W♥M

Lucy Dacus at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (12 Oct 2019)

Lucy Dacus at Cedar Cultural Center Lucy Dacus Setlist Trust Addictions The Shell Direct Address La vie en rose (Édith Piaf cover) Yours & Mine My Mother & I Timefighter I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore Night Shift Thumbs -- Encore -- Historians In The Air Tonight (Phil Collins cover) Read More Lucy Dacus “The irony is not lost on us” singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus would say about the eclectically-named three band lineup spotlighting her first headlining area appearance, a near-familial musical … Liza Anne + Liza Anne Palace Theatre Sat 02/02/2019 (6:30pm/$36/Sold Out) Multiple Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves has sold … Sun June Sun June to open. Tour dates: 10/09/2019 Headliners Music Hall Louisville, KY 10/10/2019 Park West Chicago, IL 10/11/2019 Majestic Theatre Madison, WI …

Lucy Dacus sold out the Cedar Cultural Center show, in Minneapolis, on Saturday, October 12th. Like Dacus’ last appearance at the Surly Brewing Festival in 2018, it’s an all-girls lineup.

First up was Austin’s Sun June with a brief 30-min set. The group (Laura, Michael, Justin, Sarah, Stephen) was selected as part of the official SXSW 2019 Showcase, after wowing them at the Audiotree and KVRX Library Sessions.

The band played some tracks from their debut record, Years, including their closing number, “Young”.

Next was Liza Anne (with full band of Josh on bass, Cody on drums, and Robbie on guitars), who could not get over at how cold it was in Minneapolis (it was randomly snowing throughout the day). The Nashville-based band only packed T-Shirts and jeans, so they were not prepared for the change in temperature.

They started their set with “Paranoia”, followed by “Small Talks”. Speaking of talks, Anne mentioned that the “I’m Tired, You’re Lonely” song is about how you shouldn’t talk when you’re tired or drunk (or both).

Richmond-based singer Lucy Dacus ended the all-women show, playing plenty of beloved songs. Fans loved it… but we already this was the case when we saw her headlined the sold-out 7th Street Entry in April 2018: “Still in her early twenties, Lucy Dacus is already showing a musical maturity, years beyond her actual age. The Richmond, VA singer-songwriter is touring in support of her second full-length, Historian (Matador Records), an album of leaps-and-bounds growth for her, that is the exact opposite of any sophomore slump and she seemed genuinely happy to be headlining here, after previously opening for Car Seat Headrest and Hamilton Leithauser. Dacus is so confident in the new album (considering it her definitive musical statement), the first seven songs played were all from the new record, beginning with single, ‘Addictions’. Her seemingly calm voice belies a building sound and lyrics that dive deep into wells of adversity, though provide a glimmer of hope in any darkness.”

After a successful 2018 tour, and meeting with other like-minded women singers, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, they decided to form Boygenius (stylized as boygenius). While the supergroup is currently in hiatus, expect the three to get together when they record a debut LP. She didn’t play any boygenius songs, but with two critically acclaimed albums, No Burden and Historian, she really didn’t need to. Instead, she played a couple of cover songs, an Édith Piaf song, “La vie en rose” and Phil Collins’ signature song, “In The Air Tonight”. Both these covers were recorded and released as singles from Lucy Dacus in 2019. Based on other covers she’s released (like Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”), you might think there’ll be a cover-lover collection coming out soon.

Lucy Dacus’ album Historian is out now on Matador Records.

Tour dates:

10/18/2019 The Olympic Boise, ID
10/22/2019 Neumos Seattle, WA
10/23/2019 Aladdin Theater Portland, OR
10/25/2019 August Hall San Francisco, CA
10/26/2019 Teragram Ballroom Los Angeles, CA
10/28/2019 Belly Up Solana Beach, CA
10/29/2019 The Crescent Ballroom Phoenix, AZ
11/01/2019 Lucy Dacus Gothic Theatre Englewood, CO
11/17/2019 Corona Capital Festival
11/30/2019 Jefferson Theater Charlottesville, VA
12/04/2019 Royale Nightclub Boston Boston, MA

Sun June

Sun June

Sun June

Liza Anne

Liza Anne

Liza Anne

Liza

Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (12 Oct 2019)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Greg Laswell at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (26 Sep 2019)

Greg Laswell at the Cedar Setlist Dodged a Bullet Farewell Your Ghost (Kristin Hersh cover) A Place Called Home (PJ Harvey cover) Royal Empress (studio version) Royal Empress (live version) Super Moon Off I Go Sweet Dream And Then You Lucky Man (The Verve cover) Comes and Goes (In Waves) Embrace Me I Don't Believe It's Through Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Robert Hazard cover) -- Encore -- What a Day Amazing Grace Read More Greg Laswell I wasn't there to cover Greg Laswell, but I'll quickly mention that he does a sad and depressing version of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", possibly closer to the original Robert Hazard song ...

Greg Laswell, now with a full band, played the Cedar Cultural Center, in Minneapolis, on Thursday, September 26th.

There was no opening band, so the seated show started early (and ended early), due to the all-ages status of the Cedar’s show policy.

I first saw Laswell, playing solo with Harper Blynn helping with his live set, in November 2010 at the Turf Club. The one memory I had of the performance was that Laswell had covered “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, but making it really upsettingly sad. That’s because the original Robert Hazard version was from a boy’s perspective of how girls just want to have fun. Of course, Cyndi Lauper’s cover is what people think of when they think of that song.

His cover songs, from his original Covers album, proved to be a hit, so the Los Angeles singer decided to revisit the record and record an all-new Covers II album. This time, he would tackle Catherine Wheel, PJ Harvey, Psychedelic Furs, Placebo, etc… plus duets with Molly Jenson on Röyksopp, Depeche Mode , Peter Gabriel, and The Verve covers. You can tell that his influences are in UK bands, based on the choice of bands and artists he decided to cover.

If you were expecting an all-covers set, you may be in for a disappointment, as given the 15 plus years of writing songs, Laswell played quite a few songs from his music catalog. And even if you heard the cover songs, if you know how Laswell approaches his cover songs, they sound completely different than the original songs.

For example, his double-cover whammy of Kristin Hersh’s “Your Ghost” and PJ Harvey’s “A Place Called Home”, sounded very slow and, if you didn’t know they were covers, you would they were just standard Laswell songs.

“Royal Empress” was actually played twice in the set. The first version is closer to the studio version, while the second song is with a full live band. Greg Laswell explained that this only happened a few shows ago when they had sound difficulties at a venue… so he decided to just start playing the song solo (while they worked out the kinks). Once the sound problems were fixed, they started the song again with the rest of the band. They liked how that worked out, that they decided to permanently add that to their set.

Perhaps the most personal song on the playlist was “Super Moon”, which is about Laswell’s father who had passed away to Alzheimer's Disease. As he was explaining how his father was like a “super moon” (how you just had to be there), he choked up with tears coming out. He paused and recomposed and joked that he doesn’t cry when he sings the song.

Remaining tour dates:

09/19/2019 State Room Salt Lake City, UT
09/26/2019 Cedar Cultural Center Minneapolis, MN
09/28/2019 The Ark Ann Arbor, MI
09/30/2019 Rams Head On Stage Annapolis, MD
10/03/2019 City Winery Boston Boston, MA
10/04/2019 Infinity Hall Norfolk Norfolk, CT
10/06/2019 City Winery Washington, DC

Greg Laswell at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (26 Sep 2019)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Harry & the Potters at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (03 July 2019)

Harry & the Potters at Cedar Harry & the Potters Setlist I Am a Wizard Wizard Chess The Economics of the Wizarding World Don’t Make Sense Hermoine Screws Up The Polyjuice Potion Save Ginny Weasley My Teacher Is a Werewolf S.P.E.W. You're Not the Wizard Phoenix Song Song For The Death Eaters On the Importance of Media Literacy Under Authoritarian Rule Touch the Brains Where's Ron? Gone Campin' Accio Fish No Pureblood Supremacy Get Stuck in Hagrid's Beard The Sword, the Cup, and the Dragon Phoenix Song (Reprise) Hermione's Cool Bag Save Ginny Weasley From Dean Thomas Phoenix Tears These Days Are Dark -- Encore -- Luna Lovegood based on The Kingsmen “Louie Louie” Read More Harry and the Potters We’ve been kind of fascinated with these guys, Harry and the Potters, ever since we wrote about them as the leading pioneer of “Wizard Rock” (yes, that is a thing) in 2007. The brothers (Paul and Joe DeGeorge) just released their new album Lumos …

Massachusetts’ Harry and the Potters headlined the Cedar Cultural Center, in Minneapolis, on July 3, 2019.

Opening up the show was local Larry Wish, a musician described as “bedroom pro music”. The set wasn’t a typical concert… instead it was more like a pantomime show.

Everything about Larry Wish, from his makeup, his costume, his graceful movements, his all-instrumental music, they were all part of a whole performance or dance movement.

The original Wizard Rockers, Harry and the Potters (brothers Joe and Paul DeGeorge) took the stage to adorning teenagers (ages anywhere from 6 to 19) and their parents. Right from the start, the group had the audience eating out of their hands. Even if you didn’t know their songs, the brothers made it easy (and fun) enough to get everyone involved with their show. For example, they often pass the mic around and have the fans in front say what they’re bringing in “Hermione's Cool Bag” or just saying spew in the song “S.P.E.W.” (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare).

The Potters were joined by drummer Jacob Nathan (named “Bill Weasley”) and soundboard/stage props Wizard. Together, they put on a really fun show for all ages.

For the encore, Harry and the Potters came back and created a Conga line, playing “Luna Lovegood” (sung to the tune of The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie”). It was surprisingly satisfying, watching the audience join in to create a long line.

Remaining tour dates:

07/5 - Steamboat Springs, CO - Strings Music Festival
07/6 - Boulder, CO - Band Shell in Central Park
07/7 - Denver, CO - Mercury Cafe
07/8 - Provo, UT - Provo Library at Academy Square
07/9 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court
07/12 - Missoula, MT - Missoula Public Library
07/13 - Calgary, AB - The Rec Room
07/14 - Edmonton, AB - The Rec Room
07/16 - Vancouver, BC - Vancouver Public Library
07/17 - Anacortes, WA - Causland Park
07/18 - Olympia, WA - Olympia Timberland Library
07/19 - Seattle, WA - Seattle Public Library
07/20 - Portland, OR - St. Johns Library
07/20 - Portland, OR - Gresham Library
07/21 - Eugene, OR - Downtown Eugene Public Library
07/23 - Santa Clara, CA - Northside Branch Library
07/24 - San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
07/25 - Oakland, CA - Oakland Public Library Main Branch
07/26 - San Luis Obispo - San Luis Obispo Library
07/27 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Public Library
07/28 - La Jolla, CA - The Ché Café
07/29 - Bakersfield, CA - Beale Memorial Library
07/30 - Los Angeles, CA - Troubadour
07/31 - Huntington Beach, CA - Huntington Beach Public Library
08/1 - Las Vegas, NV - Clark County Library
08/2 - Phoenix, AZ - Burton Barr Central Library
08/3 - Tucson, AZ - Flowing Wells Branch Library
08/4 - El Paso, TX - El Paso Public Library
08/5 - San Antonio, TX - The Magik Theater
08/6 - Houston, TX - Houston Public Library
08/7 - New Orleans, LA - New Orleans Public Library
08/8 - Ridgeland, MS - Ridgeland Public Library
08/9 - Dallas, TX - LeakyCon
08/12 - Austin, TX - Mohawk
08/14 - Shawnee, KS - Monticello Library
08/15 - Tulsa, OK - Tulsa City County Library
08/16 - Springfield, MO - The Library Center
08/17 - Nashville, TN - Basement East
08/18 - Greensboro, NC - Greensboro Public Library
08/19 - Raleigh, NC - Cameron Village Regional
08/20 - Washington, DC - Woodridge Library
08/21 - Lewes, DE - Lewes Public Library
08/22 - Brooklyn, NY - Knitting Factory
08/23 - New Bedford, MA - Downtown
08/24 - Boston, MA - Boston Public Library

Larry Wish

Larry Wish

Larry Wish

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters

Harry & the Potters at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (03 July 2019)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

San Cisco and Carla Geneve at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (14 June 2019)

San Cisco at Cedar Cultural Center San Cisco Setlist The Distance Beach SloMo About You Wash It All Away That Boy Magic Hey, Did I Do You Wrong? When I Dream Awkward Snow Skin (live debut) Did You Get What You Came For? Run Flaws (New song) Fred Astaire Too Much Time Together Carla Geneve Setlist 2001 New Song (Take Me Places) Things Change Yesterday's Clothes Greg's Discount Chemist Listening New Song (Woman in the Industry) New Song (Don’t Want To Be A Lover) New Song (Maybe I Dreamt About You) I Hate You (For Making Me Not Want To Leave The City) W♥ San Cisco Timeline 11 Apr 2011: Review of Golden Revolver (Australia Version) 04 Aug 2011: Review of Golden Revolver (US Version) 18 Feb 2012: San Cisco at Spectrum, Sydney 12 May 2012: San Cisco at Groovin' the Moo 09 Oct 2012: Awkward Single Review 17 Oct 2012: Interview with Jordi Davieson 21 Oct 2012: San Cisco at Turf Club 23 Oct 2012: San Cisco at The Echo 31 Jan 2013: San Cisco Album Review 09 Feb 2013: San Cisco at the Triple Rock 13 Feb 2013: San Cisco at Fillmore 30 Mar 2013: San Cisco at Triple Rock 31 Jul 2013: San Cisco at Triple Rock 06 Aug 2013: San Cisco at The Gothic Theatre 22 Jun 2015: San Cisco at Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis 19 Aug 2017: San Cisco cancels 7th Street Entry 14 Jun 2019: San Cisco at Cedar Cultural Center Tour Dates 06/16/2019 Mod Club Toronto, ON 06/18/2019 Black Cat Washington, DC 06/19/2019 Johnny Brenda's Philadelphia, PA 06/20/2019 Great Scott Allston, MA Read More San Cisco Our favorite modern Australian band San Cisco will be making their way back to Minneapolis' Triple Rock Social Club next Monday, June 22nd. The band is touring in support of their sophomore album Gracetown . … Carla Geneve Show up early to check out Western Australian artist Carla Geneve, touring in support of her debut self-titled EP that came out yesterday (June 7th) via Dot Dash / Remote Control Records. Geneve came on the music scene with her debut single …

Australian band San Cisco (Jordi Davieson, Scarlett Stevens, Josh Biondillo, and Jennifer Aslett), headlined the Cedar Cultural Center on Friday, June 14th.

Opening the show was Perth-based Carla Geneve, on her very first American tour (and obviously her first time in Minneapolis). I would describe her music as singer/songwriter, especially with just her solo on guitar and lyrical song. You can see a bit of Courtney Love (as referenced in one of her songs) and Courtney Barnett (for the thoughtful lyrics).

Geneve is still quite new to the music scene, her bio lists her debuting in the West Australian scene in 2017 (but it seems like she’s been playing local music since as early as 2010). Her debut single “Greg’s Discount Chemist”, got strong support from Australia national radio Triple J.

With new musicians, transcribing their setlist is next to impossible because they haven’t released too many songs. In fact, officially, Geneve’s only got one six-track self-titled EP that dropped on June 7th via Dot Dash / Remote Control Records. Most of the songs I’ve listed on her setlist don’t have official song titles, and 100% will be different song titles when she does release them in an album.

Still, you can tell that she’s got a lot of songs in her, and as one of “West Australian’s Six Brightest Young Stars of 2019”, you can bet we’ll be hearing more from her.

There were a couple of stand-out tracks from her set, first is her debut single, “Greg’s Discount Chemist”, which is a great descriptive song. Unfortunately, in America, no one calls it “the chemist” (it’s commonly known as Pharmacy or Drug Store), so it might not really take off in America.

The other song, is about women in the music industry. The song might actually be biographical, describing her road to creating a band and being the “only pair of tits” in an all-male music festival. I think that song might do really well with fans of strong women songs.

As you know, we’ve been following Fremantle’s San Cisco since the review of their debut single, “Golden Revolver” in April 2011 (the band’s average age was about 18 at the time). We’ve watched their rise with superstardom with “Awkward” (hitting #7 in Triple J's Hottest 100 Countdown) in Oct 2012. By this time, San Cisco toured the USA market for the first time, we got a chance to chat with Jordi Davieson at CMJ 2012.

Around this time, Minneapolis’ local radio, The Current randomly decided to test out and played “Awkward”, not thinking much of it. That one play generated so much interested from listeners that the Current was forced to play that song again (thanks to so many phone calls asking for them to play that song again). Thanks to the Current, there’s always been really, really strong support for the youth band since their debut in the Twin Cities at Turf Club, St Paul (21 Oct 2012).

Since then, we’ve never missed the band (having seen and review them a total of eight times). Unfortunately, the band had to cancel their 7th Street Entry in August 2017 and that meant that the last official time the band’s been in Minneapolis was in Jun 2015 at the now-defunct Triple Rock Social Club (they’ve played there three times!)

It’s been four long years, and by now, the band’s already well into The Water (released in 2017) and already have a forthcoming (yet to be titled) new 2019 album “in the can”. We are also presented with a new bassist called Jennifer Aslett, who replaced Nick Gardner since 2018.

Now that we’re all caught up with San Cisco, I have to say that it’s amazing that San Cisco’s audience seem to be YOUNGER than previously seen at their shows! This is partly thanks to The Cedar’s all-ages policy (one of the few local venues that is always all-ages), so the average age of the audience is under 20 years old. This is not a bad thing at all.

Although the band have released three albums, as you can see from the setlist, they mostly concentrated on the later two albums. Only two songs from their self-titled 2012 album were played: the mega-hit song “Awkward” and “Fred Astaire”. It would’ve been nice to hear “Golden Revolver”, but I’m sure the band is sick to death of playing their first single.

During “introducing the band” (before “Wash It All Away”), Jordi thanked The Current for supporting them in the early days of the band. He also reminisces about The Triple Rock Social Club, mentioning that it was the only venue that had feedback monitors directly faced toward his feet, so that his feet would feel every thunderous bass line. It’s like he missed the venue, but not its sound system.

There were a couple of new songs introduced, the first is the live debut of “Skin”. According to Jordi, the band’s never played it before and is going to be the lead single from their forthcoming 2019 album. The other song is called “Flaws” (I misheard Jordi saying “Floors” with his thick Australian accent), which was played solo as the first “encore” song.

Carla Geneve

Carla Geneve

Carla Geneve

San Cisco

San Cisco

San Cisco

San Cisco

San Cisco at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (14 June 2019)

P.S., Sorry about all this inside baseball notes, but the last time we covered a show at the Cedar Cultural Center was in 30 April 2018 (over one year). There are a few reasons. One, First Avenue, which books most of the shows we cover, purchased the Turf Club (in 2013), the Fine Line Music Café (in 2018), and added the Palace Theatre (in 2016). Between First Avenue’s six different venues (First Avenue, 7th Street Entry, The Record Room, Fine Line, Turf Club, and Palace Theatre) and Live Nation’s two venues (The Armory and Varsity Theater), there are very few songs left for the Cedar. To be fair, the Cedar does book their own shows, but their specialty is World Music, which we generally don’t cover. Hopefully, this is not our last Cedar coverage. We’d like to cover more Cedar shows, as we’ve mentioned many times before, this is a really good venue for listening to music.

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Minneapolis: September 17 to September 19, 2018

Here are some shows taking place in the Minneapolis/St Paul area from September 17 to September 19, 2018.

Read more: Minneapolis Music Guide.

Johnny Marr 2018 Tour Read More Johnny Marr Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr (one of the subject in a recent W♥M Podcast) recently performed "Easy Money" from his latest Playland (Warner Music Group) on The Tonight Show Starring … Belle Game Tue 10/10/2017, 7pm, 18+, $14 Pickwick + The Elwins and Belle Game 7th Street Entry Seattle’s Pickwick have a new LP called LoveJoys out now via Small Press Records. …

JOHNNY MARR
+ Belle Game
Varsity Theater
Mon 09/17/2018 (7pm/$34)
varsitytheater.com

Godlike guitar genius Johnny Marr is headlining the Varsity Theater on Monday, September 17th, in support of his new album Call The Comet.

If you follow British music at all, you know that Marr is the guitarist from The Smiths. He co-wrote all their hits, and while Morrissey may take all the spotlight, you know he couldn’t have done it without the music of Marr.

The first time we saw Marr solo in May 2003, he didn’t want to play any Smiths songs. It was understandable, he felt he needed to stand on his own. The same can be said for Morrissey, who didn’t perform Smiths songs for a long time.

Since 2014, Marr started playing Smiths songs again on his set, so if you love The Smiths, you should be there for Johnny Marr on September 17th.

Belle Game to open. Their latest album Fear/Nothing is out now on Arts & Crafts. The band was last seen in town in October 2017.

Tour dates:

09/15 | Nashville, TN @ Cannery Ballroom
09/16 | Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
09/17 | Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
09/20 | Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theater
09/21 | Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
09/22 | Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
09/24 | Santa Cruz, CA @The Catalyst
09/25 | Berkeley, CA @ UC Theater
09/26 | San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
09/28 | Sonoma, CA @ Old Redwood Barn
09/30 | Tempe, AZ @ The Marquee
10/2 | Mexico City, Mexico @ Plaza Condesa
10/4 | Los Angeles, CA @ The Theater
10/8 | San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
10/9 | Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater
10/10 | Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room
10/11 | Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
10/13 | Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
10/15 | New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
10/16 | Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw
10/17 | Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
10/19 | Toronto, ON @ The Phoenix
10/20 | Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
10/21 | Boston, MA @ The Paradise
10/22 | Philadelphia, PA @ TLA

Global Roots Festival 2018 (09/17) Mattson 2/Astronauts, Etc. at Turf Club Clutch 2018 Tour Global Roots Festival 2018 (09/18) Japanese Breakfast 2018 Tour Maroon 5 2018 Tour Global Roots Festival 2018 (09/19) San Gabriel September Series Pallbearer ∕ Tribulation 2018 Tour Read More Clutch Maryland rock band Clutch just celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary over the summer and brought their Psychic Warfare Tour to a raucous First Avenue in Minneapolis. … Japanese Breakfast Opening will be singer Michelle Zauner, of Philadelphia indie punk band Little Big League, under the solo moniker of Japanese Breakfast. The music showcases Zauner's dark ...

Other shows in the area:

GLOBAL ROOTS FESTIVAL
feat. Sona Jobarteh, Aynur
Cedar Cultural Center
Mon 09/17/2018 (5pm/FREE)
thecedar.org

The special day-day Global Roots Festival at the Cedar Cultural Center starts on Monday, September 17, with Gambia’s Sona Jobarteh and Turkey’s Aynur.

The event is FREE and outdoor stage starts at 5pm and indoor shows starts at 7:30pm

THE MATTSON 2/ASTRONAUTS, ETC.
Turf Club
Mon 09/17/2018 (7pm/$13)
thecedar.org

Co-headlining San Diego’s The Mattson 2 and Oakland’s Astronauts, etc. (aka Anthony Ferraro) show is taking place on Monday, September 17th.

Tour dates:

9/13: Square Cat Vinyl - Indianapolis, IN
9/14: Ruby - Madison, WI
9/15: Door County Brewing Co. - Door County, WI
9/17: Turf Club - St Paul, MN
9/19: Lost Lake - Denver, CO
9/20: State Room - Salt Lake City, UT
9/21: Jack London - Portland, OR
9/23: Wise Hall - Vancouver, BC
9/25: Barboza - Seattle, WA

CLUTCH
Myth
Tue 09/18/2018 (6:30pm/$35)
mythlive.com

Maryland’s influential heavy rock band Clutch is headlining Myth, in support of their 12th album Book of Bad Decisions (Weathermaker Music).

Tour dates:

09/16 Chicago IL Riotfest
09/18 St Paul, MN Myth Live
09/19 Kansas City, MO Uptown Theater
09/21 Houston TX House of Blues
09/22 San Antonio TX River City Rock Fest
09/23 Dallas, TX Gas Monkey Live
09/25 Orlando, FL House Of Blues
09/27 Norfolk, VA The NorVa
09/28 Raleigh, NC The Ritz
09/29 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
09/30 Louisville, KY Louder Than Life
10/02 Denver, CO Ogden Theater
10/03 Salt Lake City, UT The Depot
10/05 Boise, ID Knitting Factory
10/06 Spokane, WA Knitting Factory
10/07 Seattle, WA Showbox SODO
10/08 Vancouver, BC Commodore Ballroom
10/09 Portland, OR Roseland Theater
10/11 San Francisco, CA The Regency Ballroom
10/12 Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theater
10/13 San Bernardino, CA Glen Helen Amphitheater
10/14 San Diego, CA North Park/Observatory
10/15 Tempe, AZ The Marquee
10/17 Tulsa, OK Cain’s Ballroom
10/18 Sauget, IL Pop’s Nightclub
10/19 Grand Rapids, MI 20 Monroe Live
10/20 Detroit, MI The Filmore Detroit
10/21 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE
10/23 Toronto, ON Rebel
10/25 Worcester, MA The Palladium
10/26 New York, NY Irving Plaza
10/27 New York, NY Irving Plaza
10/28 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory

GLOBAL ROOTS FESTIVAL
feat. Zhou Family Band, Rio Mira
Cedar Cultural Center
Tue 09/18/2018 (5pm/FREE)
thecedar.org

Ecuador/Colombia’s Rio Mira brings together musicians like Esteban Copete (Colombia), Karla Kanora (Ecuador) and other local folk musicians that the river, Rio Mira, divides. China’s Zhou Family Band will co-headline.

If you like world music, come check out the group at the Cedar Cultural Center on Sep 18, as part of the venue’s 10th Annual Global Roots Festival.

The event is FREE and outdoor stage starts at 5pm and the all-ages show goes until 10:30pm.

Rio Mira’s tour dates:

09/15/2018 Chicago World Music Festival, Chicago , IL
09/16/2018 Chicago World Music Festival, Chicago, IL
09/18/2018 Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN
09/19/2018 Saint Mary's Uni, Winonna, MN
09/20/2018 Saint Mary's Uni, Winonna, MN
09/22/2018 Globalquerque Festival, Albuquerque
09/25/2018 Taos Mesa Brewing, Taos, NM
09/28/2018 Lotus Fest, Bloomington, IN
09/29/2018 Lotus Fest, Bloomington, IN

JAPANESE BREAKFAST
+ Ought
Fine Line Music Café
Tue 09/18/2018 (7:30pm/$15)
finelinemusic.com

Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner) is returning to the Twin Cities, this time headlining the Fine Line Music Café. The venue was recently in the news, as First Avenue made the announcement that they have purchased the small venue. Of course, if you follow local music at all, you know that First Avenue was already booking and working various shows at the Fine Line (including this Japanese Breakfast show).

9/12 - Columbus, OH @ Skully's
9/13 - Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop
9/14 - DeKalb, IL @ The House Cafe
9/16 - Madison, WI @ Majestic Theater
9/17-22 - Lincoln, NE @ Lincoln Calling
9/18 - Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
9/19 - Iowa City, IA @ The Mill
9/23 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux
9/25 - Seattle, WA @ The Neptune Theatre
10/2 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
10/3 - Mesa, AZ @ The Nile
10/5-7 - Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits
10/12-14 - Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits

MAROON 5
+ Julia Michaels
Xcel Energy Center
Tue 09/18/2018 (8pm/$7)
first-avenue.com

Three-time GRAMMY Award-winning multi-platinum band Maroon 5 is headlining the Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday.

Tour dates:

09/14 Chicago, IL United Center
09/16 Milwaukee, WI Wisconsin Entertainment
09/18 St Paul, MN Xcel Energy Center
09/20 Indianapolis, IN Bankers Life Fieldhouse
09/22 Louisville, KY KFC Yum! Center
09/23 Nashville, NT Bridgestone Arena
09/25 Columbus, OH Nationwide Arena
09/27 Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
09/29 Pittsburgh, PA PPG Paints Arena
09/30 Detroit, MI Little Caesars Arena
10/02 Washington, DC Capital One Arena
10/04 Charlotte, NC Spectrum Center
10/06 Newark, NJ Prudential Center
10/07 Boston, MA TD Garden
10/10 Hartford, CT XL Center
10/12 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center
10/14 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
10/15 New York, NY Madison Square Garden

GLOBAL ROOTS FESTIVAL
feat. Delgres, Lemon Bucket Orkestra
Cedar Cultural Center
Wed 09/19/2018 (5pm/FREE)
thecedar.org

Continuing the free Global Roots Festival, we have Guadeloupe’s Delgres and Balkan brass band Lemon Bucket Orkestra.

Outdoor Local Roots Stage Performances start at 5:00pm. Indoor show starts at 7:30pm.

Delgres’ tour dates:

09/18 - Whitewater, WI - Univ. of Wisconsin
09/19 - Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center
09/21 - Albuquerque, NM - ¡Globalquerque!
09/22 & 09/23 - Chicago, IL - Chicago World Festival
09/28 & 09/29 - Bloomington, IN - Lotus Festival
09/30 - Stanford, CA Stanford University
10/05 - Los Angeles, CA - Alliance Française
10/07 - Joshua Tree, CA - Joshua Tree Music Festival

SAN GABRIEL SEPTEMBER SERIES
Mortimer’s Bar and Restaurant
Wed 09/19/2018 (9pm/$5)
mortimersbar.com

Madison’s Seasaw will be playing at Mortimer's Bar and Restaurant as part of the San Gabriel September Series (every Wednesday at 9pm).

Also on the bill: Orca Colony and MT Foyer.

San Gabriel September Series on Wednesdays

9.19.18 Orca Colony / Seasaw / M. T. Foyer
9.26.18 Beringei

PALLBEARER ∕ TRIBULATION
Turf Club
Wed 09/19/2018 (7pm/$17)
turfclub.net

The co-headlining tour of Swedish rockers Tribulation and Arkansas’ Pallbearer will come to the Turf Club in St Paul on September 19th.

Tour dates:

09/15 - Toronto ON - Lee's Palace
09/16 - Detroit MI - Magic Stick
09/18 - Chicago IL - Bottom Lounge
09/19 - Minneapolis MN - Turf Club
09/21 - Denver CO - Bluebird
09/22 - Salt Lake City UT - Metro
09/24 - Calgary AB - Dickens
09/25 - Edmonton AB - Starlite
09/27 - Vancouver BC - Rickshaw
09/28 - Seattle WA - El Corazon
09/29 - Portland OR - Hawthorne
10/01 - San Francisco CA - Slim's
10/03 - Phoenix AZ - Rebel Lounge
10/05 - Austin TX - Barracuda
10/06 - Dallas TX - Trees
10/07 - Houston TX - White Oak

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ facebook.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Vinyl Vaudeville: The Floor Kids Edition, feat. Kid Koala, Adira Amram, and DJ Jester, at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

Kid Koala Vinyl Vaudeville at Cedar Poster Kid Koala Setlist Halo Skanky Panky Floor Kids Battle Tracks (medley) Drunk Trumpet Medley: Gun (Emiliana Torrini) / So What Cha Want (Beastie Boys) 4 Bit Blues Yo Gabba Gabba Metal Medley Was He Slow? (Baby Driver) 7 Bit Blues Laptop Laptop Laptop Conjoined Octopus DJs Rave Piano Moon River 8 Bit Blues Tour Dates 5/5: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios 5/7: San Francisco, CA @ The Independent 5/8: Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater 5/10: Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf 5/12: Austin, TX @ 3TEN ACL 5/13: Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center 5/15: Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall 5/16: Washington, DC @ Union Stage 5/17: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's 5/18: Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall 5/19: Boston, MA @ The Sinclair About Floor Kids Floor Kids is a new breakdance battle game featuring unique freestyle gameplay, rhythm challenges, and multiplayer sessions. Discover stylized hand-drawn graphics by award-winning animator JonJon set to an original soundtrack by world-renowned scratch DJ/producer Kid Koala. Innovative controls allow you the freedom to play the way you like with a dynamic scoring system that rewards your moves based on musicality, originality, and style. Build up your crew of bboys and bgirls, unlocking new characters and locations as you cross the city, busting hundreds of different moves and countless combinations on your journey from the corner to the club. Bring Your Skills. Build Your Crew. Find Your Style. Read More Kid Koala This is a book, completely written and drawn (with accompanying soundtrack) by Kid Koala, called "Nufonia Must Fall". It's a love story between a lonely office girl and an out-of-work robot. …

The Kid Koala-curated “Vinyl Vaudeville Show” just occurred at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last Monday, April 30th. This isn’t the typical rock concert, but rather a variety show, celebrating DJs, entertaining theatrical dancers, singers, and a bit of burlesque. It’s not as racy as that sound, but there are elements of it.

For this 2018 tour, Kid Koala dubbed these 18 shows as “The Floor Kids Edition”, as it is also in part a promotion for the breakdancing video game called Floor Kids (available for the Nintendo Switch and coming soon to Steam), which he provided the music soundtrack for the game. It’s quite an interesting cross-promotion, as you rarely see arcade video game machine available for fans to test out at the show. The three Floor Kids machines were constantly used before the show started, so it was a big hit.

The show was also billed as kids-friendly, so there were plenty of parents and their children at the show. Unfortunately, many of the parents and children left early. It’s understandable, as it’s a school night, after all.... but you can’t help but think that this kind of kids show would better be held in the day (and preferably on a weekend).

Warming up the show was DJ Jester the Filipino Fist (aka G. Michael Pendon), who played plenty of medley of the 80s and 90s pop hits. You can tell what era he grew up in, playing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” to Vanity 6’s “Nasty Girl” to Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” to The Pointer Sisters’ “Automatic”, etc.

Although mostly pop/rock songs of yesteryears, there’s also plenty of odd wonders in there too, including King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”, Dead Milkmen’s “Right Wing Pigeons”, and DJ Jester’s theme song, Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” (which we declared as a hit on our playlist in August 2009).

The other cool thing about DJ Jester is that all these songs were from vinyl records, played on two turn tables. It’s probably much easier and effortless to just bring a laptop and a harddrive, but where’s the fun in that? In the time Jester spent on stage, he must’ve gone through a crate of records (probably over a hundred 12” records).

Next on the “Vinyl Vaudeville” bill was Adira Amram & The Experience. Kid Koala “experienced” one of her shows in New York City and immediately fell in love with her act, which is part singing, dancing, and comedian. He begged her to be part of this show, and as a result, this was Amram’s first time in Minnesota. Thankfully, most of the snow have melted by this time.

Amram is joined by two dancers: Jessi “Jamz” Erian and Maresa “Body and Soul” D'Amore-Morrison. She loves her dancers so much, she actually wrote (and performed) a song for them (“Jessi and Maresa”, played after “Boom Boom”). Her set was rather short, but full of high energy dance routines. During the end of her set finale for “Pizza Party”, she body surfed to the DJ soundboard (where Kid Koala would sometime help out on his wireless sampler).

The Canadian turntable artist Kid Koala closed out the night. As previously mentioned, we’re actually big fans of his work since 2001’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes). We love Deltron 3030 and amazed at his Nufonia Must Fall shows. Perhaps some of those, puppeteers from Nufonia joined Koala on this tour, but we can’t be sure.

Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was some of the most fun, most inventive show we’ve seen in a while. There’s just something really magical about watching puppeteers animate these homemade fabric puppets. There’s no computerize tricks, just old fashion hand manipulated puppets.

Koala’s set (please refer to setlist), used a lot of material from his 2012 album 12 Bit Blues... which is not his latest release. His current album Music to Draw To: Satellite was more of a collaborative album with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini... and probably would require live vocal singing from Torrini. Instead, he sample her song “Gun” with “So What Cha Want” by The Beastie Boys.

Koala explained the secret origin story of his (now) infamous Koala suit he wears at shows. He jumped at the chance to appear on the children show Yo Gabba Gabba to show off what a cool dad he was to his daughter. The night before he was to fly to the Yo Gabba Gabba set, his wife asked what he was wearing on the show. He quickly realized that everyone who appeared on the program wore crazy outfits and costumes. With her trusty sewing machine, she whipped out a Koala suit for Kid Koala to wear.

He wore the suit for a year, after he lost a bet with his record label Ninja Tune, and now, despite his protest, is synonymous with the outfit.

For his “Was He Slow?” song, Kid Koala told us that he almost appeared on Baby Driver as a hand model because Ansel Elgort was busy filming a stunt that day. Thankfully, Elgort (who is also a DJ), stepped in at the last minute and saved the day.

Late in his set, Kid Koala asked the audience for participation. They were developing and filming footage for their upcoming Conjoined Octopus DJs story. A story about conjoined Octopus DJ brothers. The two scenes they shot at our show was a rave scene and a sweeping, quiet piano scene.

Koala closed out the show with one of his famous mix for “Moon River” (dedicated to his mother and “all the women over 60”) and set finale “8 Bit Blues”. The latter song is about being on the road, traveling from “Chicago to LA to NY” and catchy chorus “312 to 213 to 312 to 213″ samples. The finale song was a lot of fun, as Adira Amram and the Experience, dressed in flight attendants, threw out a ton of paper airplanes.

If you’re looking for a fun, kids-friendly show, go to the Vinyl Vaudeville: Floor Kids Edition show. If you want to find out more about Floor Kids, head over to Engadget.com and read about it. If you want to help support the game, you can buy it or add it to “your wish list” on Steam and it will help boost the games’ ranking.

P.S., Sadly, when a fan requested “Tricks N Treats” (which sampled “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” as Charles Schulz lived in St Paul), Koala had to politely apologized because he didn’t bring the record. Still, the Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was so much fun and entertaining, no one seemed disappointed when that song wasn’t played.

Adira Amram & The Experience

DJ Jester

Floor Kids Arcade Machines

Nufonia makes an appearance

Fan: King Mitch

312 to 213

Kid Koala at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Vinyl Vaudeville: The Floor Kids Edition, feat. Kid Koala, Adira Amram, and DJ Jester, at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

Kid Koala Vinyl Vaudeville at Cedar Poster Kid Koala Setlist Halo Skanky Panky Floor Kids Battle Tracks (medley) Drunk Trumpet Medley: Gun (Emiliana Torrini) / So What Cha Want (Beastie Boys) 4 Bit Blues Yo Gabba Gabba Metal Medley Was He Slow? (Baby Driver) 7 Bit Blues Laptop Laptop Laptop Conjoined Octopus DJs Rave Piano Moon River 8 Bit Blues Tour Dates 5/5: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios 5/7: San Francisco, CA @ The Independent 5/8: Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater 5/10: Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf 5/12: Austin, TX @ 3TEN ACL 5/13: Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center 5/15: Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall 5/16: Washington, DC @ Union Stage 5/17: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's 5/18: Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall 5/19: Boston, MA @ The Sinclair About Floor Kids Floor Kids is a new breakdance battle game featuring unique freestyle gameplay, rhythm challenges, and multiplayer sessions. Discover stylized hand-drawn graphics by award-winning animator JonJon set to an original soundtrack by world-renowned scratch DJ/producer Kid Koala. Innovative controls allow you the freedom to play the way you like with a dynamic scoring system that rewards your moves based on musicality, originality, and style. Build up your crew of bboys and bgirls, unlocking new characters and locations as you cross the city, busting hundreds of different moves and countless combinations on your journey from the corner to the club. Bring Your Skills. Build Your Crew. Find Your Style. Read More Kid Koala This is a book, completely written and drawn (with accompanying soundtrack) by Kid Koala, called "Nufonia Must Fall". It's a love story between a lonely office girl and an out-of-work robot. …

The Kid Koala-curated “Vinyl Vaudeville Show” just occurred at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last Monday, April 30th. This isn’t the typical rock concert, but rather a variety show, celebrating DJs, entertaining theatrical dancers, singers, and a bit of burlesque. It’s not as racy as that sound, but there are elements of it.

For this 2018 tour, Kid Koala dubbed these 18 shows as “The Floor Kids Edition”, as it is also in part a promotion for the breakdancing video game called Floor Kids (available for the Nintendo Switch and coming soon to Steam), which he provided the music soundtrack for the game. It’s quite an interesting cross-promotion, as you rarely see arcade video game machine available for fans to test out at the show. The three Floor Kids machines were constantly used before the show started, so it was a big hit.

The show was also billed as kids-friendly, so there were plenty of parents and their children at the show. Unfortunately, many of the parents and children left early. It’s understandable, as it’s a school night, after all.... but you can’t help but think that this kind of kids show would better be held in the day (and preferably on a weekend).

Warming up the show was DJ Jester the Filipino Fist (aka G. Michael Pendon), who played plenty of medley of the 80s and 90s pop hits. You can tell what era he grew up in, playing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” to Vanity 6’s “Nasty Girl” to Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” to The Pointer Sisters’ “Automatic”, etc.

Although mostly pop/rock songs of yesteryears, there’s also plenty of odd wonders in there too, including King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”, Dead Milkmen’s “Right Wing Pigeons”, and DJ Jester’s theme song, Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” (which we declared as a hit on our playlist in August 2009).

The other cool thing about DJ Jester is that all these songs were from vinyl records, played on two turn tables. It’s probably much easier and effortless to just bring a laptop and a harddrive, but where’s the fun in that? In the time Jester spent on stage, he must’ve gone through a crate of records (probably over a hundred 12” records).

Next on the “Vinyl Vaudeville” bill was Adira Amram & The Experience. Kid Koala “experienced” one of her shows in New York City and immediately fell in love with her act, which is part singing, dancing, and comedian. He begged her to be part of this show, and as a result, this was Amram’s first time in Minnesota. Thankfully, most of the snow have melted by this time.

Amram is joined by two dancers: Jessi “Jamz” Erian and Maresa “Body and Soul” D'Amore-Morrison. She loves her dancers so much, she actually wrote (and performed) a song for them (“Jessi and Maresa”, played after “Boom Boom”). Her set was rather short, but full of high energy dance routines. During the end of her set finale for “Pizza Party”, she body surfed to the DJ soundboard (where Kid Koala would sometime help out on his wireless sampler).

The Canadian turntable artist Kid Koala closed out the night. As previously mentioned, we’re actually big fans of his work since 2001’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes). We love Deltron 3030 and amazed at his Nufonia Must Fall shows. Perhaps some of those, puppeteers from Nufonia joined Koala on this tour, but we can’t be sure.

Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was some of the most fun, most inventive show we’ve seen in a while. There’s just something really magical about watching puppeteers animate these homemade fabric puppets. There’s no computerize tricks, just old fashion hand manipulated puppets.

Koala’s set (please refer to setlist), used a lot of material from his 2012 album 12 Bit Blues... which is not his latest release. His current album Music to Draw To: Satellite was more of a collaborative album with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini... and probably would require live vocal singing from Torrini. Instead, he sample her song “Gun” with “So What Cha Want” by The Beastie Boys.

Koala explained the secret origin story of his (now) infamous Koala suit he wears at shows. He jumped at the chance to appear on the children show Yo Gabba Gabba to show off what a cool dad he was to his daughter. The night before he was to fly to the Yo Gabba Gabba set, his wife asked what he was wearing on the show. He quickly realized that everyone who appeared on the program wore crazy outfits and costumes. With her trusty sewing machine, she whipped out a Koala suit for Kid Koala to wear.

He wore the suit for a year, after he lost a bet with his record label Ninja Tune, and now, despite his protest, is synonymous with the outfit.

For his “Was He Slow?” song, Kid Koala told us that he almost appeared on Baby Driver as a hand model because Ansel Elgort was busy filming a stunt that day. Thankfully, Elgort (who is also a DJ), stepped in at the last minute and saved the day.

Late in his set, Kid Koala asked the audience for participation. They were developing and filming footage for their upcoming Conjoined Octopus DJs story. A story about conjoined Octopus DJ brothers. The two scenes they shot at our show was a rave scene and a sweeping, quiet piano scene.

Koala closed out the show with one of his famous mix for “Moon River” (dedicated to his mother and “all the women over 60”) and set finale “8 Bit Blues”. The latter song is about being on the road, traveling from “Chicago to LA to NY” and catchy chorus “312 to 213 to 312 to 213″ samples. The finale song was a lot of fun, as Adira Amram and the Experience, dressed in flight attendants, threw out a ton of paper airplanes.

If you’re looking for a fun, kids-friendly show, go to the Vinyl Vaudeville: Floor Kids Edition show. If you want to find out more about Floor Kids, head over to Engadget.com and read about it. If you want to help support the game, you can buy it or add it to “your wish list” on Steam and it will help boost the games’ ranking.

P.S., Sadly, when a fan requested “Tricks N Treats” (which sampled “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” as Charles Schulz lived in St Paul), Koala had to politely apologized because he didn’t bring the record. Still, the Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was so much fun and entertaining, no one seemed disappointed when that song wasn’t played.

Adira Amram & The Experience

DJ Jester

Floor Kids Arcade Machines

Nufonia makes an appearance

Fan: King Mitch

312 to 213

Kid Koala at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Vinyl Vaudeville: The Floor Kids Edition, feat. Kid Koala, Adira Amram, and DJ Jester, at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

Kid Koala Vinyl Vaudeville at Cedar Poster Kid Koala Setlist Halo Skanky Panky Floor Kids Battle Tracks (medley) Drunk Trumpet Medley: Gun (Emiliana Torrini) / So What Cha Want (Beastie Boys) 4 Bit Blues Yo Gabba Gabba Metal Medley Was He Slow? (Baby Driver) 7 Bit Blues Laptop Laptop Laptop Conjoined Octopus DJs Rave Piano Moon River 8 Bit Blues Tour Dates 5/5: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios 5/7: San Francisco, CA @ The Independent 5/8: Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater 5/10: Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf 5/12: Austin, TX @ 3TEN ACL 5/13: Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center 5/15: Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall 5/16: Washington, DC @ Union Stage 5/17: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's 5/18: Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall 5/19: Boston, MA @ The Sinclair About Floor Kids Floor Kids is a new breakdance battle game featuring unique freestyle gameplay, rhythm challenges, and multiplayer sessions. Discover stylized hand-drawn graphics by award-winning animator JonJon set to an original soundtrack by world-renowned scratch DJ/producer Kid Koala. Innovative controls allow you the freedom to play the way you like with a dynamic scoring system that rewards your moves based on musicality, originality, and style. Build up your crew of bboys and bgirls, unlocking new characters and locations as you cross the city, busting hundreds of different moves and countless combinations on your journey from the corner to the club. Bring Your Skills. Build Your Crew. Find Your Style. Read More Kid Koala This is a book, completely written and drawn (with accompanying soundtrack) by Kid Koala, called "Nufonia Must Fall". It's a love story between a lonely office girl and an out-of-work robot. …

The Kid Koala-curated “Vinyl Vaudeville Show” just occurred at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last Monday, April 30th. This isn’t the typical rock concert, but rather a variety show, celebrating DJs, entertaining theatrical dancers, singers, and a bit of burlesque. It’s not as racy as that sound, but there are elements of it.

For this 2018 tour, Kid Koala dubbed these 18 shows as “The Floor Kids Edition”, as it is also in part a promotion for the breakdancing video game called Floor Kids (available for the Nintendo Switch and coming soon to Steam), which he provided the music soundtrack for the game. It’s quite an interesting cross-promotion, as you rarely see arcade video game machine available for fans to test out at the show. The three Floor Kids machines were constantly used before the show started, so it was a big hit.

The show was also billed as kids-friendly, so there were plenty of parents and their children at the show. Unfortunately, many of the parents and children left early. It’s understandable, as it’s a school night, after all.... but you can’t help but think that this kind of kids show would better be held in the day (and preferably on a weekend).

Warming up the show was DJ Jester the Filipino Fist (aka G. Michael Pendon), who played plenty of medley of the 80s and 90s pop hits. You can tell what era he grew up in, playing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” to Vanity 6’s “Nasty Girl” to Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” to The Pointer Sisters’ “Automatic”, etc.

Although mostly pop/rock songs of yesteryears, there’s also plenty of odd wonders in there too, including King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”, Dead Milkmen’s “Right Wing Pigeons”, and DJ Jester’s theme song, Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” (which we declared as a hit on our playlist in August 2009).

The other cool thing about DJ Jester is that all these songs were from vinyl records, played on two turn tables. It’s probably much easier and effortless to just bring a laptop and a harddrive, but where’s the fun in that? In the time Jester spent on stage, he must’ve gone through a crate of records (probably over a hundred 12” records).

Next on the “Vinyl Vaudeville” bill was Adira Amram & The Experience. Kid Koala “experienced” one of her shows in New York City and immediately fell in love with her act, which is part singing, dancing, and comedian. He begged her to be part of this show, and as a result, this was Amram’s first time in Minnesota. Thankfully, most of the snow have melted by this time.

Amram is joined by two dancers: Jessi “Jamz” Erian and Maresa “Body and Soul” D'Amore-Morrison. She loves her dancers so much, she actually wrote (and performed) a song for them (“Jessi and Maresa”, played after “Boom Boom”). Her set was rather short, but full of high energy dance routines. During the end of her set finale for “Pizza Party”, she body surfed to the DJ soundboard (where Kid Koala would sometime help out on his wireless sampler).

The Canadian turntable artist Kid Koala closed out the night. As previously mentioned, we’re actually big fans of his work since 2001’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes). We love Deltron 3030 and amazed at his Nufonia Must Fall shows. Perhaps some of those, puppeteers from Nufonia joined Koala on this tour, but we can’t be sure.

Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was some of the most fun, most inventive show we’ve seen in a while. There’s just something really magical about watching puppeteers animate these homemade fabric puppets. There’s no computerize tricks, just old fashion hand manipulated puppets.

Koala’s set (please refer to setlist), used a lot of material from his 2012 album 12 Bit Blues... which is not his latest release. His current album Music to Draw To: Satellite was more of a collaborative album with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini... and probably would require live vocal singing from Torrini. Instead, he sample her song “Gun” with “So What Cha Want” by The Beastie Boys.

Koala explained the secret origin story of his (now) infamous Koala suit he wears at shows. He jumped at the chance to appear on the children show Yo Gabba Gabba to show off what a cool dad he was to his daughter. The night before he was to fly to the Yo Gabba Gabba set, his wife asked what he was wearing on the show. He quickly realized that everyone who appeared on the program wore crazy outfits and costumes. With her trusty sewing machine, she whipped out a Koala suit for Kid Koala to wear.

He wore the suit for a year, after he lost a bet with his record label Ninja Tune, and now, despite his protest, is synonymous with the outfit.

For his “Was He Slow?” song, Kid Koala told us that he almost appeared on Baby Driver as a hand model because Ansel Elgort was busy filming a stunt that day. Thankfully, Elgort (who is also a DJ), stepped in at the last minute and saved the day.

Late in his set, Kid Koala asked the audience for participation. They were developing and filming footage for their upcoming Conjoined Octopus DJs story. A story about conjoined Octopus DJ brothers. The two scenes they shot at our show was a rave scene and a sweeping, quiet piano scene.

Koala closed out the show with one of his famous mix for “Moon River” (dedicated to his mother and “all the women over 60”) and set finale “8 Bit Blues”. The latter song is about being on the road, traveling from “Chicago to LA to NY” and catchy chorus “312 to 213 to 312 to 213″ samples. The finale song was a lot of fun, as Adira Amram and the Experience, dressed in flight attendants, threw out a ton of paper airplanes.

If you’re looking for a fun, kids-friendly show, go to the Vinyl Vaudeville: Floor Kids Edition show. If you want to find out more about Floor Kids, head over to Engadget.com and read about it. If you want to help support the game, you can buy it or add it to “your wish list” on Steam and it will help boost the games’ ranking.

P.S., Sadly, when a fan requested “Tricks N Treats” (which sampled “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” as Charles Schulz lived in St Paul), Koala had to politely apologized because he didn’t bring the record. Still, the Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was so much fun and entertaining, no one seemed disappointed when that song wasn’t played.

Adira Amram & The Experience

DJ Jester

Floor Kids Arcade Machines

Nufonia makes an appearance

Fan: King Mitch

312 to 213

Kid Koala at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

Vinyl Vaudeville: The Floor Kids Edition, feat. Kid Koala, Adira Amram, and DJ Jester, at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

Kid Koala Vinyl Vaudeville at Cedar Poster Kid Koala Setlist Halo Skanky Panky Floor Kids Battle Tracks (medley) Drunk Trumpet Medley: Gun (Emiliana Torrini) / So What Cha Want (Beastie Boys) 4 Bit Blues Yo Gabba Gabba Metal Medley Was He Slow? (Baby Driver) 7 Bit Blues Laptop Laptop Laptop Conjoined Octopus DJs Rave Piano Moon River 8 Bit Blues Tour Dates 5/5: Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios 5/7: San Francisco, CA @ The Independent 5/8: Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent Theater 5/10: Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf 5/12: Austin, TX @ 3TEN ACL 5/13: Dallas, TX @ AT&T Performing Arts Center 5/15: Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall 5/16: Washington, DC @ Union Stage 5/17: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's 5/18: Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall 5/19: Boston, MA @ The Sinclair About Floor Kids Floor Kids is a new breakdance battle game featuring unique freestyle gameplay, rhythm challenges, and multiplayer sessions. Discover stylized hand-drawn graphics by award-winning animator JonJon set to an original soundtrack by world-renowned scratch DJ/producer Kid Koala. Innovative controls allow you the freedom to play the way you like with a dynamic scoring system that rewards your moves based on musicality, originality, and style. Build up your crew of bboys and bgirls, unlocking new characters and locations as you cross the city, busting hundreds of different moves and countless combinations on your journey from the corner to the club. Bring Your Skills. Build Your Crew. Find Your Style. Read More Kid Koala This is a book, completely written and drawn (with accompanying soundtrack) by Kid Koala, called "Nufonia Must Fall". It's a love story between a lonely office girl and an out-of-work robot. …

The Kid Koala-curated “Vinyl Vaudeville Show” just occurred at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis last Monday, April 30th. This isn’t the typical rock concert, but rather a variety show, celebrating DJs, entertaining theatrical dancers, singers, and a bit of burlesque. It’s not as racy as that sound, but there are elements of it.

For this 2018 tour, Kid Koala dubbed these 18 shows as “The Floor Kids Edition”, as it is also in part a promotion for the breakdancing video game called Floor Kids (available for the Nintendo Switch and coming soon to Steam), which he provided the music soundtrack for the game. It’s quite an interesting cross-promotion, as you rarely see arcade video game machine available for fans to test out at the show. The three Floor Kids machines were constantly used before the show started, so it was a big hit.

The show was also billed as kids-friendly, so there were plenty of parents and their children at the show. Unfortunately, many of the parents and children left early. It’s understandable, as it’s a school night, after all.... but you can’t help but think that this kind of kids show would better be held in the day (and preferably on a weekend).

Warming up the show was DJ Jester the Filipino Fist (aka G. Michael Pendon), who played plenty of medley of the 80s and 90s pop hits. You can tell what era he grew up in, playing David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” to Vanity 6’s “Nasty Girl” to Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” to The Pointer Sisters’ “Automatic”, etc.

Although mostly pop/rock songs of yesteryears, there’s also plenty of odd wonders in there too, including King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”, Dead Milkmen’s “Right Wing Pigeons”, and DJ Jester’s theme song, Eddie Murphy’s “Party All the Time” (which we declared as a hit on our playlist in August 2009).

The other cool thing about DJ Jester is that all these songs were from vinyl records, played on two turn tables. It’s probably much easier and effortless to just bring a laptop and a harddrive, but where’s the fun in that? In the time Jester spent on stage, he must’ve gone through a crate of records (probably over a hundred 12” records).

Next on the “Vinyl Vaudeville” bill was Adira Amram & The Experience. Kid Koala “experienced” one of her shows in New York City and immediately fell in love with her act, which is part singing, dancing, and comedian. He begged her to be part of this show, and as a result, this was Amram’s first time in Minnesota. Thankfully, most of the snow have melted by this time.

Amram is joined by two dancers: Jessi “Jamz” Erian and Maresa “Body and Soul” D'Amore-Morrison. She loves her dancers so much, she actually wrote (and performed) a song for them (“Jessi and Maresa”, played after “Boom Boom”). Her set was rather short, but full of high energy dance routines. During the end of her set finale for “Pizza Party”, she body surfed to the DJ soundboard (where Kid Koala would sometime help out on his wireless sampler).

The Canadian turntable artist Kid Koala closed out the night. As previously mentioned, we’re actually big fans of his work since 2001’s Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes). We love Deltron 3030 and amazed at his Nufonia Must Fall shows. Perhaps some of those, puppeteers from Nufonia joined Koala on this tour, but we can’t be sure.

Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was some of the most fun, most inventive show we’ve seen in a while. There’s just something really magical about watching puppeteers animate these homemade fabric puppets. There’s no computerize tricks, just old fashion hand manipulated puppets.

Koala’s set (please refer to setlist), used a lot of material from his 2012 album 12 Bit Blues... which is not his latest release. His current album Music to Draw To: Satellite was more of a collaborative album with Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini... and probably would require live vocal singing from Torrini. Instead, he sample her song “Gun” with “So What Cha Want” by The Beastie Boys.

Koala explained the secret origin story of his (now) infamous Koala suit he wears at shows. He jumped at the chance to appear on the children show Yo Gabba Gabba to show off what a cool dad he was to his daughter. The night before he was to fly to the Yo Gabba Gabba set, his wife asked what he was wearing on the show. He quickly realized that everyone who appeared on the program wore crazy outfits and costumes. With her trusty sewing machine, she whipped out a Koala suit for Kid Koala to wear.

He wore the suit for a year, after he lost a bet with his record label Ninja Tune, and now, despite his protest, is synonymous with the outfit.

For his “Was He Slow?” song, Kid Koala told us that he almost appeared on Baby Driver as a hand model because Ansel Elgort was busy filming a stunt that day. Thankfully, Elgort (who is also a DJ), stepped in at the last minute and saved the day.

Late in his set, Kid Koala asked the audience for participation. They were developing and filming footage for their upcoming Conjoined Octopus DJs story. A story about conjoined Octopus DJ brothers. The two scenes they shot at our show was a rave scene and a sweeping, quiet piano scene.

Koala closed out the show with one of his famous mix for “Moon River” (dedicated to his mother and “all the women over 60”) and set finale “8 Bit Blues”. The latter song is about being on the road, traveling from “Chicago to LA to NY” and catchy chorus “312 to 213 to 312 to 213″ samples. The finale song was a lot of fun, as Adira Amram and the Experience, dressed in flight attendants, threw out a ton of paper airplanes.

If you’re looking for a fun, kids-friendly show, go to the Vinyl Vaudeville: Floor Kids Edition show. If you want to find out more about Floor Kids, head over to Engadget.com and read about it. If you want to help support the game, you can buy it or add it to “your wish list” on Steam and it will help boost the games’ ranking.

P.S., Sadly, when a fan requested “Tricks N Treats” (which sampled “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” as Charles Schulz lived in St Paul), Koala had to politely apologized because he didn’t bring the record. Still, the Kid Koala’s “Vinyl Vaudeville” show was so much fun and entertaining, no one seemed disappointed when that song wasn’t played.

Adira Amram & The Experience

DJ Jester

Floor Kids Arcade Machines

Nufonia makes an appearance

Fan: King Mitch

312 to 213

Kid Koala at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (30 April 2018)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

John Maus at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (05 April 2018)

John Maus at Cedar Poster Tour Dates 04/15/2018 Coachella 04/22/2018 Coachella 05/04/2018 Red Bull Music Academy Festival Read More John Maus In his first show in seven years, John Maus will be headlining the Cedar Cultural Center on Thursday, April 5th. Maus is known for his emotional, passionate live ..… C. Kostra Devata Daun (aka Nikki Pfeifer) and C. Kostra (aka Ryan Olcott) to open. After this warm-up gig, he’ll be travelling to various music festivals from around the world … Devata Daun Two local bands were special guests at the show. Darkwave band Devata Daun (aka Nikki Pfeifer) was first, playing some tracks from her album Look (Pytch Records). …

It was a sold-out show for John Maus’ first show in Minneapolis in seven years, at the Cedar Cultural Center on Thursday night. Sadly, that also meant that there were a few fans without tickets, waiting outside in the cold asking for spare tickets.

Devata Daun (aka Nikki Pfeifer) and c.Kostra (aka Ryan Olcott) opened the show. The first 30 minutes featured Devata Daun’s sweet, atmospheric songs from her album Look (Pytch Records), then, midway, the two swap places as c.Kostra finished out the remaining 30 minutes with his new album now i feel it (Pytch Records). The seamless transition suggests that the two often work together… and it’s probably safe to say that if you see one of them at a show, the other is close behind.

Just to give you a little background, but John Maus is often associated with Ariel Pink, as the two were roomates/classmates at the California Institute of the Arts. Maus would end up as a member of the Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti stage band.

When Maus signed and released his debut record Songs (Upset the Rhythm) in 2006, he toured and built up a good reputation for his passionate performances. Then, in 2012, he just decided to take a four-year break from music. He spent that time finishing his dissertation, and gained a PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii.

Maus’ fourth album (and his latest) is called Screen Memories and came out last year. So, for the first time in four years, he went on tour to promote the record. While fans and critics were already accustomed to his solo one-man-karaoke shows, last year’s tour featured a full live band (featuring his brother Joe Maus on bass, Luke Darger on keyboards, and Jonathan Thompson on drums). After over a year of touring, the band was actually still very tight, which is important as they are set to play Coachella next week.

After a seven-year absent from Minneapolis, the show wasn’t just about Maus, it was also about his diehard fans. It wasn’t uncommon to see friends surprised and happy to see each other at the show. Or when a familiar song started to play, some people would just turn to each other and started hugging (especially hearing the opening chords to “Streetlight”). It’s heartwarming to see so many people happy to celebrate their mutual love for John Maus.

As you would expect, there was a lot of high-energy bopping up and down, fist punching the air, and plenty of sweating.

With an upcoming album Addendum (made of extra songs from Screen Memories), expect to see Maus more active in shows… and hopefully another Minneapolis date next year.

Devata Daun

c.Kostra

Devata Daun

Devata Daun (art by Vu)

John Maus

John Maus

John Maus

John Maus at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (05 April 2018)

vu (vu@weheartmusic.com) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic