Birds at the bike shop Across the street, someone was being rolled into an ambulance. In the bike shop Katie was trying a tricycle, and outside the little birds were making space on the line and making space on the line and making space on the line. The next one came from below, the next one came flapping from the side; the birds were making space on the line.
Bird math Three dots. Space. Two more on one telephone wire.
Straight below, two yellow lines and four buzzing tires. Back up, next wire down, two more dots. Next wire down, two again.
They're out of sight, all nine behind me. They sat in odds.
Bird pursuit series: driving by Tony, photos by Katie
The real art After walking away from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis we stopped for a few minutes in a little park by a pond. We heard squawking above us. So we settled in on a bench to stay and watch awhile.
We admired the little birds flying in and out of one big tree. We had company. The old man on the bench beside us also seemed to be enjoying the show. But no.
Katie took the rest of the apricot jelly, wheat bread, and Goldfish to work today. I finished the Blueberry Muffin Frosted Mini Wheats and milk. Yesterday I finished a package of sandwich meat, our kalamata olives, and our last plum. We ate triple servings of ice cream.
Today I'm tackling a salmon fillet for lunch, but there are more in the freezer — and teriyaki beef kabobs too — which gives us reason to eat in before we move out. Tomorrow.
It'll be oatmeal with water for breakfast, throw Katie's clothes into boxes, wash the dishes we're using especially much in the closing days, and await the arrival of my parents. Then southeastward to Lake Zurich then Waynesboro, Va., where we'll live three houses down from the office of The News Virginian.
Departing Minneapolis is not easy to characterize as a good thing, but as the temperature begins to remind us what it was like during our first days here in late May, it becomes easier to acknowledge that if we must go, now is the time. After all, we're taking a cue from Minneapolis's shortest street — NE Summer Street, no joke — which we've passed a few times each week.
No number of recumbent bicycles, free museum nights, or walkable lake trails can keep us now. So we're leaving this City Where Everything Works. Whereas I spent a summer in Detroit amused by the various and bizarre ways in which life can be lived, and photographed, we're leaving Minneapolis filled with vague pleasantries, few photos, and little more than a scraped rear bumper and $24 parking ticket (both received yesterday), two thrift store ties, and a "Reprobate National Convention" RNC protest poster to show for the summer.
There's not much wrong with Minneapolis, which makes the move out more mysterious. When we decided to leave we confided in each other that back when we first arrived we thought we'd get jobs and stay. We did nothing to secure that stay. Now our situation is completely different but still confusing, or at least unexpected.
On the way to Virginia Katie and I wrote down what we thought The Valley would be like and what types and colors of cars our acquaintances would drive and how the office might look and which apartment we would like best. She was mostly right.
But we both thought, and now know, that The Valley will mean few bars and more time for books.
Turn your speakers on for these club throws and catches by Nick Laffey and Tony Gonzalez. Filmed in Minneapolis, and mostly at night, it's a t-shirt montage mostly about music. They're neverthriving.
Somewhen between her turning 22, us turning cosmopolitan (dinner at Cue, The Government Inspector at the Guthrie) and the purchase of a necklace by Jaime Fisher at Gallery 360 for her wedding dress, we got into a wine-induced rhythm of future talk.
Could be Waynesboro, Virginia, perhaps Mongtomery, Alabama.
Long story short: I finally told her that I'm willing to follow, especially if it means I get to vend peanuts at a ballpark. And I warned her to stop throwing out suggestions like, "how about we pick a city [always Seattle when we talk], go there, and then find something."
She makes me silly saying things like that. Same too, but more giddy, when she asks to come along to Neverthriving meetings to work on club passing take-aways.
Until the future, we're sticking with the cosmopolitan + bike riding life (she rode for the first time in 9 years the other night).
Because they may be the best thing going these days, I asked Boo to join me in writing about Wolf Parade -- their new disc is out and we each saw the band on their current tour.
Boo: The opening band, The Listening Party, was very good to humble shades of great. Consisting of a (very talented) vocalist/plastic-garbage-can percussionist and a guitarist/backup vocalist, it took a while for me to get used to it, but in the end, I was converted. They seemed to be shooting for a style that married American roots-esque folk and country melodies with echo guitar lines, heavy, driving, complex percussion loops, and indie sensibilities. In terms of their songs and delivery, what some might have called repetition, others might call a reinforcement of a single, solid aesthetic and style, and whatever your point of view might be, they drove home that very musical point without straying too far into other stylistic territories. After the end of the half hour, I knew what they were about -- and I liked it.
Tony: I skipped the opening acts but grabbed a good spot on a railing in the balcony at First Avenue with Katie.
Boo: Then came Wolf Parade. This was their first show of the tour, and it was at least highly impressive and at most life-altering. Emerging from the side stage entrance and comprising the group were Arlen Thompson (drums), Hadji Bakara (synth, theremin, and noise effects), Dante DeCaro (guitar), Dan Boeckner (guitar and vocals), and Spencer Krug (Piano, synth, and vocals). They started the set with "Language City," a strong Boeckner tune from the recently released "At Mount Zoomer," which was soon followed by a driving, hypnotic performance of "Call it a Ritual" that reinforced the strength and command of the opening track and made clear the intention of the band that night: to fuck shit up in the best possible way.
Tony: Wolf Parade opened in similar fashion in Mpls, but I'll note here and throughout some of the differences between this most recent show and that which I saw two summers ago in Detroit. At that point, I wrote:
Wolf Parade bashed harder. They smashed chimes. They played their entire album and new songs, and finally only had one song left to play, and made its seven minutes into even more. I danced and jumbled with a drunken couple. The louts clobbered the crowd but I didn't mind, because they gave me an excuse to get rowdy right back. They poured beer on me and I danced and I stripped off my shirt in the parking lot before we ate Taco Bell on a raised lawn with ants invading my tossed-aside shoes.
This show wasn't quite like that, in part because of the new album material. I don't know what it means when an album has the ability to "grow on" you, but that's what "Mount Zoomer" did for me, especially in the run-up to the concert. I think there are more "movements" within each track on the new disc, which when played live, make for lots of anticipation.
Boo: The one aspect that I never fully realized when listening to Wolf Parade (yet became highly apparent live) were the fantastic drum parts of Arlen, and how his beat placement and basic, almost oddly dance-like, rhythms truly push the songs forward and provide a moving if not sprinting energy to Spencer and Dan's fantastic song arrangements. The propulsive drums and stable grooves are not as strongly emphasized in the recordings, but literally knock you back at the most intense moments of the songs, whether the remarkable build up of "California Dreamer," the classic "Grounds for Divorce," or the simply epic, urging explosion of "I'll Believe in Anything."
Tony: Agreed, but I always knew it. It did take about four songs for the sound mixing to bring the keys and synth up to a level to compete with the drums.
Boo: As to the performers themselves, it was to watch them play. Firstly, Dan Boeckner is rock and roll. His stage presence consists of cigarettes, tight jeans, and spasmatic, brilliant, euphoric releases of gritty, seasoned vocals and aggressive lashes at his guitar. Carly noticed what she called his "funny head thing" as well as I did -- how he manages to have his left leg and head move in an almost coordinated epileptic fit while the rest of his body seems relatively unaffected and oblivious to them. And his charisma and energy only built from there, since by the time they ended the main set with a remarkable 15-minute version of "Kissing the Beehive," Boeckner was on the floor in front of his amplifier, swinging the guitar against the speakers, stabbing at the pickups with his cable, twisting and bending the mechanical vibrato arm on the instrument half-hoping it to snap, and generally being as overwhelmingly dedicated to the creation of static, noise, and electronic screams as any human being has ever been. It was fucking sweet, Ira Kaplan style.
Tony: There's something about Minnesota crowds. Something shitty. Spence kept calling us "nice," which we were, which doesn't cut it. Boeckner never would have had the momentum to go to the ground like that. Same lame crowd as at the New Pornographers show I bet...
Boo: Now there is Spencer Krug, a completely different side of things. Carly giggled in surprise when I pointed him out -- in his early thirties he looks to be, at most, a boyish 21. He's also the most distracted, odd, and engaging performer I've ever witnessed. He would kind of half-sit at his keyboards and rock back on forth on his seat with one leg wrapped around ready to stand, sit properly, jump up, or literally just walk away prepared to wander around in his region of the stage for a portion of a song -- which he did. He would play relatively complex and highly brilliant keyboard parts, hammering heavy octaves on his electric piano, weaving fascinating threads of notes that managed to be shockingly clever as they are subtle in the mix, and delivering playful, inspired melody lines and accents on what looked to be an older, toy Yamaha synthesizer position atop his main piano. He managed to do all of this and then suddenly back off and look off stage for a few seconds, or maybe gander at the lights around him for a bit, or, looking bored, take a drink of a beer off to the side of the stage before practically leaping back into the music and almost in a split-second start playing even more inspired keyboard parts than you remembered him doing previously.
Just watching his performing makes you realize how subtle yet brilliant their song arrangements are, such as how "Grounds for Divorce" builds around the main keyboard theme introduced at the beginning, and how the vocal lines, guitar jabs, and additional keyboard parts all reinforce the repeated theme. There isn't a simple 3-chords-and-a-melody approach to songwriting happening with Wolf Parade, but rather a serious and thoughtful development of musical and lyrical themes and variations on them.
Tony: There's also something incomprehensible about the band's lyrics. Some sort of chanting-a-catch-phrase mantra that doesn't make much sense, but which nevertheless is exciting to sing along to (singing along to single phrases, here and there).
Boo: By the time they finished with an encore of "It's a Curse", "I'll Believe in Anything" and a ridiculously awesome "Fancy Claps" it was clear that even another 8 hours would have been the incredible combination of not enough and too much, just as the past 2 had been.
Tony: Perfectly said by Boo. The encore, perhaps identical, really left me wanting more and wondering if they shouldn't have built to that frenzy earlier.
Boo: Reluctantly we filed out along with the rest of the crowd, and, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 a.m., Carly and I ran into Spencer Krug and the two members of the listening party outside the venue. We had a brief conversation, discussing how the band hadn't played together for 10 months before brief rehearsals led to this first show of the tour, the new album, those little orange bracelets that band members have to wear, how Pontiac is a ghost town, etc. Spencer was polite and I was starstruck, and it managed not to be too awkward before Carly and I left to try and get some sleep, as hard as that would most likely be.
This wouldn't fit in a Twitter update, so it goes here:
K: "It's your f-- ... (etc.)" T: "Hey, watch your language (etc.)" K: "What!? You've got the worst language of anyone I know." T: "I've also got some of the best language of anyone you know. Whaddaya think about that?" K: (eyes roll while sipping) (spurts water laughing)
Which reminds me, why aren't we using the interrobang‽
The Lee Friedlander exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts will likely rank among the top five most simultaneously humbling and inspiring "performances" I have ever seen.
"Baffling," Katie said of photographs that mix windows, reflections, and self-portraiture, like this one.
"Hey whoa," we agreed about the rest.
Some can be seen in this slideshow and more at this selective site. In short, Friedlander seems to have photographed everything I would want to photograph. Street stuff, portraits, quirky compositions, odd signs, and lots of driving. It's like watching Jay Gilligan juggle or Adam Boehmer dance (Mpls clip). It makes me want to quit.
Balls Cabaret is likely the longest running midnight cabaret in the history of mankind, says Leslie Ball, weekly emcee. Held in the well-lit, spooky, and awesome Southern Theatre basement, Balls has kept up its weekly shows for 16 years, and was once a hangout for Jay Gilligan.
Last night I took a crack at it with Mpls friend Nick Laffey. Here's the video, in one take:
I've posted a number of other juggling videos, some of them totally bizarre, relatively old, or involving TV appearances, at my Youtube account.
We live near one of the hundreds of "share the road" signs in Minneapolis at an address easily confused with its eight other versions (SE 8th Street, SE 8th Ave., 8th Ave. SE, S 8th Street, 8th Ave. NE, 8th Street S, N 8th Ave., 8th Ave. N).
Birds tweet and busses rumble down the street. A squirrel, surprised by our arrival at the front door, flipped over a stack of phone books, tried to climb the brick wall and the glass door and finally zipped, legs wide, into the freedom of the parking lot.
We jimmy the key to get into our apartment, which has too many chairs and not enough good art for the walls. But demo derbies, dinos and the Detroit News will suffice for now. We have a rolling chair, a wavy mirror, a futon, a lime green shelf, and a coat rack from our three trips to Ikea. They sell good 50-cent hot dogs there and we ate them once. Everything else we own came from Target. We didn't spend a cent at the Mall of America (but we window shopped at every store).
We've been here for six days and we're already bragging about our library and our radio station. We got our library cards, but our 89.3 The Current shirts are on hold for lack of funds. We almost get to brag about seeing Barack Obama in St. Paul, but this line deterred us (we drove up at 7 p.m., two hours before he spoke, but the line was more than a mile long already).
Music side note: When I visited the office today and met the music critic he asked what I liked. I told him indie rock, Tapes 'n Tapes, Wolf Parade, etc. So he handed me the new Wolf Parade album and offered me the chance to cover a concert in two weeks which features Andrew Bird and The New Pornographers (and I haven't even started working yet). Although I told Katie she would need to sit by the radio and phone to call and win tickets for the sold out show, it looks like we may land a pair as it is.
Katie and I started a budget in a GoogleSpreadsheet, then quickly broke the bank by choosing a recipe which calls for "about five handfuls" of basil. Today we braved a downpour for two tubs of ice cream. We're limiting ourselves to two restaurant meals per week and we're meeting that so far by making simple stuff at home. Basic pastas, salad, and old-fashioned oatmeal. Tonight we made roasted red pepper and leek soup with feta cheese "crostini" on the side. Katie busted out the housewarming champagne, but that bread I made really stole the show.
Music side note #2: Since arriving, Katie and I have really been digging 89.3, the NPR/MPR music station. They mix super new stuff with local music and old classics, for example, new Weezer, new Tapes 'n Tapes, classic Wilco, Ramones, Talking Heads, etc. New finds already: The M's, Sun Kill Moon, new LCD Soundsystem track.
Although Drew called us "purveyors of mass consumer culture" when we went to THE MALL, a few stores deftly avoid that label. First, we had a good time scoffing at poorly designed wedding invitations (while grabbing some good ideas) at Papyrus. Second, I got to see real live juggling equipment in a real-world store at Air Traffic. Third, (although maybe a gimmick or a consumer culture thing) we discovered "the bean bag chair that becomes a bed." Fourth, we found out that Click & Clack put out more than one CD at the Lake Wobegone NPR store. Besides selling The New Kings of of Nonfiction and This American Life CDs, it had a nice pop-up book and a shitton of Garrison Keillor garbage.
Before all this Minneapolis activity, we took a little roadtrip last week starting from Charleston, north through the mountains to Pittsburgh, over to Zygote Press in Cleveland ( where Katie's letterpress professor had an exhibition), through Hillsdale, and eventually stopping off in good ole Lake Zurich for a few days. We took some photos along the way (click here for bigs):
And we store my bike in the bathroom, Youch the Cactus on a frisbee by one of our our three windows, and our monster microwave on the dining table (in front of where Katie sits).
There are plenty of functional bridges in town and it's been especially warm.
