Secrets of the City

Urban Guerillas! I miss lying down on the floor in the entry. (But I suppose that’s because it’s just not the hipster thing to do nowadays.)

Wait. Scratch that. Bad idea. They sucked.

How ’bout…

SKULL FUCK
FINAL CONFLICT
LIMITED WARRANTY

Or most any of those listed here.

Ha. Cows. Roy G. Biv! Wow, that link is a trip in the time machine. Skull Fuck were awesome too. The Wallets…

The Hypstrz and Rifle Sport both reunited last year a couple times, but I think they should keep at it and record. I know I’ve missed a lot. The Magnolias reunions are always great. Ditto the Suburbs (who are amazing) and the Flamin’ Ohs. Most reunions I either wouldn’t think of because I never saw the band (I missed the ’80s here), or wouldn’t want because I saw the band and am fine with leaving the memory intact.

But I think most people have no idea what a great live band Run Westy Run was circa ‘94, and that would be something to see. Not punk, exactly, but I’d love to see the Odd again. Any band with John Crozier, who hasn’t touched a stage since the ’90s. I’m still catching up on true punk rock here, but I remember liking Dogfight a lot.

gosh, looking at that list makes me wwonder where all those amazing hipsters and musicians went, what they do now. like i heard the bass player for the Hippos went to work for grant whastisname, soul asylum’s original drummer, up at some resort up north. what happened to shannon from cows?

TVBC were amazingly cool live, too, and they never really captured it on a record, although i admit i never heard the last one from a couple years ago. they ever play anymore? don’t recall…

Last I heard, Shannon moved to NY and was playing with the Heroine Sheiks

The Hypstrz blew the roof off the Turf Club the night after Thanksgiving last year. If you see one of their infrequent gigs advertised, run, don’t walk. And get their new/old Live at the Longhorn CD.

Run Westy Run did put on a good show back then.

I also heard Al (Otto’s and Hippos) went up North. Would be great to see him on the 18th.

+ Lori Barbero’s band The Koalas have been asked to play Dale’s bday too!

NNB, but that ain’t happenin’.

I’ve got to second the Hyptstrz vote. And also, while they weren’t even remotely punk, I miss Two Tickets To Paradise nights at Lee’s Liquor.

I’m only interested in Sxities punk. I would pay through the nose to see Dudley and the Doo-Rites play “UFO.”

Talking about ’60s punk, do the Del-Counts still play the bowling-alley circuit? They weren’t exactly punk then and certainly wouldn’t be now, but they are a link to MN’s great garage legacy.

There is alot of misplaced nostalgia for the “glory days” of the Mpls music scene based primarily around Husker Du and the Replacements in the early eighties. The truth is, Husker Du was utterly charmless and too hardcore, and the Replacements (whom I love) were too fucked up to play at least fifty percent of the time. The best thing about those days was the fact that you could see pretty damn good bands virtually any night of the week for no or very low cover charge. I’m thinking Flamin’ Ohs, the Phones, Ipso Facto, Urban Guerillas, Shangoya, the Wallets, etc.

I forgot another band that I loved from that era, The Crash Street Kids!

I loved the Urban Guerillas back then, but I was in high school and am now suspicious of my youthful tastes. However, I had a high school friend in a band called Public Works that used to open for them, and I wish I still had their self-produced audio tape, because I suspect I would still love it.

Ok, I’m really fucking old, but the best Twin Cities bands ever: The Wallets and The Suburbs.

Fuck, I’m old, too! Yeah, the ‘Burbs were always solid, but for some reason, they couldn’t get it across on record.

Saw both bands live countless times and I think I only bought the Suburbs CD a couple of years ago. When both bands got it across live so well, who needs a recording. BTW, the Suburbs at the Butterball last year was just like they’d never stopped. Fantastic.

I just wish Steve Kramer was still playing out in public instead of just making advertising music. Maybe the best musician ever to blow us all away in the early 80s.

One more thing, I love the occasional incarnation of Trailer Trash–Menage a Twang.

Now I feel sad that I was out east for those years.

Cracks me up what’s now called punk. I guess, back those days,
punk = not arena rock/not disco/not The Eagles. Therefore, everything else was punk
The Wallets and The ‘Burbs? Pianos, accordions, marimbas…
(? marimbas maybe not, but it could have happened ) Hardly angry,
hardly revolutionary, at least in a political sense. Pretty damn joyful
in fact. Those old shows were like Dale Carnegie revival meetings. Any
punk posturing was utterly drowned in goofy young joy. You emerged
from those shows realigned and reconstituted in a very sappy, positive way. Those boys turned yer frown (or sneer or scowl) upside down.
It was disorienting. Remember? I loved it and I miss it. How do we revisit that place w/o being 24 years old?

I’m not really interested in any of these old bands reuniting. Some things are best left in the past.

I’d much rather go see a brand new band then a dewey eyed evening of nostalgia.

God, no, I don’t want those bands to reunite. It would be depressing.

i think of “punk” in that context mostly as the DIY aesthetic–all these homegrown garage bands, kids just picked up instruments and did it (no matter what their style).

but yeah, i thinnk some of us old farts are mostly nostalgic for the time when we had the metabolism for clubbing every night of the week.

yeah al and grant are up at the northernair lodge in ely. nice getaway.

i loved the westies, the cows were painfully good, there were some other regional groups that ruled, maybe not 100% punk, things that fall down was cool. there were some cliche but loveable groups too, like the clams. but i don’t miss that shit enough to wanna relive it. s’all good but i like the new as well if not more.

I loved going to to Wallets shows.
How about North Equator Nine?
Listenened to that album in high school long before I was going to shows.

One of the Run Westy Run’s “discoveries,” Druel was one of the hottest punk bands in the late 90s in the Twin Cities, playing with the Westies, as well as Suicidal Tendencies and Slipknot, plus the Warped Tour.

The members went on to American Head Charge, Altar of Rock, Rockford Mules a, Radio Orphans and clarity and the brothers p.

Pshaw, y’all missed Ting Kong.

Anyone remember the Skamets? This was an instrumental trio that melded ska, jazz, surf, rave-up and rock. I think this was circa 1985-6. They predated the local ska re-re-revival. They were like a more fun TVBC, who I also love.
Someone told me the Skamets were like the Panic, but I never saw the Panic…just their posters.

Anyone remember posters?????

Hi Dan Heilman.

Boy Elroy
NNB

I love the Crash St. Kids too. The bassist passed away a few years ago… Mel James, the singer, had a solo thing going for a while and got airplay with a song on KQ for a while – he also was in a band with his kid playing drums called Planet Melvin. I still see him around town occasionally, but not sure if he’s still playing… they were an awesome power pop band.

Does anybody know where I can find music by the Urban Guerilla’s?

Maybe you could ask someone on their “street team” for a lead?

Oh wait….

The thing with the Urban Guerillas was not so much their music, but they were fun. They played a lot of basement and garage parties, and ended up getting a following. Big Larry and Little Larry, ahh yes. They used to live by me in a dumpy house in South Minneapolis. I got a flea filled kitten from them which my mom never forgave me for.

There was a really horrible little band called the Hamsters that were a lot of fun too. They would line up those little plastic military men toys on the stage then kick them out to the audience, throw out nets, etc etc. They ended up moving to England and actually getting a cult following for a bit. What a riot.

But the band I think that never got their due was a band called the “Go Great Guns”. It had Mike Mann on lead guitar (excellant songwriter), Marc Lauer on rhythm (what a voice!), Rob Knox on bass (cute as hell, and good on bass too), and the infamous Tom Cook on drums (only a drummer the calibre of the Cookmeister could play good enough for Mann’s songs).

Now THERE’S a group of people I wonder what happened to. Except for Cook…as any KFAN fan can tell.

However I don’t think they could do a reunion show. Too much perfectionism is what killed that band. I doubt that it got better with age.

I just saw this thread….first a couple of bands, and then a Wallets story.

1. Walt Mink
2. Sizzling Eggheads
3. TVBC
4. Unbelievable Jolly Machine
5. Pivot (my old band)

Story: In 1993, I moved into a home in St. Anthony Park and held an open house party. At one point, I swung down into the dining room, and there’s Steve Kramer (lead Wallet) munching down appetizers. For the next seven years he was my next store neighbor. A really, really great guy. Not half as strange in “real life” as his stage character.

Steve and former Wallets manager Bob Hest now run great music house, HestKramer.

Hey PHC, whatever happened (besides TC, I mean) to the rest of those guys in the band?

EPR,
I couldn’t tell you what any of them are up to presently. Wish I knew, I lost contact with them when either they or I grew up ; )

I know Mann and Cookie did quite a few other things together, a band called Ichy Bruda, and then there was the “Lights Out Committee” which actually was pretty good, and fun.

LOC would have a lot of great local talent join them, and Lauer even sang with them a couple of times. But that was the last I heard of Lauer doing anything musically, and Knox sort of disappeared completely.

Cook went on to put out some CDs with his bands, even had a video that showed on MTV back a couple of times on some program in the late 80’s. I can’t remember tho if it was Big Mambo or the Magnolias. All I remember was they were playing on a fishing boat being pulled on a trailer. Now that is Minnesotan!

I agree with “hopped up on goofballs” about being nostalgic for the metabolism. I’d go out everynight, and stay skinny. In the late 70’s, 80’s one didn’t have to make plans with anyone, we just headed down to the Entry or to Duffy’s and knew we’d see you there. And boy did we dance, didn’t we?

But then things changed in the late 80’s, people didn’t use the dance floor to dance anymore. There were good bands to go listen to, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t as fun to just stand on the dance floor and bob the head and shoulders.

Was it the change of music, or the change of nighclub patrons that brought this on?

PHC, since you hung around allot, would you mind dropping me an email so I can send you a picture of two people I’m trying to identify?

I would really appreciate it.

EPR-

PHC, since you hung around allot, would you mind dropping me an email so I can send you a picture of two people I’m trying to identify?

I would really appreciate it.

EPR-

It was the Magnolias in the video. I believe TC was just an interim drummer.

Also, as an aside, I always thought Lauer’s only claim to fame was as having been the guy Carleen dumped when she met Bob Stinson.

My dad was in North Equator Nine. He was the drummer.

NE9-

Just about everyone I knew was in a garage/bar band at one time or another- only a tiny select few ever made it big. Those being Prince, Stevie Greenberg, Andre Cimone and a one or two others. Lamont Cranston played my 15th birthday party as a favor for my older sister.

You have to remember that bands like your Dad’s and most of those listed above played for beer and that’s about it. The bars were doing them a favor giving them stage time- the idea being that exposure was good for the band and might lead to better things.

As a general rule of thumb, the louder a band plays, the crappier they are. When you’re good, you don’t have to cover up by playing so loud you hurt people’s ears. GGG’s, listed above is an example of a band that played excessively loud. The bass alone was stupefying. Which is why they never made it past being a warm up band for warm up bands.

This has been a great read! My brother introduced my to local music in ‘79 (I’ve been hooked ever since), but I wasn’t of age until ‘85.

People used to dance!! Hard to imagine, but true. Something definitely changed, maybe it was the the drinking age?

Man Sized Action, Whole lotta Loves, Charlie Don’t Surf, Baby Astronauts

Here’s a similar link (more like a list): http://www.tcpunk.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000005.html

Link to Reflex Records Discography.
http://www.geocities.com/soho/museum/7147/refdisc.html

Speaking of the Urban Guerillas, Brad Ptacek, bassist, can be found in the Brass Kings and is chef/co-owner of The Band Box.

People used to dance because it was still possible to. Mosh pits are not conducive to dancing, nor is slamming, which started in the 70’s, but was not real common around here as yet. Jay’s Longhorn Saloon was the first place I saw it here around 1978 or 79. NOW that was a fun bar- Oh my, the bands I saw there for a 6.50 to 10.00 cover charge.

THe ‘Burbs used to get booed off the stage there on a regular basis- kinda funny. It was real treat seeing Talking Heads there, though. A year later they were far too big and hot to ever “touch” like that again.

EPR,
just sent you off an email.

As for Lauer, yeah actually good old ‘Earth’ does have some cyberspace tied up with that story about being dumped. But he in his own right did have one hell of a voice, and was quite talented being able to pick up an instrument he never had experience with and play it rather well in hardly any time at all. What a pity that he is now only known as a guy that was jilted.

Makes me wonder of all the other such talents that will go to the grave unknown.

Okay…So, I was thinking today: “I wonder if anyone has posted info on the web about the MPLS music scene circa 1978-80?” And I found this. Although this topic is at least a year old, I’ll still make some comments/recollections.

One of the most intense periods in MPLS rawk music history occurred during late summer/early fall 1979:

Magazine/NNB @ the Longhorn, Aug? 79. Really really good show, as far as I was concerned. Stood at front of stage right in front of McGeogh’s guitar amp. He just stood there, hunched over, playing those riffs of his much louder than on the records. Fantastic. After gig party at Jody’s house. Magazine showed up. Met Howard Devoto. He asked me (I was about 15 at the time) ‘What do American kids listen to these days?” I replied “Oh, y’know, Skynnurd and REO.” He looked really puzzled. Later, We all danced for a long time to the Dave Clark Five, Joey Dee and the Starlighters Live at the Peppermint Lounge, then some James Brown, then a Buzzcocks bootleg LP, and then PiL’s latest 45’s three or four times in a row (right before the much-anticipated Metal Box came out) then after that I don’t remember. It was dawn when we left. One of the best nights of my life, I think.

A few weeks later, Gang of Four w/ Buzzcocks @ the Longhorn. Sept? 79. I got too stoned and kind of hung out towards the back, but I still remember Pete Shelly cheerfully arguing w/audience about which numbers to play: “Play ‘Boredom!’ ‘No…We’re gonna do our latest – called…Everybody’s Happy Nowadays onetwothreefour..’ After the show, I asked him about the bootleg LP mentioned above, but he didn’t know about it. He gave me one of his guitar picks – a grey Dunlop. I kept it and played guitar w/it for years, then lost it somewhere. Pete S is the nicest semi-famous-rock-band-guy I ever met. Maybe this was the best night of my life. Go4 were great, too. “Legendary” tour.

BTW, back then it was easy for an underage boy like me to get into clubs because the drinking age was only 19. The authorities weren’t nearly as strict as they are now, fuckers. Reagan really fucked this country up. Maybe that’s why the young music scenes around the country just don’t seem to have the same kind of energy and sense of fun that we had back then. Not enough drunk teenagers. Maybe it’s just cause I’m older now, but when I go to gigs with young bands, it’s usually alot more sedate and ‘nice’ than when I was young…er.

Another memorable event was the M-80 “fest”, which took place around the same time, i.e. Sept 79. My cousin Geoff was connected with the Walker video crew for some reason, so we got in free. Unfortunately, the sound in this huge aluminum barn was abysmal, and it smelled like cowshit. I basically wandered around, not really paying a whole lot of attention to most of the bands, many of which were just typical, skinny-tie new-wave groups that I hated. One thing that was really great was a screening of the hardly-ever-seen TAMI show from 1965 with Bo Diddley, James Brown, the Stones, and the Supremes. Of the flesh-and-blood musicians who played, I liked Teenage Jesus (they were a bit too much, though). Also good were Contortions, Judy Nylon/Snatch, and Tuxedomoon. A funny group was The Girls – three guys in horn-rimmed glasses and nerd-outfits who basically spazzed out on stage and played goofy no-wave. The UK was not well represented – Monochrome Set’s Byrds/Velvets thing was kinda boring. The MPLS bands were really good, though – Curtiss A standing out. Best of all was Devo’s one-time only performance (as Dove) playing a cover of Dylan’s recently-released born-again Xtian song “You Gotta Serve Somebody”. They wore matching lime-green polyester bell-bottom leisure suits w/golf visors. Incredible. I don’t think they ever played this “show” again. Other highlights included hanging out backstage, drinking free beer and digging all the crazy outfits everyone from the different bands were wearing. Back then, everyone was a fashion victim. Lydia Lunch in some kinda weird black and red dominatrix/baby doll outfit, Jerry Casale in a sharp suit and tie, etc. You could tell if someone was from MPLS at that time, because they all wore pointy cowboy boots. Fabulous.

Other recollections from that era: The band Fine Art. Anyone remember them? As I recall, they were pretty good. They had a record out, but I never got a copy. Kinda No-Wavey, but alot more tuneful than, say, Teenage Jesus.

MPLS Incest: I was hoping some issues of this short-lived newspaper/zine might be avilable online.

The previously mentioned after-gig parties at Jody’s house: I only went to about 4-5 of these, but they were always a blast for a 15 yr old like me. They were my first chance to stay up all night drinking and doing drugs with the cool, older rocknroll crowd. Jody was a 20-something student (I guess) who had a big house and this great record collection with all these bands and artistes I’d never heard before. She always got the latest punk/new wave 45s from the UK/NYC but she also had all these cool hard-to-get RnB/RnR/Soul/Rockabilly/Surf LPs from the 50s-60s. This was waaay before the days of CD re-issues and compilations of obscure classics, like we have today. Back then, you had to have special knowledge to know about the really good old records, and they were always hard to find and out-of-print. I heard a Link Wray record for the first time at one of her parties and was gobsmacked. She had all the classics. Fucking great. Everybody danced alot at her parties, too, and I had a schoolboy crush on all the different girls I met there and at the Longhorn. The punk chicks were always much hotter and friendlier than the boring girls at school…

Shopping at Oar Folk Joypyskiixckz. I used to go there with my 10 dollars allowance money dollars and spend hours agonizing over which records to get. I’d read every single music mag (NY Rocker, Search & Destroy and the UK weeklies) there to find out which records I might like. I bet the staff hated me. I’d spend hours there. The records I did get are worth a fair chunk of change today, if I had kept them in good shape which I didn’t. I played the hell out of them. Besides I gave/sold them all to friends of mine when I left for NYC in 82.

I would have to agree with TBartel. The Wallets got me through HS and College. I made countless road trips to see them, including all the way to South Bend in 85 or 86, and all the way up through their last concert. I have a couple of Kramer watercolors that are simply timeless pieces. They look as good to me today as they did when I got them in 1988. Twenty something years go by like nothing, which means I have doubled my age since I last saw them. That sucks. I agree, I wish there was more to their time. I got the impression that marketing was everything and for whatever reason, just got the wrong promoter.