brainsplotch

Thinking quite a bit about Prince's death. Coincidentally, I'm currently reading Trouble Boys , the recent biography of those other Twin Cities icons, The Replacements. I have Minneapolis on my mind. Just a warning: This is not the story of a cool kid who was hip to the 1980s music scene in Minneapolis, but a somewhat dorky teen who had little idea of what was happening but could definitely feel the vibe of a hip city. Though I didn't know about the Replacements and Husker Du until 1986, I had the sense that Minneapolis had it going on like few other places I'd ever been to before. Now a little backstory... I may have mentioned this before, but I took trips to Minneapolis in the summers of 1981, '82, '84, and '85. My uncle Jim worked for the chief of the Baraga (MI) Ojibwa Tribal Community and made business trips to Minneapolis. I don't know if this was coincidence, but almost every time I went up north to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins ...

I recently unearthed these postcards I brought home from my various trips to Minneapolis. There is the City Center, where I purchased my copy of Purple Rain in July 1984, the Minnesota Zoo (that I visited in 1985) and a few others that I probably took from the lobby of the Normandy Inn. 

Alright, this has to stop. Enough with every great musician dying recently. It's getting ridiculous. I don't even know where to start with this one. It blindsided me. I knew that Prince had a health scare last week, but I never expected him to frickin' DIE a week later. Do you remember how, after Bowie died, I wrote about how his Let's Dance album penetrated the hinterlands of rural Michigan? It was exactly the same deal with Prince when 1999 was released, and then the doors blew off their hinges two years later when Purple Rain exploded. Prince introduced R&B and funk to quite a few small town, Midwestern white kids. And it's safe to say that if you came of age in the 1980s, Prince was a major part of your life's soundtrack. It was in a van heading home from a high school golf tournament when I first remember hearing about Prince. The year was 1982. I remember that the Brewers were playing the Cardinals in the World Series. Conversation went from...

A college friend of mine just recently--today, in fact--posted on Facebook this old picture of me and some friends. It really blew me away because I'd never seen it before. I'm pretty sure this is either freshman or sophomore year at Michigan State, which would make it circa 1986/1987. (In case you're wondering, I'm the guy in the red shirt). I can't quite put into words how gleeful I am to see this photo. The guy standing next to me is Pete Overton (Kadyk), who introduced me to The Smiths, The Feelies, and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks. Yes, he was "that guy": the guy you always hope to meet in college. The guy who says, "If you're into so-and-so, you might like such-and-such." He was the cooler guy who leads you down unknown paths. (Unfortunately, he left this earth far too early, in 2001). The first time I met Pete was my second or third day on the MSU campus in September 1986. I was dragged out of my room by a few other fresh...

This is my last day of my spring break vacation, so naturally I put off writing in this blog until the last hour of said last day. Such is the life of a habitual procrastinator. We went to Chicago and were there from last Sunday until late Wednesday afternoon. We did most of your typical touristy things that families with kids tend to do: Millenium Park (on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon), a long Monday spent at the Art Institute and then a few minutes at the top of the Sears (aka Willis) Tower, a stroll through Navy Pier with lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern (or what passes as the Billy Goat Tavern), and finally a brief shopping excursion on the Magnificent Mile, where I felt completely out of place at Nordstrom's, but picked up some Cubs swag at the Lids store. Finally, it was a long train ride back home in the cold, dark Midwestern drizzle. I had the opportunity to decompress and relax a bit from Thursday until today. I watched the Tigers' home opener on TV Fri...