Songs of the 612
Bleak winters, skyways, and mall chicks put Minneapolis on the musical map
Marcy Playground
It may lack the timeless grandeur of Paris, the iconic aura of Manhattan, and the gangsta mystique of Compton, but Minneapolis has garnered its share of musical shout-outs. Over the years, even former hometown favorites who fled the Twin Cities for good have paused to name-check the City of Lakes, for better and for worse. As the locally reared members of Marcy Playground—named for a local schoolyard—prepare to touch down for an Aug. 22 show at the Fine Line, The A.V. Club offers this annotated list of 10 noteworthy nods to the Minneapple.
MOST INFECTIOUS: The Hold Steady, "Southtown Girls"
As leader of both The Hold Steady and its punkish predecessor Lifter Puller, Craig Finn has chronicled scores of druggy, nostalgic Twin Cities foibles, using actual street names and locations to give his post-modern rock yarns some specificity. While Lifter Puller's name-checking of the infamous Nankin restaurant is tough to trump, The Hold Steady's ode to girls who hang at the Southtown shopping center is Finn's most perfectly executed hometown anthem, stirring up a Skynyrd-style sing-along wherever it's played.
MOST TOKEN: Janet Jackson, "Escapade"
The lyrical substance of this chart-clobbering jam from Janet's super-huge Rhythm Nation 1814 album doesn't have much to do with the Twin Cities, per se. It was recorded here and co-written by the famed local production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, but when you break it down, the song is essentially a bubbly R&B update of Loverboy's "Working For The Weekend." Still, Janet's loving shout-out to Minneapolis—just past the three-minute mark—is enough to make it feel like a priceless piece of Perpich-era music history.
MOST AMBIGUOUS: Bob Dylan, "Positively 4th Street"
It's a tale of two streets. Although there's surely some autobiography in Dylan's song about betrayal by a former friend, it's not always easy to parse the exact meaning of his lyrics. There's a prominent Fourth Street in New York's Greenwich Village, where Bob made his name in the early '60s, but Dylanologists will also remind you that before he headed out for New York, he had a brief stay in Dinkytown, the central street of which is, of course, Fourth. Since New York has plenty of anthems already, we're claiming this one. You got a problem with that?
MOST POETIC: Tom Waits, "9th & Hennepin"
Currently the site of civilized happy-hour haunts like Solera and Rock Bottom Brewery, this intersection in downtown Minneapolis doesn't inspire much in the way of lyrical portraiture. As observed by Tom Waits in his spoken-word gem from 1985's Rain Dogs, however, it was a gloriously seedy epicenter of urban intrigue where "all the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes / and the moon's teeth marks are on the sky."
MOST WEATHER-PROOF: The Replacements, "Skyway"
The climate-controlled passageways connecting the buildings of downtown Minneapolis are mainly known as a reliable defense against frostbite. To Replacements leader Paul Westerberg, the skyway also provides a classic metaphor for would-be lovers whose paths never quite manage to cross.
MOST DEPRESSING: Lucinda Williams, "Minneapolis"
As if Minnesota winters weren't grim enough already, Williams chose a Minneapolis hotel room as the setting for one of the most devastating breakup ballads in the alt-country universe. "Open up this wound again / let my blood flow red and thin ... into the melting snow of Minneapolis." Thanks, Lucinda. We'll pop another Demerol as soon as we're done shoveling.
MOST LOYAL: Atmosphere, "Say Shhh"
Hometown pride is a hip-hop staple, so it's no surprise that Minneapolis' most influential rapper is also the city's most earnest musical ambassador. Notice how Slug uses this tune—originally a hidden track on 2003's Seven's Travels—to reconcile his own mixed feelings about life in Minnesota, acknowledging the lackluster nightlife but ultimately touting the value of potable tap water and ample street parking.
MOST DISLOYAL: Lipps, Inc., "Funkytown"
Local songwriter-producer Steve Greenberg was the pop maestro behind this triumphant disco mega-hit. While revisionists would later use its title as a nickname for Minneapolis—especially during the early-'80s heyday of the local funk scene—the song is actually a restless plea to get the funk out of here. Ironically or not, the tune's phenomenal success afforded Greenberg the freedom to continue living in the Twin Cities while cashing fat checks from all over the planet.
MOST TRAUMATIZED: Marcy Playground, the band itself
Frontman John Wozniak attended the Marcy Open School in Minneapolis. Not content to dedicate a song or even an album to his childhood stomping ground, he named the whole goddamn band after it. The future author of '90s alt-rock hit "Sex And Candy" was a shy kid who used to be fearful of this local schoolyard and the bullies who lurked there, later explaining the name by saying, "The strange way in which I see the world today can be directly traced back to the time when, as a little boy, I sat paralyzed by the unfortunate realities of life as I looked out of a school window and down onto the Marcy Playground." These days it's fair to wonder which is more nightmarish: a grade-school beatdown or a crowd of drunken clubgoers yelling "Sex And Candy" at you for 45 minutes?
MOST RANDOM: That Dog, "Minneapolis"
There wasn't much local or particularly memorable about That Dog, a band of L.A. scenesters with a solid industry pedigree. (Singer Anna Waronker's dad is legendary producer Lenny Waronker; bandmates Petra and Rachel Haden are daughters of renowned jazz bassist Charlie Haden.) The group's third and final LP, 1997's Retreat From The Sun, includes this throwaway pop tune about a cute boy who may or may not be a member of the band Low: "He came running after me / he saw me at the Entry."
