Picked to Click XVI

 

1. The Alarmists

2. Black Blondie

3. The God Damn Doo Wop Band

4. Chooglin'

5. Maria Isa

6. White Light Riot

7. Gay Beast

8. (tie) Awesome Snakes

Birthday Suits

10. (tie) One for the Team

Vampire Hands

As the freshly commissioned City Pages music editor, I have been searching for a way to make our annual list of 10 promising new bands a little more rock 'n' roll. Not literally, mind you—screw rock as a genre; if the list comprised equal parts Dixieland/Tuvan throat-singing fusion groups and gutter-bluegrass cabaret acts, I would look forward to the upcoming year of concertgoing as if it held the boundless delight of 365 successive birthdays. No, it's the rock 'n' roll spirit that catches up city aldermen and harried waitresses alike, provoking them to take off the day-job uniform—that's not the real you—and head down into the basement for the first night of band practice. And what better way to embody this ferocious, never-say-die spirit than by pushing a 10-point scale all the way up to 11? Well, maybe by eating all the ballots and then puking them up onstage during the ceremony for the Minnesota Music Awards on Sunday. That would indeed be pretty fierce, but it would do nothing to address the problem of what to do when your Top 10 poll has multiple tie scores. So, I'm sticking with the whole "11" idea.

 

There were 117 voters this year—knowledgeable insider types, mostly; your club owners and bookers, your music geek writers, your record label mafiosi—each of whom submitted a ballot of five bands numbered according to personal preference. First place on a ballot was worth five points, second place was worth four, and so on down the line. If the voter listed bands but didn't bother to rank them, each band on the ballot got three points flat. The band with the most points won.

There were an unbelievable 280 new musical acts in this town, and in the following pages, you can read about 4 percent of them. (The top 4 percent, even.)

—Sarah Askari

Clicked in the Club

Friday: Gay Beast perform at Big V's, 1567 University Ave. W.; 651.645.8472. Saturday: The Alarmists perform at the Summit Big Brew 20th Anniversary Party on Harriet Island (at around 12:30 p.m.); 651.265.7800. Chooglin' play an in-store at 7:00 p.m. at Aardvark Records, 924 Lowry Ave. NE; 612.781.3404. Black Blondie perform at Bryant-Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St.; 612.825.8949. Sunday: The Alarmists, the God Damn Doo Wop Band, White Light Riot, and Birthday Suits perform at the 26th Annual Minnesota Music Awards at First Avenue and 7th St. Entry, 701 1st Ave. N.; 612.332.1775. Vampire Hands play the Triple Rock Social Club, 629 Cedar Ave.; 612.333.7399.

 

PTC 06 Top 5s from Top 11 bands:

Top 5 by Kat Naden of the God Damn Doo Wop Band 1. Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels 2. The Awesome Snakes 3. The Gateway District 4. The Strait A's 5. Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters   Top 5 by Danny of the Awesome Snakes The Evening Rig The God Damn Doo Wop Band The Retainers MC/VL Chooglin' (no particular order)   Top 5 by Maria Isa Angel Tisch Jones Back-Up Plomo Leroy Smokes DJ Don Cuco (no particular order)   Top 5 by Angela Gerend of Gay Beast 1. Synchrocylcotron 2. Skoal Kodiak 3. Vampire Hands 4. Jose Bove 5. Total Fucking Blood   Top 5 by Ian Anderson of One for the Team 1. Tapes 'n Tapes 2. Hockey Night 3. Haley Bonar 4. Plastic Constellations 5. A Night in the Box   Top 5 by Mike Schwandt of White Light Riot The Alarmists The Debut Tapes 'n Tapes Happy Apple The Bill Mike Band (no particular order)

Top 5 by the Alarmists Solid Gold Bridge Club The Hasbeen The Debut The Maps of Norway (no particular order)   Top 5 by Brian Vanderwerf of Chooglin' Birthday Suits Cockfight The Awesome Snakes Spider Fighter The Honeymoon Shockers (no particular order)   Top 5 by Hideo Takahashi of Birthday Suits Chooglin' Skoal Kodiak His Mischief Vampire Hands God Damn Do Wop Band (no particular order)   Top 5 by Tasha Baron of Black Blondie Maria Isa Mystery Palace Omaur Bliss iQuit Music Series M.anifest MC/Four Shades (no particular order)   Top 5 by Colin Johnson of Vampire Hands Mute Era Gay Beast Shahs Skoal Kodiak Synchrocyclotron (no particular order)

 

Picking new bands may be a matter of taste, but sampling beer—that's a science. "Taste this," Ryan MacMillan of the Alarmists says to Eric Lovold, sliding his newly delivered brew across a weathered wooden table at a south Minneapolis restaurant. "Probably a dirty tap. Notice that sugary, kinda butterscotchy, flavor? That's microorganisms in the tap line. Grain Belt's not supposed to taste like that. It has more of a salty flavor."

Lovold takes a drink, pauses, nods, and slides the glass back. A black watchman cap covers the frontman's shaggy blond hair, and he wears a moustache that's so meticulously contoured it could have come off the top shelf at Theatrical Supply. Which is to say that Lovold looks like an actor portraying a '70s cop disguised as a gay longshoreman.