The Wake

When it comes to film, women in rock and roll just can’t seem to catch a break. More often than not, females in rock movies are shoved aside into the roles of doting girlfriends or groupies (Almost Famous and That Thing You Do). The notion of an all-girl band being film material doesn’t seem too radical, yet it’s only been successfully carried out in a few ‘80s teen flicks banished to late night play on cable TV, such as the well done but rarely seen Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.But in the just released on DVD Prey for Rock and Roll, Gina Gershon’s Jacki is no teen, instead is just days away from her 40th birthday. As the front woman for the all-girl group the Dandy Clams, Jacki is the stereotypical bad girl, covered …

Read more →

In the University of Minnesota’s metal sculpting foundry, students and faculty take busted-up radiators, rusty cast-off hardware, and failed art projects, and heat them to more than fifteen hundred degrees Celsius until they are bright red and as runny as milk. Under the watchful eye of professor and renowned metal sculptor Wayne Potratz, molten scrap flows into sand molds and becomes fine art. Only when heat forces iron out of its cool, stable state can it transform. But for graduate student Allen Peterson, the catalyst for transformation was three years in the cold.In order for the emerging artist to become a master of his medium, Peterson left his warm home state of Alabama for Minnesota. He grew up in Birmingham, a city forged by the iron and steel industries, and Birmingham is where he earned …

Read more →

Considering the majority of actors are female, it’s perplexing that so few women-written, women-performed plays actually make it to the stage. Now, in honor of women’s history month, locally-based Theatre Limina is putting on Parallel Lives. Written by comedians Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy, the play was originally part of the duo’s Kathy and Mo Show. Using the same skit style of comedy used in Saturday Night Live, the play boldly addresses issues surrounding being female in our society. Although the play encompasses multiple characters and multiple perspectives, only two actors make up the cast. Sarah Cantleberry, one of the theater company’s founding members, and Mia Dodson take on the arduous task of performing the play. Debbins notes that one of the defining qualities of the newly emerging company is its willingness to take on …

Read more →

What if your worst memories could be erased, the moments when you felt the most pain, humiliation or guilt? Is your brain working now, filtering through all the bad moments you wish you could zap first? For me, that bad memory exists in a dimly-lit hallway, outside a locked door; the end of a five-year relationship. What is it for you: a fallout with a lover, friend, a death or a goodbye? But there’s a catch: along with that bad memory will go its good counterparts. The pain that person caused will be absent but so will the happiness that person brought to your life. A complete erase, reset and restart. This is the central theme of director Michel Gondry (Human Nature) and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s (Adaptation) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a dizzying …

Read more →

Ahhh! There’s nothing quite like that first cup of coffee to start the day. And with my beautiful, and insulated The Passion of the Christ™? coffee mug, I can remind myself as well as others around me the sacrifice that Jesus made for mankind…now if I could only figure out why people fiercely avoid me in the workplace? We’ve all heard about the merchandise tied with Mel Gibson’s film, and as absurd as the very notion – why not? The Passion is on track to well surpass the $300 million mark on its fifth weekend in the US. And, I guess merchandise such as mugs with crucifixes and nail jewelry are a little subtler than something like Burger King’s The Passion Kid’s Club Meal (includes a Jesus action figure – with battle damage!) But unlike …

Read more →

When Dave Grohl released Probot, I decided to put away my prejudice against him for his more well-known (not to mention overrated, lacking talent, etc) bands. Grohl has quite simply made an amazing metal album with the help of some of the genre’s most talented and under recognized voices. Featured here are Cronos (Venom), Max Cavalera (Sepultura), Lemmy Kilmister (Motorhead), Mike Dean (Corrosion of Conformity), Kurt Brecht (D.R.I.), Lee Dorian (Cathedral/Napalm Death), Wino (The Obsessed), Tom G. Warrior (Celtic Frost), Snake (Voivod), Eric Wagner (Trouble) and King Diamond (Mercyful Fate). Grohl is responsible for almost all of the instrumentation, although there is occasional assistance. The music on each song does reflect the vocalist, as each vocalist co-wrote their song. However, Probot does not sound like a mish-mash of disparate artists, but, instead, sounds coherent and …

Read more →

The Walkmen leisurely claimed the 400 Bar stage as their own, clad in light sweaters and button down shirts. Surprisingly un-hipster, they resembled average twenty-something easterners while strapping on their guitars and letting out the first few organ notes of “What’s In it For Me,” the first track off of their spectacularly moody new LP, Bows & Arrows. Singer Hamilton Leithauser questioned with his trademark wail, “What’s in it for me/ I came here for a good time/ Now you’re telling me to leave.” Just then, the drums kicked in - and the show was forever changed. Drummer Matt Barrick began a rapturous assault upon his kit – arms raised high again and again before crashing them down against the snare. Eyes wide open, his face seemed to be in convulsions – but …

Read more →

In the world of jazz, The Bad Plus are like an airborne C-130 Gunship. Circling over their weak and unsuspecting prey - those cheap, doctor-jazz producing pukesmiths (see Kenny G. and Michael Bolton) - they unleash an ivory-strewn arsenal, obliterating all traces of their too-smooth targets. The band is a virtual shitty-music-killing-machine. Their latest, Give, swings this musical-mediocrity massacre into ravenous, army-of-the-dead mode, with zombie-like proficiency, The Bad Plus stop at nothing until every ear-ache-inducing, imitation jazz artist is d-e-s-t-r-o-y-e-d, pul-ver-ized, terminated, musically disemboweled in their wake. Whether in the Españacana-rumba-rythym of “Cheney Piñata” or the techno-bowlified, futura space-jazz of “Neptune (The Planet),” the guys in The Bad Plus – all Midwesterners, two of whom are from Minnesota – provide the vital life-elixir (that poisonous lite-jazz thinning agent) that has eluded jazz for much of …

Read more →

“I was just out in L.A. and The Strokes were in town,” Ben Kweller tells me. “We hung out all night.”The twenty-three year old, retro-fried rocker sounds a lot like Buddy Holly. Soft-spoken with a southern rancher’s drawl, you’d think he was the underpaid star of some Hollywood B-list Western film – not a budding, Big Apple breakout artist. But for Kweller, now a ten-year veteran of the music biz, such conflicting imagery is nothing out of the ordinary; the Texas Troubadour has been a walking contradiction ever since he was old enough to reach the piano keys.When Kweller’s first band – Radish, a Nirvana-inspired angst-rock outfit – released their debut album in 1996, he was heralded as the boy-genius of rock and roll. He was Brian Wilson, Daniel Johns and Doogie Howser all rolled …

Read more →

2D (pronounced “second”) is an astonishing collaborative effort between two of Minnesota’s finest. A Whisper in the Noise from Minneapolis plays an intricate manic rage of emotion with their songs, crafting a beautiful form of post-rock that ebbs and flows with fervent aggressiveness. If Thousands from Duluth provide the subtle details in between the cracks, melding ambient bliss with ethereal soundscapes that lull the listener to a distant place. The bands blend together like clockwork, each performing with subtlety and grace. Both are also able to capture the kind of melancholic brilliance and emotion that will give the listener the most beautiful nightmares one could imagine for weeks on end. It is, however, West Thordson’s piano/programming and vocals that really drives the record into a whole new dimension of musicianship and technicality. These lyrics are …

Read more →

Like a bad cowlick you can’t keep flat, Courtney Love thrust herself back into the spotlight, this time without the benefit of drug-induced breakdowns or distribution battles. Love’s debut solo album, America’s Sweetheart, depicts her as anything but. Her days with Hole branded her as an Amazonian savior. Sure, she’d made some mistakes, but that just made her more credible. She was the patron saint of bored and hurting women everywhere. Listening to America’s Sweetheart, however, you can almost hear her shooting up between takes. Love has gone from a rock spectacle to sideshow spectacle. On “Life Despite God,” she sounds so coked up and broken it’s a wonder she made it into the studio at all. Instead of writing frank, introspective lyrics, Love stoops to ripping off “gabba gabba hey!” and penning cliches like …

Read more →

Question: How does one obtain the dream of becoming a celebrated band? Answer: hard work, dedication, and a love for the music. Cowboy Curtis, a home grown Minneapolis band, has done all of this and more to establish themselves as a fixture in the local music scene. By following the forming of their band, getting gigs, creating great music and putting out the coveted CD, the ambiguity of making music is revealed. Forming a Band: Cowboy Curtis’s birth took place after Neal Perbix (vocals, guitar) started playing with Jake Hanson (vocals, guitar and keyboards) in high school. Submerged in their parents’ basement, the two started creating music. Neal also played drums, but his older brother, Nate, soon took over the rhythms after his return from college at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. The band …

Read more →

The letters FCC got an entirely different meaning on March 10th, as the Fuck Clear Channel Tour came to Minneapolis. Headlining the tour was rapper Sage Francis.Mac Lethal and Grand Buffet opened for Francis. Mac Lethal, out first, rapped about issues concerning ex-girlfriends and child abuse. His style was similar to that of Francis. Even his delivery seemed to be in the same vein as the headliner. Grand Buffet followed Mac Lethal. They entertained along with “DJ CD Player,” as they called their Walkman, which spewed out the wacky beats that appeared to be their trademark. Francis took the stage donned in black, thick-rimmed glasses and a tuxedo that looked to be two sizes too small. He grabbed the microphone, obviously uncomfortable, and started his set. One thing was missing from the show, however: DJ. …

Read more →

I Spit on Your Grave (more accurately portrayed by its original title, Day of the Woman) has been one of the most controversial films in history. Siskel and Ebert did all in their power to have this 1978 film pulled from theaters. In England, among other countries, it was illegal at one point to own a copy of this film. People were actually jailed for this infraction. The film is still banned in Australia.Why does so much controversy surround I Spit on Your Grave? The reason is because the film succeeds. It set out to show the absolute horror and ugliness of rape, to show how it can destroy a person (or at least as well as film can portray it). Director Meir Zarchi wished to accomplish this feat after he and a friend found …

Read more →

I can’t sing, dance or act.Scratch that. Physically, I can do all three. I sing along to the radio when I’m driving. I do a little tap dance in the kitchen when I think my roommates aren’t looking. And we’ve all pretended we’re the next Gwyneth Paltrow or Tom Cruise.But anything beyond that and I’m out of my league.So what possessed me to audition for the “Rocky Horror Show”? I didn’t kid myself - I knew I wouldn’t get a role. I did it out of moral support more than anything else. One of my roommates, Michaela, wanted to audition and was too nervous to go alone. After two weeks of coaxing and pleading, I reluctantly agreed to audition with her.Then there was the matter of preparing. Michaela had been through this before, but I …

Read more →