8.28.07: Allman Brothers Band at the State Fair

Clouds don’t have teeth or claws, but the black pillows of doom that surrounded the grandstand at the State Fair last night could not have looked more menacing even if they did. The drizzle came and went during the hour-long set of pedal-steel guitar whiz Robert Randolph and his Family Band. And when the Allman Brothers finally took the stage at 8:30 p.m., opening with the chorus, “People, can you feel it? Love is in the air,” I can’t have been the only one thinking,  No, in these parts we call that the dew point.

The seemingly inevitable deluge never came, though. Half-way through the first soaring guitar solo, as the projection screens on each side of the stage zoomed in on the magic hands of guitarist Derek Trucks and the screen behind the band displayed a giant spinning mushroom, it became possible to believe that the evening may not end in tragedy after all. By the time Greg Allman growled the opening lyrics to “Midnight Rider,” it even looked likely that this was going to be a fairly decent show, not one of those half-hearted phone-in concerts that plague the grandstand stage so often this time of year.

Fortunately, the Allman Brothers Band isn’t some has-been casino act trying to cash in on its nostalgia; it’s more like a corporation that makes sure its customers receive a quality product, and which guarantees a certain amount of unrefundable satisfaction every time. The Allman Brothers isn't a band anymore—it's a brand. What makes it more Mercedes than Mercury is that even when its members are just going about their everyday business, the Allman Brothers is still one of the most musically interesting and adventurous rock acts in existence. When lead guitarists Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks are trading sinuous guitar licks, chasing the ghost of Duane Allman, they at least do Duane the justice of playing like they mean it.

The other invigorating aspect of the band’s current incarnation is that even though there’s a lot of gray hair on the Allman stage—and in a few cases, no hair at all—it’s the youngest member of the band, twenty-eight-year-old Derek Trucks, who is clearly keeping the franchise alive. Sure, the frizzy-haired, pot-bellied Haynes can still coax his Gibson to deliver the Allman’s signature sustain, but whenever the band wants to kick a song up a notch or three, it hands the reins over to Trucks, who routinely sends a plume of slides and bends and wails into the stratosphere. It’s sacrilege to say it, I know, but technically speaking Trucks is probably a better guitarist than Duane Allman ever was—and, like a restless jazz musician, his improvisations simultaneously echo the Allman sound of old and marry it to an edgier, more sophisticated brand of blues that all but shouts “new and improved!”

The other aspect of Trucks’ playing that’s hard not to marvel at is his preternaturally calm demeanor at the helm of this great institution of rock. Trucks doesn’t jump around onstage or squeeze and grimace like he’s trying to pass a kidney stone. On the contrary, when Trucks is up there laying his claim as the most amazing guitar hero of his generation, and the camera zooms in to capture the expression on his pallid, boyish face, he could just as well be reading the paper or sewing a button on a shirt. If the camera and screens weren’t there, one could at least imagine he was breaking a sweat. But he’s not. Trucks is the thinking man’s guitar hero, and when it’s his turn to solo, he’s definitely the smartest guy in the room—or in the grandstand.

Historically speaking, last night’s overall performance didn’t have the aura of greatness. Greg Allman stayed in the background most of the time, presiding over the show like a proud grandpa. He came forward, acoustic guitar in hand, to play “Melissa” for the first encore, but wisely let the youngsters do most of the heavy lifting. They played some favorites—"Revival," "Midnight Rider," "Let It Rain," "One Way Out," "Jessica"—mixed things up with a few mid-listers—"Woman Across the Water," "The Same Thing"—and even played a couple of songs I’d never heard before. All I can say about those tunes is that they sounded like worthwhile extensions of the Allman brand, which is a distinctively American blend of progressive, Southern-grown blues rock that’s been gently aging for more than thirty years and is tasting quite smooth now.

It’s a quality product, after all, packaged to perfection, satisfaction guaranteed.

8.25.07: Queens of the Stone Age at First Avenue

I think I might’ve just broken up with Queens of the Stone Age.

How did this happen?

I’ve been seeing Queens since 2000, when Rated R came out. It was mindblowing—heavy, hypnotic, massive. Like Radiohead, without the English pretense. Prog rock that could kick your ass. Love at first listen. We’ve had some great memories: a roadtrip to Chicago and Milwaukee to see each other in the autumn of 2000, a sweaty couple of hours in the summer of ’02 at the 400 Bar (Dave Grohl on drums), another great show at the Quest. I mean, the Quest. Ha. It didn’t really matter where we were.

But lately, it’s been a mess. First, in 2004, lead singer/guitarist Josh Homme fired original Queens bassist Nick Olivieri, whom I loved. Then Homme started moonlighting as the drummer for Eagles of Death Metal, whom I hated. Still, last night, three songs into the Queens show at First Avenue, things felt just like old times. “I feel great tonight,” Homme said from the stage. A lean six-feet-five-inches, dressed in black, with that sneer and that swagger, and those gigantic hands . . . he still looks like the star quarterback who quit the team to play guitar. The band ripped through “Regular John,” off its first record. There was a new bassplayer, drummer, and keyboardist, but they still had that mathematic Queens synchronicity to go with all that power. And as a lead guitarist and James Brown-esque bandleader/conductor, Homme is still the master of alternating sustain/silence.

But then it started to feel weird.

A pointless, meandering jam halted the heretofore Apocolypto-like pace. It was “Into the Hollow,” a song off the new record, Era Vulgaris. Momentum was lost. The crowd looked confused. Then another new song: “Misfit Love,” this one with call-and-response Motown choruses. Oh, dear. Then “Suture Up Your Future,” which sounded like a jazz cover of “Better Living Through Chemistry,” from Rated R. They recovered a little bit at the end of the set with an epic “Song for the Dead” and came back out and dominated “I Think I Lost My Headache” during the encore, but . . . look, I really want to avoid sounding like a bitter ex. (Sigh.) I suppose it’s inevitable. I don’t want to get into “performance” or talk out of school about how Queens has “lost its fastball” or anything like that. I’m trying to be classy here. I just like their old stuff better, OK?

Thanks for the memories.

8.25.07: Girls Rock! at the Ritz

A couple of nights ago I was at the local premiere of Dirty Country, a hilarious documentary about Larry Pierce, a singer-songwriter who performs raunchy country music only the ill-informed would call misogynistic—his songs are so juvenile that you gotta believe Pierce is the only one being oppressed. Still, it was a reminder that the music business is largely a male-dominated one in which women are often relegated to the thankless role of groupie, backup singer, or video hoochie. 

But what about girls who want to rock? The inspiring chick-power documentary Girls Rock!, which screened yesterday afternoon at the Ritz Theater as part of the Sound Unseen Film + Music Festival, argues that peers and pop culture are doing their damndest to groom more Britney Spears than Patti Smiths. But it also suggests that if you put an electric guitar in the hands of a troubled teenage girl, you’re building more than a budding musician; you’re chiseling away at the cultural flotsam that tells her she’s worthless.

Scheduled to open in theaters in March (nothing’s booked yet for our Landmark screens), the film follows campers at the famed Oregon-based Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. Over the course of the five-day camp, girls as young as eight form bands, write and perform songs, work out their hostilities (at the world and each other), and learn that they’re not weird if they want to wail on a guitar or scream into a microphone—in fact, they’re cool. The camp was started by a female roadie who was tired of seeing the tough women rockers of the ‘90s being replaced by Hilary Duff–styled “performers” of girly pop who had never picked up a guitar, much less played one.

There are no Hilary Duffs at the five-day Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp, which, judging by the film’s four hand-picked protagonists, seems to attract more than its share of kids with baggage. On one end of the spectrum, there’s Misty, a teenager with drug-addicted parents who has spent time in and out of group homes and is now ridiculed by classmates for living with her grandparents. On the other, there’s Palace (above), a cherubic eight-year-old vocalist who eats up the camera but seems to have inherited her divorced yuppie mom’s preoccupation with her appearance. Amelia is the chatterbox guitarist who writes songs about her dog Pippi but can’t find any friends at school, while Laura is the perpetually smiling Korean adoptee from Oklahoma who loves death metal but admits she hates herself.

We don’t spend enough time with any of the girls to get a real sense of how much they’re transformed by the camp or even learn much more about them than the above descriptions suggest. Luckily, director Arne Johnson has chosen such winning subjects that it’s easy forget that the film is largely a collection of captured moments than a character-driven narrative.      

Campers take self-defense lessons and talk about “body oppression,” but the film makes clear that the real work of building up these girls comes in teaching them not to tear down one another. Interviews and camp footage mingle with stylized animation that wisely adds some levity to all this self-esteem talk; unfortunately, these segments also introduce some suspect stats about the assault on girls—not an insignificant point when you consider the folks lined up to take shots at anything that argues that life is tougher for girls.

Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom are two other docs that followed a melting pot of talented kids readying for their big day on stage. Like these films, Girls Rock! is at its best simply observing kids being kids in all their unvarnished, pubescent hilarity—not reaching for the big message.

Women in Music Minnesota hosts its own rock camp for girls modeled after the one in the film. Visit wimmn.com or girlsrockandrollretreat.com for details.

8.23.07: Dirty Country at The Heights

Larry Pierce’s foul-mouthed country music is too filthy for even the most delicate, carefully asterisked descriptions. So, if you weren’t at the Heights Theater last night for the regional premiere of the Minnesota-produced documentary about the honky-tonk George Carlin, I insist: go to iTunes and listen. Then ask yourself if the cultural watchdogs shouldn’t be patrolling small-town garage parties instead of hip-hop videos next time they want to unearth some real smut.

One might assume that a film calling itself Dirty Country would focus on the strange marriage of red-state-entrenched country music and its obscenity-twanging fringes. Or that the filmmakers would find some outraged parents in Pierce’s hometown of Middleton, Indiana, who want to run him out of town. Nope. The fast-paced doc, an audience winner at South by Southwest, follows Pierce, a third-shift factory worker with a talent for writing country songs who gets a mid-life shot at a big-time music career.

When we first meet Pierce he’s a married-with-kids fifty-three-year-old with a second life recording smutty, comic country songs that are distributed at truck stops by a label called Laughing Hyena Records. He sings and plays guitar to an enthusiastic, boozy group of friends and family, but they’re hardly just amusing him. The guy's got a voice like a poor man’s Waylon Jennings and a quick wit that’s put to service in decidedly profane but nonetheless well-constructed songs.

It turns out Pierce has more fans than his ad-hoc garage concerts might suggest and they include -Itis, an established Colorado power-pop band that includes Pierce covers in its anatomically obsessed setlist. The group, headed by Chris Daughtry look-alike Craig Soderberg, track down their idol, who they’re surprised to learn doesn’t have a band and is struggling to make ends meet after having been forced into early retirement from the GM plant. The country singer and the rock band click, of course, and before long Pierce is playing his first real gig with –Itis at the Main Event in Fridley.

Dirty Country tells its feel-good underdog story well, letting its (often unintentionally) hilarious cast of characters tell their own stories without a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge from the filmmakers. It also gives some nice context to Pierce’s peculiar brand of outsider art through interviews with professors, music journalists, and other dirty-music cult favorites (the sequin-caped rapper Blowfly and white tuxedoed piano man Dr. Dirty) who cultivate their rabid fan bases despite no airplay and little in the way of traditional marketing.

In Pierce’s case, the best marketing seems to be his own understated charm, and his fortuitous friendship with -Itis frontman Soderberg, who seems to be having as much fun transforming Pierce’s life as Pierce is living out his dreams. The band and its new elder statesman now play shows together around the country, including one last night at the Cabooze after they fielded questions at a post-screening Q&A with the film’s directors, Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett—childhood friends and Wisconsin natives who also seem kindred spirits.

The Dirty Country filmmakers never get in the way of their raunchy, surprisingly affecting doc, no small feat from the guys whose touring Found Footage Festival of discarded industrial training videos and strangers’ abandoned home movies is but one indication of their offbeat tastes. So why is it they’re still shopping Dirty Country around for DVD or theatrical distribution? Somebody, please, get these guys hooked up. Pierce has plenty of audiences yet to defile.

8.19.07: Japanese Lantern Festival at Como Park

St. Paul and Nagasaki, Japan, have been sister cities since 1955; pretty amazing considering that Nagasaki was flattened by an atomic bomb dropped by the United States only ten years earlier. That relationship takes physical form in the Como Ordway Memorial Japanese Garden, a truly lovely place that is the setting for possibly the most enchanting moment of the summer.

The Japanese Lantern Festival is an annual celebration modeled on Obon, a brief window of time when ancestral spirits are thought to return to visit their families according to Buddhist and Japanese folk beliefs. The festival culminates in the release of paper lanterns on rivers and even in the ocean to guide the spirits away. Last night, the Japanese Garden glowed with the light of dozens of lanterns floating in the pond against a backdrop of miniature granite cliffs bordering its shore. Beautiful.

The festival offered less lofty pleasures as well in the form of sushi trays and shrimp tempura, origami and haiku booths, and daiko drumming and obon dance performances. Mu Daiko radiated sheer energy with its amazingly choreographed and resonant percussion. It was a hard act to follow, but Minnesota Bon Odori held its own with several dances punctuated by graceful gesturing of hands and arms. In Japan, each neighborhood or town has its own dance with gesturing particular to the way of life in that place. In keeping with the spirit of the dance, the group composed, choreographed, and performed a Minnesota bon odori with gestures evoking canoeing and fishing and, of course, shoveling snow.

Minnesota girls in kimonos, goth kids eating sushi, elderly Japanese women in kimonos giving away their Midwestern connection with their thick oversized spectacles, families crowing the origami table, and people composing haikus about the weather, all very Japanese, all very Minnesotan.

8.18.07: Hot N' Throbbing at Minneapolis Theatre Garage

Paula Vogel is not the subtlest of playwrights. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, How I Learned to Drive, she dealt explicitly with incest; a lesser known play, The Oldest Profession, is about three old women on a bench reminiscing about their lives as prostitutes. Her seriocomic-feminist approach can yield phenomenal work (Drive and The Baltimore Waltz are at the top of this list), or it can birth heavy-handed diatribes such as Hot N' Throbbing, which opened this weekend at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage, produced by 20% Theatre Company. Thankfully, this production is very good, so it's easy to overlook most of the sticky wickets.

Hot N' Throbbing depicts a world where women are beat up, vilified for being out of control, and generally get the sh*t end of the stick. Hoary stuff, right? Thankfully, director Claire Avitabile keeps it light—as light as a play about domestic abuse can be, anyway. This emotionally taut production highlights some of our society's darkest secrets and isn't easy to watch.

The play opens with two erotically charged characters slinking around in their own film noir fantasy. He's a detective and she's a playful dame. It turns out that they're both characters in the screenplay our heroine, Charlene, is trying desperately to complete before deadline. Charlene is the mother of two wound-up adolescents on the brink of sexual revelation. To pay the bills, she's started a women-centered production house called Gyno Productions. As a mother and provider, she's stretched thin. As a woman, she's lonely, and lives out some of her sexual desires through her work.

For various reasons, including writer's block and a teenage daughter who has yet to comprehend the effect of her cleavage on men, Charlene can't finish her screenplay. Oddly, she seems somewhat relieved by the final and most disturbing disruption of the night—her drunken husband, Clyde, who breaks her door down, upset about the restraining order she's put on him (gee, I wonder why). She shoots him in the butt and suddenly her evening has gotten a lot more interesting. Instead of writing a script, she gets to live one, to a lugubrious conclusion.

Clyde is at the heart of this play, and Jeff Broitman goes the distance and then some, portraying Clyde as all sinew and sex, alcohol and rage. As the night wears on, Broitman reveals Clyde's complexities and vulnerability. We start to like the creep. Broitman is also the most charismatic actor onstage, which doesn't hurt.

Without a doubt, Hot N' Throbbing is a horrifying play as well as an important one, and Avitabile makes sure her audience goes home with a greater awareness of what can happen behind closed doors. I did not sleep easily last night, but when I awoke, I was grateful for the reminder.

Hot N' Throbbing plays Thursday through Monday until August 25.

8.17.07: Shreds at Bryant-Lake Bowl

First, if you haven’t been to Bryant-Lake Bowl for a show, you should go. The tickets are cheap, and you can drink and eat good food while you watch. More to the point, some of the most interesting artists in town—from avant-garde duo Hijack to James Sewell muse Sally Rousse—perform new work on the BLB’s tiny, quirky stage. Shreds is no exception. Purest Spiritual Pigs leader Helena Thompson invited such local stars as Jaime Carrera, Hijack, and Dylan Skybrook to choreograph to the leftover bits from PSP’s latest record. The result was a lot of miscellaneous fun, unified only by the rhythmic grind of PSP’s music.

I say miscellaneous because a good chunk of the work here felt one-off, partial. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it may even be intentional (at the BLB, messing with audience expectations is de rigueur). Still, Jessica Cressey’s clever shaving-cream legs and Sarah Gordon’s mysterious cardboard signs left me wanting more. Hijack’s strenuously physical section—no props, no context to speak of, from a pair who routinely drag the kitchen sink into their work—felt too tightly wound to end as abruptly as it did. Susan Scalf and Natasha Hassett’s unsafe “Safety Dance” and Dylan Skybrook’s “In the Manner of Flowers” (more below) suffered from a lack of context, trailing into the forgettable despite some riveting moments.

But it will be hard to forget Jaime Carrera’s “Olvidame.” Carrera appeared in nothing but high heels and a long black Cher wig (leave the kiddies at home), which he swung back and forth and draped over himself in eroticized Cousin Itt fashion. Carrera—a muscular bundle with a paunch that he can entirely suck in or blow out to bun-in-the-oven size at will—then tried on a series of attitudes, from the bodybuilder’s studied crunch to the pageant queen’s cocked hip to the Madonna’s skyward gaze. Disquieting and creepy, yet mesmerizing and oddly lovely, “Olvidame” stood out from the rest of the evening’s offerings.

Dylan Skybrook’s “In the Manner of Flowers” was also a stand-out, though less so. Here, it’s Skybrook’s movement style, not what he did with it, that was notable. Skybrook is an oil-slick mover, someone who looks like he could do a wicked robot dance, but he applied this preternatural smoothness to pedestrian moves. Well, not quite pedestrian: he gestured like a silent-film star, then like a distraught street person predicting the end. He’s a preacher, a cartoon, a politician; he moved like your most demonstrative math teacher. All this strange, not-quite comprehensible communication fascinates, but in the setting of Shreds, there was no context to help us get further.

It’s good that Shreds left me wanting more. Thompson spoke of making Shreds a regular occurrence; that’s great. But I’ll also be on the lookout for longer work—split or full evenings—from these artists. I’d like to go further than "fun" and "interesting."

Shreds plays again tonight at the Bryant-Lake Bowl.

8.16.07: Summer Sci-Fi Series at the Bell Museum

Given how utterly perfect the weather was last night, it was theoretically possible to be almost anywhere and feel a little euphoric just to be outside. If you happened to be at the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus, that feeling was likely compounded by the charm of watching a really bad movie surrounded by deep blue summer dusk and breathing in the smell of popcorn.

The Bell launched its summer sci-fi series—a roster of low-budget B-movies from the 1950s and ‘60s—last night with Attack of the Giant Leeches. I won’t say there were no young girls in attendance, but the movie attracted a decidedly young male crowd. (Or maybe it attracted their parents, lured by the promise of spending an evening outside with—for once—a willing young companion.) After all, who wouldn’t read the description of the movie on the Bell’s website—“When local moonshine-swilling trapper Lem Sawyer sees a giant creature in a swamp near his home, his story is dismissed as a tall tale—but when people start disappearing, the good-looking game warden begins an investigation that ends in terror!”—and not think ten-year-old boy. The rest of the crowd was remarkably mixed. One lucky elderly man even won the drawing for a pet leech.

The “creepy crawly” petting zoo, populated by a millipede, hissing cockroaches, and requisite leeches, proved a popular pre-movie attraction for kids and grownups alike. (There was also a stuffed piranha for good measure.) Facts learned: every millipede in the world is a vegetarian and only three types of cockroaches live in people’s houses. Who knew?

Not surprising: the trajectory of Attack of the Giant Leeches. The movie is set in a town on the edge of a massive Florida swamp and offers up every tried-and-true cliché and stereotype about humans and leeches being alike as possible. Of course, the predictable nature of B-movies is part of their charm. Just consider a few snippets of dialogue:

Sheriff Benton to the earnest (and, naturally, hunky) game warden Cal Moulton: “I’m not about to go tromping through the swamp looking for an over-growed gator.” (He does.)

Sheriff Benton foreshadowing Cal’s fool’s errand to the swamp: “That boy’s lookin’ for bad trouble and he’s gonna get it.” (Indeed.)

Cuckolded husband Dave Walker in response to his wife’s immodesty: “Someday I’m gonna give that she-cat the whopping she’s been asking for.”  (He does not, though she does get eaten by one of the leeches!)

Tramp and good girl, capable game warden and backcountry fumblers drinking moonshine from jugs, a slimy and, frankly, ridiculous-looking enemy/”monster,” it’s all here in black-and-white.

Still to come his summer: The Killer Shrews (August 23), The Wasp Woman (August 30), and The Giant Gila Monster (September 6).

8.11.07: Mason Jennings at the 400 Bar

When Mason Jennings released Boneclouds last year, he broke from his signature folk sound in favor of a more pop kind of rock. He followed the release with an extensive tour, which his new label, a Sony imprint, supported with moderate promotion.

On a smaller scale, Jennings easily packed the 400 Bar last night—even at $20 a head, a steep ticket for that venue. It's always exciting to see a musician perform in the place they got their start. I had been wondering if he'd be playing with his band (he's currently backed by Brian McLeod on drums and Arabella Kauffmann on bass). When I got to the 400, I learned this was a solo set. Initially, this wasn't happy news. I saw him do a solo set at First Avenue just before Boneclouds, and the show's energy was much lower than when I've seen him perform with a band. Last night I was aching for a high-energy show.

Lucky for me, the 400 was much better than First Ave. for a solo Jennings performance. The intimate size and sentimental significance of the venue lent an exclusive air to the night, even though it was the second of a three-night stint.

Band be damned—two acoustic guitars and a harmonica proved crowd-pleasing.

The audience was crowded so tightly we were dripping sweat. Jennings's lengthy delay between opener Pieta Brown's set and his own took a toll on the cramped crowd. But as soon as he hit the stage, opening with "Jackson Square" from Boneclouds, we were immediately uplifted by his presence. No one seemed to miss the song's piano parts, which Jennings smoothly filled in with harmonica.

Next, he moved onto the short, staccato "Simple Life," the title track off his 2002 record. I dare say the entire crowd knew every word to this fast-paced tune.

With less going on onstage sans backup band, the simple songs seemed simpler yet, thus prompting the crowd to sing along even more than usual. Loyal fans, from frat boys to hipster girls, belted out Jennings's heartfelt lyrics along with the singer for the duration of the show.

His mixture of old and new songs worked well for the audience, many of whom no doubt watched him play there ten years ago to much, much smaller crowds. Even when playing Boneclouds songs, Jennings's stripped-down solo performance seemed a return to his folksy roots, in the place where he planted them.

Setlist:
Jackson Square
Simple Life
Bullet
The Light (Part II)
California (Part II)
How Deep Is That River (my best guess is this is a gospel song by Rev. James Cleveland)
Forgiveness
Living in the Moment
Fighter Girl
Be Here Now
Adrian
(Didn't recognize this one. Was anybody there who did?)
Nothing
If You Ain't Got Love
Big Sur
Keepin' It Real
Crown

Encore:
Summer Dress
California
Isabel
Darkness Between the Fireflies

8.10.07: Drinking with Ian at First Ave.

The concept of supporting local television seems to be an obtuse one. The benefits aren’t as tangible, say, as eating locally (tastier chicken) or shopping locally (employed neighbors). But on Friday night at First Avenue, during the taping of Drinking with Ian, that’s exactly what local talk show host Ian Rans was urging the local live studio audience to do. Then he urged them to drink more beer. 

Have you ever been to a talk show taping before? I mean, one of the real national talk shows: Leno, Letterman, or Conan (I guess Kimmel counts too). They kick things off with some “wacky” out-of-work stand-up that warms up the crowd by talking really energetically, and doing bad fart jokes and tossing everybody free Snickers bars before the “wacky” announcer introduces the star of the show and the band cues the theme music. Going to a taping is okay, but unequivocally, sitting at home on the couch watching the show in your underwear is a more pleasurable experience. Without the annoyingly energetic warm-up act and bright red “applause” sign, there’s a lot less pressure on the material to be funny. Sitting on the couch in your underwear, your expectations are lower than when you’re sitting under the hot lights in the middle of a mob that’s high on celebrity and gorging themselves on free candy.

The problem with this analogy is that I can’t decide if I’d like watching Drinking with Ian better at home in my underwear or the way I watched it at First Avenue, gorging myself on beer and free UV Vodka shots. I’m unsure because I’ve never actually seen the show on cable access, and watching the show in person was like being in the middle of a swirling, nightmarish bacchanal. There wasn’t an applause sign, but there was a big crane and a busy crew of professional-looking camera people with headsets running around filming everything, and crowd wranglers making sure no one wandered into a shot. The crowd was made up of Ian acolytes who knew when to cheer or jeer at the appropriate times. But there seemed to be something extra riding on this shoot: when Ian thanked the crowd for showing up, he offered a profane prayer about “hopefully never going back to the Entry, like a bunch of losers.” Ian himself is a goofy-looking bastard, with the bad tie/jacket combination and permanent smirk of a used-car salesman. He’s clearly going for the Conan thing with his floppy red cowlick, but he doesn’t have the Harvard Lampoon five-jokes-a-millisecond wit or the spazzy good nature of Conan. Instead, he substitutes the leering menace of a carny barker, and drinks and swears like an angry waitress. 

And it works. Well, at least the format works. Although the fact that it seemed to get progressively more enjoyable as the night went on might well be due to all the drinking. (In all fairness, the free shot budget is a fair equalizer for the national talk shows’ staffs of well-paid professional joke writers.) Ian taped three shows back-to-back-to-back, and this is how it goes: Ian opens without a monologue, going right into a taped segment; last night’s first show began with a bit where Ian interviewed the people waiting outside First Ave. for Prince tickets (not bad). Then Ollie the bartender makes the “shot of the night” with the crowd hollering out the recipe along with Ollie, then the crowd toasts Ian right before he brings out the guest. After a few minutes of awkward conversation, Haiku Jim comes out and reads a funny Haiku. My favorite from last night tied the ethanol production companies profiteering to the rise in beer prices:

Dear hybrid driver
I hope you have insurance
You just wrecked my buzz

After Haiku Jim is another segment of taped funny bits, fake commercials, and sometimes a series of surreal audience-submitted fifteen-second videos. The grand finale is the musical guest.

Like most national talk show hosts, Ian’s biggest weakness is his inability to engage a guest in entertaining conversation. He’s stuck in the rut of making wisecracks while the guest stammers through an account of working on whatever book or art project they happen to be working on. Other than that, he’s a canny ringmaster, ceding his monologue time to the local actors, amateur filmmakers and just plain local exhibitionists who send in the filmed segments, and the local bands that play at the end of the show. He is a smirky host, but he’s smirking for good reason: he knows that what everybody really wants is to be on TV. And if you’re a Minnesotan, Drinking with Ian is probably as close to real TV as you’re ever gonna get.

I need a drink.

8.9.07: Béla Fleck and the Flecktones at the Minnesota Zoo

It almost doesn’t matter who you see play at the Minnesota Zoo’s Weesner Amphitheater, because it’s such a spectacularly appealing venue. The hike to get there, across the lake bridge, past the swan and pelican paddle boats, has a calming effect on the soul, and the amphitheater itself is small enough that every performance feels like it’s taking place in your backyard—which, in a way, it is. Concerts go from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., so nature provides a tranquil sunset and a blanket of stars for a backdrop. And at intermission, you get to check out the caribou on your way to the bathroom. What’s not to love?

Concerts at the zoo have been especially pleasant this year, which will no doubt go down in history as The Great Bugless Summer of 2007. Last night, banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and his Flecktones were entertaining the humans, and the evening could not have been more perfect. Fleck and company flirted very close to perfection themselves, filling the sky with their signature brand of jazz-grass funk-jam fusion.

Fleck is not a flashy performer; he looks like a stock broker on vacation, wearing jeans and a T-shirt when he plays. About the only thing he moves onstage is his hands. Fleck’s right hand happens to include one of the most highly developed opposable thumbs in the history of civilization, however, and what he can do with it on a banjo, the least appealing musical instrument ever invented, is a true miracle of talent and genetics. What makes the Flecktones special, though, is that Béla has surrounded himself for the past eighteen years with musicians of equal genius, including the incomparable Victor Wooten on bass, his brother Roy “Futureman” Wooten on percussion, and Jeff Coffin on saxophone, flute, and everything else.

As amazing as Fleck is on the banjo, it’s Victor Wooten who really gets the crowd going. A short guy with bouncy dreadlocks and a boyish smile, Wooten can create a pocket of funk as deep and wide as anyone and, when he’s playing with his looping machines and effects pedals, he can coax a symphonic range of sounds out of a four-string bass and deliver them all with blistering, funkadelic speed. The band doesn’t have a drummer, per se. Instead, it’s got Wooten’s brother, Roy, who wears a pirate’s hat and provides most of the “drum” groove by banging on a SynthAxe guitar synthesizer, which is a bizarre instrument that looks like a kid’s toy dug out of the rubble of the apocalypse and patched together with duct tape and bubble gum.

As usual, the Flecktones played a wide variety of tunes, including several from their album The Hidden Land, which won the Grammy for Best Jazz Album last year. In one of the few verbal exchanges with the audience, Fleck joked that the award was great because “now we know that we’re a jazz band.” It’s a joke because Fleck’s music is unclassifiable, and he and everyone else knows it. Last night, they even found a way to make the Beatles’ “Come Together” sound like it was written by Les Paul and John Coltrane.

Lest we forget that it’s Béla’s band, though, Fleck wrapped up the show with a fifteen-minute solo banjo medley that included some token “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and snatches of the most revered tune in the banjo canon, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” otherwise known as The Beverly Hillbillies theme song. After that, there was nothing left to do but bow to the master and howl into the starry night, grateful for that rarest of things, a mosquitoless night in August, in Minnesota, at the zoo.

8.7.07: John Popper Project Featuring DJ Logic at the Cabooze

The Cabooze is a regular hangout for the jamband/hippie-rock set, so the groove-rock of the John Popper Project Featuring DJ Logic should've been an easy sell. Instead, the room was only fifty or sixty strong for the opener, local blues-funk singer and beatboxer Heatbox, and only maybe 200 for the headliner. My guess is the show was booked late (announced on July 16) and wasn't publicized enough.

Every time I go to the Boozer (which, granted, isn't that often), the parking lot is packed and I have to spend five or ten minutes searching for a spot on the street that won't get me towed. Not so last night. I pulled up fifteen minutes before the scheduled showtime and the lot was less than half full—a welcome occurrence as a driver, a bad omen as a concertgoer.

The small but appreciative crowd was a mix of thirty- and forty-somethings with a palpable affinity for Blues Traveler, along with the bar's regular twenty-something pierced and dreadlocked crew.

Last night's gig was part of a tour to support the JPP's 2006 debut self-titled CD, which was released on Relix Records, an offshoot of longstanding jamband rag Relix.

Though Blues Traveler and DJ Logic are currently on nationwide tours, BT's frontman (Popper) and six-string bass player (Tad Kinchla) and Logic have all worked in some tour dates for this side project. Mosaic's Marcus Bleecker joins on drums.

Both the strength and weakness of this group is that Popper's vocals and harmonica-playing style are so distinctive. Even though each player's instrumentation was tight independently, they didn't always hit their mark as a group. Too often the bass, drums, and turntables would be totally in sync and creating a groove, when all of a sudden Popper's vocals or harmonica would blast through the crescendo his band had been building.

After that, it was a Blues Traveler concert.

These guys are experts at funky, bluesy, groove-rock. However, side projects need to be more than just the stuff you're not doing in your primary band. Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke's vocals are entirely different when he does his solo work. A big part of the success with his The Eraser CD was the fact that it didn't sound like a Radiohead remix. Unfortunately, Popper's vocal range and energy in the JPP is identical to his work in BT. Likewise, his harmonica licks were too close to BT's, making the whole enterprise sound like a musical retread.

That said, Popper found a more complementary rhythm mid-set. The group drew its loudest cheers when it did a fun cover of a song I'd never heard live: A3's theme song to The Sopranos, "Woke Up This Morning," which segued into Stevie Wonder's "Superstition."

Though JPP isn't as harmonica- or vocals-driven as BT, focusing more on the jams than the melodies, the most distinguishing difference between the two bands is DJ Logic's contribution. His beats seemed to lead the band's rhythm more than the drums or bass lines, though his scratches were often overpowered by Popper. The band's name, the John Popper Project Featuring DJ Logic, is crafted to be true to its sound, and clearly to its hierarchy.

8.5.07: Fringe Festival

For me, August is all about the Fringe Festival: what I’m seeing, what’s good, what’s not, which shows my friends are in, which shows I can tell my grandmother about, which restaurants are giving good discounts on dinner and cocktails, etc.

I’ve only seen a handful of shows thus far (the festival runs through August 12) , but word of mouth is starting to spread. In addition to the Minnesota Fringe, I’ve also seen a couple shows at Augsburg’s Manna Fest, which are the two I would most recommend this early in the game. They are The Neon Man and Me by Slash Coleman (left)  and Potato Chip Head by Heidi Arneson. (Coleman’s show will be taped by PBS this fall.)

Other shows I’ll stand behind include True Theatre Critic (Omar Sangare is an incredible actor from Poland) and Macbeth’s Awesome Scottish Castle Party, by Joseph Scrimshaw, co-starring some of the Cities’ funniest sketch-comedy actors. (In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is playing guitar for the show. But rest assured that all of the sophomoric jokes are pure Scrimshaw.) Brother Joshua is remounting From Here to Maternity with Shannon Wexler, which a lot of people loved it was at Bryant-Lake Bowl in May. I wasn’t crazy about it. If you consistently disagree with my reviews, you will probably like this show.

I also plan to see Amy Salloway’s show, Circumference (left), which I expect will be as good as her previous Fringe shows, Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat? and Kiss Me Already, Hershel Gertz! Tonight I’m seeing KIPO!, a category-defying performance featuring twenty Tibetan dancers and musicians. Later this week, I’m seeing Blue Collar Diaries, a one-woman show by Michelle Myers, as well as Bedlam Theatre’s William Shakespeare’s Hystery Queene Margaret. Rumor has it that the Bedlam show may be shut down—their makeshift stage is outside and their permit for it expires this week—so I’d go sooner rather than later. (Of course, if this is just a publicity stunt, it's nothing short of brilliant!)

Things to skip: The World’s Largest Aluminum Foil Ball stands out from the crowd. This original musical by a well-intentioned Iowan made my head hurt. The anti-Bush jokes are funny, though.

In the out-of-town department, here’s what’s piqued my interest: FLUID, a one-woman show out of New York, Bouffon Glass Menajoree (also from New York), and The Most Mysterious Day of the Year (left). I have no idea what that last one’s about, but the promotional photo makes it look like it will be a cross between a Marilyn Manson–esque cabaret and kilt-wearing chaos. I’m sure I have it completely wrong but I like the picture, so there you go. I’m a big fan of white face paint and kilts.

Everything Fringe can be found on the extensive Fringe Festival website. Have fun!

8.4.07: New Photography: McKnight Fellows 2006/2007 at MCP

Openings are the best kind of parties—free food and wine (even if it is served in plastic cups), interesting people, and good atmosphere. Of course, more often than not, people are looking at each other rather than at the art. Last night's opening reception for New Photography: McKnight Fellows 2006/2007 at the Minnesota Center for Photography was packed and people were talking about the photos. Given the many distractions available, that's a good sign.

The show features new work by Orin Rutchick, Kristine Heykants, Mickey Smith, and Angela Strassheim. Rutchick turns his camera on tourists, often with whimsical results. His Push Button Memories project captures scenes familiar to anyone who has visited a landmark—people posing for cameras. It's the stuff of family photo albums, but with a twist. The images—taken at Graceland, Alcatraz, Kennedy Space Center, and Hoover Dam—catch people unaware in moments of calculated observation or, as the description of the show puts it, in the "willful, if chimerical, creation of memories."

From landmarks to laundromats, Heykants offers a different sort of unguarded moment. Her images echo the stylized scenes of certain Cindy Sherman photos. Heykants shows us women caught in a moment of thought, or maybe hesitation, against a variety of backdrops: a laundromat, a kitchen, a cowboy saloon. They look like they can sense trouble coming.

Strassheim does something similar with images of oddly private public moments (and vice versa). Young women huddled together dissecting a cat, an unhappy young couple visible through glass doors, a group of nude young people eating roasted marshmallows around a bonfire, a rather demure red-haired nude perched atop a library counter, in each case the outward drama implies a more complex inner state.

And speaking of libraries, Smith's images of huge oversized book spines with the stark heavily-bound look of reference tomes evokes a whole other kind of drama. Her cleverly framed images offer up a simple pallette of green, black, and yellow spines embossed in black and gold with single words: "Life," "Progress," "Endeavor" (the last bracketed by an "Or" and "End"). Simple and striking.

New Photography runs through October 7.

8.3.07: The Ten Opens at Uptown Theater

No one believes me when I tell them that Winona Ryder was born in the sleepy, scenic southeastern Minnesota college town that bears her name. Or maybe they just don’t want to claim the face of Gen X angst cinema, better known these days for her 2001 pill-fueled shoplifting binge at a Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. Can’t we show a little love for the woman who made parole a career move long before Lindsay and Paris?

Ryder’s Minnesota roots don’t go very deep and, frankly, the hippie childhood that followed in a California commune (godfather Timothy Leary, family friend Allen Ginsberg) pretty much negates all that Hot Fish Shop wholesomeness. In recent years, though, Ryder has been lying low and slowly piecing together her rudderless career in a fashion that is decidedly Minnesotan in its unpredictably stubborn way. A scandal-surviving celeb’s second act usually includes a teary Dateline NBC interview and ironically self-mocking SNL skit. Ryder did the SNL gig long ago, but she seems to have an admirable disdain for press-junket born-agains and as of late has taken to ungraciously bitching about how she’s still paying the price for her youthful transgression.

Still, I detect a career rehab in progress. Just check out this month’s Vogue, in which cover babe Ryder is anointed an “Ageless Beauty.” Or, if you’re desperate for an air-conditioned respite from the Uptown Art Fair, catch her in The Ten, a raunchy comedy that opened yesterday at the Uptown Theater. After this weekend, though, all bets are off. This clinker is going straight to DVD.

The Ten’s interconnected shorts are ostensibly about the Ten Commandments, but the film’s ribald humor and sketch-comedy sensibility is more Wet Hot American Summer (writer/director David Wain’s other film) than Kryzsztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue. Which would have been perfectly fine if any of its blasphemous conceits (a prisoner negotiates for a different jailhouse rapist in “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” to pick a particularly naughty example) were actually developed into stories.

So formless, though, are most of the segments that each time Wain cuts to his lazy framing device—actor Paul Rudd introducing each commandment while negotiating his own marital strife—it’s jolting. Rudd’s narrator, who has a dismal segment of his own, isn’t the only one breaking the fourth wall. Two other stories also end with characters addressing the audience in lame asides that seem to serve no other purpose but to save the writers from having to come up with a third act.

How bad does it get? So bad that the talented Liev Schreiber plays a man competing with his neighbor to see who can own more CAT scan machines. Their wives leave them when their houses are overtaken by the machines, but then the rivals become buddies over beer and Bonnie Raitt songs, while schoolkids exposed to radiation die on their lawns. Someone thought this was funny?

Ryder makes an appearance in two of the strongest stories (relatively speaking), but she chews the scenery viciously. In the opener, she plays the girlfriend of a man (Adam Brody) who jumps out of a plane without a parachute, survives the accident, but is forever stuck in the ground, unable to be moved or he’ll die. He gets his own TV show, covers of magazines, and a cult-like following, but Ryder leaves him for a slick TV news reporter. Playing the same character in the wink-wink “thou shalt not steal” segment, Ryder makes off with a ventriloquist’s wooden dummy she has taken an, er, intimate liking to. It’s a wild (okay, gross) concept that Ryder commits to fully, hell bent on replacing her Court TV perp walk with a decidedly more indelible image.

8.2.07: April Sellers Dance Collective

Put your name down on a few dance mailing lists and it will happen: you’ll be invited to a party/performance/ showing/gala/fundraiser. We press people typically don’t cover these events because they’re small, sometimes invitation-only, a little informal about the art, often insider territory, and because the liquor and money flow freely. (Yet we cover gallery openings.) But the party-performance scene seems to be heating up. April Sellers, the subject of this review, is a special pro at the arty party (she and Judith Howard won a Sage Award for their House of Big Love), but Three Dances’ annual birthday party performance (in March) is a fun and boozy spectacle, and Deborah Jinza Thayer and Rosie Simas have been accompanying their frequent showings with crudités, party games, and sometimes wall art. Even theater performances can feel like parties. Get to the Bryant-Lake Bowl (where you can eat and drink as you watch) on the right night and the enthusiasm of the avant garde dance crew will make you feel like you’re at a homecoming pep rally with some really interesting cheerleaders. Ballet of the Dolls seems to be trying to create a cabaret feel at their Ritz Theater—and succeeding (check out their French cabaret in late October). Even the Walker’s getting into the act with Faustin Linyekula’s November performance. All this is to say: don’t discount the dance party. Lighthearted and conversational, these events are an easy introduction to the sometimes hard-to-understand dance they promote. Bring a friend and a stack of small bills (for drinks and donations) and you’re all set.

April Sellers has the dance party down. She and her friends know how to decorate, dress, and greet: this is not your college kegger. And then there’s the dance. Gettable enough for the girls who’ve had one too many pinot grigios, Sellers’s work mines fairly simple stereotypes—the repressed girl, the natural woman, the fertility goddess—for all the postmodern postfeminist zest they’re worth. I’ve seen Sellers’s work onstage and in the wild (so to speak), and while her stage work is often more complex and more technically difficult, I prefer the ease of her work outdoors. Women Bathing, which Sellers showed last night, gained immeasurably from the sound of crickets in the background (even the enterprising beetle who crawled up my back added something).

And then there’s the nudity, which outdoors, at someone’s home, has a reality that stage nudity never attains. Sellers shines with the female nude. Never coy, never exhibitionistic, her playful nudes will make you laugh at the same time as they inspire you with the beauty of flesh. And there’s a slight, but not at all bitter, political edge: watching Sellers and Judith Howard kick and thrash out of their togas in Sap Rising might make you think of how repressed we still are, but it’s more likely to evoke a simple pleasure in their freedom.

Enjoying dance in someone’s backyard, drink in hand, is apt to make you feel a little of that freedom yourself. There’s no rule stating that serious art has to take place only in serious settings. We do have a prejudice against mixing play and art—but, thankfully, it’s a prejudice that April Sellers and many others are challenging.