Uh, howdy. Been awhile. Yeah, it’s me not you. Really. You know how it is, you get swamped, you retreat into your shell, you got no time for sharing. And, well, here’s the thing about blogs: increasingly, they seem to me like the province of moderately pithy people who, because they offer moderately personal observations in a very. short. snappy. way. imagine that they are contributing a unique insight in the time it would take to tie your shoe. They’re not. They’re the contemporary equivalent of the old SNL movie review skit–two snaps up!–as though snark were criticism and confession was the highest calling of literature. So let’s just keep that in mind and have some fun, shall we?
Who’s going to see Def Leppard at the State Fair Grandstand, for instance? Back in my grade school days, when heavy metal was getting serious government scrutiny, I used to think these guys were downright dangerous. Now seeing them feels like listening to a barbershop quartet–smile-inducing nostalgia. And how about the Goo Goo Dolls? When I saw them open for the Replacements, there was little indication they would end up selling millions more records than Paul Westerberg could dream of. Now they’ve already burned out, hitting the fair circuit. The best show here (sorry, Vince Gill fans) is clearly the B.B. King gig, not so much for the omnipresent B.B., but because of his touring pals: Al Green and Etta James. These two could still belt the pants off any Ludicris, Amy Winehouse, or any other warbler out there.
As for visual art, the Chambers Hotel is featuring the work of MCAD graduate students in its Burnet Gallery, part of its stART program to encourage emerging, contemporary artists.
And Gallery 13 is featuring the work of the late Malcolm Myers, a longtime studio arts instructor at the University of Minnesota. This guy hung out with Diego Rivera in Mexico and the great midcentury painters in New York.
You might try hitting Afrifest, too, whose program venues range from the big African market in Brooklyn Park to the West Bank.
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