Minnesota's Fifty Greatest Hits

Leo Kottke
Watermelon
from 6 and 12 String Guitar, Takoma, 1971
From Kottke's liner notes: "While at Watermelon Park Music Festival I had the opportunity to play a banjo in the middle of the night for a wandering drunk. When I finished he vomited--an astute comment on my playing." I can't speak to Kottke's banjo work, but his guitar playing has made many six- and twelve-string tyros sick with inadequacy, and inspired heartier souls to expand their practice regimen to 11 hours per half-day. Played on a dark-sounding 12 string, and apparently with 12 fingers, this pretty-sad contrapuntal ditty evokes a nature walk with Leadbelly and a big bag of gorp. Dig the cool clunk when Kottke goes for his slide; lesser artists and producers would insist on another take. --Dylan Hicks

Haze
I Do Love My Lady
from Haze, ASI Records, 1974
Another chapter in the Twin Cities' neglected history of pre-Prince R&B, Haze, formerly Purple Haze, scratched Billboard's soul chart in March of '75 with this groovy ballad in the vein of the Stylistics and Blue Magic. Seven pieces strong on this, their lone hit, the group wheedles on bended knee with skyscraper harmonies, Paul Johnson's smooth bass rolls, Peter Johnson's organ swells, and lead singer Willy Thomas's falsetto swoops of devotion. --Dylan Hicks

N.N.B.
Slack
Wave Seven single, 1978
N.N.B. leader Mark Freeman is another underappreciated Godzilla of Minnesota music, as is demonstrated by "25 Reasons" (released as Red House; see "How Could You Idiots Forget..." p. 40) and this tense punk/wave classic from '78. "Can't sleep anymore 'cause I always wake up screaming," Freeman sings in a voice somewhere between Lou Reed's stoicism and David Thomas's anxiety. Drummer Jim Tollefsrud and bassist Wayne Hasti provide the steady pulse of existential dread, while Freeman and fellow guitarist Richard Champ pick and slash and whine, providing relief on the song's pretty turnaround, crying bloody effects-pedal murder on the nightmarish close. --Dylan Hicks

Flamingo
I'm the Gun
live performances
Unrecorded, unheralded, unforgettable. It usually capped three (yes, children, three) sets, and in its day it was as awesome as anything Springsteen delivered in his prime. Robert Wilkinson and Johnny Rey would face off with dueling guitars, playing for their lives, and the whole punk-pop epiphany was climaxed by Wilkinson soaring splay-legged across the stage, to a fevered crowd on the dance floor below. At the moment, Flamin' Oh's are in the studio recording new material with producer Rich Mattson; we want this one, dead or alive. --Jim Walsh

The Overtones
Calhoun Surf
Twin/Tone single, 1978
Minneapolis's fabled punk/new-no-now-wave Longhorn Bar era would seem an unusual time and place to spawn a surf band, but hometown boy Danny Amis and his band the Overtones were game to try. Amis's original instrumental "Calhoun Surf" shared the band's 1978 Twin/Tone 7-inch EP with vocal performances "Red Checker Wagon" and "Surfer's Holiday," a cover from an AIP beach movie. When Amis was invited to join New York's Raybeats, the song went with him. It later accompanied him to Nashville, where he cofounded Los Straitjackets. Recognizing a good thing, both bands recorded and released renditions of "Calhoun Surf." The capper came in 1999 when instro rock heroes the Ventures chose to record the tune as well, stamping their imprimatur on this modern surf classic. --Ron Thums

The Suicide Commandos
Complicated Fun
from Big Hits of Mid-America Volume Three, Twin/Tone, 1979
"The New Wave is the old wave 'cause we know it all by heart," quavered guitarist Chris Osgood in 1978, already wearying of the scene he had helped create, "we're looking for an anthem that we haven't torn apart." But instead of being taken to heart, much less torn apart, "Complicated Fun" became a lost punk classic, released after the Commandos had broken up, and covered locally until a new version, recorded by the band with Magnolias singer John Freeman on vocals, appeared in a 2002 Target commercial that still airs occasionally. For a timeless song about how punk might grow up without growing out of its contradictions, the way-belated sellout was a fittingly complicated ending. --Peter S. Scholtes

Curtiss A
Land of the Free
Twin/Tone single, 1979
To me, this song, written by maverick keyboardist Mark Goldstein, defined the late-'70s/early-'80s Minneapolis music scene. There were two different recordings of the song: a version by Buzz Barker & the Atomic Bums (which was Curt, Mark Goldstein, and the Commandos) that appeared on Big Hits of Mid America Vol. 3 in the summer of '79, and another stab by Curtiss A (which was Curt, Mark, Bob Dunlap, Chris Osgood, Dave Ahl, and Renaldo Antonio Toro), issued as a single that fall. I hadn't listened to them both back-to-back for many years and when I recently did I found that I preferred the latter. Curt's impassioned, insane delivery and the exuberant guitars of Chris Osgood and the leader's longtime right-hand man Bob (later "Slim") Dunlap are what really made this particular recording. Live, it was an absolute showstopper. At the finale, when Curt screamed defiantly, "We're in the heart of the beast," it was empowering to the audience, as if we were all saying to the hipper, bigger cities, "You got nothing on this town!" --Peter Jesperson