’re here to entertain you, but you must pay attention,” instructs Tony Award-winning director Barbra Berlovitz. Cabaret is her latest production, and marks the former University Theatre actress’ return to teach a very important history lesson—one of acute sensitivity to the past, present, and future.

“I wanted to look at things thematically, because Cabaret is a warning piece of sorts,” she explains. “These situations shouldn’t be ignored or they’ll happen again.”

“You are at the mercy of what you are watching, and it certainly can be applied to modern situations,” cast member Jairus Abts agrees.

Written by the notorious duo Kander and Ebb, who brought the sex and scandal of Chicago to Broadway, Cabaret is, at first, a fantastical but ultimately tragic exposure of Berlin nightlife during the rise of the Nazi regime. It details the relationships between two couples in this time of political tension: the Kit Kat Klub’s beautiful, boozing star attraction Sally Bowles (Sabrina Crews) and the seduced American writer Cliff Bradshaw (Ryan Lear); Cliff’s buttoned-up landlord Fraulein Schneider (Maria Effertz) and her kind Jewish tenant Herr Schultz (Gabe Steinberg). A magnetically twisted Master of Ceremonies (Abts) and his troupe of performers musically narrate their trials and tribulations with show-stopping numbers all at once comical, erotic, and devastating.

“I’m trying not to think of this as 75:20’s big finish because then I wouldn’t be able to get anything done,” Berlovitz laughs. “I’m proceeding with this as with any show, as something that relates to the world we live in now. Obviously the music and the dancing of Cabaret are always spectacular, but there are a lot of correlations to reality.”

Berlovitz’s visions for Cabaret are hardly Hollywood, and she instead portrays the Kit Kat Klub as a dirty, brutal nightspot filled with lowlifes. “This is not the Liza Minnelli story,” she jokes, referring to the 1972 film that customarily defines the role. “Minnelli’s performance was so specific to that version. When I research for a production, I go straight to the sources.” To prepare for Cabaret, Berlovitz immersed herself the book The Berlin Stories and the film I Am A Camera, extensively studying first-hand accounts of the events in Germany at the time.

Despite her research, however, Berlovitz has her limits. “There are no completely new ideas. At some point all that has to be put aside and I have to seize what is here on this stage with these individuals.”

The character of Sally Bowles strikes a particular chord. “In a way, Sally exemplifies what a lot of people were doing. She wants to go beautiful and young because she can’t look a long life in the face. She’s always running,” says Berlovitz, though she recognizes some merit to such a tragic character. “Sally is someone you would definitely want as a friend. She walks into a room and everything is much more fun, however temporarily,” she adds. “And our Sally, she’s great.”

The Sally who Berlovitz speaks so highly of is freshman Sabrina Crews, who stood out amongst 150-some students hoping to be cast as Bowles. Crews, who was talked into auditioning by her father, admits to feeling a bit of initial intimidation in her first University production. “But working with everyone is motivational because they’re all so passionate,” she says.
Crews underwent research similar to Berlovitz’s, and decided on an unconventional interpretation. “In I Am A Camera, Sally is depicted as quite young, and you’re given more insight on her character. I wanted to convey her inexperience because I think deep inside she’s really just a scared little girl.”

Abts asked questions to get answers when it came to developing his own character. “I had to consider what the role of the MC was, what his job entailed, how he fit into society and history, and ultimately, what was going on around him,” he explains. “It has definitely been a process.”

No one ever said keeping things authentic was going to be simple. Despite the stress of cramped scheduling, musical director David Saffert praises both his 9-piece cabaret band and the fast-paced direction of Berlovitz. “I don’t get to actually work with the band until a week from opening night,” he laughs. “But Barbara and I are on the same wavelength. We both have a sense of the necessity of drama within the music.”

“It’s not completely smoothed and polished,” Saffert adds. “The music of Cabaret fascinates me because it’s so rhythmically dark and reflecting of the past—very quirky, very real. You’ll hear each instrument individually, just as you would the singers. It’s raunchy and powerful, not some beautiful, sterile choir.”

After all, with a show rooted in such gritty reality as Cabaret, there must be all the blissful perfections and harsh imperfections of the era and its characterizations, or nothing.

Cabaret opens April 20 and closes April 29, 2006 at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota West Bank. For ticket information, call (612) 624-2345.

29th and Aldrich, 3:55 a.m.

A pool of light illuminates a small brick building, abandoned, but for a sign taped to the door reading: Attention gangstas, pimps and prostitutes. YOUR TIME IS OVER! Night patrols starting NOW. To the right, a large plywood board covers a partly smashed window. Like a blank canvas it waits, taunting the artists that haunt empty corners and alleys, bringing them to life with a flurry of spray paint and brushstrokes.

Ignoring the sign’s angry threats and the infrequent hum of traffic drifting from Lyndale Avenue, “27” sets down a backpack bulging with paint cans and brushes. The shadow cast by the building’s overhanging roof helps conceal his body, buried in head to ankle black, with dark brown sneakers torn near the toes. Broken hunks of glass and concrete grind beneath his feet as he steps over two empty 200 mL Peppermint Schnapps bottles with his spray paint in hand, poised for action.

He starts with the face, onion-shaped and pale pink. Next comes a torso in yellow, legs in blue and a wave of hair. A car engine roars closer—too close—and 27 is gone, gliding down the street. The vehicle passes, and he’s back at the window, legs slightly bouncing as the paint flies faster, a rhythmic pss, pss, pss sound disrupting the damp air’s cool silence.

According to the City of Minneapolis website, illegal graffiti is not art. “If it’s done on your house, would you think it’s okay?” asks Steve Johnson, Deputy Chief of the University of Minnesota Police Department. But 27 tries to avoid private property, favoring city-owned dumpsters and doorways. “I would rather hit abandoned things,” he says. Besides, “If it can be painted over, it’s not really destroyed.”

27 strides toward the glow of Lake Street’s Super America, cuts across a parking lot, and walks down a bright alley. He inspects and dismisses a dumpster, sighs, then settles before a brick-red door, already marred by several tags scrawled in black and green. Eyes narrowed in concentration, he draws a cartoon body using what’s left of a white oil bar. He smears the pigment with his right hand before lining the character in black, adding streaks of side swept hair, eyes like sideways rain drops and a nose that swirls and slides into a cheek.

A generator kicks on, sending a bolt of electricity through the air and into 27’s oil-darkened fingertips. Each strategic smudge injects life into the flat surface, until suddenly the character pops—exploding off the door, into the third dimension.

Another page on Minneapolis’ website says, “A neighborhood plagued by graffiti generates fear … creates blight … and is inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic standards.” Of course, it depends on whose aesthetics you’re talking about. While business owners and police officers often decry graffiti artists as vandals, galleries across town, from the venerable Walker Art Center to Ox-Op, a miniscule venue off-shot from Grumpy’s bar, celebrate notable graffiti artists. And then there’s Intermedia Arts—a veritable shrine to the genre, wrapped in a rainbow of paint that sends tourists digging for cameras.

“We’ve gotten really positive feedback. People like the change, new colors and activity,” says Theresa Sweetland, Programs Manager of Intermedia Arts. Once a year, a group of artists paint a mural on the building’s façade. The current design was created last summer in conjunction with “B-Girl Be,” a six-week long exhibit honoring women in hip-hop. Nineteen females, from St. Paul to Phoenix, collaborated over five days and countless cans of paint. “This is the first time we know of that a whole wall was painted by all women.”

Trail the three-color ribbon connecting the mural around Intermedia’s corners, and you’ll find the only “free wall” (a space where graffiti is tolerated by the police) left in the city, since former Minneapolis mayor Sharon Sayles Belton launched a full-scale attack on the illegal art form in 1999, prompting Sgt. Tom Stocke to shut down the Bomb Shelter, a free wall near 34th Avenue South.

Intermedia’s free walls are awash with pieces (multi-colored designs with 3-D qualities), tags (single-color monikers, quickly penned to identify the artist), a shout out (“Hi Waffle!”), and political propaganda (“End War.”) “It’s an outdoor gallery, a space for learning artists,” Sweetland says.

Across town, Tupac’s gruff alto thumps up Juxtaposition Art’s winding stairway, where co-founder Roger Cummings sits with a stack of photos and a half-full album. Adolescents bent over giant canvases wield cans of spray paint in several pictures, but don’t call the graffiti hotline just yet—it’s all part of Juxtaposition’s mission for “Guiding urban youth along paths to success through visual arts.”

“A lot of people come in who want to do graffiti. That’s not what we do,” Cummings says. “We do public art, teaching the basics of aerosol, and the history behind it.”

The soft-spoken artist’s own interest in graffiti emerged in junior high, when he wrote his Dungeon and Dragons name up and down the street. “It’s a way to acknowledge that you exist, and have something to contribute to your neighborhood,” he says. “Kids are gonna be rebellious. Some get noticed because they can fight really well, or because of promiscuity or access to drugs … This is the least of the evils. People recognize you for doing something creative and colorful, even though it’s not the best place to do it.”

For 11 years, Juxtaposition’s students, mainly teens from the North side, have been commissioned to paint murals on walls across Minneapolis, including the intergalactic farm scene on a Kemps/Marigold building. It’s a win-win partnership—the students can legally indulge their creativity in a space where they’ll be recognized, and businesses are less likely to endure tagging on an already painted surface.

29th and Aldrich, 4:24 a.m.

Birds twitter loudly in the ever-lightening sky as 27 dabs a long paintbrush into a pool of black ink. He paints with his body, bending at the knees to lower his back with each vertical stroke, until he’s crouching over the littered ground. Every new line heightens the contrast—between the pink face, yellow torso and blue legs—with the brown plywood background.

Plastic gloves protect 27’s already-stained fingers as he seduces the fresh paint into position, blending and shading with an experienced touch. At 4:31 a.m., he adds his lucky number—27—to the corner of his canvas, then vanishes back into the streets.

The title of Peter Rosen’s new documentary poses the question that has perplexed both the art-snob elite and the everyday people since man first laid eyes upon an art gallery wall, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I don’t get it.” Who Gets to Call It Art? recounts the modern art revolution that took place in the United States at the dawn of the 1960s and its rapid rise from misunderstood fringe movement to lucrative commercial commodity. With testimonies from the times’ illustrious and notorious artists and an arsenal of the era’s prolific and perplexing pieces to appease the eye, Who Gets to Call It Art? transports viewers to the New York scene where the modern art movement began in hopes of answering its titular query. Mere moments into the film the question seems to be answered as renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler emerges as the film’s central focus, and the one who gets to call it art.

The strength of the film lies primarily in its form and style over content. Don’t get me wrong, Rosen’s documentary is bursting at the seams with visual content. The camera pans slowly, Ken Burns-style, across still images of the faces and places that comprised the New York art scene. Rosen covers all his bases, treating our eyes to everything from the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock to the sardonic pop stylings of Andy Warhol. Live footage of art galas and showings bring to life the stories of contributing artists Ellsworth Kelly and David Hockney, among others. Where the film loses sight is with regard to its subject, Henry Geldzahler.

While we are told by every artists interviewed, ad nauseam, how profoundly important Geldzahler was to the post-war art movement, we never get to know him beyond the idiosyncrasies and social adeptness that made him a legendary museum curator and friend to the artists. Geldzahler’s conservative upbringing and strained relationship with his father are touched upon briefly by friends who knew very little of his past, but ultimately we only meet the public Geldzahler. Because he spent much of his adult life surrounded by the beat generation artists he championed, it is through their testimonials and art works that we must understand Geldzahler by understanding what he loved. That he would so willingly pose and serve as subject for the workings of his artist friends (many sculptures, films, sketches and paintings from the era feature him), reveals a very Warhol-like thirst for notoriety that is another aspect of the curator which is unfortunately eclipsed by the film’s emphasis on the art scene itself.

While the intimacies and inner workings of Geldzahler are never fully realized, Rosen does manage to exploit his relationship with the iconic Andy Warhol for a large segment of the film. With the breadth of works already dedicated to Warhol, it’s a shame that Rosen doesn’t more fully explore the enigmatic subject of Geldzahler, and instead punches another fifteen minutes onto Warhol’s clock of fame.

Who Gets to Call It Art? may have its shortcomings with regard to Henry Geldzahler, but it is a captivating visual portrait of a time and place, “the golden age of everything” as one testimony recalls. With pop, abstract expressionist and minimalist works used to illustrate the tale of modern art’s rise, the film is a must for any fan of 20th century art and the tumultuous decade that allowed it to thrive.