Society Fox Trots and Other Springtime Rituals
The daises are blooming on the Minneapolis music season. Finally, after five cold and decidedly low decibel months, touring bands are starting to stop through town again. You can almost set your watch to it. As daylight saving pushes through it’s high time to head down to the clubs. The problem is that every band wants a gig in Minnesota during that short window of weather where they don’t have to pack their tour van with pink panther fiberglass insulation and music fans don’t have to coat check eight layers of winter shielding. During that short window you have to get pretty choosy about who will supply your nightly soundtrack. Last Saturday night, then last night, the next two nights – all steeped with possibility – each night three different national touring acts in three different location. I’m thinking someone should set up some kind of ‘Minnesota Spring Music Pass’ to accommodate the seasonal auditory overflow. A pass that would allow you to bounce between different venues. The Current should hook something like this up. Reward music fans who go out to shows frequently and give them a price break so they don’t have to choose between three different $25 door tickets. Actually doesn’t First Avenue have something like this? A preferred member pass or some such thing. I think it needs to be all city wide tho.

Speaking of all city wide…my biggest gripe with the newly imposed city smoking ban has little to do with how goddamn fresh my clothes smell the day after (washing machine it was nice to know ya), or how how much I enjoy meeting all the wonderfully insane street dwellers who saddle up and make spit bubbles while attempting to sweet talk cigarettes from my person. These are all fine and good. But I do not like that every time I remove myself from my bar stool and go outside for a smoke that I inevitably loose my bar stool. Vultures lurk and wait for you to succumb to the urge to light up a healthy stick. And when you step out, then they swarm down on your spot. It’s enough to make me want to throw down the gauntlet and demand an olde tyme duel right there. “Sir (or madam) you have stolen what is not properly yours. Can you not still feel the warmth from where my arse did once sit? You have wronged me. I request a duel. Flintlocks at 18 paces.”

Also, watch the wonderful ‘we can’t go backwards‘ video via videoblog. Very nicely done.