The Rake Magazine

Tonight is the night of bad haircuts. There's the bassist with the frizzed-out white boy Afro. And there's a whole mess of uncontrolled curls. But who said rock and roll is supposed to be beautiful? Mick Jagger? Fuck Mick Jagger. Music sounds better when it's snarled, in need of a comb. This evening is showcasing a man who, on his last album cover, stood in his underwear drenched in a bucket of fake blood. That ain't pretty, but it's awesome. And Jay Reatard isn't half bad himself.

Opening for Jay Reatard are locals Private Dancer. This band may have the weakest stage banter ever. Throughout the set, their fuzzy-haired singer enlightens the audience with lurid tidbits such as, "Sweet. Totally sweet," "That was totally awesome," and "I forgot the name of the next band." Private Dancer is also a group that seems best listened to after three shots of whiskey, which is not inherently a bad thing. It just lubricates the veins in preparation for their primitive frenzy. Bare-boned and screaming, Private Dancer sounds like an off-kilter Pavement with cowbell and indulgent wannabe psych jams. "Do You Like to Read" is the hardest rocker in their arsenal-the only discernable lyrics of which are "Fuck yeah/ Oh yeah/ Oh yeah/ Oh yeah/ Fuck yeah," sung while the singer shakes his non-existent ass.

Next is Nashville trio Cheap Time. One-third of the band looks vaguely like a 1970s roadie, one-third like a less drugged out Dee Dee Ramone, and one-third like an indie band poster boy. Their jaunty garage rock has spitfire nasally vocals that sound like that bratty kid in fifth grade. It works, and once you sink into it, those bar chords are addictive-the surf drums even more so. Their brand of basement-dwelling punk strips down the excess leaving only the parts that make you twitch and feel good. Really good. "People Talk" is a good example of the band's irresistible, shiver-inducing explosions. Dual lyrics are delivered rapidly like a well-oiled muscle car with the pedal to the metal, while two-note guitar riffs carry the tune off to oblivion. It's not smart music, but it's efficiently primal, and Cheap Time proves something can be both cheap and top quality.

Jay Reatard blasts through his 11-song set in what feels like 20 minutes, but is probably more like 21. Songs like "Blood Visions," "My Shadow" and "It's So Easy" are sped up even faster than on the record. With fingers in a blur and feet doing tap dances on his large collection of pedals, it's nearly impossible to fathom how Jay Reatard even can play his music faster than on Blood Visions. In his fever-pitched fury, the Memphis punker is lost in a mass of long brown hair. And I'm not sure whether it's sweat or spit, but some kind of liquid is flying off him in massive amounts. Listening to the set feels like a pleasurable electrocution, with sparks shocking synapses and turning the audience into a thickly spasming mass.

Jay Reatard is quickly rising to the top of the indie watch list. This time the hype is warranted. He geniusly blends his delectable, upbeat ragers with macabre lyrics like, "It's so easy when your friends are dead," and "I won't stop until you're dead/ Because of the voices in my head." Unlike forefathers Misfits and The Cramps, Jay Reatard manages to present his mock-horror in a wholly non-campy way. Sure, if you could actually see his eyes behind that mop of hair, he may be spurting the lyrics with a sly wink, but there is a pleasant lack of overacting. Even without his quirky, morbid lyrics, the music is some of the best retro garage out there. Jay Reatard will get his 15 minutes of fame, but let's hope it's probably more like 16.

Thirty seconds is my guess. The generation of 20-something over-stimulated technophiles has notoriously short attention spans, fitting snugly within the confines of rapidly flashing images in 30-second commercials, mind-numbing YouTube videos, maniacal iPod shuffling and ever shifting favoritism to "bands of the hour." But some musicians have managed to cash in on our generational ADD. Girl Talk is the best example. The Pittsburgh-based king of sampling weaves together furious seconds-long bursts of the best and worst dance hall hits to create songs sounding like a schizophrenic radio station that can't decide which Top Ten number to play. The result is a schlepped-together creation, and a serious copyright nightmare, that stands on the legs of others instead of its own two feet.

In contrast, Minneapolis foursome Story of the Sea takes on this similar fast-paced blitzkrieg approach in a more intelligent, and listenable, mode. The music is overwhelming. At the July 18 Triple Rock show, the waif-filled audience simply stood and stared, wondering where the band would go next. Story of the Sea may be the very definition of genre-hopping. The music consists of blips and blurbs meshing, coercing, exploding and sinking below the surface, breaking through, thrashing, smashing and ultimately fading away. One moment they fill the room with psych drone-- a millisecond later they resonate with guttural fervor. Then the music is melodic, then angular, then it stabs through with jagged dissonance and seeps with interludes of grunge. Story of the Sea splits and reassembles genres like Mary Shelley's monster and builds an entity just as fantastic.

But this isn't a band to watch. It's a band to listen to. Story of the Sea appears wholly disinterested in lively distractions. It is literal shoe-gaze with no banter or audience interplay. Onstage the four are talented statues, barely acknowledging the existence of anything but their epic sound, this heavy, heady obelisk. Rarely, a thin grin emerges on their faces when they can tell it's really working. Still there is an enormous presence. Drummer Ian Prince is the ultimate beat blaster with a sound that seems too massive to come from his rig. He is the hidden weapon that ties down the band's constant, frantic diversions. He is the pace that grounds the intricate but stable fortress of guitars as they swoon, intermingle and coalesce.

Story of the Sea is indeed a strange machine. Shucking trends, the band is the misfit inside the Minneapolis scene. Yet it is one of the city's top contenders. I recently sat down with Ian Prince, brother of singer Adam Prince, bassist John McEwen and guitarist Damon Kalar to discuss its encapsulated mischief.

Erin Roof: Are there any brotherly rivalries?

Ian Prince: Not really, no. We have very different personality types.

ER: What are they?

IP: I'll give you an example. [Adam] is three years older, and he had a paper route, which I could not wait to get a paper route. He broke his ankle, and I had to take over for his paper route. And people--when we were kids--people thought we were twins because we looked so much alike. And he used to do such a bad job. The route was after school. When he would do the paper route he would go after school and watch TV and deliver the papers a couple hours later. And I was so gung-ho I would do it right away after school. All these people thought I was him, and they nominated him as paperboy of the month. And he totally took the credit for it. Somebody from the paper came and took his picture and interviewed him. They asked him what his favorite band was. I remember his favorite band was Def Leppard. I was just like ‘Go fucking figure.' That's the story of our lives, basically.

ER: When is your new album coming out?

IP: We don't have an actual date. Fall-ish.

ER: Could you explain the difference between this record and the first one?

IP: The production is different. The first one was really kind of blown out.

John McEwen: Real glossy.

IP: [The new album] sounds like you're a band in a room, instead of in an arena.

JM: We also got Damon in the band. We were a three piece before. So getting him in the band added that whole new element that we had written for but hadn't actually played live.

ER: Why did you decide to add another person?

JM: The songs were always kind of written for four pieces. All the recordings had four pieces. The songs actually sound the way that we thought they would.

ER: Damon, how did you feel about stepping into this already established band?

Damon Kalar: I was just pumped. I heard that they were trying people out, and I jumped out of my seat. It's so exciting to think about this because I've seen Ian playing around a lot, and it's always been unreal. Adam was pretty good about talking to me about what he wants me to play, what he hears. He's very specific about the parts he wants. Something I really appreciate is direction. These guys already had a great idea, and it translated easily.

ER: Describe your sound. It's very genre-hopping and difficult to describe.

JM: We never really go into songs thinking we want a song to sound exactly like this, or we want it to sound exactly like that. It's really whatever feel is on the mind. We like to do a lot of pop things. Really poppy bands or more math rock.

ER: What are some of the bands you like?

JM: None of us really listen to exactly the same thing. All of us have a different collection of music that we listen to.

IP: Adam is the primary songwriter. He's into old pop-- Roy Orbison and stuff like that.

JM: He also loves Britney Spears, really strange things.

IP: He's a sucker for a pop song.

ER: But you're not pop at all.

IP: I think ‘cause we grew up on not really punk, but post rock type stuff, so we have that angular element. They really are somewhat pop songs, in a nutshell.

DK: I wanted to be in Pearl Jam. Really. I loved grunge. If there was a type of music that influenced me the most, it was that, like Pearl Jam, a little Sound Garden, a lot of Alice in Chains.

ER: Do you think you, as a band, fit into the Minneapolis scene?

DK: I don't know.

JM: We try to pick good shows. We try to make it a show that everybody wants to go and see. We play with bands that we really like. With a scene, there's so many different ones. Scene is kind of a tough word.

ER: I don't see anyone here trying to do what you do, which is why I asked the question.

IP: We definitely try to pick oddball shows, where there's an acoustic guy and a pop band. There isn't necessarily a scene that we fit into.

JM: There's so many bands that fit into so many different scenes. We try not to be in one of those.

ER: I think you've accomplished that.

JM: Well, I hope so. If we're not playing for new people all the time, then what's the point?

"Don't wait for the critics to jump on this dude before you start giving it up," says everybody's favorite Albino rhymer, Brother Ali. He's speaking about Muja Messiah, the latest local rapper to make a big splash in the national underground hip-hop scene. "Muja is the shit. The man is right with his."

So this is your last chance to go grab (download...) Muja's debut album Thee Adventures of a B-Boy D-Boy and enjoy it for yourself, before I ruin it with tempered, analytic praise.

Ready, go. Now come back. We can have a nice discourse in the comments section below. We will agree with each other, all of us emphasizing each other's opinions in a positive, supporting manner. Which happens.

Okay. Let's start with Bro Ali's statement that "Muja is the shit." If being ‘the shit' - and making an album that is also ‘the shit' - necessitates putting forth an unbroken series of successful songs, then indeed there's something gorgeous about Muja Messiah. Thee Adventures cycles through a medley of styles. The production ranges from the jazzy slow jam to the upbeat to the downright krunked, the rhymes from egotistical to introspective. And Muja effortlessly navigates from track to track, rapping convincingly over the varied beats - it's not just like he wrote a rhyme and a producer made a beat and they synced them up and smashed them together; rather his flows seem actually to be linked with the rhythms.

Overall, his style has a bit more of an edge than most Minnesotan rappers'. Just when I thought the local scene was as saturated as it could possibly be - this is a small city to have as many big names as we do - Muja is able to inject it with something that, if not completely new, is at least new to us.

Though he expertly tackles the self-conscious and political rhymes that have filled several albums on the Rhymesayers label, Muja Messiah (whose album is put out by Black Corners) is most on point when he's rapping about his life on the streets of North Minneapolis. (Not to say other rappers here haven't dabbled in this milieu; it's just that, to my mind, Muja is so far the most noteworthy.)

On "What's This World Coming To" (which features Slug) he's all like:

"I was conceived in a mustard green Cutlass Supreme/
lucky me at the time I was the youngest of three/
til my big sister drowned in a river/
years later my brother got gunned down and they never found the killer."

As this verse shows, he handles his personal history with frankness and even a little bit of humor. It's his trademark mixture, and proves to be engaging on every track. One gets a sense that Muja is rapping about some important, personal issues, but where applicable he's able to see the absurdity of his situations. I think that might be called scope.

What's maybe most endearing, though, is an inferiority complex that hovers over the album, in regards to street credibility. While Muja Messiah raps about the toughness of his childhood, the murder victims he knows (including his brother), and his absent dad - this is the stuff of Tupac, let's remember - he still seems to need to validate himself and the city he grew up in.

On the Lil' Jon-inspired "Get Fresh," he's all like:

"Niggaz backstabbin' my city
like it's all backpackin' and hippy
like it ain't crackin' in my city
We don't be rappin' about rappin'
We rap about what be happenin'
in the streets."

Likewise, Thee Adventures features guest verses from Black Thought (The Roots), Slug, and I-Self Devine; his beats are produced by guys that have worked with Eminem, Nas, and De La Soul; and yet it seems like Muja's ego still needs some propping up. It's sweet, kind of. Coming from the state that labors to make sure everyone knows that Bob Dylan was born here, the self-conscious ego seems a very Minnesotan thing. The overall effect works in Muja's favor: Because of its insecurities, his thuggish style of rap is accessible even to guys like me.

At the end of the day, he can't ignore the fact that Kenwood and Linden Hills are as much a part of his city as any other neighborhood. Seeing as how he's the wordsmith here, it's not surprising that he puts it best himself:

"I'm from a pasture where the grass is greener
started as a rapper and emerged as a leader...
I'm down with Black Thought
I'm down with Black Blondie...
I am the Black Honkie."

 

**CD release party Sunday, July 27 at First Avenue**

Fake Sonny has that deer in the headlights look. The right side of his mustache is slowly slipping down to rest on his bottom lip, looking like a venomous breed of wooly caterpillar. It doesn't take long for audience members to notice. They erupt in gut-breaking cackles at poor fake Sonny's expense. This mockery is not undeserved, being that he did break rule number one of fake mustache wearing-make sure fake mustache is properly affixed.

This is fake Sonny's worst nightmare. But his recovery is quick. Ever the intrepid impersonator, he changes lyric "the beat goes on" to "the moustache stays on" and bravely attempts to play off the snafu. Only seconds later, in a moment of failure, fake Sonny slips his mustache into the palm closed around fake Cher's spindly fingers.

"I thought that was real, Sonny," fake Cher says, noting her partner's suddenly naked upper lip region.

"I wish," fake Sonny chides.

"The things you don't know about your own husband."

Tonight Bryant Lake Bowl is celebrating everyone's inner cheese ball with a night of double takes, cringes and unbridled guffaws as members of local impersonation troupe, Party Crashers, take the stage.

The music begins with a solo routine highlighting Cher's 80s hits. Decked out in a $5 wig, fake Cher rips off her miniscule black dress after the first song to reveal lingerie as scandalous as a 2 a.m. drag queen at Gay 90s. She looks much more pleasant after a costume change into the long white dress reminiscent of Cher's earlier fashions. Following a rousing and authentic rendition of "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves," Sonny again joins the stage with freshly spirit-gummed facial hair for "I Got You Babe." Amid fanfare, he quietly slinks behind the curtain, perhaps to retire the fuzz forever.

The star of tonight's show, though, is Terry Schulz, the Elvis Presley of the Twin Cities. Schulz is appropriately large for the latter day Elvis look. And his disco ball shaking pipes could rival the King's own, were he still around for a croon-off. Schulz doesn't need a microphone --he needs a muffler for fear of shorting out audience members' hearing aids.

With his rabid leg pumping, snarled lip and sweeping arm movements, Schulz accurately conjures his idol. Those in need of glasses could easily reminisce about being in a sold-out stadium with the real deal, instead of Bryant Lake Bowl's small, sit-down theater, while looking upon Schulz' bell bottom, black jumpsuit bedazzled with red and gold rhinestones. His fingers are weighed down by enormous gold rings and a massive cross is entangled in Schulz' snarled black forest of Elvisian chest hair.

Schulz, like the majority of Elvis impersonators, chooses to recreate the last shining moments of Elvis' career. Strangely, impersonators choose to celebrate the era when Elvis was past his prime. Even though The Beatles never had an opportunity to pass their prime, their impersonators favor the early years, wearing mop-top wigs and Cuban heeled boots, even when they sing numbers from The White Album. The reason Schulz and his peers dress up in chintzy gear is because, by this time in Elvis' career, he was, in a way, an impersonation of himself. Missing were the shaking hips, tight pants and sex appeal after the Army and the army of barbiturates that warped his persona. It was like looking at the revolutionary icon in a discotheque's fun house mirror. Impersonating this era feels like kicking a man when he's down. When Elvis emerges from his cryogenically frozen hideaway one day, will he laugh at these bastardizations or hang his head?

In the height of his act, Schulz doesn't seem to concern himself with these philosophical quandaries. He simply has fun. The crowd is eating it up.

"This goes out to the girls right here," Schulz says, pointing a kingly finger at three elderly women before launching into "Love Me Tender." Crowd interaction is the focus of Schulz' routine. Throughout the night, he tosses red scarves into the audience and bends down to hang leis around ladies' necks, dripping sweat onto their unsuspecting forearms as he does so.

During "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," he throws small, stuffed bears into the audience. A few songs later, a woman in the front row hands her bear to Schulz, making dabbing motions at her face. Shulz fills her request, wiping his drenched brow with the bear's fur. The woman clutches it for the rest of the set, imagining it is a gift from the real thing.

DAY ONE

The warnings start off nicely enough, with the Basilica Block Party MC kindly asking people to stand further away from the stage, you know, for fear of electrocution or something.

Then it is, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you're worried about getting wet, you can go in the parking lot or go in the church. If you go in the church, you better say a prayer." That quickly morphs into the pleasantly shouted, "Head into the parking lot!" Then, essentially, "RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIIVES!"

The clouds had been broadcasting impending doom the whole afternoon. They dimmed the sky as Augustana took the stage to spout their pop-infused pick-me-uppers. The Californian quintet clearly doesn't partake in the Minnesota tradition of the "summer haircut." All five don shaggy do's and unwashed jeans, though it's possible they paid for them to look that way. Augustana is your typical rock-by-numbers band. The music is not particularly inspired, an apt summary of the entire festival, but it's easy listening. The band is all about earth tones, from their clothing to the color of their guitars, to their inoffensive piano-fuelled ballads. Still, on the side of the stage a gaggle of girls are enjoying themselves, slapping their thighs in time to the music.

As a solid mass of gray eclipses the skies of downtown Minneapolis, concertgoers flood to cover inside the basilica and under a soon-to-be drenched highway overpass. The nearby parking deck turns into a five-level beer-drinking fiesta, as festival attendees hoot at every clapping thunder and bolt of lightning. They swoon under the force of 80-mile-per-hour winds rushing through and cause a general ruckus, stopping only to snap cell-phone photos of the monstrous purple cloud hanging over the highly embellished cathedral dome. The scene could only be more appropriate if snarling gargoyles hanged from the edge of the building, laughing frightfully at the weather.

One woman takes things in stride: a professionally trained ballerina who leaps and dips and twirls on the outside deck of the parking garage, with not a centimeter of dry skin left. "My shoes are wet," the rain dancer says after sufficiently exhausting herself. By this time, her lack of dryness is a moot point. She smiles, "That was awesome."

Outside, the festival looks like a deserted and wrecked movie set. Tents are overturned. A light inside the basilica is silently flickering. A tree split by the wind lays desecrated on the lawn. Everything is soaked, and the only thing not in danger of blowing away is a Brinks truck quietly lumbering down a nearby street.

But the show must go on, even if it is an hour late. As lightning hushes the distance and the rain dies down, a beer-thirsty herd emerges from hiding. Those who don't head for their cars become a mass of wet diehards, eagerly waiting for reggae all-star Ziggy Marley to begin. Bathed in blue light, the be-dreaded Marley's only comment about the storm is a simple "Yeeeeaaaahhh!" shouted before he and his band fill the air with their uplifting, poppy reggae. In response to the reverberating wah-wah and the sight of a legitimate member of the legendary Marley clan, the audience is awash with high fives and handclaps. One man feels compelled to do jumping jacks. Why not?


DAY TWO

A gigantic piss cup is standing next to the Twin Cities' mayors. Let's be proper here. The piss cup has a name: Petey P. Cup. Petey P. Cup and Pokey the syringe, health insurance company Health Partners' mascots, are just a small sampling of the infectious throng of corporate advertising at the Basilica Block Party. There's Verizon with its free mini backpacks, Starbucks with its free samples, and Chevy with a small armada of show cars and its very own stage, on which two not nearly drunk enough women are yelping their way through Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll," and many more.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak are standing next to the six foot tall piss cup in what, let's hope, is a low moment in their respective careers. Mayor Coleman steps up to the mic and hollers, "You do this every night over here? Is that true?" Next, mayor Rybak gives "shout outs" to his children in the audience and loudly reminds them he is in charge of the police force, before flinging t-shirts into the crowd.

Missy Higgins' set is a sigh of relief. The Australian songbird is one of the only salvageable acts of the festival, joining local rockers White Light Riot on the shortlist. Higgins alternates between acoustic guitar and keyboard. Wearing a summer dress and appropriately rosy cheeks, her soulful, swooning alto hangs in the air like a thick, velvet curtain. Tunes like "Peachy" are rolling, spirited romps, while others sound more rustic and befitting of coffee shop showcases. Her songs of being in love, angry at love, missing love and love in general transfix the sunned audience.

This cannot be said about either headliners. For reasons of mystery and poor planning, festival organizers chose the Gin Blossoms and Gavin Rossdale as the main acts. Maybe this would have passed a decade ago, but definitely not now.

The Gin Blossoms' music is as sagging as their skin. The half-hearted harmonies flounder, as does the band's approach. They play like it is the thousandth time they've plunked the notes. The technical musicianship is apparent, but their enthusiasm died with Y2K. The saving grace of the Gin Blossoms' set is singer Robin Wilson's penchant for shooting devil horns. Devil horns. At a church-sponsored music festival. Granted, the money earned from the two-day event goes into the restoration of the undeniably gorgeous basilica and not to the J-man, but still. The whole evening has this "smoking in the boys' room" vibe. People are sloshed on $5 beer with cigarettes hanging from their lips. Wafts of pot smoke float by. Who knew Catholics could be so cool?

Gavin Rossdale's set is negligibly better. He has faired better with time, though his long, curly locks are sorely missed. Rossdale pairs piano melodies with his trademark epic guitars that are full enough to slip into every nook and cranny of the city. He is still able to serve up upbeat thumpers with dashes of atonality, though his new music could easily be considered "Bush-lite." The lyrics are at times ghastly: "She started a fire/I was the wood." But Rossdale sings well, as long as he doesn't try to get too creative with his vocal range. His stage presence is a different story. Rossdale often saunters across the stage like an ape in a confusing white room. Gone, also, is that "tortured rock star" aesthetic that was so pivotal to Bush's success. Rossdale even sings a song called, "Happiness." Being married to Gwen Stefani, the guy can't have much to complain about-which is, unfortunately, less than can be said about Basilica Block Party.