Three years after his last album, Guero, Beck gives us The Information, a spacey rap fantasy, and we’re relieved to report that our favorite trapped-in-puberty rocker is still one of the most devious sound manipulators in the business. Things were uncertain for a while: After the exceedingly mopey Sea Change and a notorious tour with … Read more
Mina Agossi was born to rankle a particularly fusty type of jazz listener. Her music is just so maddeningly … French. Edgy, cranky, wandering, and undeniably sexy, her vocal style owes more to PJ Harvey and Diamanda Galás than anyone from the jazz world. Agossi employs punkish backup musicians, utilizes unauthorized sounds (including the kamale … Read more
As of late, Wendy Knox has been giving some thought to what a person might take with her if driven from her homeland. She and her Frank Theatre troupe are rehearsing their production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, an epic set during the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648—a time when many Europeans … Read more
Joan Jett, the tough-talking broad who once screeched “I don’t give a damn about my reputation,” has been canonized by an entire generation of she-rockers. Everyone from Courtney Love to PJ Harvey cites her as a muse. And while Jett’s career has recently detoured through acting gigs and reworking some of her standards for movie … Read more
I was ten years old when I first saw Citizen Kane. My father hauled my brother and me to the enormous Temple Theatre in downtown Saginaw, Michigan, and with a crowd of maybe two dozen, we noticed that Citizen Kane was more than just a chapter of film history; it was hilarious and melancholy and … Read more
I first encountered an Uta Barth photograph six years ago, wandering through a group exhibition of eleven artists at the prestigious Getty Center in Los Angeles. The works were high-concept, low-execution, clearly the product of expensive art school educations, and, like pretentious dinner guests, unjustifiably boring. Then, turning a corner, I stopped dead in front … Read more
It was a good dog-weather day. Several hundred onlookers, kids clad in hooded sweatshirts and parents in Patagonia zip-ups, crowded around a roped-off rectangular strip; a painted finish line glowed white against the still-green grass at Wayzata West Middle School. More than one of the contestants was shivering under its cape, though it wasn’t clear … Read more
Barely two hours after the first round of American Idol auditions began, the sidewalk outside Target Center is abuzz with distressed-looking people on cell phones, seeking, no doubt, some form of satellite consolation. Some of them are tearful. Some are stone-faced. These folks are among the many who sang their hearts out for thirty seconds, … Read more
Somewhere in the archives at the Richard M. Nixon museum in Yorba Linda, California, is a photograph of Nixon playing the piano in the White House with his wife, Pat, sitting in the foreground, clapping and singing along to some popular show tune. I was reminded of this scene recently while sitting stage right at … Read more
At the former St. Croix Hilltop Drive-In Theater, on Sunday mornings from Memorial Day through Labor Day, the Cougar lies down peacefully with the Mustang, the Falcon with the Sunbird, and the Cobra with the Impala. These worship services, held by Trinity Lutheran in Stillwater, are the longest-running show at the Hilltop, which is about … Read more