rakemag

You know, Disney always left us cold, even as young Rakesketeers. Mickey and his tedious, bland bunch… Feh. Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam—now, those are cartoons. Brash and anarchic. Gleefully punning, with their comic timing perfect to the second. Ducks getting hit with frying pans. That’s our America. (We’re choosing to ignore Space Jam and Back … Read more

FOX canceled this sketch-comedy show ignominiously after only half a season in 1992, but in retrospect it’s clear that its chief fault was being too hip for the room. There’s the posthumous Emmy, and the ongoing success of cast members Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show) and Andy Dick (NewsRadio), repeatedly proving their satiric … Read more

Although it would be a mistake to overpraise the last decade of the Man in Black’s career, it’s certainly true that the four albums in his American Recordings series more than rehabilitated his eighties-era reputation as an irrelevance. The work he did with producer Rick Rubin was of such consistent high quality that when he … Read more

When Billy Bragg paints you a picture, there’s always a lot of red in it. His music alternates passionate expressions of his socialist ideals (“There Is Power in a Union”) with more personal songs of love and heartbreak, the best of them remarkable for their emotional incisiveness. It’s a dichotomy he once acknowledged with the … Read more

Is there a band on the planet that cares more for its fans, or does more to satisfy them with a steady stream of amazing albums, videos, one-offs, DVDs, and an encyclopedic website? Of course, it would mean nothing if Wayne Coyne and his friends weren’t also brilliant musicians. This new EP is one of … Read more

The lilting soprano of Dublin-born Katie McMahon gained worldwide attention during her time as lead vocalist for Riverdance, the mid-nineties Irish-dance smash. These days, she’s happy being the boss of her own solo career right here in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband, Ben Craig, a local rockabilly musician who met her backstage after … Read more

On overhearing the rumor that the eccentric Kottke’s Minnetonka home was, well, untidy, when he sold it recently, harp guitarist Andy Wahlberg told us he would gladly help shovel out some of the master’s legendary guitars. In the thirty-four years since his first recording, Kottke has cultivated a collection of instruments that bring other guitarists … Read more

Jasper Johns has long been considered one of the most influential artists in Pop Art. His flag and number paintings, in which he repetitively worked the canvas using layers of encaustic wax, challenged the idea of iconography as art, blurring the division between a highly recognizable symbol and the artist’s creative labor. Johns deliberately chose … Read more

They are ageless, the last surviving of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, three vast and tapering monuments of stone standing in the desert. For thousands of years they were the tallest buildings on Earth, and yet their function was at best symbolic: tombs designed to hold the lifeless kings of Egypt until they … Read more

There’s a saying that goes something like this: I against my brother, and I and my brother against the world. That’s also a fair, if laconic, synopsis of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer-winning play, the first ever won by an African-American woman. Topdog takes on issues of race, masculinity, sibling rivalry, and devastated family structures in furious … Read more