SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL >>

• BEST ACOUSTIC PERFORMER
  He rarely plays live, but newcomer Rodine's self-titled long-player on Mercy Recordings is a performance in itself: It kicks off with a stark reading of Dylan's "New Morning," which is gutsy enough, never mind all the freshly unwrapped reworkings that follow (to name a few, covers of Ray... More >>
• BEST ADULT VIDEO STORE
  In some instances, size does matter--especially when you're talking 20,000 square feet. At $4.28 per video for two nights with a $50 per movie deposit, SexWorld's gargantuan selection of flesh in motion can be a bit daunting for the neophyte who doesn't know a double-D feature from a triple-X... More >>
• BEST ALBUM OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  Every year readers pick Atmosphere as the best hip-hop group in the Twin Cities, and every year we point that readership to another act they should notice as well (see "Best Hip-Hop Artist, p. 154). Atmosphere are by now such a self-sustaining cultural phenomenon that the crew--rapper/guiding... More >>
• BEST ALL-AGES VENUE
  City Pages readers over 21 years of age will be forgiven for assuming the Garage takes this category by default. It has been a rough year for minors who want to see live, amplified music. The Babylon Gallery burned down, the Fireball Espresso Cafe met the wrecking ball, and Eclipse Records... More >>
• BEST BAND NAME
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• BEST BAND NAME (SECOND PLACE)
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• BEST BAND NAME (THIRD PLACE)
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• BEST BAND TO BREAK UP IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS
  Maybe they were trying to break your heart. Onstage, this local pop-punk band played Paxil-spiked emotive rock to a room full of people who would always be teenagers in their minds. And for a while, they lived their fans' high school dreams: The Crush released two albums on the Bay Area record... More >>
• BEST BAND TO LEAVE THE TWIN CITIES IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  We are hereby changing the name of this category to "Best Band to Leave the Twin Cities, Gyrate with Naked Supermodels in Ibiza, Dry Hump a Steer in Majorca, Record Simulated Orgasms in Los Angeles, and Still Make Hometown Fans Want to Lick Your Nipples." Because now that Har Mar Superstar has... More >>
• BEST BARTENDER
  Neighborhood bars really serve as an outpost for those familial feelings you could never, ever express to your actual family. That makes the bartender a patriarch, a matriarch, a brother, a sister, a spouse, and an ex-lover, all in one heady swirl. Who could be all of that and remember what the... More >>
• BEST BEER SELECTION IN A BAR
  Yeah, we know that William's Uptown Pub and Peanut Bar has something like 300 bottled brews and its fair share of taps and that Old Chicago can boast high numbers of what Kurt Vonnegut once called "yeast farts" with a bit of hops, malt, and water. But is selection all about numbers? Serious beer... More >>
• BEST BLOODY MARY
  By now everyone knows that the Twin Cities is a bloody mary haven. From the St. Paul Grill's spicy concoction to the Uptown Bar and Cafe's liquid breakfast of champions, at least half of the urban watering holes in these parts offer some fine variation on the potent combination of vodka and... More >>
• BEST BLUES BAND
  Quit your What year is this anyway? bitchin' and listen up, young bucks and lionesses. It says here that Lamont Cranston is the best blues band because the blues is about stubborn stick-to-itiveness, grooves made outta ruts, and because Hayes and his compadres have been kicking the shit out of... More >>
• BEST BLUES BAR
  Fans of live blues have always dug the option of getting on the floor and getting nasty, or sitting back and watching others do the same. Lucky for all involved, not only does the MMC (the biggest music-club room in St. Paul) feature the old stage from the Mirage in Minneapolis and a massive... More >>
• BEST CLUB DJ
  Kahalé has more aliases than a big-time New York mafia family, but maybe that grandiose list of titles is warranted. From the early party days he spent introducing ghetto house tracks under the name Ralph Laurenn, to the sadistic, mid-'90s techno sets he conducted as DJ Apollo, to the... More >>
• BEST COCKTAILS
  Chino Latino often gets slammed for being too hipster-friendly, but we don't give a damn about the patronage: If loving a place that sells cocktails that come with umbrellas and plastic monkeys is wrong, we don't want to be right. If you want a boring beer or a simple glass of wine, then by all... More >>
• BEST CONCERT OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  I saw it happen. I was there. Words whose weight should be reserved only for presidential assassinations, natural disasters, broadcast television breast-unveilings, and last summer's Lifter Puller shows. Anyone who spoke those sentences last June recalls every detail from the nights the... More >>
• BEST CONCERT VENUE
  Go ahead. Show us a musician who doesn't like strutting under the glimmer of Christmas lights or sucking up a beer beneath the velvet paintings in the Clown Lounge downstairs. Show us a fan who hasn't shown up early for Raleigh's Tacos (Tuesdays and Fridays), or crowded into the photo booth, or... More >>
• BEST DANCE CLUB
  If there was a category for Best Bad Club Made Good, there would be no question that Tabu would take home the victor's window decal. But since there is no such category, proprietor Farzad Freshtehku will have to settle for Best Dance Club. You might not know his name, but if you know his story,... More >>
• BEST GAY BAR
  Let's face it: The contenders for this category have nothing on the Saloon. The rude security people at the Gay 90's have more sass than the Adam's-appled divas belting out Diana Ross songs onstage. The yuppie patrons at Jetset look like they just walked out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. The... More >>
• BEST HAPPY HOUR
  What good is "happy hour" if it finds you surrounded by long faces, bad music, and office-boardroom decor? Really, if it was just about cheap booze, you could drink at home. Happy hour should have the power to actually improve your mood, especially on those dead-of-winter afternoons when it's... More >>
• BEST HIP-HOP ARTIST
  What do you need to make a great hip-hop crew? An identity, first of all, and the Star Tribune's Chris Riemenschneider got the hook right for Doomtree: "Rhymesayers with skateboards." You also need early recordings that will eventually become collectible, and the Doomtree label/studio produced... More >>
• BEST IRISH PUB
  Tom Scanlon has operated a bar at the corner of University and Cretin Avenues for 20 years. For most of that period it was called the Ace Box Bar and it catered to overnight factory workers and truckers. Then one day in the mid-'90s the main employer in the immediate neighborhood packed up and... More >>
• BEST JAZZ ARTIST
  You might say George Cartwright is a ringer. By the time he settled in Roseville a few years back, the 52-year-old saxophonist and composer had already established himself as one of the leading lights of New York's downtown scene, where Curlew, his genre-busting free-improv/ rock/blues/funk... More >>
• BEST JAZZ CLUB/BEST RENOVATION
  Our perennial winner in the "Best Jazz Club" category has strengthened its status by moving to elegant new digs in downtown Minneapolis. We actually miss the beleaguered Zinc--we loved the spacious bar, bitter Bastille cocktails and tangy lemon tarts. But now with the Dakota moving in, we feel... More >>
• BEST JUKEBOX
  The jukebox at the Turf Club is one of the most underutilized musical treasures in the Twin Cities. There's a simple, obvious reason for this: Most people go to the Turf Club to hear live music. Consequently, the jukebox stays dormant during the bar's busiest hours. The old skells and pool... More >>
• BEST KARAOKE
  Some years ago, no one would have thought that karaoke, the ultimate geek party favor, would make a comeback. But it's bigger and hipper than ever, and therein lies the problem. The spirit of karaoke is a populist one, and too many of the karaoke nights around town have become too ironic, too... More >>
• BEST LESBIAN BAR
  Just miles west of Club Metro's gravesite sits an unremarkable sports bar. Its faded red sign sticks out of a dirt parking lot, indifferently announcing its presence, and the generic venue name written on it might as well be Drink Beer Here. But don't let its drab appearance fool you, because... More >>
• BEST LIVE ARTIST
  The list of hip-hop crews who rely on live instrumentation is brief because the music can be redundant if the group doesn't take risks, or embarrassing if there's no intuitive intimacy between the MCs and the band. And yet, after nearly seven years together, Heiruspecs is achieving the sort of... More >>
• BEST LOCAL MUSIC COMPILATION
  The Iron Range doesn't just love country music, it is country music: The ravaged north of our state is at once a thing of beauty, a product of human pain, and a terrain whose ownership and cultural control is far from decided yet (at least if environmentalists, Bible-bangers, workers, and... More >>
• BEST MARGARITA
  Ideally, margaritas should be as plain as the sun in the sky: sun, a few fluffy clouds, sky--perfect! What more do you need? Well, tequila, for one, and not any of that oaked-up junk that arrivistes find so sophisticated; in a margarita, tequila should be pure as sunlight, oak smoke not needed.... More >>
• BEST MARTINI
  We searched high and low for the perfect martini in these Twin Cities. What we found may surprise you. Night after night we walked out of [Your Bar Name Here] completely and utterly convinced we had found the best martini. It was always the third one. It's quite simple, almost as simple as the... More >>
• BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR--MINNEAPOLIS
  There's a purple-haired girl sitting next to a white-shag lampshade playing Yahtzee with a young but already grizzled tattooed guy in a work shirt. Two very PTA-looking moms sit a couple of tables over and watch their kids play Atari. Boisterous groups of twentysomethings gulp beer and sip wine... More >>
• BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR--ST. PAUL
  Sure you've heard all about Arnellia's lately. You've read about the Cameroonian immigrant who was gunned down there by some knucklehead one early Friday morning in February for no reason whatsoever. And about the St. Paul cop who subsequently lost his job because he purportedly fled the scene... More >>
• BEST NEW BAND
  Death metal is dead. Long live death! Because as the plague of Morbid Angel imitators yields to the sound of this proggy quartet grinding out spirit-of-'76 chords, there's no need to fear the reaper. Guitarist Erik Fratzke, moonlighting from his gig as Happy Apple's bassist, brings a jazzman's... More >>
• BEST OLD BAND
  Named for the St. Paul neighborhood that gave us Augie Garcia and his band, Minnesota's first rock 'n' rollers, Westside is a similarly integrated group of Latino and black musicians, anchored in the muscular but understated beat of drummer and co-founder Junior. They are, in other words, the... More >>
• BEST OPEN MIC
  One of the best things about Balls is that it takes place at midnight every Saturday on a real stage in a real theater, though the dark recesses of the stage do bear a swampy likeness to a missing molar. As you enter the playhouse, someone will ask you if you're going to perform, and there's... More >>
• BEST R&B ARTIST
  We could probably retire this category with a lifetime achievement award to Flyte Tyme's Jimmy Jam Harris and Terry Lewis, or get nostalgic and go with Prince. Instead, we'll give a nod to the up-and-coming artist J. Isaac, who's played just a couple of gigs around town but has a sweet, stellar... More >>
• BEST ROCK BAND
  The first time we saw Sweet J.A.P. singer Sho, he was flying face-first through the air in a swan dive, his nose headed straight for the drum kit. It wasn't his drum kit, mind you. In fact, it wasn't even his band playing onstage. You might say the music just moved him. Though if his music... More >>
• BEST ROCK CLUB
  We admit that when we first visited the Triple Rock, our insatiable urge to see a show was trumped by our insatiable urge to eat a burrito. But now that countless other local haunts also resemble Chipotle (we dare you to check out Tonic's sterile silver walls and not thirst for a... More >>
• BEST SONGWRITER
  His songs ain't gonna climb every mountain, swim the deepest ocean, or chop down every tree in the Amazon with a Swiss army knife just to pen 3,500-word love songs on the finest wood-pulp paper. But Askeleton albums are epic in a smaller, subtler way. Frontman Knol Tate's music, simple but never... More >>
• BEST STRIP CLUB
  There are a few things that any decent human being should do only in the privacy of her own bedroom. Getting naked isn't one of them. True, when in public, we prudish Minnesotans like to cover our bodies with a ridiculous amount of clothing: earmuffs, headbands, glove liners, butt warmers, nose... More >>
• BEST VOCALIST (FEMALE)
  You won't find her name on the lips of many hipsters or hypesters, but take it from the well-honed ears of CC Club barkeep/tastemaker Ken Wenzel, who, during one particularly memorable Corbett set, enthused to a fellow fan, "She's the best. Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Chrissie Hynde, I don't... More >>
• BEST VOCALIST (MALE)
  When no less of an expert on exquisite vocalese than Curtiss A tells you matter-of-factly one night that Jacox is "the best singer to ever come out of this town," you don't argue. You simply consider the statement for yourself, regard the soul man's work with the likes of the Butanes Soul Revue,... More >>