Month: September 2006

  • LOCAL MUSIC: Wanted Man

    The local music scene’s ubiquitous and ridiculously busy hot hand, Erik Appelwick has, remarkably, been living in the Twin Cities only six years. Having grown up in South Dakota and Michigan, and then kicked about South Dakota for a while during his collegiate and postcollegiate years, he made the bold decision in 2000 to move…

  • LOCAL MUSIC: Ex 'Burb

    Twenty years ago, one could hardly have blamed Chan Poling if he’d walked away from a music career altogether. His band, pioneering Minneapolis punk-poppers The Suburbs, was in its second abortive go-round with a major record label—this time, A&M. The ’Burbs’ primary ally at the label had left the company, often the kiss of death…

  • Cyndi Lauper

    Lauper’s latest, The Body Acoustic, pays homage to her own greatest hits in mellow new interpretations. She still has that voice—half Marilyn Monroe, half Minnie Mouse—and she still has that wild, half-Pippi Longstocking, half-Billy Idol hair, but we’re glad that she doesn’t make as big a deal of herself as, say, another icon who dates…

  • LOCAL MUSIC: We grow old, we grow old.

    There may be no more telling harbinger of the onslaught of middle age than the stasis that settles over an individual’s music collection, signaling that shift in a passionate fan’s life when he throws in the towel and resigns himself to a soundtrack stalled at a particular point in time. The precise date can usually…

  • Not So Independent After All

    Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson [“The Only Other Job I’d Like,” August] is an enigma. He speaks like a progressive, but is hellbent on sabotaging the election for neocon Tim Pawlenty. The issues are clear. If you support regressive taxation, gutted public education, discrimination against gays, denial of women’s rights, punitive transportation policies, environmental…

  • Charles Frazier

    As the years ticked by without a follow-up to Charles Frazier’s surprising (and fantastic) National Book Award-winning 1997 novel, Cold Mountain, the obvious conclusion was that Frazier was feeling daunted by both the wild success of his debut and the expectations created by the whopping advance he received for a second manuscript. Thirteen Moons doesn’t…