Monday, August 02, 2010

Funkytown Beyond Prince

People outside of the Midwest tend not to know much about Minneapolis. As Slug pointed out, we've got 10,000 lakes and Prince, and beyond that, it's hard to find too much to brag about.

But like so many things about Minneapolis that surprise outsiders, we really do have a pretty rich legacy of performers/musicians/entertainers etc. that stretch well beyond the purple Yoda and the Garrison Keillor. The strib this morning has a great list of 50 moments that put Minneapolis on the map, at least in terms of pop culture.

While some are a little dubious and probably just included to make the list a nice, round 50 (Janet Jackson records her first album here entry -- I'm looking at you), but some are unquestionably important -- Nirvana holing up in a snow-barren studio to record In Utero, Rage gets shut down outside the RNC, the birth of MST3K, Dylan re-records Blood on the Tracks, August Wilson gets a couple of Pulitzers -- that really say something about the arts scene we've got going on here.

That, and about 5,000,000 less hipsters than NY, make MPLS one of the best arts and music scenes around, in my completely un-biased opinion...

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