Your Locally Grown Alternative Newspaper
Volume 9 * Issue 43 *
January 18 - 24, 2006 * FREE will
PulseTC.com
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Hot Tickets for January 25 - January 31, 2006
Dr. Preventing Youth Violence...Antarctic Artist...Saintly City Kittys...Spikier rawkin' Modern double-CD release shows...Eclectone's “I’m too old for this shit.” showcase...Appreciating Current appreciating listeners...Broken Social Scene is to risky rocket to Pluto as is Jason Collett is to ground control...plus, other white hot tix/shows/events to melt your mood this week!
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Hearts of champions: The Plastic Constellations + P.O.S.
story and photos by Steve McPherson
People get into music for all kinds of reasons: the girls (or boys), the money, the fame or for any number of dreams. But I’m willing to bet that most musicians quickly realize there’s something more intangible and difficult to pin down that makes music worth their time. It’s tough to frame correctly, but music—truly exciting amazing awe-inspiring music—makes you feel more alive. Call me sentimental, but there are certain elements in the things people make—the bowl of a well-designed lowercase “a” in a typeface, the dovetail joint of a piece of woodwork, the perfect grid of Manhattan streets—that nearly unhinge me in my admiration for human endeavor. And when music serves as your religion in as much as it makes you believe humankind is capable of true grace and beauty, what you hunger for are albums, songs, hooks, moments—whatever—that transport you. There’s no formula or exact science for this kind of alchemy, but you know it when you see it, so with that in mind, if you haven’t already met: Everybody, these are The Plastic Constellations and P.O.S. TPC and P.O.S., everybody.
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March 31 mantra in St. Paul—I'm no longer a smoker at bars/restaurants—totally
by Sid Pranke
Dave Thune is an interesting man. Somehow, he manages to spearhead a circuitous yet successful campaign to snuff out smoke in St. Paul bars and restaurants, although he is desperate himself to quit smoking. Or maybe his habit is the reason for the campaign in the first place, since he’s been trying to quit for a long time.
One can’t help wondering the obvious: the guy hasn’t been successful at quitting, so he makes everyone else quit? Isn’t that kind of Freudian? Isn’t that called transference or cognitive dissonance or something? Somebody let me know.
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Commentary: The dream is dead? Long live the American dream
by Holly Sklar
The American Dream doesn’t need to go on a diet in the new year. It’s been shrinking for years. We are becoming a nation of Scrooge-Marts and outsourcers—with an increasingly low-wage workforce instead of a growing middle class. Even two-paycheck households are struggling to afford a house, college, health care and retirement.
The American Dream is becoming the American Pipe Dream. “The vast majority of American workers (70 percent) think ‘the American Dream’ has been or will be harder for them to financially achieve than it was for their parents’ generation,” according to the Principal Financial Well-Being Index.
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Bad Bambi
by Liberty Finch
Borders, an installation by Barbara Claussen at Augsburg College’s Gage Family Art Gallery, raises issues surrounding the unstable separation of public and private spaces. Dividing the gallery into several sub-spaces, each modeled on a different type of designed environment—information kiosk, office, museum/gallery exhibit and free giveaway basket—Claussen has built a forum to address her subject matter from several directions.
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Indian Cowboy: Zaraawar Mistry’s Journey
by Dwight Hobbes
If you haven’t followed the career of actor-director-playwright Zaraawar Mistry, this is an opportune time to take note of the seasoned veteran. He’s enjoying a heightened profile and making a significant transition—one that happens to benefit him as well as Twin Cities theater.
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’round the dial: Making Rock the Old-Fashioned Way
by Tom Hallett
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren’t able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking.” — Wayne Kramer of The MC5
SONG OF THE WEEK: “I Made An Offer” — Little Man
No time for jivin' an jawin' this time out, gang. We're divin' right into a killer local CD I’ve been just itchin’ to give some ink to, so kick back, crank up the tunes, an’ roll ‘em if ya got ‘em ...
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"Your Locally Grown Alternative Newspaper"
PulseTC.com
…And many other grassroots, independent music, news and arts stories this week…Check Your Pulse!
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