4:25 a.m.
The Session, KFAI, Minneapolis
Tony Nelson
Related Content
More About
"I'm givin' a shout-out to Eden Prairie, a shout-out to Blaine, a shout-out to Burnsville," declares Letta E. "I know y'all like to kick it on a Friday night."
Perhaps that claim is not entirely accurate: It's 4:00 a.m. at community radio station KFAI-FM (90.3/106.7), and to most people, "Friday night" already feels like something that happened last year. Yet radio personalities Letta E and Special Dark and their record selector DJ Tyrone have been at the station since two o'clock, playing local and national hip-hop on their program The Session. Theirs are the hibernation hours when listeners retreat home from the clubs and into the sounds of their own speakers.
Special Dark and Letta E, heads dwarfed by bulky headphones, sit before microphone stands in the small room, discussing what it means to support the local hip-hop community. DMX, Bilal, Nate Dogg, and C-Murder flow out over the airwaves. DJ Tyrone stands alone in the corner, staring out the window. --MAERZ
5:10 a.m.
Music piracy, Audiogalaxy, cyberspace
The sky is still dark in the Twin Cities. But right now, 23 people in Egypt, 9 people in Peru, 182 people in Singapore, and 1,452 people in the United States are downloading music from Audiogalaxy. Of the Americans, 12 are in Minnesota. And among those, one is a Rob Zombie fan, one professes that David Lee Roth is his favorite artist, and one is a self-described "crazy sexy bitch."
The "bitch" is Angie Zembal-Corson, an unemployed 20-year-old woman living in Duluth. She's listening to David Bowie's "Heroes," which she selected from her shared-files folder a few minutes ago. Why is she up at this hour along with the other aural nut jobs with high-speed Internet connections? "My husband works the [late] shift," she explains over Audiogalaxy's instant-message system. "It's easier if we stay on the same schedule." In Duluth, Bowie is crooning: "'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact/Yes we're lovers, and that is that." --MAERZ
5:53 a.m.
"Floss" after-party, Mady's Bowling Center, Columbia Heights
A stocky, phat-panted girl in a cocked hat enters the restroom and locks herself in a stall. To no one in particular she says, "How can they have parties here?" Though still baffled that the transformed bowling alley has become her playground for the night, she fondly reminisces over the birthday party held here for hard-house b-boy DJ Fresko a few months ago. Dipping into her slang dictionary, she exclaims that that was "tits."
Bass shakes the washroom mirror courtesy of drum 'n' bass DJ Lonnie Mneumonic, who smartly spins a spacey and mellow set. It's breakfast time for many churchgoers and the sun is on high beam upstairs. But some 80 party people who rushed over at 3:00 a.m. from Club Metro's "Floss" remain standing. And dancing. Lasers cut through this still jacking crowd and touch on the heads of kids rolling balls down the lanes. A blonde in a short black dress and knee-high boots slips and falls on deck, and her friend rebukes her for not wearing the proper (yet no less embarrassing) bowling shoes. She's down but not out: Who know when she--or any of these adrenaline-seeking kids--will actually get around to going to bed? --BOYLES
6:00 a.m.
Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota
You can't possibly stand any more music. You've chased it around all day, you've managed to rock on into the night, and you'd serve yourself best by just going home to bed.
But you don't, and somehow you end up here, staring at the platinum records of Soul Asylum, Live, and Nirvana on the walls of this little world-class studio hidden in the woods. The Big Wu have just finished a long day of recording, and most of the members of the band are smartly retiring to the guesthouse up the driveway. Suddenly someone hands you a can of Old Style, there's a bottle of Jack Daniel's going around, and you realize that this place has a stereo--a very good stereo. There are about four other dudes and a stack of CDs and vinyl in the corner, and that, in any circumstance, qualifies as a rock 'n' roll party.
It starts, as these things too often do, with a couple of songs of Zeppelin II played at a shoelace-shaking volume. More beer, and maybe a water pipe goes around, and suddenly the room is filled with Ravi Shankar's voice, quietly telling you how to play the sitar from the soul. This segues, naturally, into George's "Blue Jay Way" off of Magical Mystery Tour, and then into "Cathy's Clown" by the Everly Brothers.
It gets a little hazy after the deep track from the Dead, but you notice how true "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" by Aretha Franklin really is, and realize that Jack Nitzsche, the movie soundtrack guy who also did the string arrangements on the first Neil Young record you're hearing, just died not too long ago. They always do, you think. The night sky takes on that blue hue before sunrise, and suddenly "Blue Moon" off Big Star's Sister Lovers is lulling you to sleep. You stretch out on the leather couch behind the mixing board and listen to Alex Chilton sing, "Take care not to hurt yourself/Beware of the need for help" on the next track. This, you think, drifting away, is music. --ANDERSON
Correction published March 6, 2002:
Owing to an editing mistake, we misidentified Slobberbone in a photo caption accompanying this story. Additionally, we incorrectly located St. Anthony Park Elementary--it's in St. Paul, not Minneapolis. The above version of the story reflects the corrected text. City Pages regrets the error.
