Don't Wanna Know If You Have An Opinion

How desperate is the City Pages to whack at the right?

The CP's weekly hatchet job has turned from Lileks and the Fraters to...the Governor.

City Pages - and former Saint Paul Pioneer Press - music critic Jim Walsh interviews Grant Hart.

You might ask "Who's interviewing WHO?" And you'd be right.

For those of you from out of town:

• Jim Walsh is a music critic. He writes about music - although given the CP's pedigree as an "alternative" weekly, he has free reign to yak about politics or cooking for, for all I know, brain surgery. He is an excellent music critic. He is a less effective record producer; I may never forgive him for turning the evanescent Gear Daddies into the dull, flat, joyless band we heard on "Let's Go Scare Al". But I digress; as a critic, he's good; as a producer, he sucks chunks through a long conduit; as a political columnist, he should stick with producing.
• Grant Hart was the drummer for Husker Du, a Twin Cities post-punk band that was what the overly-serious, slightly dorky kids listened to while the fun kids were listening to the Replacements or the Time. They had some great music, and a lot of tossaway filler; graded on their high points, they get an A-, while the Replacements got the A. While the rest of Husker Du went on to bigger and better things (Bob Mould has a successful solo career; Grant Norton is, according to an acquaintance, an excellent chef), Hart went on to front "Nova Mob", a band only a City Pages critic could love.

It turns out Grant Hart and Tim Pawlenty are high school classmates!

No, really!

So what does Grant Hart - dissipate superannuated punk rocker - have to say about Tim Pawlenty, moderate conservative governor?

Well, it's another one of those things where fisking would be redundant. Here's a section, no worse than the rest of Hart's essay:

I don't know how much liberty, life, and pursuit of happiness I can put on the line about this stuff, but I think you know how I feel about what's happened in this state in the last two years. I think that the right wing has looked at history, and they don't trust Minnesota. I think this next year is going to be revolutionary. I mean, even four more years of Bush is going to polarize everyone even more. [The Republicans] are going to give the American people the conclusion that we can't afford to govern ourselves, that we have to have the corporations do it for us.

And they've got a [friend] in Minnesota. When I think of the crowd Pawlenty ran with, it was the high school equivalent of, you know, Grunseths. I mean, kids that weren't in and of themselves bad kids, but kids who automatically made the A squad. The very, very privileged of the town.

I was working at Cheapo [Records] at the time, and bringing my amp and guitar and record player to parties. Guys would go, "Is this the new Aerosmith?" And I'd say, "No, it's the New York Dolls." I would say that Tim was probably into whatever music swung with the crowd he was trying to impress. He probably had never been to an arena concert, at a time when you could see eight bands for four bucks, but I don't know.

That's the funny thing: I knew the guy for years, and it's still like he's a cipher. He's Chauncey Gardener. With a lot less Zen. You know, I'd vote for Chauncey.

Well, as long as you set him straight about the New York Dolls. I mean, really.

Read the whole thing, if only to prove to yourself that the City Pages is overpriced.

(Note to out-of-towners; the City Pages is free. And with articles like this, I have to say it's worth every penny).

Posted by Mitch at January 28, 2004 06:06 AM