It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XII

Unspoken - to most people - among my motivations for moving to the Twin Cities was a craving to get into the Twin Cities music scene. Whatever it was.

Sunday, October 20, I drove downtown to try to find it.

In '84 and '85, Minneapolis' musical output was peaking. For white-boy punks like me, the likes of the Replacements and Hüsker Dü were breaking out of the regional ghetto, even getting on the national charts.

And then, there was Purple Rain. To a guy who was used to playing in high school gyms and divey bars, the "First Avenue" in Purple Rain - Prince's one good movie, and it was a great one - was irresistable; a kaleidoscope of colors, styles, attitudes; people break dancing in the balconies!; a stage with actual lights and a sound system that sounded like it worked; Apollonia running out of a cab and straight into your gig!. Even the seamy, seedy underbelly of Minneapolis music looked good. Jeebus, I was so looking forward to being in a music scene with a seamy underbelly! At gigs in North Dakota, the seamy underbelly was someone selling angel dust in the parking lot.

I went downtown that night; I had to make it an early one, because I had a 9AM job interview the next morning. but I had to get to the First Avenue and see what the fuss was all about!

Eyes darting between the road and the map, I found my way downtown. I took the first parking spot I could find - it was on Eighth Street over by the Normandie Inn, probably a mile from the First Avenue, but I didn't want to take any chances. I parked, plugged the meter (it was at the end of the evening that I read the meter and noticed that they were not enforced on Sundays, to a dollar's worth of chagrin), and started walking.

First stop - Northern Lights records, on Hennepin and Seventh. I walked inside and took my first deep drag of the gloriously skanky, funky miasma of a big-city underground record store. Heaven!

I browsed the aisles, seeing vinyl wonders that never made it west of Saint Cloud; Throbbing Gristle! Black Flag! Pigbag! Pure farging heaven!

There was a bulletin board in the back, crammed with posters for bands looking for people, people looking for bands, bands looking for gigs; I tore off a couple of phone numbers, carefully put them in my wallet, and killed a couple of hours in dank, skeezy style.

Finally, it was closing time. I bought a copy of the new Replacements album (Tim, still one of my favorites, partly because of its association with this whole time, mostly because it's just a freaking great record), walked out and turned down Seventh.

And then I saw the sign - the same big, black edifice from the movie, the "First Avenue and Seventh Street Entry".

It was a Sunday night; I don't think any bands were playing in the Entry; the Main Room had a DJ playing music and vids (I remember some Sonic Youth song, although not the name - not that it makes a lot of difference - and the vid for the Replacements' "Bastards of Young"). Nobody was on the floor. The balcony had a couple of tables full of people, drinking and smoking and talking. Not a break dancer to be seen.

I walked through the door, around the edge of the huge dance floor, past a couple of pinball machines, and the little pizza bar that used to be just off stage left, on the ratty, dark carpet, past innumerable sparsely-populated stools. I looked around the joint - at the dingy rafters, the large but oppressively flat-black stage, the tile floor and the ratty risers. And I thought...

..."It's just a bar".

Just a big, dark, dirty, smoky bar!

I laughed. What did I expect, Graceland? I certainly should have known better than to expect Apollonia, break dancers; I was less crestfallen than mentally kicking myself for falling for a movie image.

I kicked myself a few more times, ordered a beer, and plotted my band's first gig on the mainroom stage. And how I was going to put that band together.

After I got a job, of course.

Posted by Mitch at October 20, 2005 12:33 PM | TrackBack