The A.V. Club - Daily

City Life: News Net: Barry Manilow gives Stillwater students instruments, forces them to play nothing but “Copacabana”

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:45:00 -0500

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the week. Here are some things to think about as the weekend begins. • Taking the clump-of-pubic-hair-on-top-of-a-slice-of-pizza stunt from She’s All That to a frightening new extreme, a student at Como Park Senior High School was suspended after allegedly serving a fellow student a cupcake filled with his own semen. Once punished, the student took to Twitter to express his desire to torch his principal ...

Music: Local Newswire: Summer Of Ska coming to North America

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Get out your suspenders, Fishbone T-shirt, and Dr. Martens: On July 11, the Summer Of Ska tour is coming to First Avenue. The skanksters of Reel Big Fish—on the heels of their eighth full-length album, Candy Coated Fury—and L.A. band Goldfinger will be co-headlining the tour from mid-June until Goldfinger drops off July 2. The Maxies will join in on the party after July 2, and Big D And The Kids Table and Suburban Legends will be supporting throughout. The Summer Of Ska will begin in Canada and work its way across the U.S. Then, beginning ...

Sports: Jock Itch: New technology hopes to make football safe from head trauma, but can it?

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

In the wake of former NFL star Junior Seau’s suicide, football is once again making headlines for its dangers rather than its highlights. There’s a lot of talk about concussions and the prevention thereof, with helmet manufacturers searching for the next big advancement in technology. But will improved equipment really make the sport of football—a game inextricably linked to monsters colliding with each other—safe to play? Warren Moon seems to think so. The former Vikings quarterback is now repping the Xenith helmet, designed by former Harvard QB Vin Ferrara, which “might reduce head trauma and help ...

Features: Local Newswire: Rusty Quarters Arcade needs $3,000 (or 12,000 quarters) to stay in business

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:00:00 -0500

Saturday morning cartoons and breakfast cereal commercials might be enough to sell an ironic vintage-style T-shirt at Urban Outfitters every once in a while, but it’s an entirely different ball game to bank an entire business on childhood nostalgia. Rusty Quarters Arcade is no doubt hoping that memories of blistered thumbs and wasted allowances will be enough to willingly bring people back to the days of weekends spent crowded around buzzing Mortal Kombat machines. But, as a recent message posted on the arcade’s Facebook page implies, you can’t count on nostalgia to pay the bills. According to ...

Music: Just Announced: Stone Arch Bridge Festival announces additions to lineup

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Despite the death of founder Ira Heilicher last summer, the Stone Arch Festival Of The Arts is soldiering on as the newly born Stone Arch Bridge Festival. Matt Mithun, owner of the Somerset Amphitheater, is heading the event, which will be held on St. Anthony Main on Father’s Day weekend, June 15-17. The riverfront festival’s music lineup has come together over the last month or so, and today organizers unveiled several new “after-hours” acts in Water Tower Park. Friday and Saturday’s headliners have yet to be unveiled. Check out the full schedule below (h/t Local Current ...

Music: Local Newswire: Prince’s Purple Rain added to the Library Of Congress’ National Recording Registry

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:30:00 -0500

Now in its 10th year, the National Recording Registry of the Library Of Congress unveiled the 25 sound recordings that make up the class of 2011. (They’re a little behind—it is Congress, after all.) And, in no shock to anyone, Minnesota’s own purple native son is joining an esteemed class of musicians that already includes The Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Marvin Gaye. In case you were wondering, Minnesota’s other golden boy Bob Dylan made the cut during the registry’s first year with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Not surprisingly, it’s the soundtrack to Prince’s ...

Music: Just Announced: Justin Bieber announces big boy tour

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:40:00 -0500

Get ready to squeal, massive segment of The A.V. Club readers who are also members of Bieber Nation—the big man is going on tour. Now that he’s all growed up, legal, and has tried his hand at easy manly hobbies like boxing, the Biebs is set to release his first “adult” album. Believe is set to drop manliness on everyone June 19, and Bieber is set to go on a mind-bendingly masculine, Ron Swanson-like, months-long marathon tour behind it that includes a stop at Target Center in Minneapolis on October 20. Tickets go on sale June 1 ...

Music: Roll Call: Los Straitjackets’ headgear, Lil Wayne’s warnings, and four other wrestling tributes from musicians

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Ever since word got out that pro wrestling is not, in fact, legitimate competition, the performance art has been pushed further and further into the gray outskirts of American pop culture. Considering that wrestling’s not an actual sport, ESPN and Sports Illustrated only give the performance art an occasional shout-out. However, the mainstream entertainment industry and press shun it, too, never granting a good wrestling match or event the accolades or attention a good record or movie might receive. Vocally appreciating the theatrical violence of “fake fighting” has become a soft taboo—something that’s not explicitly despised as ...

Music: Just Announced: Somerset’s Summer Set lineup announced, includes Nas and Black Star

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:10:00 -0500

Not to take anything away from the achievements of Pretty Lights, Big Gigantic, or Umphrey’s McGee, but it seems like whoever was in charge of designing the poster for this August’s Summer Set Music & Camping Festival may have buried the lead a bit. Fans will no doubt flock to Somerset to hear the electronic/hip-hop fusion of Pretty Lights and the prog-rock jam band stylings of Umphrey’s McGee, but the big story of the festival is unquestionably the currently scheduled appearance of hip-hop titan Nas and the reunion between Mos Def and Talib Kweli, who will be ...

Music: Just Announced: Sugar catalog to receive the reissued, remastered, and expanded treatment

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:00:00 -0500

Though the umlaut-laden and hard-to-pronounce words “Hüsker Dü” are the first to come to mind whenever Bob Mould surfaces in polite conversation, Mould’s work with his post-Hüsker group Sugar is equally iconic. Starting with 1992’s unstoppable Copper Blue and culminating with 1994’s File Under: Easy Listening, Mould—along with Dave Barbe and Malcolm Travis—created music that both defined and transcended the ’90s alt-rock landscape. And now, because that very same ’90s alt-rock landscape is 20 years old, the Sugar catalog is getting the standard reissued, remastered, and expanded treatment. On July 24, Merge Records ...

City Life: News Net: Portland strikes back: The never-ending saga of Best Biking titles continues

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:20:00 -0500

Since sifting through dull newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful news can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the significant reports that were overlooked throughout the weekend. Here are some things to think about as the workweek begins. • Carrie Underwood once sang about taking a Louisville slugger to the headlights of her cheating boyfriend’s car, but after a woman wrote on her ex-husband’s GMC Yukon, we can’t help but wonder if Underwood’s song would have been better had she gone with a more direct lyric along ...

Sports: High Five: Our Vikings Stadium wish list

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

After years of debate and threats of moving the team, the Vikings will finally have a new stadium. They better not mess it up. We thought we'd run down a few of the items on our Vikings stadium wish list. A tribute to the Hefty Bag If the spate of high-tech stadiums (see: Dallas, the new Meadowlands) is any indication, this new stadium will feature some high-end sound and video options. But one thing that should forever stand is the (in)famous Hefty Bag wall. A white trash cousin of Fenway’s Green Monster, the Hefty Bag was only ...

Music: Just Announced: Local rockers Me And My Arrow releasing biweekly singles all summer long, just like Kanye

Fri, 18 May 2012 10:15:00 -0500

Joining an esteemed class of musicians including Kanye West, The-Dream, and, um, Swizz Beatz, the local rockers of Me And My Arrow are the latest in the music business to begin releasing scheduled buzz singles one at a time onto the Internet. However, unlike most, Me And My Arrow’s tracks aren’t leading up to an album any time soon. Forgoing the traditional full-length buildup, the band is instead letting the songs stand completely on their own merits. Since Me And My Arrow seem to be performing somewhere within the city every other day, the group’s planned biweekly ...

Music: Faking Your Way Through: “HUNGGH!,” “WOOP!,” and “BAWSE!”: A brief history of Rick Ross noises

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

More so than any other genre, the majority of hip-hop’s importance is placed on its lyrics, since it is first and foremost a music of language. Where rock concerts put weight on musical improvisation or solos, rap does the opposite, letting MCs display their skills by freestyling new rhymes off the top of their heads. It’s not that the musical backdrop of hip-hop isn’t important—it’s that more often than not, backdrop is the keyword. That also doesn’t mean that every listener to the genre has to be a linguist or a poetry critic to ...

City Life: Just Announced: Bastille Day and Red Stag block parties announce lineups

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:20:00 -0500

Pizza Luce’s block party isn’t happening this year, which means you’ll only have several hundred other blacktop weekend gatherings to choose from this summer. We recommend the fests sister restaurants Barbette and the Red Stag Supperclub throw every year, and not just because we’re French history nerds and fans of puppet shows. Both events unveiled their lineups for the 2012 weekends today, and while each is unique and diverse in its own way, we can pretty much guarantee you can purchase funnel cakes at either of them. First up is Barbette’s Bastille Day Block Party ...

Music: Blog: 11 David Lee Roths: Why loving Diamond Dave in Van Halen is not a crime

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

So often in the ’80s, we didn’t know what we had until it was long gone. Van Halen’s classic lineup held court in American rock arenas beginning in 1978 and reached artistic peak with 1984, an album that blew up the decade’s artificial and indulgent charms to totemic scale. In “Jump,” it expressed a footloose, life-loving exuberance with more bleached-coiffure swagger than most rockers muster in an entire career. Once at the top of the charts, frontman David Lee Roth dabbled in a cabaret-ready solo act, and the circus tent of rock collapsed under the weight of ...

Music: Local Newswire: The Brick limps toward redemption

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:05:00 -0500

Slash’s show with Myles Kennedy Monday night was met with mediocre reviews, but the folks at The Brick are sure to be glad that their venue wasn’t part of the problem. The much-maligned club has moved its bigger shows across town to the Myth, and Slash was the Brick’s first big seller since the now-infamous Jane’s Addiction show. How did the Brick handle the packed crowd? Pretty well, it turns out. City Pages’ Pat O’Brien said the show was “far from the train wreck I sort of expected,” noting the Brick’s recently raised ...

Music: High Five: 5 Xiu Xiu songs most likely to scare off casual fans

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Over the course of a 10-year career, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart has done his best to keep casual listeners out of his sphere, requiring every new Xiu Xiu listener to either get on board with the band’s divisive lyrics and abrasive noise rock, or to get lost. That said, Xiu Xiu is in an unthinkable position from when the band started. The band’s new album, Always, is more accessible and more publicized than any previous Xiu Xiu release and the band is on a lengthy North American jaunt behind the album. Which means that Xiu Xiu is ...

Music: Newswire: Gaslight Anthem announces summer tour and album details

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:55:00 -0500

On July 24, New Jersey punk-rock foursome The Gaslight Anthem will release its fourth LP, Handwritten, its first on Mercury Records. The first single, “45,” is a hunk of classic-rock gold, which you can listen to here. After spending much of June in Europe, the band will hit the North American market, kicking things off in its home state and stopping in Minneapolis July 11 at the Fine Line. Find the full track listing for the new album as well as tour dates below. Track list for Handwritten: 1. 45 2. Handwritten 3. Here Comes My Man 4. Mulholland Drive ...

Music: Interview: Grouplove’s Christian Zucconi

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

The Grouplove bio reads like fiction, or a publicist drunk on YA romance novels. The story goes like this: A dashing, down-on-his-luck New York crooner (Christian Zucconi) was scraping by, tending bar at night and driving a truck during the day. In between these soul-crushing doldrums, he was playing open mics and yearning for an escape. Into his world walked the improbably beautiful Hannah Hooper, a starving artist with wanderlust and a song in her heart bursting to get out. It was love at first sight, and after a whirlwind, 48-hour courtship, the young couple jet off to a mysterious ...