Something is happening in Minnesota (again)

by von

OK, I never really understood Prince.  Or the Violent Femmes, for that matter.   But, damn.  Minneapolis?  St. Paul?  You've always punched above your weight, and you're doing it again.  [UPDATE:  The Violent Femmes are from Milwaukee. My entire thesis has been burned to the ground and pissed upon.  Thank you so very frakin' much, insightful commentators.]

I've plugged for P.O.S. in the past (explicitly) and for Slug (implicitly).  I'll be even more direct with regard to Dessa:  She is well deserving of your time.  Just watch this:

Dixon's Girl from Dessa on Vimeo.

Catchy as hell, ain't it?  And pretty smart too.

So hear (here) are your lyrics for this evening, courtesy of P.O.S. and Dessa:

It seems like we've fallen out of favor, the era ended on us

Now the money's just paper: the houses all haunted.

We had a hell of a run before it caught up. for all the corner's cut, we got an avalanche of sawdust.

Life of the party, we're the death of the novel

The glass is half empty, so pass the next bottle.

It's the flight of the salesman, death of the bumblebee

Nothing left for the attorneys and the tumbleweeds

They say that God's on the right (so goes the rethoric)

But I say the cross is a kite that left a skeleton

and I think that Russell was right, but that's irrelevant friend

For all I know there'll be nothing left to defend tomorrow

Sugar in the gas tank, nothing in the cashbox

Thought that we were so sick, looking like it's smallpox

The bullets are still on the shelves

But when the armory empties, we're melting down the bells.

Candidly, I love that last line.  When I wrote my first novel -- yeah, I wrote a novel in a dorm room, didn't you? -- it was just so I could write the ideal paragraph or two.  Here they were:

I walk the streets of Watch Hill alone now, snowflakes swirling round my frosted ears as winter climbs up onto the beach is chill, white-tipped waves.  I sit in Snuffy's Diner and smoke cigarettes and eat clam chowder every day.  But every day is shorter than the last.  And every day is colder than the last.

So I'l wait for summer, for the warmth that will remind me of Mark's body, cold under the noon day sun. 

And I don't think I'll make it.  We can never be sure that we'll ever make it.

So those were the last lines of "Zero."  I wrote eleven chapters, starting at chapter "ten" and counting down.  It was a very long time ago.  I was in a dorm, in Bloomington, Indiana, with a cigarette lit and The Joshua Tree on the stereo.  You could smoke in buildings, back then, y'know.  Everyone smoked in buildings, back then.

It's true.  I used to buy packs of GPC Lights for 99 cents at the local gas station on my walk home from class.  It might have been 1994.  I was out of the dorms, out of a sad frat, and in a house.  423 College.  True address.  [UPDATE:  Although it's not exactly the address that I lived at, although it's close enough that a Bloomington resident might be able to figure it out.] The memory is nice.  I was drunk, which was usual, and stumbling away from campus, when I bought a pack of smokes at the gas station that used to be at third and the law school in Bloomington.  I had just scored in a college fiction contest:  Playboy Magazine bought one of my stories. 

Later, I'd put that on a resume and an asshole lawyer would ask me what the hell was I thinking --- and then hire my ass.  (That was '99, when I graduated from law school, when anyone could get hired.)

And, certainly, no one gave a f_ck in 1994.  I used to walk into bars and people would mistake me for Henry Rollins. I sh_t you not. [UPDATE:  I should add, "dumb people."  I really don't look much like Rollins.  And in '06, I got mistaken for Jeff Gordon.  Who knew that Jeff Gordon is basically a pudgy Rollins with slightly longer hair? Still, that was in Orlando, so maybe it doesn't count.]  

So:  Too much sharing for one evening.  [UPDATE:  Evening and morning.]

But I've been gone from this blog for too long.  I intend to bore folks again.  Because I'm getting older and starting to not give a shit. LIke I used to not give a shit.  Which, I think, is probably a good thing.

 

Comments

[Marty]

From that chronology you are 15 years from not give a shit age, but its good anyway. And I used to stop and get Marlboros for 75 cents after voice class. Somehow that never seemed odd to me.

[Eric Shaw]

Hm, you keep posting like that and I might have to start reading here every day again.

[blogbudsman]

No, not Minnesota - Minneapolis! Not New York - New York City. Not Illinois - Chicago. Not California - well it ain't that solid an argument. But here's where I was headed: Not D.C. - America.

[cleek]

I used to walk into bars and people would mistake me for Henry Rollins.

crap. my mental image of you was quite different. now i need to re-calibrate.

(also, IMO it should be illegal to mention musicians from Minneapolis without mentioning the Replacements.)

[Jason Kramer]

Violent Femmes are from Milwaukee...

[Mark Wade]

Um, Violent Femmes are from Milwaukee, not Minneapolis. Upper Midwest... Check. Starts with M... Check. 340 Miles down I-94? Ah, what's the difference?

Switch it to Dylan. Everybody else does.

[John Thullen]

" .... and I think that Russell was right ..."

So do I.

Slart's back in comments, and now Von is posting again.

Can Hilzoy be too far behind?

All good.

[Slartibartfast]

Bravo, von. Writing to please other people is a losing game for most everyone, and (perversely) you're going to please more people by being yourself than by catering to your notion of what's pleasing to others.

I was drunk, which was usual

I don't think I've spent much time sober in Bloomington, except that time I brought my bike and rode practically everywhere, thinking of Breaking Away nonstop. Smoking allowed in the dorms? Once when I visited, my brother's floor was having a bongathon. And that night, there was a multi-keg party in his floor lounge (Teter/Bristow, or some such). This was all kid-in-a-candy-store for a Purdue guy; Purdue is where the campus rules on alcohol are strictly enforced, and an open-door dorm party with alcohol WILL get busted.

Which didn't stop us from having the occasional bash, but you always had to keep it down to something that wasn't going to make the dweebs in the floor below complain.

Sometimes "those dweebs" was me, but typically if I wanted quiet study, I'd go to the library, and then pick up and go to the student union when the library closed.

Always a good argument for living on the ground floor, but if you do that, you have to keep the curtains drawn, come party time.

My first time at IU was Little 500 weekend back in 1980. I remember walking around campus at 3-ish am, preternaturally drunk, marvelling at all of the empty beer kegs. Back then, campus parties could be open, so I just wandered into one kegger after another. One band looked and sounded familiar, so I studied them for a while. It gradually dawned on me that it was my oldest brother's band. Ron, who didn't even try to go to college, had nevertheless made an appearance there. Once I recognized him, I struggled to get his attention. Much later, he told me that he'd done far too much acid and didn't recall me being there at all.

Which is odd, given that he could still play well enough to please several hundred drunks, and possibly a few relatively sober people.

Second time was the next Little 500, which had my next-older brother riding in the race. It made for slightly less fun spectating, him not being next to me with another backpack full of beer.

Ah, college days. I'm glad to have lived through them.

[mark f]

Your thesis isn't shot, because although Minnesota did not give us Violent Femmes, many great bands are from there.

Bob Dylan, The Replacements, Husker Du, Jayhawks, The Hold Steady, off the top of my head.

[Slartibartfast]

Oh, this is my very favorite scene from Breaking Away.

Paul Dooley. I loved him in that role.

Bonus early-career appearance by Rorschach, punching the clock.

[Jadegold]

My favorite scene from This is Spinal Tap:

Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled...
David St. Hubbins: What?
Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

Of course, real life is often far more bizarre. Struggling musician I know decides he's too good for the venues he's playing in Northern Indiana, Southern Michigan and Chicago. Decides to move to Denver for a change. After no success in Denver, musician moves, claiming "the music scene was very immature."

[wallamaarif]

Your thesis isn't shot, because although Minnesota did not give us Violent Femmes, many great bands are from there.

Bob Dylan, The Replacements, Husker Du, Jayhawks, The Hold Steady, off the top of my head.

I was wondering if someone would bring up Paul Westerburg and Husker Du. I'd add Low and Tapes n' Tapes to that list as well.