Author: 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 in Action.) For the classic toons, this set is just about everything you could hope for. Fifty-six of some of the best cartoons, mostly from WWII to the early sixties. “Duck Amuck.” A couple of Marvin the Martian appearances. The ones where Bugs Bunny bullfights and meets the Tasmanian Devil. Enlightening documentary extras, not just promos for other WB product. Ducks getting hit with frying pans, then calling rabbits despicable. With more than a thousand cartoons to cull from, some omissions are inevitable. But still, how can you leave out “What’s Opera, Doc?” The “kill the wabbit, kiiiilllll the waaaaabbiiiiit” Wagner parody was the first one we looked for. Surely that’s not all, folks.

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 skills on other projects. Truth be told, the show was so obscure that until Comedy Central picked it up briefly a few years later, we’d only seen clips when Stiller guested on Later With Bob Costas (now there’s another gem of the TV dial gone missing). It wasn’t unfailingly brilliant, but the show was a clear precursor to the smart, razor-sharp absurdity that Odenkirk and David Cross generated on Mr. Show. And, more to the point, it was very funny very often. Years after seeing the sketches, we still laugh when we think of the surly, ALF-like sock puppet called Skank, or Stiller’s wonderfully overearnest parody of U2’s Bono, crooning his heart out over a cereal commercial as if marshmallows were going to singlehandedly save the world. This two-DVD set collects all thirteen episodes of the series, including one never broadcast.

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 died in September, his status as one of the century’s great American singers was unquestionable. No posthumous rediscovery needed here. The new box set Unearthed treats his legacy with due gravity, even while its raison d’etre is largely to clear out Rubin’s vaults of the Cash material that didn’t quite make the cut for the initial releases. This wouldn’t be the place to begin exploring Cash’s work, but the sixty-four previously unreleased songs here include any number of must-hears for the initiated. Among those are an entire disc of acoustic spirituals Cash learned from his mother as a boy, and his duet with Joe Strummer on Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”—beautifully low-key and dignified, a worthy song to remember both of the dearly departed by.

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 self-mocking couplet “Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is; I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.” Though his political commitment hasn’t lessened a whit over the years, it’s that genuine affability and sense of humor that have probably kept his career going for more than twenty years. For a polemicist like Bragg, such qualities are vital for avoiding the sin of stridency, a turnoff whether or not you agree with his views. Though it’s a pity there wasn’t room for another half-dozen songs, this two-disc career-spanning collection does a pretty decent job of cataloging Bragg’s high points from his early days as a fiery solo guitarist to his terrific collaboration with Wilco, breathing life into a set of unfinished Woody Guthrie songs.

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 those internecine releases that looks forward and back at the same time; four new songs are complemented by two previously unreleased tunes. We’re not saying they’re the Beatles, but Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots are two discs that your grandchildren will know about. It pays to watch what the Lips’ next move will be.

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 a Riverdance show and won her heart swing-dancing at Lee’s Liquor Bar. Katie’s music still keeps her as busy as ever. She recently returned from a five-week tour of Norway with duo Secret Garden, just in time to release her third CD, Celtic Christmas, on which her lovely vocals soar through a choice selection of carols and traditional Irish tunes. Her annual holiday concert attracts larger crowds each year, and for 2003 moved on up to the larger confines of the O’Shaughnessy, accompanied by Irish dancers from the local Scoil na dTri school. (Read our interview with McMahon at www.rakemag.com.)
O’Shaughnessy, 2004 Randolph Ave.,
St. Paul, (651) 690-6700, www.stkate.edu/oshaughnessy

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 to their knees. Onstage at the Ordway, Kottke’s instruments of choice will likely be a polished set of custom-built Taylors. Other than them, he’ll be on his own up there, since Phish bassist Mike Gordon, who collaborated on last year’s very well-received Clone, is out on tour with his regular gig. But Leo on his lonesome is just fine with many Kottke fans, who’d rather make a meal of his (self-described) goose-fart voice and extraordinary fretwork without a side order.
Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul,
(651) 224-4222, www.ordway.org

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 methods and subject matter that would mask his own identity, once explaining, “I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions… but eventually it became a losing battle.” Past Things and Present is a triumph, punctuated with deeply personal commentary by the artist and an invitation into his surroundings. Many of the works have never been publicly exhibited, and others are from the artist’s own private collection, including some recent intaglio prints that resurrect his Seasons series. Johns lets us into his studio, his childhood, and his admiration for other artists. In the 1983 canvas Ventriloquist, he even lets us into his bathtub, a fitting viewpoint from which to watch the mask of his earlier work being washed away layer by layer. You can catch some of those early pieces in the exhibit Pop3, Oldenburg, Rosenquist, Warhol, also running through February 14.
Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl.,
(612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

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 were finished being dead. A myth like that doesn’t come along every day. So it’s no wonder that the Pyramids been a favorite subject for photographers since the invention of the medium. The Weinstein’s exhibit gathers the Egyptological exposures of nearly three dozen artists, ranging from stark shots of the structures looming in the sand, to more playful takes on their ancient, immovable iconography. Our favorite is Alec Soth’s portrait of an old stogie-chewing man framed underneath the angled roof of his two-car garage, like an American pharaoh. Unless it’s Lee Friedlander’s shot of a pack of dogs lazing around on the sand,while behind them the Sphinx peeks over the horizon, as if checking out the animals next door.

Weinstein Gallery, 908 W. 46th St., (612) 822-1722.

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 and acidly witty dialogue that flows out in its own peculiar rhythm, like a jazz riff. In fact, Parks takes care to turn not merely the dialogue, but the entire story structure off-kilter. The two brothers of the story, ominously named Lincoln and Booth, are both down on their luck and desperate to advance their lives. That they have no one but each other might be more harmful than healthy. Older brother Lincoln has already walked away from his former life as a street-hustling card swindler. Instead, he’s taken a humiliating job in a sideshow impersonating his namesake president, complete with stovepipe hate and white makeup, so that carnivalgoers can pretend to assassinate him. But Booth is no good at anything but shoplifting, and desperately wants Lincoln to teach him how to deal three-card monte. Things get weirder from there. Mixed Blood’s production is a collaboration with Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theater, starring actors Thomas Jones and Jahi Kearse, who bring their Capitol version of the Broadway play to Minnesota.
Mixed Blood, 1501 S. 4th St.,
(612) 338-6131, www.mixedblood.com