A few years ago, I contacted Robin Rife, who, at the time, was booking music for Cafe Maude, about the possibility of a gig. The first surprise was that, unlike, say the booker for the Dakota, she actually responded to my inquiry. (Despite my lack of appetite for chasing after work which has increased exponentially ..read more
Jan 21st, 2012
Blow-Fi is vocalist Ville Kiiski and multi-instrumentalist Erkki Huovinen. Long-time collaborators, their work might best be described as performance art, which, at its core, consists of improvised spoken/”sung” word and music. During one of Ville’s visits to Minnesota, where Erkki currently resides, they organized several sessions with varying personnel, ultimately resulting in the CD “..read more
Jan 18th, 2012
“Wiener-U-Bahn-Kunst” is a lavish, glossy, 294 page, 9″ X 12″ German language hardcover book (with an accompanying DVD) chronicling the history of Vienna’s subway system, and its interface with commissioned visual arts projects over the last two decades. As the Reform Art Unit (founded in 1965), and its offshoot Reform Art Orchestra have ..read more
Jun 12th, 2011
In a lifework marked by and continuing to vacillate among a certain respect, vilification, and essentially being ignored, the story of the Teenage Boatpeople is a curious chapter indeed. Founded by Jeff Johnson in 1979, the group recorded an EP and had but a handful of gigs. (Our sole headline outing at the 7th ..read more