The Current Rewind (Minnesota Public Radio)

Ask most casual Minnesota music fans about the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis, and they'll probably tell you about the folk and blues hippie scene of the '60s and '70s. These days, the West Bank is home to a thriving Somali population, and several Somali-Minnesotans are famous throughout the diaspora for their own music and poetry. In this episode, we learn about music and community from our Somali neighbors. [Songs sampled: Aar Maanta & Friends - "Welcome to Cedar-Riverside," Lazerbeak - "Winging It," Aar Maanta - "Deeqa," Aar Maanta - "Tahriib," Faarrow - "I Don't Belong To You," Huhroon - "Happy Birthday Haroon," Deka - "Fond Memory"]

The Andrews Sisters, the vocal trio who sold nearly 100 million records during their lifetimes, came to symbolize the United States during WWII. You'd think their story is settled. But in this episode, Maxene's manager and longtime companion shares another side of the outgoing middle sister. Plus, historian Tom Rockvam talks about the Andrews' "heart home," just 25 miles outside of their hometown, Minneapolis. [Songs sampled: Lazerbeak - "Winging It," The Andrews Sisters - "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," The Andrews Sisters - "Bei Mir Bist du Schon"]

In this episode, you'll meet a family of pastors hell-bent on saving souls. A pro-sticker Washington wife. A B-horror blood-gusher with a heart of gold. Plus...Prince's photographer? This cast of characters is just a peek into the unbelievable story of the Peters Brothers, the evangelical crusaders who preached against rock throughout the 1980s. [Songs sampled: KISS - "Plaster Caster"; Prince - "Darling Nikki"; Impaler - "It Won't Die"]

Your favorite Minnesota music history show is back! In our second season, we're exploring 10 pivotal days in the history of First Avenue, the Minneapolis club that has hosted life-changing shows for the past 50 years. Episodes air on Tuesdays starting Sept. 22.

One day after the LAPD beat up Rodney King, an Ice Cube concert went down in history as one of the most violent shows ever held at First Avenue. Hosted by Jay Smooth, we ask rap experts and former First Ave staffers about gangsta rap, security, and the uneasy relationship between the Minnesota music industry and Black hip-hop artists.

The Current Rewind is a music history podcast hosted by Andrea Swensson. Songs in this episode: Lazerbeak - "Winging It"

Grab a carnation and travel back to the dawn of the '70s, when Joe Cocker and his "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" packed the room that would later become First Avenue. The club's rookie owners had a lot to learn, but thanks to this show, they earned the attention of Minnesotan music fans and media. [Songs sampled: Joe Cocker - "With A Little Help From My Friends," Joe Cocker - "The Letter," The Del Counts - "Let The Good Times Roll," Icetep - "Hive Sound," APM Music - "Feel This Way"]

When First Avenue entered bankruptcy on Election Day 2004, some saw it as the end of an era. But others - including devoted employees, local music fans, and a certain stage-diving ally in City Hall - would not rest until they'd saved the club. [Songs sampled: Icetep - "Hive Sound," Mojo Nixon - "Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus," Lifter Puller - "Lifter Puller Vs. The End Of The Evening"]

Ever watched your grandmother spit verses for a crowd? Tou SaiK Lee has. He's one of several younger Hmong-Minnesotans who have collaborated with elders in the last decade, combining folk traditions and newer sounds. In this episode, we ask folks including Tou SaiK, Lis Pos, Shawn Mouacheupao, and Ernest and Missy Whiteman why and how they've reached across generations. [Songs sampled: Tou SaiKo Lee - "United Worldwide"; PosNoSys - "Sunshine"; Shawn Mouacheupao - "Forever, My Dear (feat. Lis Pos)"; Phooj Ywg - "Hlub Tso Cia"; Jasmine Tierra - "Our Love Was Real"]

Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, married founding members of Low, have quietly shattered rock music norms throughout their quarter-century career. In this episode, we join them for an interview and a walking tour of their Northern Minnesota hometown. [Songs sampled: Low - "What Part Of Me"; Low - "No Comprende"; Low - "Words"; Low - "Starfire"; Low - "Fly"; Bob Dylan - "Desolation Row"]

The day Prince passed away, thousands of Minnesotans congregated outside First Avenue to dance and cry. Although the street party might've seemed like magic, of course real people made it happen - and we talked to a few of them for this episode. It's the last full installment of our season, and it celebrates Prince, parties, and Minnesota music. [Songs sampled: Prince - "Sometimes It Snows In April," Cameron Kinghorn - "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore," Lizzo - "The Beautiful Ones"]

Alternative rock stayed underground throughout the '80s, but in the early '90s, that distorted, furious sound burst into the mainstream. Experimental bands who'd been playing First Avenue were suddenly going global. In this episode, members of Cows and Babes in Toyland talk about sharing a bill with Sonic Youth at First Avenue. [Songs sampled: Sonic Youth - "Tunic (Song For Karen)," Kiss the Tiger - "Bad Boy," Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing," Babes in Toyland - "Swamp Pussy," Cows - "Memorial"]

Hip-hop legends and XXL freshmen. Indie rap nerds and kids from the 'burbs. Skaters, DJs, and tornado sirens. These are the main ingredients for Soundset, a Minnesota-based hip-hop festival that draws more than 30,000 people every year. In this episode of The Current Rewind, we find out how Soundset grew from a warehouse rave to, at one point, the biggest hip-hop festival in the country. Rhymesayers bosses Siddiq, J-Bird, and Slug of Atmosphere discuss their Soundset triumphs and fears. Plus, stories from Lizzo, Psalm One, DJ Spinderella, and more. Music sampled: Lazerbeak - "Winging It" Stock media provided by SplashStudio / Pond5

Can you imagine PJ Harvey walking down a small-town Main Street? Kurt Cobain antiquing in farm country? Yup, that happened. It was all thanks to Pachyderm Studio, a rural recording facility that used to be a family home. In this episode, we'll meet that family, plus a dozen musicians and engineers who've recorded some unforgettable work at the studio. Engineer Steve Albini tells us why Pachyderm is so special, and Lori Barbero from Babes in Toyland shares a story about taking Nirvana to the Mall of America. Music sampled: Lazerbeak - "Winging It"; Nirvana - "All Apologies"; Ramblin' Jack Elliot - "The Buffalo Skinners (On The Trail of the Buffalo)"; Soul Asylum - "Bitter Pill"; PJ Harvey - "50 ft. Queenie"; Babes in Toyland - "Bruise Violet"; Gully Boys - "Dizzy Romantics" Stock media provided by SplashStudio / Pond5

Almost 40 years ago, D.C. rockers Bad Brains played First Avenue with two Minnesotan openers: Sweet Taste of Afrika and Husker Du. While Husker Du are relatively well-known today, Sweet Taste of Afrika are all but forgotten. Meanwhile, Bad Brains are world-famous, but their hurtful behavior has flown under the radar. In this episode, we tease out the complicated relationship between the three bands on the bill, their genres, and their identities. [Songs sampled: Bad Brains - "Banned In DC," Husker Du - "Pink Turns To Blue," Sweet Taste of Afrika, "Children Of The Nile," Gully Boys - "New Song No. 2," The Smokes - "2 I Luv"]

A piece of First Avenue's ceiling fell to the ground during a concert in August 2015. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. But throughout the music industry, concert safety has been a huge issue during the last decade. How can we keep each other safe? [Songs sampled: Icetep - "Hive Sound," Stereo Confession - "Tonight," Theory of a Deadman - "Angel"]

Before we wrap up our First Avenue season, we have to pay homage to its famous painted stars.

Most casual Prince fans know 'Purple Rain' was partially filmed at First Avenue. But did you know the title song is a live recording, taped at First Ave a few months before filming started? In this episode, we meet Prince and the Revolution at a benefit show for Minnesota Dance Theatre, where they debuted "Purple Rain" in support of dance and community. [Songs sampled: Prince - "Purple Rain," Purple Playground - "Purple Playground"]

Bonnie Raitt is best known for her hits "Something to Talk About" and "I Can't Make You Love Me." But back in 1971, she was a 21-year-old kid with a friendly streak, guitar chops, and her first record deal. That summer, she recorded her debut album on Lake Minnetonka with a motley crew of Minneapolis musicians, making music and commotion in a wild recording retreat.

Mark Wheat left The Current in May 2020, but not before recording an interview with Cecilia Johnson for The Current Rewind. In this conversation, Mark talks about how he got a star on First Avenue's wall, how music intertwines with his spirituality, and what he sees as his greatest impact on Minnesota music.

Disco was the ticket at Uncle Sam's in the late '70s. But the club's destiny changed course in Nov. 1979, when the Ramones and Pat Benatar rocked the Mainroom on back-to-back nights. In this episode, hosted by Zoo Animal's Holly Hansen, we learn how First Ave became a rock 'n' roll sanctuary. [Songs sampled: Pat Benatar - "Heartbreaker," Zoo Animal - "Black And Charred," Starland Vocal Band - "Afternoon Delight," Ramones - "Blitzkrieg Bop - Live at Rainbow Theatre, London, 12/31/77," Prince - "Head," Curtiss A, "Land Of The Free," Icetep - "Hive Sound"]

Nov. 28-29, 1979: The days that told the future

Disco was the ticket at Uncle Sam's in the late '70s. But the club's destiny changed course in Nov. 1979, when the Ramones and Pat Benatar rocked the Mainroom on back-to-back nights. In this episode, hosted by Zoo Animal's Holly Hansen, we learn how First Ave became a rock 'n' roll sanctuary.

This is the second episode of The Current Rewind's First Avenue season. If you missed the first one, catch up here.

Transcript of
The Current Rewind
season 2, episode 2: "Nov. 28-29, 1979"

[Pat Benatar, "Heartbreaker"]

Mark Wheat VO: [over Benatar] It's 1979, and Pat Benatar is on stage at Uncle Sam's, jumping up and down with a microphone in her hand. The crowd has been waiting for this one, the single from her new album, and as the guitar builds, so does the energy on the floor.

["Heartbreaker" fades up for a few lines, fades down while Icetep's "Hive Sound" fades up]

Mark Wheat VO: Like most emerging rock stars, Pat is wearing all black — and behind her, a guitar crunches through the chorus. From the dance floor to the balcony, people are cheering and nodding to the beat.

For us, this is a glimpse of the past — but people at that '79 Benatar show were seeing the future. As Pat performed at the Uncle Sam's disco in downtown Minneapolis, the club's corporate management had their eye on an exit. Thanks to her and others, the venue's next chapter would turn out a lot less Saturday Night Fever and a lot more rock and roll.

I'm Mark Wheat. This is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. For our second season, we're exploring the history of First Avenue, the downtown Minneapolis venue that has become one of the Twin Cities' — and the country's — greatest clubs.

In our first episode, we covered the beginning of First Ave's life as a music venue...which hit a few bumps right away. When the Depot filed for bankruptcy in the summer of '71, it stayed closed for a year — before an out-of-town company turned it into a disco. That scheme stayed alive until 1979, when two rock shows — the Ramones and Pat Benatar, playing back-to-back nights — set the table for First Avenue's future.

For this second episode, we're excited to introduce Holly Hansen, the musician behind Zoo Animal. Holly will help us tell the story of First Ave's second incarnation — as a suburban disco in the middle of downtown Minneapolis — and the people who, in 1979, turned it into a, quote, "New Wave Experience."

[rewind noise]

Holly Hansen VO: The two most vivid memories I have of First Avenue both involve intimacy, but in very different ways.

I was standing at the side of the stage during a Kevin Drew show, and a stagehand made eye contact with me and waved me over. Next thing I knew, I was slow-dancing with Kevin on stage, thinking, "Why me?" I seriously think there are many people in that room who would've loved to be on that stage holding his sweaty body, but here I was, simply being a good sport.

[Zoo Animal's "Black and Charred" fades up, plays under VO]

Holly Hansen VO: A few years later, I released the Zoo Animal album Departure, some of the most personal music I'd ever written, and the release show was at the 7th St Entry. I don't know how to explain what was going on that night, but it felt very different. It was so quiet and focused; it was like the audience took up part of the weight of the songs. I had never felt so connected with an audience before or since.

I feel myself at First Avenue because it's ready for any experience, always centered on music. It's a place where no matter who you are or what you like, the audience and performer can be one. In the late 1970s, First Ave wasn't known as a venue for intimate performances. And then punk happened.

Back in the summer of 1972, the Depot had been shut down for a year. Then, in July, it reopened under new management. Instead of a black exterior, the former Greyhound station was now painted red, white, and blue. The Depot's owners hadn't sold the company, but American Avents, a company based in Cincinnati, took over its operation, turning it into one of several Uncle Sam's franchises throughout the U.S.

Chris Riemenschneider: I think they had like eight or nine by the time that Uncle Sam's opened here.

Holly Hansen VO: Chris Riemenschneider is the author of First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom.

Chris Riemenschneider: And in fact, the first year or two of the Uncle Sam's, they struggled a bit early on, apparently. But one of the things that really helped it was in maybe about '75 or '76, they changed the liquor law to — Minnesota went from 21 to 18 and up, drinking, and obviously, that was a big boost to the place.

Andy Sturdevant: By the late '70s, you've got the heyday of kind of the seedy downtown Hennepin strip.

Holly Hansen VO: Andy Sturdevant is the co-author of the book Closing Time, a history of Twin Cities bars.

Andy Sturdevant: Like, that's the place that you're talking about when you're going to school and the taunt that you hear is, "Aw, your mom works on Hennepin!" This is that era. And so, you've got that whole strip, and there's still a couple of bars just barely hanging on from that older era. But you've mostly got strip clubs; you've got porno shops; you've got clubs. That's where the gay bathhouses are.

Holly Hansen VO: And Uncle Sam's was one of the roughest bars near the Hennepin strip. The manager was a U of M dropout named Steve McClellan.

Steve McClellan: My name's Steven McClellan, and I worked in a nightclub downtown from 1973 to 2004. [4:00]

Holly Hansen VO: Steve met with The Current Rewind's producer, Cecilia Johnson, for two separate interviews. For the first, he brought LeeAnn Weimar, First Avenue's former director of marketing. For the second, he came with Richard Luka, who started as a doorperson and ended up designing First Ave's logo. Steve had a story about everyone.

[supercut of Steve McClellan exclaiming names: "Dave Ahl. Tom Spiegel! Cara Lewis. Gary Rue! Pat Lyons. Kevin Sadowski [ph]. Mark Downey!"]

Holly Hansen VO: And as you might hope, Steve McClellan is one of live music's biggest fans. One of his favorite quotes is from Frank Zappa: "Once you record it, you've sold out." He says he picked up this attitude as a college kid.

Steve McClellan: I'm a West Bank guy. I remember when people would go to the West Bank when I was going to the U. I lived on the West Bank from '68, '69 to '73. And you had five, six venues doing live music.

Holly Hansen VO: Steve was on the West Bank attending the University of Minnesota, but dropped out in the mid-'70s. Before that, though, he started working the bar at Uncle Sam's.

Steve McClellan: My feeling is in '75 they put me in management training. I had been bartending probably since late 1973. And after they sent me to the management-training thing, I was ready to go back to school. I was fed up with the corporate nature of it. And then I came back, and I was pulled out of training early because Pat Lyons, who was managing Minneapolis at the time, got promoted. They pulled me out of training and gave me First Avenue.

Holly Hansen VO: Even after Steve's promotion, he and his bosses didn't always get along.

Steve McClellan: You wanna get me on a rant when I put the first black doorman at the door when American Avents hated it, and all the people involved couldn't believe I had a black doorman? Ah, women in management — I put a woman named Marsha Lear in the Uncle Sam's management program, and I wish I could find her again, because I owe her an apology. American Avents was totally not gonna have a female manager back in the '70s and I realized I sent her — I went through their management program. It's a good old boy network. I hated it.

But looking back and seeing how their management meetings went and all that, it would be like you were being run by a — I never went to a fraternity, but back in college I always thought they were kind of a weird group — frat guys. Pretty elite group, they drink a lot of beer. And my image of that whole upper management at American Avents reminded me like they were all from Buffalo, New York. It was one big frat running the company.

Holly Hansen VO: The music at Uncle Sam's was largely DJs playing safe pop hits, as dictated by the national office.

Chris Riemenschneider: They had this deal where there would be DJs with a live drummer, and this was actually where Bobby Z, later of Prince and the Revolution, first played the club. He was like 18 or 19, on dance night, and, you know, just playing along to recorded music. They used to have another guy, Denny Craswell, who performed with a jungle theme. He had drums built like into, like, logs — it was like this jungle vibe. Pretty cheesy stuff, from what I can tell, but it was a big hit. They only had concerts once in a while — they would bring in some local and regional stuff. And then later on, after McClellan got a little more involved, in the late '70s they brought in stuff that was more Top 40 . . .

[Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight": "Skyrockets in flight/Afternoon delight"]

Chris Riemenschneider: . . . that stuff didn't do well.

Holly Hansen VO: One feature at Uncle Sam's that brought repeat business was its Sunday-night teen dances. One of the regulars there was the future Time member and hit-making producer Jimmy Jam, as he told Pete Scholtes of City Pages in 2003.

Jimmy Jam: Yeah, it was a disco, and it was packed, man. I know they had at least a thousand people every Sunday. There was a crowd, that was sort of a roller skating crowd that I used to hang out with at the Roller Gardens, and I think the Roller Gardens was like a big Friday night thing. So you'd go to the Gardens on Friday night, and Saturday there was a whole lot of different options, and then Sunday was always Uncle Sam's. But it was a lot of the same people you'd see, just kinda from my circle. I went to Washburn High, and so all sort of that crowd from there.

But really, the crowd came to Uncle Sam's from everywhere. I mean, back when Hopkins was really a suburb and like seemed like it was on the other side of the world, kids from Hopkins and Minnetonka and Wayzata, and it was basically like a sort of a melting pot of races and ages, but mostly a lot of cute girls, and it was just a fun place to hang out.

Holly Hansen VO: The history of disco is complicated, and although it has roots in black and queer culture, Uncle Sam's' version was decidedly mainstream.

Chris Riemenschneider: At that point, it really wasn't city kids as much as a lot of the suburban kids were coming downtown to hit Uncle Sam's. It kind of was that kind of place, yeah, a little bit more of a shot bar kind of vibe, and that's when they had the Firecracker drinks, which apparently was just basically red food dye or red coloring and vodka. Nobody talks about those drinks fondly, but for some reason, they were ubiquitous there, and people still have the Firecracker glasses, which I guess goes with the patriotic Uncle Sam's idea.

Holly Hansen VO: Most of the bands that played Uncle Sam's did covers. But there was the occasional local band playing originals. The Suicide Commandos, one of the Twin Cities' first punk groups, formed in 1974. Later, the Commandos would become regulars at a new club called Jay's Longhorn, where Peter Jesperson worked as house DJ.

Peter Jesperson: It opened in June of '77, and I think the DJ booth - it was a Naugahyde disco unit that they rented until they built a booth for me in the corner. But at the time, yeah, we rented this Naugahyde disco thing with flashing lights that we never used, and it was on wheels so it wasn't very sturdy, and people would bump into it and records would skip and I'd be screaming at people.

Holly Hansen VO: The Longhorn was where you went if you lived in the Twin Cities and identified in some way as "punk." Bands that played there included Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, the Police, and the B-52's. The Longhorn was a world away from Uncle Sam's.

Steve McClellan: I kind of really felt an outsider to that whole Longhorn scene. I was not part of it.

Holly Hansen VO: But soon, Steve would hire someone who was.

Kevin Cole: I'm Kevin Cole. I am chief content officer at KEXP in Seattle.

Holly Hansen VO: Kevin was a Longhorn regular who worked at Hot Licks, a record shop downtown, where one of his coworkers was a young Jimmy Jam.

Kevin Cole: I was hired in '78. I worked at First Ave/Uncle Sam's from '78 to '91. I was brought in to help usher in a change, and I was a total misfit for the club at that time. It was a pretty mainstream suburban Saturday Night Fever-type disco, and that era was starting to die. And I think also in part because Steve Egsgard, the DJ who had kind of reigned supreme during that '70s disco heyday, was leaving, so they needed a DJ. I remember going to the back door and meeting Steve. At that time I — Joey Ramone was my idol, so I looked like one of the Ramones — long hair, ripped jeans, tennis shoes. And Steve and I had a great conversation, but I didn't know, really, how it went. And then like a week later he called and he's like, "Hey, can you start in like two days?" So I think they had a need. [Kevin laughs]

Holly Hansen VO: In fact, they did.

Steve McClellan: I could tell American Avents, at the time, was already planning on dumping Minneapolis, but didn't tell anybody. That's my gut feeling when I look at paperwork and stuff. So that brings us through the turmoil in the transition from Uncle Sam's to Sam's. We were kind of just dumped. Allan was jilted.

Holly Hansen VO: That's Allan Fingerhut, who still co-owned the club at that point. Steve's plan was to bring Jack Meyers, a lawyer who Steve knew from Catholic school, on board for damage control.

Steve McClellan: When American Avents pulled out and Allan was deciding to have both Byron and Mel Orenstein, the attorney, telling him, "Close the club, we can't lose any more money," there was two of the big hoops I had to hurdle. I do remember I took a half cut, [of] whatever American Avents was paying me at the time, because I wanted to add Jack to the management team. And then of course, American Avents pulled out by sucking all the money out and putting no improvements in. So when we had taken over the club, we were like $60,000 in debt with no backup revenue source. That's a huge amount of money.

Holly Hansen VO: Money was the big difference between Steve and Jack's management styles.

Steve McClellan: I always wanted to spend money. Jack always wanted to save money. And that was our whole working relationship. I had just taken over as manager, and I started getting bills from people for stuff that happened in '70 and '71. And I couldn't — this is at the time American Avents had pulled out. If there's any reason for that club being open financially, it would be Jack. He went through years of stressful deposits and non-deposits and the financial end.

LeeAnn Weimar: It went to, replacing light bulbs was an issue sometimes.

Steve McClellan: Oh yeah, because we had the big fluorescent tubes that were expensive and just putting them up was a pain in the butt.

Holly Hansen VO: The turning point for Uncle Sam's came on November 28, 1979. That night, Steve had booked the Ramones. It was the New York punk heroes' third show in the Twin Cities. Peter Jesperson, the Longhorn DJ and co-founder of Twin/Tone Records, who also worked the counter at the Lyndale Avenue record store Oar Folk-joke-opus, saw the first.

Peter Jesperson: Oh, you know, Kelly's Pub in '77. But of course, I was at every Ramones show I'm sure they ever did in Minneapolis. We did in-stores with them when they were in town at Oar Folk for each of the first three albums. By the third time the Ramones were there, I think that we had several where they got so crowded the police came, and that was one of them because people were spilling out all over the corner there at 26th and Lyndale. They got bigger each time, and some people came because they were a curiosity, and other people came because they were just such a great band. But they were super nice. They were so friendly - loved hanging around the store, [and] they all bought records.

Holly Hansen VO: The one time Jesperson skipped seeing the Ramones was in November of 1978, at the St. Paul Civic Center, when they opened for Foreigner. The longtime Minneapolis Tribune critic Michael Anthony remembers cringing at that show.

Michael Anthony: What it suggested to me was an elemental truth about pop music and the venue — how important the venue is because their brand of punk, those short quick tunes, works only in a club. It has to have a small thing and boom-boom-boom-boom. You can't do that in a big cavernous room. Whereas Foreigner wrote music that was meant to be played in an arena.

Holly Hansen VO: But the Ramones didn't just sound better in a club. Their whole vibe felt better in a smaller room. Punk rock was a tight-knit subculture, and McClellan responded instantly to its do-it-yourself ethos. He booked the Ramones and Pat Benatar on consecutive nights, through the booking agency Premiere in New York. He says this was a total coincidence.

Steve McClellan: Now understand that I got along with very few major agents at the time, but both of those shows came from a guy named George Cavado [ph] at Premiere Agency, which was, at the time, Premiere had Bruce Springsteen. That's how I got my U2 dates, was through Premiere. George was an exception to the rule. I hated the big agents. They were so pretentious — arrogant. George wasn't.

Holly Hansen VO: Steve didn't get along with several booking agents in town. He also struggled to work with the Minneapolis Police Department. This becomes a key part of the story once the Ramones show up at Uncle Sam's.

Steve McClellan: When I took over as management, the Minneapolis Police Department were the security there. At that time, you needed them. Otherwise, if you had trouble, you couldn't — they wouldn't come to you. But it was a Drink and Drown night, one of those pay $5 and get a dime drink [nights]. There was one night when the police kind of overreacted. Something they had instigated blew up and they had fights on the street — 7th Street. There was, like, 22 arrests. The police just started arresting people. And as it turns out, a lot of was, they were just arresting people without merit, and they ended up dropping it all. But the city officially decided we were a club that the Minneapolis Police could not work for, unless they were bonded, and we couldn't afford bonding. It was ridiculously too expensive. But I breathed a sigh of relief, 'cause I couldn't tell them what to do.

Holly Hansen VO: From then on, Uncle Sam's had to hire its own security staff. Enter Richard Luka, who worked the door from '75 to '93.

Richard Luka: At the time, I was a competitive bodybuilder and on the track team of the U of M. I was 260 pounds, and they had a Wednesday night Drink and Drown night, where you pay $5 at the cover, and drinks were a dime. So I came in and I walked in and I looked around and somebody said, "Hey, you — would you like to work here?" And I said, "Do I get free drinks?" I said, "Okay, all right." [Steve laughs]

Steve McClellan: We were just hoping we could keep it open another day.

Richard Luka: Okay. Alright. Yeah, just don't beat anybody up; just don't drink too much. That's all it was.

Steve McClellan: When people came in for security, A, they always assumed we wanted a bouncer. I took the term "bouncer" out of the job descriptions after American Avents left. They wanted big bouncer guys to be on staff. And remember, we inherited a police force that were bouncers. That was their job: kick butt. And they took seriousness in it, back in the Mayor Stenvig days. They were the best bouncers you could have, because they were armed and they had a whole police force they could call. But the way they handled security stuff was not what you wanted.

MUSIC: "Blitzkrieg Bop - Live at Rainbow Theatre, London, 12/31/77; 2019 Remaster"

Holly Hansen VO: Working security at the Ramones and Pat Benatar shows changed Richard Luka's life.

Richard Luka: About that specific night, it was seeing disco one night and then all of a sudden, "Who are these people in the black leather jackets and the green hair? Who the hell are these people?" And this band comes out and I'm thinking, this is just gonna be like any concert. They're gonna do a couple of songs and then they're gonna slow it down. It was like [Richard laughs] they're not slowing this thing down! This crowd is crushing us, and they're yelling and screaming, and people are climbing over us, and we're looking for people trying to spit on them. And at the end of it I said, "This is so awesome." [Richard and Steve laugh]

And my ex-wife was there, and she was totally into disco. She looked around and said, "These people are disgusting. Disco's never gonna die." And she said, "I'm expecting you home immediately," and she left and I went, "F*** you. I'm gonna help the band load out." And I helped the Ramones and their road crew load up, and I stayed there until like three in the morning. They gave me a Ramones t-shirt, and I wore it to work the next day, and then I had to show up the next night for Pat Benatar.

Holly Hansen VO: The Benatar tickets cost $1.92. That in itself was unusual — Uncle Sam's usually didn't have a cover charge.

LeeAnn Weimar: Yeah, but Pat Benatar was a sex symbol then. She was a rock chick, and every guy I knew wanted to see that show.

Steve McClellan: I still say it was a really good show.

LeeAnn Weimar: I'm sure it was.

Steve McClellan: Live show-wise, and I didn't understand the Ramones because they had no radio play. Why did they sell out?

LeeAnn Weimar: She's still out there doing it. Well, because the Ramones were the Ramones.

Steve McClellan: I didn't know that.

Holly Hansen VO: Kevin Cole DJ'd both shows.

Kevin Cole: At that point in time, it was still the old-school Uncle Sam's DJ set-up, which was on the stage. So during the Uncle Sam's heyday, the DJ would be on the stage; there'd be dancers on the stage; a lot of times, there'd be a drummer on the stage drumming along to whatever the DJ was spinning. I'd be spinning before they went on, and when it came time for the band to play, [I] would make the announcement and literally duck. And I would just sit back there onstage as the band was playing.
And both were really incredible high-energy shows. I remember after the Pat Benatar show, getting them to sign this standup from the store. And it was pretty funny. They wrote something like "Keep rockin' into the '80s, man."

[Prince's "Head"]

Holly Hansen VO: The same week as First Avenue's first Ramones show, a young Minneapolis R&B singer performed his first headlining concert away from home. On November 26, 1979, Prince performed at the Roxy in Hollywood. Before they went onstage, Prince told his group, "I'm going to personify sex in every possible way." That tour, he debuted the song "Head," a risqué, as-yet unrecorded track influenced by the New Wave.

[Prince's "Head" fades up, plays for a few seconds before fading out under Holly's voiceover]

Holly Hansen VO: Uncle Sam's was ready to embrace a new wave, too. Back home, the Ramones and Pat Benatar shows did so well that Steve McClellan won a prize.

Steve McClellan: This is where I got an award one year, because I did Pat Benatar and the Ramones the same week and they both sold out, and I was the highest-grossing of all fifteen clubs for that one week. Now, that is not really amazing when you consider admission prices and stuff, and when you do two $1,500 shows.

Holly Hansen VO: The two shows also set the stage for Kevin Cole, along with DJs Roy Freedom and Paul Spangrud, to revamp First Avenue's dance nights.

Kevin Cole: It was a real transitional period, and I think another thing that's significant about those two back-to-back shows is what happened right after those shows. So the Ramones were on November 28, Pat Benatar on the 29th, and then in the Mainroom, Roy and I presented, on Friday and Saturday, "A New Wave Experience," which is how it was billed at the time. And that was, in part, part of this big statement of like, "Hey, we're changing. Here's two national bands that we're really excited about." And, "Here's what we're doing on the dance nights." And Friday and Saturday nights were the bread and butter of Uncle Sam's and Sam's and First Avenue. We were going from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever to playing the Clash and the Talking Heads and Blondie and Iggy Pop and Gang of Four and Devo and B-52's, and so it made for a really interesting challenge. And that was some of the most vital music being made. But part of what made ultimately, I think, First Avenue really successful was this philosophy that Steve really, really supported, and it was this idea that we were gonna play an eclectic mix of dance music. [Kevin takes a deep breath] It was a challenge. I mean, early on we'd clear the floor. [Kevin laughs]

Holly Hansen VO: In order to pay the bills, Steve made it his mission to fill Uncle Sam's calendar, with DJs and live bands.

Steve McClellan: You have this amount of money you gotta cover if you're open seven days a week. "Geez, $300, I can make that happen. If we do a college night with mud wrestling, we'll get $300, right?" And I knew if I was only open five days a week, well, take $2,100 and divide it by five instead of seven. Every day I was closed, to me, cost us money.

Holly Hansen VO: In addition to big-name headliners, Uncle Sam's booked openers from around the Twin Cities, forming ties that would only get stronger.

[Curtiss A's "Land of the Free"]

Kevin Cole: The Pat Benatar show, Curtiss A opened. So we were developing those relationships with those bands already and working toward ultimately where we got to, which is a space where live bands could play.

Daniel Corrigan: So, Micah, who used to work here, once said that First Avenue is a pirate ship that doesn't go anywhere.

Holly Hansen VO: That's Daniel Corrigan, First Avenue's official photographer, quoting Micah Ailie. When Cecilia mentioned this to Steve and LeeAnn Weimar, they had a ready response.

Steve McClellan: Not only was it a pirate ship, but it had a captain that didn't know where he was heading, or which shore we were heading for, or . . .

LeeAnn Weimar: Or where the Bermuda Triangle was.

Steve McClellan: Yeah! And we were constantly lost. [Steve laughs] Bermuda Triangle!

LeeAnn Weimar: But god, we had a good time.

[Icetep's "Hive Sound" fades up]

Mark Wheat VO: In 1980, the crew dropped the "Uncle" and just went by "Sam's," a name that would last a couple of years. Next episode, you'll meet the newly christened "First Avenue" in a heyday of historic shows — few more significant than Bad Brains, Sweet Taste of Afrika, and Husker Du.

Did you see the Ramones or Pat Benatar at First Avenue? If so, or if you'd like to share another memory, send it to us via email or voice memo at rewind@thecurrent.org.

If you enjoyed this story, please mention it in a review of The Current Rewind on Apple Podcasts, or share it with the music lovers in your life.

Also, we're happy to provide transcripts of each episode of this show. If you'd like to check them out, head over to TheCurrent.org/rewind.

This episode of The Current Rewind was hosted by Holly Hansen and me, Mark Wheat. It was produced by Cecilia Johnson and scripted by our head writer, Michaelangelo Matos. Marisa Morseth is our research assistant, and Jay Gabler is our editor. Our theme music is the song "Hive Sound" by Icetep. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel. Thanks to Brett Baldwin, Rick Carlson, Shelby Sachs, David Safar, and Peter Scholtes for additional support. [Producer's note: We also owe Jeanne Andersen and her website Twin Cities Music Highlights a debt of gratitude for her original research and archiving.]

The Current Rewind is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It is a production of Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.

Sept. 27, 1982: Bad Brains/Sweet Taste of Afrika/Husker Du

Almost 40 years ago, D.C. rockers Bad Brains played First Avenue with two Minnesotan openers: Sweet Taste of Afrika and Husker Du. While Husker Du are relatively well-known today, Sweet Taste of Afrika are all but forgotten. Meanwhile, Bad Brains are world-famous, but their hurtful behavior has flown under the radar. In this episode, we tease out the complicated relationship between the three bands on the bill, their genres, and their identities.

This is the third episode of The Current Rewind's "10 Pivotal Days at First Avenue" season. If you missed the first two episodes, catch up below.

• April 3, 1970 (The day it all began)
• Nov. 28-29, 1979 (The days that told the future)

Transcript of
The Current Rewind
season 2, episode 3: "Sept. 27, 1982"

[Bad Brains' "Banned In DC"]

Cecilia Johnson VO: D.C. rockers Bad Brains are among the best-known hardcore bands in history. They're famous for their live shows. Imagine a scene like this:

[volume inches up]

Cecilia Johnson VO: Lead singer H.R. is flailing, his voice curdled from screaming, and drummer Earl Hudson rides the cymbals hard. A song later, the band dips into reggae. The kids who were moshing just a minute ago are now letting their shoulders slump, swaying from side to side, until Dr. Know fires up the guitar again, and the audience churns back into a pit.

Maybe you've experienced this in person, maybe you've just heard about it...but whatever's the case, for a lot of people, Bad Brains are one of the only Black rock bands they've heard of. Let's talk some more about that.

[Icetep's "Hive Sound"]

Cecilia Johnson VO: [over theme] I'm Cecilia Johnson, and this is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. For our second season, we're exploring the history of First Avenue, the downtown Minneapolis venue that has become one of the Twin Cities' – and the country's – greatest clubs.

[Icetep's "Hive Sound" crescendos, plays for several seconds, and fades down]

Cecilia Johnson VO: So far, we've seen First Avenue evolve from the Depot to Uncle Sam's to Sam's. For this episode, we'll jump ahead to 1982, when Bad Brains, Sweet Taste of Afrika, and Hüsker Dü shared the Mainroom stage.

We set out to tell a story about one of the most revered bands in punk music. But we ended up learning a lesson: that while representation is definitely necessary, if you treat individuals' identities as their virtues, you can actually allow them less humanity – and excuse the harm that they've done.

Honestly, this episode presented a lot of challenges, and we want to let you in on them as we tell this story. So let's do that. I'm super excited to introduce our guest host for this episode. She runs the show Rock and Roll Over at the University of Minnesota's Radio K and her name is Zoë Challenger. She's definitely one of our youngest guest hosts this season, but I can already tell she has a ton of talent and wisdom to share with the world. Here she is.

[rewind sound effect]

Zoë Challenger VO: I'm Zoë Challenger. Being a Twin Cities native, I am embarrassed to say that my first concert at First Avenue was when Noname came to town in January of 2019. I was 19 years old, and I went alone. While I grew up with a desire for musical exploration, I did not grow up in a musical household by any means. I told my parents I was going with a friend, when in reality, I couldn't find anyone to go with me. So I draped my mother's elegant hand-me-down wool coat over my plaid skirt, crop top, and tattered stockings. I let the material confidence override any underlying social anxieties.

As an only child, I've never been afraid of being alone, but walking into a venue by myself brought up new feelings. Since that night, I found myself at the First Avenue Mainroom or the 7th St Entry nearly once a week until the coronavirus pandemic hit the nation. Most of the time I would arrive alone, but over time, I would find myself running into more and more familiar faces at any given show. Maneuvering the block of 7th Street and Hennepin Avenue will always be an act of muscle memory.

Over the last 50 years, First Avenue has hosted a variety of big names, but the early 1980s were jam-packed. From 1982-84, the calendar swerved from funk to punk to New Wave, with acts ranging from talkbox legends Zapp & Roger, to Minnesotan rockers the Replacements, to Bow Wow Wow, the band behind "I Want Candy." That's not to mention Prince, U2, Ray Charles, and a then-unknown Wynton Marsalis. But if you were to look through the 1980s First Ave band files that are now housed at the Minnesota Historical Society, you'd struggle to find a particular category of artists: well-known Black American rockers.

The Minnesota music community has a lot of excuses for this, the most common one being, "There weren't that many Black rock bands to book." It's true that funk and soul were much more popular among Black Americans, especially those raised in the church. But it's too easy to say that Black rock wasn't a thing. In fact, according to those band files, rock-adjacent bands War, Ipso Facto, and Defunkt played First Avenue in the early '80s. But aside from the Historical Society files, those shows hardly left a paper trail, whether in microfilm archives or the internet. Which brings us to an issue at the heart of this story: which legacies last and which fade away.

The story of Bad Brains is fairly well-established. The D.C. group originally banded together in the 1970s as a jazz fusion ensemble called Mind Power. After going to a Bob Marley concert and hearing the Ramones' song "Bad Brain," they were influenced enough to change not only their name but also their sound, ending up with a mix of punk rock and reggae. At this point, a pattern was beginning to form with Black musicians who dove into punk music; they were often eclectic in their genre-molding and evolution.

In Minneapolis, local punk bands who'd been performing at bars like Duffy's and the Longhorn had a new room to fill: the 7th St Entry, a small space off the side of the First Avenue Mainroom.

Steve McClellan: And there was just, say, we got this empty room. It's a storage area.

Zoë Challenger VO: Around the same time as he opened the Entry, general manager Steve McClellan hired Chrissie Dunlap, who ended up booking the space.

Chrissie Dunlap: I started out just 100 percent Steve's assistant: You know, his desk (and office generally) was just filled up with contracts, riders, promo material, you know, label stuff, cassette tapes everywhere. And I would go in there and just try to prioritize things – tell him, "This needs to be signed, this, you gotta do this." And then I would just sorta take the promo material and start promoting shows. And as time went on, a lot of that detailed stuff ended up leaving Steve's desk and [moving] over to my desk. The bands would start calling, looking for gigs, and, you know, I started out giving the info to Steve and kinda working on him with it, but he was busy doing the real talent buying, and I was there during the day more when the phone rang and people stopped by with cassettes and stuff. So I just kinda, little by little, picked it up.

Zoë Challenger VO: One of the bands Chrissie would book – a lot – were Hüsker Dü, the St. Paul punk group who opened for Bad Brains at First Avenue. But that's not a huge surprise; in the '80s, they were playing upwards of 60 shows a year. Hüsker Dü guitarist Bob Mould wanted to tell us all about this era, but right when we were producing this episode, he was actually called for jury duty. While Bob did his civic duty, we grabbed a clip from the audiobook of his memoir, See A Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody.

Bob Mould: We started the spring tour in the Midwest, with our four-year anniversary gig at First Avenue in Minneapolis. First Avenue was originally a bus depot in downtown Minneapolis. It became a nightclub in 1970, and 7th St Entry was the coat check before becoming its own 300-capacity music room. First Avenue had been a cornerstone of the Midwest rock scene for years, and to play the 1,200-capacity main room was the goal of many a Midwest musician.

Zoë Challenger VO: Along with Bob, bassist Greg Norton and drummer/songwriter Grant Hart recorded their debut album Land Speed Record at the Entry in '81, and they released it via New Alliance in January 1982.

Bob Mould: The band always played with purpose – there wasn't a lot of goofing around in the live shows. On the faster material, Greg would start jumping in the air or do scissor kicks. I typically wore a grave, glowering expression, digging deep into my guitar when not singing. Grant was behind the kit, looking much like Animal from the Muppet Show band, except with longer hair and bare feet. We were young and inexperienced, but we had tons of energy and were able to create a solid wall of sound.

Zoë Challenger VO: In selecting this show as one of First Avenue's pivotal nights, we were excited to focus on the positive, celebrating punk heroes Hüsker Dü and Bad Brains on one bill. But it didn't turn out to be that easy.

Bob Mould: There was a loose network, which we often discovered by chance, where like-minded bands would share a stage and the hometown band would offer accommodations to the traveling band. In return, when that band came to your town, you would reciprocate. Sometimes you'd run into a band that didn't understand or appreciate the idea. When Bad Brains stayed with Grant and his parents, they took Grant's pot and left behind an antigay note. Some gratitude. But once people caught the drift of those bands, they were usually shunned, and eventually they faded away.

Zoë Challenger VO: Bob and Grant's sexualities were open secrets in the Minneapolis punk scene. Bob would come out as gay in a Spin article in 1994, and Grant is on record talking about his bisexuality around that time. Bob and Grant wanted to avoid becoming pigeonholed for their identities. But when you consider the scope of their experiences – and how scary the AIDS crisis was – their angry, frenetic catalog takes on new meaning.

[Hüsker Dü's "Pink Turns To Blue"]

Bob Mould: Gays in the hardcore punk scene were much like gays in the military. If the military says, "Don't ask, don't tell," the hardcore punk collary was, "Don't advertise, don't worry." If someone made a disparaging remark about gays, I would simply say, "That's not cool," or, "You're so ignorant." It was a way of making my feelings known without broadcasting my sexuality.

Generally, there was no more homophobia in the hardcore scene than anywhere else in America, although as 1981 progressed, the media began reporting on the "gay cancer," and homophobia escalated throughout the country. Numberwise, the hardcore scene didn't seem any more or less populated by homosexuals than most major cities were. Then again, the scene attracted the margin walkers, the folks who were outside the norms of society, so maybe there was a slightly higher ratio of gays to straights.

Zoë Challenger VO: According to several sources, Grant wasn't the only person Bad Brains mistreated. Lori Barbero, who drummed and sang in Babes in Toyland, remembers similar behavior toward Randy "Biscuit" Turner of Texas punk quartet the Big Boys.

Lori Barbero: Think they did the same thing to one of the guys from the Big Boys down in Austin, Texas, because he was gay. And I heard kinda the same story. And it's like then don't – if you know they're gay, why would you even stay at their house?

Zoë Challenger VO: In Finding Joseph I: An Oral History of H.R. from Bad Brains, punk rock activist Mark Andersen also mentions the band's mistreatment of Biscuit. He echoes Bob Mould's thoughts on margin walkers: quote, "Weren't we all in the punk rock underground because we were all different, and because none of us felt like we really belonged out there?"

In 1989, Bad Brains released the song "Don't Blow Bubbles," which guitarist Dr. Know described as an "angry warning to homosexuals." One chorus goes, quote, "Don't blow no bubbles and we can stop the AIDS/ Don't blow no spikes/ Don't blow no fudge buns/ Ask Jah and he'll make the change." By this point, 100,000 cases of HIV/AIDS had been reported in the U.S., and the public health crisis would get much worse before the government approved the first antiretroviral drugs in 1995. It's shocking to hear H.R. cite "P.M.A" – Bad Brains catchphrase "Positive Mental Attitude" – in the same song as he encourages, as a fundamentalist Rastafarian, that non-straights pray the gay away. In 2007, bassist Darryl Jenifer addressed the band's past worldview with some remorse, saying, quote, "Damn right, I was a homophobe! [...] You have to grow to be wise."

As more details about Bad Brains' homophobia came to light, the Current Rewind team weren't feeling too good about focusing this episode on such a disappointing group. So we turned to the third band on that night's line-up: Sweet Taste of Afrika. Before learning about the show, I had never heard of that band before, and neither had our producer, Cecilia Johnson. But we were excited to learn that they're from the Twin Cities.

Joe Shalita: So I came to the Twin Cities in the '80s and I've been in – you know – participating in the music and art industry all that time.

Zoë Challenger VO: This is Joe Shalita, Sweet Taste of Afrika's lead guitarist and the man the Twin Cities Daily Planet has called "the face of African music in the Twin Cities." He grew up in Uganda and moved to Minneapolis in 1979.

Joe Shalita: When you grow up in Africa, you have – music is a big part of our culture – people are tilling the garden, they're always using music to till the garden or till the land. Whether they're chopping trees down, they're gonna be singing along. [Shalita laughs]

Zoë Challenger VO: And when he got to Minneapolis, he found a small but strong African music scene.

Joe Shalita: In those days, really, there were a whole lot of live bands, live groups of almost every genre, but Simba was the original roots-reggae band in the Twin Cities. And then there was the calypso band, which was Shangoya with the late great Peter Nelson. Then there was Sweet Taste of Afrika, which was our band, which performed strictly African music.

[Sweet Taste of Afrika's "Children of the Nile"]

Joe Shalita: Hassan [Omari] was our lead singer, and then there was Mr. Robert Mpambara who was on bass. He's still in the Twin Cities. I was on lead guitar and also singing, and then there was Mr. David Mutebi from Uganda also. Mr. Mpambara was from Uganda; I was from Uganda; Mr. Mutebi from Uganda. So the Ugandans dominated the band. [Shalita laughs] He played rhythm guitar. And then we had native Minnesotans who played. We had the late Paul McGee on percussion [and] Mr. Ben Hill on drums.

Zoë Challenger VO: In 1980, the band helped organize an event called Afro Fest. But most of the time, they had to rely on white bookers to let them onstage.

Joe Shalita: We were really stubborn, because getting into First Avenue was not easy. And I know personally, I kept harassing Mr. McClellan – Steve McClellan – and I'm sure he got tired of listening to my voice – "Is that Joe Shalita calling again?" [Shalita laughs] Steve, wherever you're listening – it's true, because I kept bugging him all the time, said, "You gotta give me a chance! Come on, man. How many times do you have an African band on your stage?" And then, fortunately, First Avenue started having these big African stars coming in to grace the stage. They had, like, Tabu Ley Rochereau was like one of the superstars of Africa [who] came to First Avenue, and I think that opened their eyes, too, to say, "Ok." I was young in those days. But eventually they let us open for some artists – Bad Brains being one of them.

Zoë Challenger VO: Sweet Taste of Afrika spent a little time in the studio, but to Shalita's knowledge, none of their music was ever released to the public.

Joe Shalita: There are some YouTube videos of Sweet Taste of Afrika. Have you seen them?

Cecilia Johnson: I have seen them! They're so good!

Joe Shalita: I know! I was skinny, with a huge Afro. [Shalita laughs] I think David and Hassan may have some recordings, but I don't have any myself. I just look at those ones on YouTube and marvel at the quality of the sound and musicianship. I was like, "What?" [Shalita laughs]

Zoë Challenger VO: According to Joe, the band had some creative differences, and they broke up in 1982. Joe found work as a roadie, then learned a little sound engineering, then formed his own band, Shalita, which lasted until 1999. He rarely performs these days, but he's planning to retire in a few years, and he dreams of returning to music.

Joe Shalita: Art doesn't have an age limit. That's a good thing about art.

Zoë Challenger VO: After learning about Sweet Taste of Afrika, we got to thinking about the Black rock artists who work in the Twin Cities today. Some are relatively well-known, having placed in "best new band" polls or opened for bigger acts. But sooo many of them have never been in the spotlight. And as we've learned while relying on microfilm and internet archives this season, the press has the power to preserve artists' legacy.

So we decided to talk back to this narrative. Our producer Cecilia met up with a few Minnesota Black rockers – Matt Slater and Himes Alexander of the Smokes, plus Nadi McGill of Gully Boys – and asked them, what musicians inspire you? What constitutes a good legacy? What do you love about rock music?

Nadi McGill: Um, I feel pure joy. It's like I can feel the oxytocin rushing through my body. It feels really good.

Zoë Challenger VO: Nadi drums and sings in the Minneapolis rock band Gully Boys – who've performed in the First Avenue Mainroom and many times in the Entry.

[Gully Boys' "New Song No. 2"]

Nadi McGill: I'd always wanted to drum. My mom said no when I was a child, of course. A past partner was a very good drummer, and he had two [or] three drum kits, so I just sat down at one of the drum sets he had set up at his house and just started playing.

Cecilia Johnson: What do you think of when you hear somebody talking about rock, or like, what is rock to you? What do you feel when you're listening?

Nadi McGill: Everyone's playing their own instrument, like that's – the sound you hear is the sound that is being put out, and I think that's really cool. I think that's a really awesome aspect of rock.

Zoë Challenger VO: Although they're a young artist, Nadi is already thinking about legacy.

Nadi McGill: I will always be loud about what I believe in, and I'm always willing to be corrected, and I just want to be known and remembered as someone who used whatever platform that I had to make Minneapolis a better and safer place. For all people, but mostly femmes – fat femmes, femmes of color – in whatever space they choose to occupy... Every opportunity that we have, I try to encourage femmes to join a band, and then I specifically make a point to encourage Black femmes to join the band, because I feel like there is a lot of gatekeeping, and there is a lot of tokenization that happens, which is very annoying. I think the best way to kinda combat that tokenism and gatekeeping is to just be loud about it, and rock music is a great way to be loud about it. And you kinda just make your own space.

Zoë Challenger VO: Nadi says they've taken inspiration from other Black rockers.

Nadi McGill: I was obsessed with this band called Dance Gavin Dance when I was younger. I really was into pop punk music and a little bit of emo music, and Dance Gavin Dance I loved, and then I found out their guitarist was a Black musician, and I was even more in love, because it's very rare for me to see anyone who looked like me, not only in the crowd at the shows that I would love to go to, but on stage.

Also, The Smokes locally? Two Black amazing punk rockers. And my favorite is that Matthew, the drummer rocks an Afro while he's playing. They sing about racial experiences that they've had. And then I appreciate that they're transplants as well. They're not even from here, but they kinda came here, and they were like what's up, like we are here to rock. So that's amazing.

Cecilia Johnson: [laughing] We are here to rock.

Nadi McGill: Honestly, like they really did. I remember I saw them for the first time. It was, like, maybe a week or two weeks after they had moved here, and I was like, "Welcome! Welcome, let's do this," like, "Y'all came like riding on the pavement 100 miles per hour," and I was so stoked to have them here.

[The Smokes' "2 I Luv" (demo)]

Himes Alexander: Black pride is something that's difficult for a lot of people to swallow, but is inevitable as you look at the influence that Black culture has had on American society, especially.

Zoë Challenger VO: That's Himes Alexander of the Smokes, a two-piece garage/punk/indie/soul band who've been performing together for about five years. Himes and his cousin Matt Slater grew up in Spokane, Washington and moved to the Twin Cities in 2017. They've learned from many Black artists around the world.

Matt Slater: This is a really broad one to start with, but I really love Fela Kuti. I've always loved Fela Kuti for lots of reasons. I've got like a soft spot for funk, and he was like a – just comes off as like this African king to me. And then jumps around musically so freely, like, just like feels the spirit of the music. And it was like, oh my god. This music is so Black, so free, and so it like captures his voice so well that like even now I hear it and it just like it makes you feel good, inspires to actually say something – say something real, and it doesn't have to be like a downer.

Himes Alexander: I'd like to talk about a collective like Odd Future who has a bunch of different bands, a bunch of different projects coming out of the same collective, and there's a wide range of eclectic taste when it comes to all of that. You know, Steve Lacy is doing some sort of indie thing. The Internet is electronic R&B or – and even goes outside of that, and [Earl] Sweatshirt and Tyler the Creator are enigmatic, like you can't really hold them down to one thing.

Matt Slater: And then there was the drummer from – god, why can't I –

Himes Alexander: Yellowcard?

Matt Slater: Yeah, the drummer from Yellowcard. Who cares about Yellowcard? [The Smokes laugh] The drummer from Yellowcard was this Black dude with dreads, and it was like hell yeah, I wanna do that. I literally – I was like I didn't even like their music. I was just like yes, cool.

Zoë Challenger VO: The Smokes have brought up several musicians who made an impact on them. For me, Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, and Janis Joplin have probably been my biggest musical influences. Years after Houston's death, her friend Robyn Crawford told The Guardian about their queer past, saying, quote, "Our friendship was intimate on all levels." Both Simone and Joplin also held relationships with both men and women. And going back to the beginnings of rock and roll, artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Little Richard experimented not only with instruments and genre, but also with their sexualities. Many beacons of musical creativity have occupied many different identities – there is no "prime" or perfect human being, whatever H.R. or anyone else might say.

Like it or not, Bad Brains are part of rock history. It's true that their actions were garbage. But it's also true that they inspired members of Fishbone, Rage Against the Machine, ho99o9, and many more groups to make rock music. They played First Avenue during a complicated and sometimes tense time in the club's history, with respect to race. Many of the Black bands who played there were not supported by press, radio play, or strong ticket sales, and community members noticed. In fact, one of the people who would've been paying attention was Prince.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Thank you, Zoë. In 1983, the year after the Bad Brains show, Prince would take the First Avenue stage to change the club – and music history – forever. As we'll see in our next episode, the artist who catapulted First Ave from a well-known local rock club to an international destination was a genre-fluid Black rocker. And that was no coincidence.

[Icetep's "Hive Sound"]

Cecilia Johnson VO: This episode of The Current Rewind was hosted by Zoë Challenger and me, Cecilia Johnson. I produced this episode, with research and consulting by Taylor Seaberg. Marisa Morseth is our research assistant, and Jay Gabler is our editor. Our theme music is the song "Hive Sound" by Icetep. This episode was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans. Thank you to Brett Baldwin, Rick Carlson, Matthew Gallaway, Dirim Onyeneho, Jackie Renzetti, David Safar, and Jesse Wiza for additional support. If you'd like to learn more about Hüsker Dü, check out The Current's five-part podcast Do You Remember.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review our show on Apple Podcasts, or tell a fellow music fan it's out there.

To get in touch, please send an email to rewind@thecurrent.org. To find a transcript of this episode, go to thecurrent.org/rewind.

And thanks for rolling with these mid-season changes. We have one more episode hosted by Mark Wheat next week, and after that, we'll share a bonus episode about his personal connection to First Avenue. I miss him already, and I know you might, too.

The Current Rewind is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It is a production of Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.

Most casual Prince fans know Purple Rain was partially filmed at First Avenue. But did you know the title song is a live recording, taped at First Ave a few months before filming started? In this episode, we meet Prince and the Revolution at a benefit show for Minnesota Dance Theatre, where they debuted "Purple Rain" in support of dance and community.

This is the fourth episode of The Current Rewind's "10 Pivotal Days at First Avenue" season. If you missed the first three episodes, catch up below.

• April 3, 1970 (The day it all began)
• Nov. 28-29, 1979 (The days that told the future)
• Sept. 27, 1982 (Bad Brains/Sweet Taste of Afrika/Hüsker Dü)

Transcript of
The Current Rewind
season 2, episode 4: "Aug. 3, 1983"

["Purple Rain" chords, but trembly and slowed-down. After several seconds, the music snaps into the original version, and we hear the lyrics, "I never meant to cause you any sorrow/ I never meant to cause you any pain."]

Mark Wheat VO: After three episodes and 13 years of First Avenue's history, we've arrived at the song. The song that evokes an artist, a movie, and to some, a period of mourning: "Purple Rain."

["Purple rain, purple rain" fades into "Hive Sound" by Icetep]

Mark Wheat VO: [over theme] I'm Mark Wheat. This is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. For our second season, we're exploring the history of First Avenue, the downtown Minneapolis venue that has become one of the Twin Cities' – and the country's – greatest clubs.

Most casual Prince fans know that scenes from the 1984 movie Purple Rain were filmed at First Avenue. The version of "Purple Rain" that you hear in the movie and the soundtrack was recorded live at First Avenue, but not at the same time the movie was filmed. Just a few months before the cameras rolled, Prince hadn't yet written the song. He first performed it on August 3, 1983 at First Avenue, during a benefit show for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. He had the show recorded, and when we listen to "Purple Rain" today, we're hearing him and the Revolution play it live for the very first time. In this episode, we'll explore the story of that song and that amazingly unique one-off performance, along with Prince's relationship to Minnesota Dance Theatre – a tale that captures Prince's ethos as a musician and a community member.

So far this season, guest hosts have lent their voices to each episode of Rewind. But by this point, the coronavirus pandemic has complicated our production. So we here at The Current will step in to host a few episodes, including this one, which I was quite fond of from the beginning. It takes place when I had just moved to the United States, for good, in 1983.

[rewind noise]

Mark Wheat VO: The early 1980s were a transition moment in Minnesota music. Artists from two different local scenes were breaking out. On the indie rock side, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü were stirring up mosh pits all across the country. And Prince had just become a national star through the success of his fifth album, 1999.

David Z: I mean, it was exciting, because Prince was our local star, and he had the beginning of success before this. I mean, he did do Dirty Mind.

Mark Wheat VO: This is David Z, Prince's longtime producer – and brother of The Revolution drummer Bobby Z.

David Z: So I mean, he wasn't a nobody, but he wasn't internationally famous at all. It was kind of a local thing, and we were all happy because we always wanted somebody from Minneapolis to make it.

Mark Wheat VO: And before the world knew Prince's music – along with his slides, splits, spins and pelvic thrusts, he studied ballet with Minnesota Dance Theatre.

[audio of a Minnesota Dance Theatre rehearsal]

Mark Wheat VO: Renowned choreographer Loyce Houlton founded Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1962. They still teach classical and contemporary dance, and over the last 50 years, they've presented one of the best-attended performances of The Nutcracker in the country. In the '70s, the theater participated in Minneapolis Public Schools' Urban Arts Program, which Prince joined as a high school student. After Loyce's passing in 1995, her daughter Lise Houlton took over as artistic director.

Lise Houlton: My mother and Wally Kennedy were developing this program in the Twin Cities for those us of who didn't fit in the traditional academic life. That's how my mother met Prince, through the urban arts program. And I think that she saw immediately that he had a special spark, that there was something – she used to talk about the combination of this insatiable appetite and this sadness that came together in some sort of combustion of energy, and I think because she had a similar quality that they had this common ground.

Mark Wheat VO: You can catch the dance moves he mastered in Minnesota in some of his music videos.

Lise Houlton: In the ballet world there's a step that's challenging and that we all have to do, and it's called an entrechat six, and it's where you do three beats in the air. You jump up, you do three beats and you land. Prince could do an entrechat six, and you learn that in a ballet class. That's not an instinctive move, because you do it with turnout, which is unnatural to the human body. He did tour en l'airs, where you jump in the air. Tour en l'airs. He did pirouettes with excellent placement, and that was combined with his jazz aesthetic and already his own personal grind.

Mark Wheat VO: A few years after Prince graduated, Minnesota Dance Theatre needed financial help, and Loyce decided to get back in touch. As the Star Tribune reported at the time, she found out where Prince was staying in town and stood outside, waiting to ask if he could do a benefit show.

Lise Houlton: But that was her style. If she believed in somebody, if she wanted to have a connection with an extraordinary talent, she did that sort of thing. That was her reputation as being a little bit crazy. But I think once again, that's where Prince and my mother saw their connection.

Mark Wheat VO: Prince said yes, and First Avenue hosted the concert. Right after Prince played "Little Red Corvette," his biggest hit to date, Loyce Houlton took the mic to thank him for his support.

It was guitarist Wendy Melvoin's first time on stage with Prince – and therefore, the first time the Revolution's classic line-up performed together, even though they weren't billed as such. Along with Prince and Wendy, there was drummer Bobby Z, bassist Brown Mark, keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink, aka Dr. Fink. It was also the night Prince recorded "Baby I'm A Star," "I Would Die 4 U," and "Purple Rain" – right there at First Avenue, live.

David Z: And you'll see that there's not very much added or changed to the original performance, especially with the song "Purple Rain."

Mark Wheat VO: It was normal for Prince to have David record his performances, so no one expected anything unusual to happen.

David Z: Nobody really knew there was a movie coming out. We just thought it was gonna be a live record, or whatever.

Mark Wheat VO: And as Dr. Fink recalls, it wasn't the most comfortable environment.

Matt Fink: We all knew it was a hot, muggy summer night and that First Avenue would be packed, and it would be very uncomfortable for older people to be standing in there. And we were right, 'cause we were all drenched with sweat within two minutes of taking the stage, because that's how hot it was in there. The air conditioning wasn't keeping up. It was back when people smoked cigarettes in clubs. So not only did you have [Dr. Fink laughs] all the heat and humidity and bodies and cigarette smoke, but it was just very difficult to be comfortable.

Mark Wheat VO: According to First Avenue's records, about 1200 people bought tickets to the show. On an average night in 1983, a Mainroom show would run about five bucks, but tickets to this benefit were $25 – the equivalent of about $60 today. Including staff and an extensive guest list, about 1,500 people were in the club that night. First Avenue manager Steve McClellan was just trying not to overpack the place.

Steve McClellan: I had to go and tell people, except for the really important VIP list, it's not good for you tonight. Because my goal was to keep my list under 100, Prince's was supposed to be under 100, Minnesota Dance Theatre was supposed to be under 100. That night that all went blowin' in the wind. The guest lists poured in, and that's why that night, everybody says, "Well, why didn't you watch the show?" I remember between having to get the numbers together – because I thought I would have to pay the Minnesota Dance Theatre that night, so I had to get all my costs together. Because it was a $25 ticket. We'd never done a $25 ticket before. And so I knew that the money was gonna be big.

Mark Wheat VO: When we had Steve and veteran doorperson Richard Luka in for an interview, we asked Richard what he was up to that night.

Richard Luka: I was at the back door, and I could see everything from behind. "Why isn't he playing anything familiar here? What the hell's this stuff?" And but then there also this people going in and out through the garage to this truck that was out there. Turns out they were recording everything. Nobody knew that there was gonna be a movie within a year or so of that. None of us knew. That's why when you come back to a night like that – well, you know, it had sort of a cultural impact further down the line. But when you're in those moments you don't know that. So it's like, "This jerk just wants to get inside right now." No. You're Prince's cousin. Aren't we all. No, you can't come in. And we're dealing with things on an interpersonal level like that, whereas up there they're doing this thing that's gonna be here, and then it's gonna go out all over the world later.

Steve McClellan: I do remember hearing "When Doves Cry" the first time. There were certain times when I was able to stand and go, "Oh, pretty good." But, you know, life goes on.

Mark Wheat VO: Maybe Steve and Richard didn't get to experience the full show, but Prince fan Heidi Vader couldn't tear herself away.

Heidi Vader: It was so hot, so hot and so crowded.

Mark Wheat VO: When the band played "Purple Rain," the crowd didn't know what to make of it.

Heidi Vader: The song seemed to go on forever. So the audience was – you know – listening. They were paying attention, but nobody was freaking out and excited. And it was nothing like the movie, and nobody had all their costumes on, like in the movie. [Heidi laughs]

Mark Wheat VO: According to Dr. Fink, Prince and his band had just started practicing "Purple Rain" a couple of weeks before the show.

Matt Fink: Prince didn't write that one 'til the very end, which is more about like mid-to-late July of '83. He brought that song to the group. He hadn't finished the lyrics. He hadn't finished the melody. All he had was the chord structure and he came to us and said, "Ok, let's try this; let's just start jamming on this chord progression I've got for this song." And then we all coalesced into what you hear live. And even at that live show, he improvised his guitar solo somewhat.

[about 10 seconds of the "Purple Rain" guitar solo]

Matt Fink: He wasn't playing it exactly like he did it every time at rehearsal. Nor was I playing my piano parts exactly the same at rehearsal that evening. It just did what it did.

Mark Wheat VO: Kevin Cole, a former First Avenue DJ who now hosts the afternoon show at KEXP in Seattle, remembers there being cameras that night.

Kevin Cole: At that point in time, we were experimenting with filming sessions, or, filming performances at the club, that we would then give to the band. So there's footage floating around out there of that very first performance from a different perspective.

[cheers from the live bootleg fade up]

Kevin Cole: One of the cameras is to the left of the stage and above the stage, looking down, kinda right where Prince was playing from. And it's remarkable, but you're also seeing the audience. People are just stunned watching that song.

Mark Wheat VO: In fact, the crowd was so quiet, David Z had to tweak the recording.

David Z: When it came time for the movie, I cheated and put a crowd from the Minnesota Vikings in the audience track.

Mark Wheat VO: Because technology at the time couldn't record wireless bass well, Prince added in some bass overdubs. Heidi remembers the song being long because it was. Prince cut five minutes and still ended up with a nine-minute song. David Z recorded the show in a truck from the New York-based Record Plant, which was considered the best in the industry at the time.

Meanwhile, director Albert Magnoli was working with Prince on the early stages of a movie, which didn't have a name yet. He and Prince had gone through about a hundred songs that could go into the movie, but Magnoli felt they were still missing a piece.

Al Magnoli: Interestingly enough, there was no "Purple Rain" in that 100 songs.

Mark Wheat VO: During a recent trip to Minnesota, he elaborated in an interview with The Current host Jill Riley.

Al Magnoli: So I went to him, after I lined up what I thought was the storyline and lined up the songs...and said, we're missing the song – that catalyst, in all of this journey – that song that releases you finally to become the person you should become. And he said, ok, I got another song to write.

Mark Wheat VO: The director came to town to scout out locations for the movie and hear new songs from the band that night. When he heard "Purple Rain," he knew it was the one song he needed. Our producer Jackie Renzetti called him up and asked him why "Purple Rain" worked.

Al Magnoli: Well, it had the right pacing and it had the right lyric content. It had the right soulfulness and emotion. And it wasn't like anything he had done before. To me, it was a unique sounding piece, and that's what I was looking for. He obviously knew he had that song when I said we didn't have the song. So he didn't immediately say, "Oh, I've got a song that would fit the bill." He didn't say that. He performed it, not realizing that I would approach and then say that could be the song. I said, "What's it called," and he says, "'Purple Rain,'" and then there's a pause, and he says, "Could we call the movie Purple Rain?" and I go, "Yes."

Mark Wheat VO: By the end of the night, Prince had raised $23,000 for Minnesota Dance Theatre. That's the equivalent of about $60,000 today. Although Prince would go on to perform dozens of philanthropic acts – giving to music education and coding programs; buying houses for his band members; and paying medical bills for loved ones – few of them would be so public.

David Z: He would give money to people without trying to use it as publicity. Nothing! And then he would do charity, but in his own way of the true meaning of charity, which is not get all these people recognizing you for it. He just did it and didn't want the recognition. He just wanted to do a good thing and pay it back.

Mark Wheat VO: Our producer, Cecilia Johnson, asked The Current host and Prince expert Andrea Swensson to put his giving in perspective.

Andrea Swensson: Prince was raised in a really pivotal time just in history, during the civil rights movement and during the political uprising that was happening in North Minneapolis in the 1960s. His mother was a social worker. He was also partly raised by Bernadette Anderson, who was a huge community figure. [She] worked at the YWCA and was just really admired as a leader.

I mean, Prince's philanthropy goes back to the very beginning of his career. I remember his bandmates telling me stories of, even on their first couple of tours, they would squeeze in shows to play at community centers or play for the Deaf or do something out of their way to give back to the community. It was clearly something that Prince really valued. And that went all the way up until the end of his life, when he was funding projects like Yes We Code, and sending money to Baltimore, and honoring Freddie Gray in his music. He just had that spirit in him. I think it really goes back to coming up in North Minneapolis and being so involved in the community there and being raised by community leaders like Bernadette Anderson and like his mother, Mattie Shaw. It was just part of who he was.

Cecilia Johnson:: So what else was going on in the early '80s when Prince was starting to have this huge rise, in terms of philanthropy or giving or like celebrity?

Andrea Swensson: Yeah, well there's "We Are The World," which was a huge moment culturally, as all of these stars came together to record this song. There was Live Aid. U2 coming up – that was something that they really preached, and I think it just became part of the pop music culture, that in order to be, like, a good citizen, that if you were successful, that you should use some of your power and your money to give back.

But also, Prince was very discreet about his generosity. He did not do it for his own name or reputation or personal brand. It was just something that he valued, and especially later on as he became more religious, explicitly, with converting to Jehovah's Witness, it was a huge part of his faith as well, that that was not something that you were supposed to advertise. That's not why you give. That's not why you give money or help people in the community. You do it because it's important and because you value it.

Mark Wheat VO: We might not ever really know who all Prince helped. But we know he donated to a lot of programs centered on youth and community. At the Circle of Discipline in South Minneapolis, Sankara Frazier wrote a letter to Prince asking for funding to help keep his community boxing program going. Prince ended up making multiple contributions over the years. Our producer Jackie visited Circle of Discipline to ask how Sankara felt when he got the checks.

Sankara Frazier: I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised. Prince helped a lot of people. He saw what we were doing, with all of the young people and our older people. We have – you know, the community comes in here. And he saw what we were doing, community-wise, we're putting a lot of people together, people that wouldn't be together, you know? This right here, the boxing, was something that they grew up around. He didn't box – as far as I know, he didn't didn't box – but they know the importance, and how it develops a lot of the youth into better people. Worthy cause. We're working with the community.

Mark Wheat VO: Sankara was part of Prince's community from a young age. As kids, he lived with Prince and André Cymone, one of Prince's best friends and earliest bandmates. Speaking with Jackie, Sankara used the phrase "behind the scenes" to describe Prince as a community member. But although his actions may have been discreet, they were full of love for his cities.

Sankara Frazier: Oh, Prince was, he was down for Minneapolis. He was down. All of the people that had opportunities and stuff that were with him, they got him here. You know, so he decided to put this on the map. That's why, you know, even making Purple Rain, he's putting Minnesota on the map. Yeah, I give him credit for that.

Mark Wheat VO: To Lise, Prince's support of Minnesota Dance Theatre has been about more than just the money.

Lise Houlton: He's continuing to have an impact on Minnesota Dance Theatre, because every time this subject is brought up, Minnesota Dance Theatre is right there in the story, and once again, for me, having been so surprised with this event that happened in the '80s when I was far away, to feel those repercussions still is such a gift.

Mark Wheat VO: His legacy continues to inspire community work, especially among his longtime fans. Heidi Vader, who saw the August '83 show, told Cecilia that she sensed a vacuum in the fan community after Prince's death. She wanted to unite people behind something healing. So in 2017, she started a music education program called Purple Playground. Each summer, Purple Playground runs a two-week music camp where young students write their own music and record it. They also hear from guest speakers about Prince's legacy and what it's like to be a professional musician.

[Purple Playground's song "Purple Playground" plays for several seconds]

Heidi Vader: They write, like, five or eight songs, and then we record them. And we put them out, and they're on our website. And we ended up with these inspiring songs about supporting each other and loving yourself and believing in yourself, and all this stuff. That's what we were hoping but we didn't know it would happen – you know. They come in, these kids who – a couple of them knew each other, but a lot of them don't know each other. And then they're, immediately, like within an hour, they're like "Let's do this," back and forth, and yeah. So some of the songs will make you cry.

["Purple Rain" "twinkling" arpeggios and cymbal washes from the end of the song, with cheers from the audience. Prince tells the crowd, "We love you very, very much. Good night!" "Hive Sound" by Icetep fades up and plays under the credits.]

Cecilia Johnson VO: And there you have it. Mark Wheat's final contribution to The Current and The Current Rewind.

This episode of The Current Rewind was hosted by Mark Wheat. It was produced by me, Cecilia Johnson, and Jackie Renzetti. Marisa Morseth is our research assistant, and Jay Gabler is our editor. Our theme music is "Hive Sound" by Icetep. This episode was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans. Thanks to Brett Baldwin, Rick Carlson, Shelby Sachs, and David Safar for additional support. If you liked this episode, check out the series Prince: Official Podcast, which is produced by The Current and the Prince Estate. It's available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and beyond.

We work really hard on all these music history podcasts, and if you'd like to give back or say thanks, we'd really appreciate reviews on Apple Podcasts or a donation via support.mpr.org.

If you have any comments or stories you'd like to share directly with us, send them to rewind@thecurrent.org.

The Current Rewind is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It is a production of Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.

Description: One day after the LAPD beat up Rodney King, an Ice Cube concert went down in history as one of the most violent shows ever held at First Avenue. Hosted by Jay Smooth, we ask rap experts and former First Ave staffers about gangsta rap, security, and the uneasy relationship between the Minnesota music industry and Black hip-hop artists.

This is the sixth episode of The Current Rewind's "10 Pivotal Days at First Avenue" season. If you missed the first five episodes, catch up below.

• April 3, 1970 (The day it all began)
• Nov. 28-29, 1979 (The days that told the future)
• Sept. 27, 1982 (Bad Brains/Sweet Taste of Afrika/Hüsker Dü)
• Aug. 3, 1983 (The birth of "Purple Rain")
• Oct. 22, 1990 (Sonic Youth/Cows/Babes in Toyland)

Transcript of
The Current Rewind
season 2, episode 6: "March 4, 1991"

Anne O'Connor: We're talking about almost 30 years ago, but my memory of this was like, you opened up the gate at the horse races, and everybody was off to it.

[Ice Cube, "The Bomb," with the lyrics:

"With the L, the E, the N, the C, the H
The M, the O, the B, the great
Lyrics that make the beat swing and I gotcha
It's the hip-hopper that don't like coppers." Hard cut.]

Anne O'Connor: And it was just like an explosion, and it was non-stop all night long.

["The Bomb" picks up where it left off, running through these lyrics:

"And if you try to upset the pot, son
You get kicked in the chest like a shotgun
I make the beats, I make the breaks
I make the rhymes that make you shake
Make you find
Ice Cube never caught in the middle
I make stuff that kick you in the a** a little." Hard cut.]

Anne O'Connor: We just went from one fight to the next fight to the next fight. There was no breathing time. There was no downtime. It was just, "What emergency is there to go and deal with next?"

[Ice Cube's "The Bomb" returns with a sample of spoken audio and several voices singing, "The bomb"]

Cecilia Johnson VO: Gangsta rap was the most controversial music of the '90s – praised as an expression of Black America's righteous anger, reviled for its misogyny and depictions of violence. Taking cues from Schooly D and Ice-T, Los Angeles group N.W.A popularized the genre with their album Straight Outta Compton. Their most talented rhymer, Ice Cube, left the group to go solo in 1990. In early 1991, he brought his show to Minneapolis's First Avenue, for one of its most memorable nights ever.

["Hive Sound" by Icetep]

Cecilia Johnson VO: [over theme] I'm Cecilia Johnson. This is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. For our second season, we're looking back at one of the Twin Cities' – and the country's – greatest live venues through a series of pivotal nights. We're bringing on guest hosts for several episodes. In this one, Jay Smooth – the New York hip-hop radio legend and cultural commentator – joins us to tell the story of one of the most infamous shows in First Avenue's history. I do want to warn you: This episode contains explicit accounts of racism and violence.

[rewind sound effect]

Jay Smooth VO: Way back in 1991, I founded New York's longest-running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad. It was a pivotal time for hip-hop music, when it was still just beginning to cross all sorts of cultural boundaries. And the other love of my musical life back then was the Black Minneapolis Sound, as defined by Prince and his many collaborators – who, in their own way, were on a similar path of bringing Black music into spaces where it hadn't necessarily been all that welcome.

So, as a devoted student of Prince and hip-hop who came of age in that era, the First Avenue club and its relationship with Black music, and hip-hop, specifically, has always been an object of fascination for me. And though it was primarily defined as a rock club, First Avenue did host a number of high-profile hip-hop shows in the '80s and early '90s, according to someone who saw a lot of them.

Tim Wilson: Timothy Wilson, Urban Lights Music owner.

Jay Smooth VO: Tim's record store, Urban Lights, is a community hub in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul.

Tim Wilson: I remember seeing Run-D.M.C. I remember they had Jam Master Jay kind of suspended in the air, swinging back and forth, and they couldn't jump around on the stage, because the records were skipping and stuff like that, but they still made it through. I remember going to KRS-One; the sound crashed and he literally had one of his people beat box, and he continued to perform. [Tim laughs]

Jay Smooth VO: On top of the big names from out of state, Minnesotan hip-hop acts the Micranots and the I.R.M. Crew sometimes performed in First Ave's smaller room, the 7th Street Entry. Still, it would take a while for the club's overall attitude to change, from what sound engineer Randy Hawkins, in Chris Riemenschneider's book First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom, called, quote, "anti-rap." The non-white population of Minneapolis grew nearly 70 percent during the '80s. But hip-hop took longer to bloom in the Twin Cities than on the coasts, partly because the success of Prince, the Time, and Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis made funk the sound du jour there in the '80s. One of First Avenue's most successful dance nights was More Funk, every Thursday with the club's longtime DJ Roy Freedom. Prince and Jimmy Jam would sometimes bring test pressings for the occasion. Tim Wilson also DJ'ed there.

Tim Wilson: You know, it was disco, funk, rap, kind of all mixed up into one hodgepodge. It was just a little bit of hip-hop at the time, because rap just hadn't really – hadn't really captured the imagination of the world, let's say it like that. It wasn't the Wall Street darling that it is today. So it was a record here, a record there, but it was just a lot of Minneapolis Sound stuff. Of course you would get a lot of Prince and people like André Cymone, the Girls, Ta Mara & the Seen, Alexander O'Neal.

Dan Corrigan: More Funk with Roy Freedom? We used to call it More Fights with Roy Freedom – ha!

Jay Smooth VO: Dan Corrigan has been First Avenue's official photographer since 1995. These clips are from a 2003 interview he did with Pete Scholtes of City Pages.

Dan Corrigan: There was one night, there was the biggest fight I've ever seen down there. It was just crazy. It started on the dance floor and kind of went around the right and spilled all the way out to the entryway.

Jay Smooth VO: That brawl took place in 1990, during More Funk's fifth anniversary. Randy Hawkins told our writer Michaelangelo Matos about that night.

Randy Hawkins: The fifth anniversary of [More] Funk night it was a similar situation of losing control of the club. There was a few times where it was like, "We've lost control of this."

Jay Smooth VO: Now, this kind of thing didn't happen very often. One reason for that is First Avenue's security system.

Sabrina Keith: There's, like, a light switch at various locations throughout the club, like emergency buttons you press if something goes wrong.

Jay Smooth VO: Sabrina Keith was a bartender, stagehand, and superglue employee of First Ave, working on and off from 1988 to 2004.

Sabrina Keith: And you flip the switch, and let's see, upstairs, a central light goes on. It's, like, a siren light – a red siren light. And then, I think, at the front door there might be one, as well. And then, you look over to the side of the stage, and there's many lights of many different colors, and hopefully just one of them will be spinning, and that would be – that gives you an idea of where the trouble is. And actually, just the other day, me and another old employee were talking and can remember pretty much where all the trouble lights are. It's really disturbing. [laughs] I shouldn't know that green means pool tables, which means it's by where the current coat check is and no more pool tables.

Jay Smooth VO: The origin of the so-called "trouble lights" is still fresh in Richard Luka's mind. He had been recruited to work security in 1975, when the club was still called Uncle Sam's. You may remember him from the Ramones and Pat Benatar episode earlier this season. Richard spoke with our producer, Cecilia, and First Ave's longtime general manager Steve McClellan.

Richard Luka: The reason for that light was that in March of 1977, I was working alone. We'd purged a lot of people out of there at that time. Uh, there was all this new staff. They really didn't know anything, and I was all alone at the front door with the cashier, and a bike gang came to the door. The Iron Cross from northern Minnesota. And I had to card these guys, and I thought, "Oh my god, I can't – what am I gonna do here?" And I just – there was, like, six of them. I just said well, I guess I'm letting them in. And it turns out a few more came in, so we had like nine bikers in there who took their coats off. They were flying their colors in there.

Steve McClellan: What show was it?

Richard Luka: No, this was like a Saturday night in 1977, and I remember one of our regular customers, a guy named Tiger. He was Black, and he had a shaved head and these guys surrounded him. They were rubbing his head, saying, "I wish I had a watermelon," and I was like, "Oh my god, this is gonna get out of hand." And at the end of the night, they were just rude and belligerent to people. And [Tiger] came up and he said, "What on earth did you let them in here for?" I go like, "I was gonna get the s*** beat out of me. It's like I'm up here all alone." And they said, "Okay, we're putting a light in." So they installed this light, and a year later, the bike gang came back, but we had hired all new staff. [Steve and Richard laugh] We had some bigger people there, and I hit that light and people were right there, and these guys, they threw their jackets off and they were ready to go, and the police showed up. So that is what can happen at the front door. You never knew what was gonna show up there.

Steve McClellan: Oh, the first light that he's talking about, my brother Kevin installed. When did we put in the different colors? So if it was the game room, it would go off green, and when it was –

Richard Luka: It was, like, 1983, I'm gonna say.

Steve McClellan: Yeah, that much later. The first one was '77, '78. And that was sufficient, and then we had to do a system that people wouldn't go to the front door. They would go to the game area, the upstairs, or bar five. So we had like a six-light sequence that would go off.

Jay Smooth VO: Along with the trouble lights, the seriousness of First Ave's security earned it a reputation in town, according to Tim Wilson.

Tim Wilson: People go through the usual First Avenue bulls*** when you go to First Avenue. You know, they look at your license and turn it upside down and flip it and flop it, pat you down, and you walk in. It was always one of those things like, oh man, don't go to First Avenue with a fake ID. Don't try to sneak in First Avenue. Their security doesn't play. And it's still the same thing. People get turned away.

Sabrina Keith: One point that as always made kind of clear at First Avenue was, we're not bouncers. And we don't ever want to be called bouncers. We are security. We're just trying to make things better. We don't want to bounce you. We don't want to be mean to you. We don't want to beat you up. We just want you to have fun, and I've never understood why people go out and don't have fun. It's like, "Why are you starting stuff? You paid however much money to get in here, so have fun."

Whether you kick them out or whether you put them back, it's up to how they act. I mean, I had one kid come up to me five years after the fact saying, "Oh my god, it's you," and I'm like, what are you talking about. "You kicked me out of Nine Inch Nails." I'm like, "OK." [laughs] I'm glad that was a great memory for you. [Sabrina and Michaelangelo laugh]

Jay Smooth VO: The club's security staff have long been trained to de-escalate situations, according to a longtime staffer.

Anne O'Connor: My name is Anne O'Connor. I worked at First Avenue for two different time periods in the 1990s. [pause] I mean, de-escalation can work in any setting. It really can. You have to keep your head. My strategy was always to get in between the people who were really upset, because they almost would never go after me. And so that would at least create some space. When people are hot-headed, a lot of times all they really need is to step back for a second and say, "Wait a minute, do I really want to do this?" And that's the kind of thing that we would say.

[Ice-T's "Body Count" starts fading up]

Anne O'Connor: And sometimes that didn't work at all. [Anne laughs]

[Ice-T's "Body Count" plays for about 20 seconds]

Jay Smooth VO: In February of 1991, First Avenue hosted one of its occasional rap shows: Ice-T, the revolutionary Los Angeles MC with sharp storytelling and a steely voice. That show was one of two he'd perform in Minnesota that year; he also came through St. Paul's Harriet Island on the Lollapalooza tour. And each time, Ice-T didn't just rap – he sang with an all-Black metal band called Body Count. Sabrina Keith told Michaelangelo about hanging out with that group.

Sabrina Keith: It was just fun, because it was Ice-T, and he was doing metal, which, like, with Body Count, there's just not a lot of Black artists doing that. And we had Blake working at the club, who's basically the exact same thing, just not, you know, Ice-T. And so it's fun, it's novel and just a bunch of big guys, and they had really cool merch, and they wanted like our First Avenue jackets because we were all wearing them and I think it was cold then too.

Michaelangelo Matos: February.

Sabrina Keith: Yup, that's cold. [laughs]

Jay Smooth VO: Ice-T and Body Count would see more than their share of controversy a year later, in 1992, when they released the song "Cop Killer." But in 1991, there was no more controversial figure in rap, or in music, than Ice Cube. He'd been the primary lyricist for N.W.A, who had debuted in 1989 with the iconic album Straight Outta Compton. Soon afterward, the FBI sent a letter to N.W.A's record label to complain about the lyrics of songs such as "Eff Tha Police" – lyrics that had mostly been written by Ice Cube, who was only 20 years old.

But Cube felt like he wasn't getting his fair share of royalties, so in 1990, he and his friend and producer Sir Jinx went to New York to collaborate with the hottest producers of the time, The Bomb Squad. The Bomb Squad, featuring Hank Shocklee, Chuck D, and Eric Sadler, were Public Enemy's sample-heavy production team. With their help, Ice Cube finished his first solo album, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, and released it in May of 1990. He followed it with the Kill at Will EP in December. No rapper was hotter right then, as Tim Wilson recalls.

Tim Wilson: That was good Ice Cube: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, one of my top five albums of all time. He left N.W.A, got politically conscious, and then there was just the whole thing with the group and the break-up, and then he went out east and hung out with Chuck D and Public Enemy, and they produced that album, and it was just – it was the hot album at that particular time. That particular album bridged gangsta rap and politically conscious material all into one project. You know, he was gassed up and ready to go.

Jay Smooth VO: Ice Cube didn't lead a lifestyle as violent as his lyrics would suggest – like a lot of rappers, he'd rhyme in character. But some of his fans did carry the things he rapped about carrying, as John Smith, who would join the First Avenue staff in 1993 and is still a DJ and bartender at the club, would discover.

DJ Smitty: First Avenue started using metal detectors. When you saw the metal detectors, it wasn't, "Oh, this is a new thing they're doing." It's like, "Oh, Ice Cube is coming." And then earlier that week, before the show, I was at Northern Lights Records, and I overheard some clerks talking about how they had overheard some kids talking about trying to stash some guns in First Avenue before the Ice Cube show, so that they would circumvent the metal detectors. Those were the people who first made it apparent to me that this was not gonna be business as usual.

The record stores, I guess, were getting phone calls and whatnot – because we weren't a Ticketmaster club, [so] if you wanted to buy tickets for a First Avenue show, you had to go someplace and buy them. I think the Ice Cube crowd was a crowd that didn't necessarily know where to buy our tickets. So it was kind of that, where we realized, "This isn't just gonna be shiny happy hipsters going to a rap show. This is gonna be real."

Jay Smooth VO: Anne O'Connor worked roaming security that night.

Anne O'Connor: As the staff, we would get together and talk about what we were gonna do. And then what ended up happening is we hired in a bunch of extra additional security people. For about a week before the shows, we had metal detectors at the door so that people couldn't bring guns of knives or anything in and stash them in the club, so that they could use them during the shows themselves.

You know, these were guys who, their show was about raising people's anger about some really unfair situations, about calling out some things that were really wrong, and so people had a tendency to get pissed. So we knew that, and we had to be ready for that. And the Ice-T show, I feel like we managed to do that without huge problems. We didn't have huge problems that night.

When you put together people with loud music, lots of drinking and lots of young people dancing – body contact – you're really just setting a stage for some conflict. There's gonna be some conflict sometime.

Jay Smooth VO: Ice Cube's March 4 appearance was, in fact, two shows – an all-ages in the late afternoon and an ID-only show at night. This was a regular occurrence at the club throughout the '90s.

Sabrina Keith: I know for the first show, I did coat-check, so it was pretty mellow. Everybody thought the kids' show was gonna be bad, and it just was not.

Jay Smooth VO: There was one issue during the all-ages show: Somebody threw a bottle over the upstairs balcony, where alcohol was allowed. When Ice Cube finished the first show, the club took two hours to change over.

Sabrina Keith: You have to clean up and kind of reset everything to start the night fresh. I think they bought us pizza, and we just kind of hung out and waited.

Jay Smooth VO: Rod Smith was bar-backing that night – running liquor from storage to the bars.

Rod Smith: The attendance at the all-ages show was healthy, but nowhere near sold out. At the ID show, attendance was sold out-plus. I believe you've encountered the phenomenon where somebody in the office would panic about ticket sales and just start slamming comps out indiscriminately. A ton of comps had gone out, and then a ton of people paid, so attendance [laughs] was way over the top.

DJ Smitty: We got there for the ID show. We walk in. First thing we figured out pretty quick was, we weren't gonna get any help, because anything with a counter, whether it was a bar or whether it was coat-check – they were busy. It was packed. It was full, and there were people yelling. There were people who were not happy with the order that they were being helped. There were people who were not happy with the prices. There were just a lot of not happy people. It was wet outside, and it was hot in there, which made it hot and wet – like a cave. The walls were sweating. The men's room had an inch of water going on, on the floor. There was a bad vibe.

Jay Smooth VO: Our sources couldn't pick out one specific point where the fights started. But according to Anne, once they started, they didn't stop.

Anne O'Connor: It was just bam-bam-bam. It was just non-stop, so you didn't really have time to stop and think, "Wow, this is really overwhelming; I don't know if I can do it." You just did it. The place was packed. There were so many people there. So if you were – if you couldn't get to the trouble light, that's one thing, but also if the trouble light was already going, you'd have a fight five feet away from you. Well, five feet in a packed room could be – it's a lot of feet to get to, sometimes – [laughs] you know – to get through the bodies and get to the actual fight, you're not always gonna make it.

Rod Smith: These melees would just randomly break out. The outside security people that First Avenue hired did an outstanding job, because they were really aware of what was going on mood-wise in the club, and as soon as something broke out, they would start heading toward it. But, again, the problem being there was a certain amount of distance in the Mainroom, and when the club is that packed, you can't move that quickly. They were moving pretty quickly, though. So these fights were being stopped, for the most part, like, pretty quickly after they started. But they didn't really stop. I'd say they continued pretty much through the night.

DJ Smitty: As a customer, I knew about the trouble lights, and I'd seen them go off in the past. I had never seen all of them go off at the same time.

Rod Smith: I believe there were 27 all told, and there were incidents that didn't even prompt the trouble light, because nobody could get to a trouble light, because the club was that packed.

Jay Smooth VO: Randy Hawkins worked the barricade in front of the stage for both shows.

Randy Hawkins: There was three of us – four of us all in the barricade, and we had to stay there. Unless the situation was right in front of you on the floor, of which there were many, we did what we could from inside the barricade, but mostly the roaming security of people on the dance floor dealt with that stuff. And so it was like, it turned into a pretty serious us-against-them scenario, and like as far as security vs. the audience, which, you never want to get in that situation. But every time a door got opened, there'd be three people trying to bum-rush the show. But every time like a side door or anything got opened to let someone in, you had to have security at each one, basically just to defend the castle. It was kind of the same way with the barricade and every bar – just people trying to take everything they could take. Yeah. There was all sorts of, just grab whatever booze you could grab.

Rod Smith: I encountered bartenders and bar backs crying back by the coolers, and that happened multiple times. The bar backs, because they'd been sucker-punched, and the bartender, because people kept I mean, there was some real ballers there, and they tipped really well, but then these wannabes would come along and steal the big tips that somebody else had just left. And it was so busy that it was impossible for the bartenders to really keep track of what was happening with their tips.

Anne O'Connor: You know, we called the cops several times. We carted several people out to the cops. When you are in a fight at First Avenue, what ends up happening is you get surrounded by staff.

Michaelangelo Matos: Quickly.

Anne O'Connor: Quickly. And so, you know like, there's nowhere to go.

Jay Smooth VO: But the cops weren't particularly soothing that night, or any other. In fact, just the night before, on March 3, 1991, a Los Angeles motorist named Rodney King was pulled over and beaten mercilessly by the LAPD. A man with a camcorder filmed the incident and sent it to a local TV news show. The Rodney King video wasn't yet national news when Ice Cube played First Avenue – that would be in a few days still. But for most people at the show, police brutality wasn't just something they heard about in rap songs – chances were, many of Ice Cube's fans knew someone it had happened to, if they hadn't experienced it personally.

Anne O'Connor: What I would say is that there were a lot of valid reasons for being upset, and this was a place for them to have that upset, and sometimes that upset meant that they wanted to hurt someone. And so I'm not justifying the behavior or excusing it, but I'm just saying it was not a big surprise. When I say nobody got seriously hurt, I mean like broken bones or injuries that . . .

Michaelangelo Matos: Hospital injuries.

Anne O'Connor: Hospital injuries. It was a rough night. It was a rough scene. It was a very violent show, so I don't want to underplay that.

Jay Smooth VO: Urban Lights owner Tim Wilson was in the audience that night – and he remembers seeing an opening group that included a rapper who would top the pop charts four years later.

Tim Wilson: I remember a group called WC and the MAAD Circle, which was one of Ice Cube's groups – Dub-C who still tours with Cube. And Coolio was actually part of the group at that time. Crazy Toones was the DJ, which was Dub-C's brother. I remember they kept having sound problems. And they kept telling the sound guy, like, "Man you better fix this or we're gonna have a problem." And they would keep rapping, keep doing their thing, and then they would warn him again, and then the sound never changed. I think they warned him a third time. And honestly, what I remember is them jumping off the stage, breezing past us, and I remember – I never understood why First Ave set their soundboard – they had those steps that go down, and then they set their soundboard where, unfortunately, the way he kind of got jumped on, he ended up down in the crevice at the bottom of the stairs and where the soundboard started. And they were kicking him and hitting him until they got pulled off and back onto the stage. They just kind of shot past us and jumped on him. Then they jumped back onstage, and they kept rapping, and the sound man wiped the blood off his face and he just kept going.

Jay Smooth VO: DJ Smitty, who couldn't get into the Sonic Youth concert last episode, did make it in the door for Ice Cube. He says the mood perked up when the headliner took the stage.

DJ Smitty: People never talk about the fact [that] that was a great show. Ice Cube – I'd go see him again in a heartbeat. One of the best hip-hop shows I've ever seen. But a friend of mine did get close enough to the stage to see the set list and came back and said, "We're going. We're two songs away from the encore. Let's get out of here." And as we left, I had to hold the door open because they were stretchering someone out.

[Ice Cube ft. Chuck D, "Endangered Species (Tales From The Darkside) - Remix"]

Rod Smith: Management lost control of the club, too. Everybody lost control of the club.

Steve McClellan: All I know is it was hateful because you couldn't – you got 1,500 people in the room. You could have 50 security staff. You don't stand a chance. There was so many people ready to quit after some of these shows.

Jay Smooth VO: Anne O'Connor was one of them.

Anne O'Connor: I put my notice in shortly after the Ice Cube show. I remember thinking, that is the violence that I don't need to be a part of. And I love the club, I loved the people I worked with, it was a lot of fun, but that wasn't fun for me.

Rod Smith: A lot of people were really bummed out. I had quit smoking eight months earlier, and I started again that night. The mood overall was, "We got through it." A few people were traumatized.

Anne O'Connor: We were worn out. And it was hard. And I remember everyone feeling pretty rough at that point. It was pretty rough.

Jay Smooth VO: The show also got First Avenue in trouble with the city, not for the first time.

Steve McClellan: I had too many incidents where the police wouldn't respond when I would book gangsta rap. I used to go to monthly downtown – what do they call them? – downtown association meetings or something. Where I'd go and I'd sit, and when you went to these meetings, and if you were a nightclub, the fire department was there to tell you exactly what you do to keep your license. The police department would be there monthly and tell you exactly what you needed to do to keep your license. They were more like – "This meeting isn't to ask questions. We're the city and you're gonna do what we tell you."

Jay Smooth VO: Despite the complaints about gangsta rap, the next First Ave show that'd see similar violence was a 1995 appearance by a singer-songwriter whose politics could not have been further removed from Ice Cube's.

Randy Hawkins: There's a country singer – oh my god, what's his name? Outlaw country singer. David Allan Coe. At the time, that was show two that had as many problems as Ice Cube. That David Allan Coe show, I think it wasn't as well attended. I got probably there was probably 800 people there, and so I don't think we ever really lost control of it, but it was definitely getting there. I came in the next day and everybody was just, like, shell-shocked: "You will not believe what we were dealing with last night."

Jay Smooth VO: Chris Riemenschneider, author and longtime music reporter at the Star Tribune, suggests that the Ice Cube show is remembered as a turning point.

Chris Riemenschneider: The biggest myth about that show – well, I don't know if it's a myth, but I mean, supposedly that show was – hip-hop was not booked at the venue for many years after that show, because it got so ugly. And they generalized over, "Well, hip-hop audiences are bad news."

Jay Smooth VO: When we asked Steve McClellan and LeeAnn Weimar whether First Avenue avoided hip-hop after Ice Cube, Steve said that he still booked rappers through agents he trusted.

Steve McClellan: There was a lot of drug dealers that were trying to bring me shows, because they had connections with the agent, and they wanted to bring in a lot of these hip-hop acts.

LeeAnn Weimar: Or they had beepers. Remember, they had beepers.

Steve McClellan: I called them the beeper phone promoters. In the '90s, I stopped dealing with beeper phone promoters that had plenty of cash but no trust from me.

Jay Smooth VO: Steve returned to this point several times throughout the interview, insisting that if there was a lapse in hip-hop shows, it was only because he didn't want to work with so-called "beeper phone promoters." Whatever the case, First Avenue generally avoided hip-hop until the late '90s, according to Chris Riemenschneider.

Chris Riemenschneider: It really wasn't until Rhymesayers and Atmosphere came along and started packing the place that they started giving hip-hop a good chance there again.

Jay Smooth VO: Nationally, hip-hop had been ebbing into the mainstream for years. In Minnesota, indie rap label Rhymesayers capitalized on that shift. In the late '90s, they started throwing Soundset Wednesdays, a series of hip-hop dance nights at First Avenue, and their audiences trended whiter and whiter. At the same time, First Avenue opened the gates to touring acts such as OutKast, Eminem, Public Enemy, and the Black Eyed Peas.

["Hive Sound" by Icetep fades up and plays for a few seconds]

Cecilia Johnson VO: Ok, so this episode was a whopper. And I think the material of this episode is still so relevant today. At this point, I want to bring up an article that rocked Minnesota music in 2016. Like, I still remember, the day that it came out, reading it at my desk. It's the Twin Cities Daily Planet's piece "Whitest hip hop scene you've ever heard of," written by Kayla Steinberg, and it speaks directly to the aftershocks of the Ice Cube show. I'm just gonna read a few somewhat abridged sentences:

Quote, "When out-of-state and mainstream media and fans refer to Twin Cities hip hop, Rhymesayers Entertainment is often their point of reference. The common faces of Rhymesayers include Brother Ali, an albino Muslim rapper who identifies as white, and Atmosphere, a duo of racially ambiguous, arguably white-passing, hip hop artists.

However, to Toki Wright, a Black North Minneapolis rapper, these are just a couple faces of the Twin Cities hip hop scene. "I think the face of Twin Cities hip hop is a 14-year-old kid on the Northside of Minneapolis in his bedroom, making beats or writing rhymes," he said. "The face of Twin Cities hip hop is Lexii Alijai recording with Kehlani and the local press turning a blind eye to it. That's Twin Cities hip hop." Enquote.

Later in the article, Black rapper MaLLy talks about his experience at the Rhymesayers 20th anniversary show in 2015. The way he remembers it, many audience members went from supportive, when white artist Brother Ali rapped his song "Dear Black Son," to apathetic when Toki Wright and I Self Devine, both Black rappers, proclaimed messages such as "eff the police" and "kill white supremacy" on stage.

Some things haven't changed between '91 and now, but First Avenue [itself] has undergone a monumental shift, in the way they operate, what causes they stand for, and whose names are at the top. It's all covered in our next episode, which is about Election Day in 2004: the day First Avenue declared bankruptcy.

This episode of The Current Rewind was hosted by the one and only Jay Smooth and me, Cecilia Johnson. It was produced by me and Jesse Wiza and scripted by our head writer, Michaelangelo Matos. Marisa Morseth is our research assistant, and Jay Gabler is our editor. Our theme music is the song "Hive Sound" by Icetep. This episode was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans. And I wanna give a super special thank-you to Rick Carlson, Shelby Sachs, David Safar, Pete Scholtes, and Chris Wilbourn for additional support.

If you want to check out a transcript of this episode or any other one, you can go to TheCurrent.org/rewind. And if you feel so moved, you can go ahead and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or tell a friend that it's out there. If you want to share any thoughts, feedback, or First Avenue stories, our inbox is open. You can just send an email to rewind@thecurrent.org.

The Current Rewind is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It is a production of Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.

Description: When First Avenue entered bankruptcy on Election Day 2004, some saw it as the end of an era. But others – including devoted employees, local music fans, and a certain stage-diving ally in City Hall – would not rest until they'd saved the club.

This is the seventh episode of The Current Rewind's "10 Pivotal Days at First Avenue" season. If you missed the first six episodes, catch up below.

• April 3, 1970 (The day it all began)
• Nov. 28-29, 1979 (The days that told the future)
• Sept. 27, 1982 (Bad Brains/Sweet Taste of Afrika/Hüsker Dü)
• Aug. 3, 1983 (The birth of "Purple Rain")
• Oct. 22, 1990 (Sonic Youth/Cows/Babes in Toyland)
• March 4, 1991 (Ice Cube/WC and the MAAD Circle)

Transcript of
The Current Rewind
season 2, episode 7: "Nov. 2, 2004"

Cecilia Johnson VO: Hey, it's Cecilia, host and producer of The Current Rewind. If you're listening to this the day it drops, it's Election Day in the U.S. You may be wondering what a First Ave podcast is doing in your feed, today of all days.

Well, first, we wanted to encourage you to vote, if you haven't already. On the flip side, if you're seeking a few moments of respite, we got you. Third, a while back, I noticed a really weird coincidence: This episode takes place on Election Day itself. In fact, some First Ave employees remember frantically working to save their club and having to take a break to vote. It's funny how history rhymes.

[🎵 A few stock music selections slide from song to song, separated by brief bursts of static. After several seconds, the music drops out, and we hear the following interview clips in quick succession 🎵]

Dan Corrigan: But we thought that it was not going to be open anymore. We thought it was done.

DJ Smitty: Nathan was like, "Yeah, I think this is it." And we're like, "Really?" Like, "Yeah."

[🎵 contemplative guitar fades up 🎵]

Randy Hawkins: It was heartbreaking.

Dan Corrigan: It was crazy, because when we closed the door for the – what we thought was the last time, all the lights in the whole place were off, but we turned on all the trouble lights.

[As Dan mentions the trouble lights, a "twinkly" sound effect fades up. Then, the guitar song resumes]

Cecilia Johnson VO: I'm Cecilia Johnson. This is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. This season, we're looking back at 50 years of First Avenue, one of the Twin Cities' and the country's greatest live venues.

So far this season, we've welcomed a series of guest hosts, but this episode, I'll be your guide through the story of First Avenue's bankruptcy. In this episode, we'll visit First Ave on one of its darkest days, which some folks took to be the end. But others – including devoted employees, local music fans, and a certain stage-diving ally in City Hall – would not rest until they'd saved the club.

[guitar song fades out; rewind sound effect]

Cecilia Johnson VO: Although it shocked a lot of music fans, First Avenue's 2004 bankruptcy was a long time coming. If you've been following this season of our show, you've probably got a general understanding of First Avenue's finances, from its genesis as the Depot up until 2004.

Craig Finn: ...these carpetbaggers weren't bagging much cash.

Joe Shalita: But First Avenue is First Avenue. A dingy little place – at first, it was real dingy – you know –

Steve McClellan: We were, like, $60,000 in debt with no backup revenue source.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And the whole way through, Allan Fingerhut had owned or co-owned the business. We introduced him in the first episode of our season, but just for a little recap: Fingerhut had grown up in a suburb of Minneapolis, and his family ran a profitable mail-order company. He was one of the founding members of "The Committee," the small group who opened the Depot at First Avenue and Seventh Street in 1970. The Depot entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1971, and Cincinnati disco chain American Avents took over the club's operations in 1972, rebranding the Depot as Uncle Sam's. But the chain dissolved that partnership in about 1979. Soon afterward, Steve McClellan, the club's general manager, brought his old friend and roommate Jack Meyers aboard, to help manage money.

Steve McClellan: We were a very good, in my mind, a good yin and yang, that when the club was doing well, I was in charge, but when we weren't doing well, Jack was in charge.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And according to Jack Meyers, the fourth member of their quartet was Byron Frank.

Jack Meyers: Allan Fingerhut grew up with a buddy named Byron Frank. They were inseparable for years. And Byron is a real accountant CPA – a very good businessman. And he ran all of Allan's concerns, and so we had a meeting in 1979 – Byron, Allan, Steve and Jack – and put together our plans for First Avenue, shook hands, and off we went. Our main rule from Allan was "never ask me for money," which we never did, thankfully, otherwise we wouldn't have been there so long. At any rate, that was the big meeting, and those were the four of us, and we always reported to Byron, just like all of or most of Allan's concerns reported to Byron. So Byron was what we'd call "boss." Allan was what we'd call "owner." And this was even better, because the owner lived in California, so he kept most of his good ideas away.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Our producer Jesse Wiza spoke with Jack this summer.

Jesse Wiza: So when you were assistant manager, what did you do on a typical day?

Jack Meyers: Everything Steve didn't. It started out, Steve did the promotion and I did everything else, which means open the doors, hire and fire, run operations, and do the accounting when I had time, and count the money – you know. It was a real shoestring [operation], and I'm kinda proud of that.

Steve McClellan: I knew not to go to him to ask for any special requests if we just had a terrible week or month. But if I just had like three sellout shows and we had – oh, I don't know, I think 30 grand would've been a lot of money at the time in the bank account. I'd go, "Whoa, we can fix the floors, we can fix everything." And then Jack would remind me that the $8,000 insurance bill is due at the end of the month, and he would line up $20,000-30,000 of payments due just to stay open. You know, ridiculous things like insurance.

Jack Meyers: But Jack always made sure Allan got his check. Oh yeah, not only didn't he give us any money, but he got his check every month, which he was used to because Uncle Sam's sent him that check. So I sent him the same amount every month, and that was copacetic, and that's how it worked. That was, as we shall see, years later became very important.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Jack, Steve, and a few others ran the office upstairs at First Avenue.

Rob Milanov: But they were all day guys.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And Rob Milanov, who worked at First Avenue from 1999 until the 2004 bankruptcy, was a night staffer.

Rob Milanov: I started out as roaming security. You know, just the guy who wanders around the club trying to keep an eye on things. I eventually worked my way in barbacking and bartending and bussing and cashiering and – never worked stage but did a little bit of everything else.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Like Richard Luka from earlier this season, Rob got a job at First Avenue while attending a show.

Rob Milanov: We're standing in line, and they came down the line like, "We're short on people; anybody need a job?" [laughs]

Cecilia Johnson VO: And unlike many of the people who jumped at that opportunity, Rob ended up staying for years.

Rob Milanov: Everybody thought they wanted to work there, but once they started, the vast majority of people are gone within a couple days. Because, at the time, you didn't get paid anything, and you're risking your life, and it was a hassle.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Like lots of restaurant and entertainment jobs, First Avenue was a "sink or swim" kind of gig.

Rob Milanov: I mean, you'd be friendly with people right away, but to be honest, we were not the nicest to new employees. We threw you to the wolves and – and saw if you could survive, and – you'd get help in some ways, but at the same time, like I said – you had to prove yourself or you were just gonna be another person that lasted three days.

Cecilia Johnson VO: While interviewing former employees, I heard about a particularly hilarious tradition. Only at First Avenue does "throw you to the wolves" translate to "involuntary karaoke." But that was part of being a new person.

Rob Milanov: So if you're looking at the stage, there's that sitting rail along the left side of the room, and basically, at the employee meeting at the end of the night, you'd have to stand up on the sitting rail and sing a song. You didn't know this; occasionally, somebody would hear it through the grapevine, "This is what they did," or whatnot. But for the most part, most of us were completely surprised by this.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And what did Rob sing?

[🎵 "Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus" by Mojo Nixon fades up 🎵]

Rob Milanov: [laughs] Well, I stood up, thought for a few seconds, and I started singing the chorus to "Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus" by Mojo Nixon, which was a popular choice. By the end of the chorus, most of the staff were singing along.

[🎵 "Are You Drinkin' With Me Jesus" by Mojo Nixon plays for several seconds, fades down 🎵]

Cecilia Johnson VO: But Rob's First Avenue was pretty different from that of the higher-ups. He says most of the office workers would go home by the time the concerts actually started.

Rob Milanov: The night staff didn't really see the upper-upper management too much. The one we'd see the most was Steve, because he would at least stick around long enough to say hello to the bands as they were loading in. The office was kinda this foreign world. [laughs] We knew the office as far as like – getting change and them putting the money away at the end of the night. That's where you pick up your walkie-talkie and your keys and whatnot and drop them off at the end of the night. But other than that, you know...

Cecilia Johnson VO: Like almost any job, there was some tension between those who set the wages and those who earned them. In 1998, one employee filed a Department of Labor complaint that attested to a couple different types of wage theft at First Avenue. No one wanted to go on the record with me to talk about it, mostly out of love for the club, but every First Avenue veteran we interviewed agreed that it was not a place to get rich. Even Steve tried to steer potential employees away from seeing First Ave as a career.

Steve McClellan: One of my interview questions in those days was, "You really need work, don't you?" My suggestion, and I was serious when I told people this: "Go get that full-time job that's gonna pay your rent, then come back and talk to me about some supplementary income."

Cecilia Johnson VO: I asked Rob Milanov if he felt management had any way to pay people more.

Rob Milanov: I honestly don't know if there was, because – you look at the bartenders just piling money into their registers, and you think, "This place is making money hand over fist." But if you think of the logistics of it, like, on any given night, a lot of times, we have like 40 staff members on, and you got the expense of the bands and the DJs and – you know – the stage people – and I do think they probably paid us what they could.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Despite the low wages, many First Ave employees truly cared about their jobs and each other.

Rob Milanov: Sometimes, we were bonded by fire, literally. [laughs] Or putting our lives on the line for eight bucks an hour. That kinda makes you family.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And although it was a tough job, Rob remembers those days fondly.

Rob Milanov: Saw a lot of good shows for free, man. That's what it was about. That's why you literally risk your life for eight dollars an hour, is because you get to be a part of the music scene. I feel like I was part of the shows.

Cecilia Johnson VO: In 2003, tension was mounting amid the owner and manager quartet: Allan, Byron, Jack, and Steve. Jack remembers it like this.

Jack Meyers: Sometime in '03, Byron and Allan had a falling out over the stupidest reason I ever heard of. Allan claims he didn't sign something that Byron had, and there's no way Byron would've done that. So he up and fired Byron, after, what, 50 years of Byron running everything for him? So at any rate, remember the four people at the table: Allan, Byron, Steve and Jack. He fired Byron, our boss. And that's complicated, because in 2000 when we bought the building, Allan didn't wanna spend any money. Remember the rule? "Don't ask me for money."

Cecilia Johnson VO: The team behind First Avenue hadn't owned their building until 2000, when the building's then-owner presented an ultimatum: buy the real estate or face a huge rent hike.

Jack Meyers: And Allan got – we were able to get enough for 20% of the property, and then Allan's kids, through his brother who was trustee, each bought 10%, so that's 40%. So then Jack and Steve had to step up, and we each bought 10%. That was a lot of money to us. And then Byron filled in the other 40%. So now you have a situation where Byron's running the club as a manager who owns 40%, more than Allan. And Allan fires him. Well, obviously, there's gonna be disputes over the property. So of course, Allan doesn't have enough shares to, uh, replace Byron. He's a minority shareholder, so of course he calls Jack and Steve. This started the downturn for us. And he said, "Vote with me. We're gonna do something to Byron." He wanted to buy him out, force him out; I don't remember.

So at any rate, Joe Finley, our lawyer, said, "You don't wanna get in the middle of that. You don't vote in any of these things." Well, Allan knew that a "no" vote made him impotent, and he couldn't get rid of Byron, and so he got mad at Jack and Steve. So all we did was no vote, which, when you think about it, makes a heck of a lot of sense, because why in the world would we pick sides between Byron and Allan? Ok. So that's a big thing.

So then months later, we had to stop sending Allan his monthly check. Allan didn't like that; oh, I knew he wouldn't. And then – Joe said I had to do it. I had to send Allan a letter saying, things are bad, and we need money, or they're gonna get worse. I didn't wanna send it, because I knew where it was gonna go, but I did, because that's what managements do. We weren't the only club losing money in '04. It was just a bad year for bands. Who knows why? I used to call them "the bad band gods." There were good some years; they were bad other years, and that's the best I could ever figure.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Jack and Steve's back-up plan was to entice Jam Productions or another big company into buying First Avenue.

Jack Meyers: Well, Allan wasn't interested in selling. But we did – we tried to buy the club, knowing full well that Allan would take that letter he received saying, "Not only aren't I getting my check, but now you want money, and that's the one – first rule I told you, back in 1979. I got a better idea. You and Steve are fired." So now, of the four people at the meeting that put it all together in '79, three are fired. And this is important to us. Since we've been terminated, we no longer owe any loyalty to Allan.

Cecilia Johnson VO: The club limped along for five more months. But according to longtime First Avenue stage manager Randy Hawkins, its operations were not pretty.

Randy Hawkins: It was [sighs] heartbreaking. I think, without pointing any fingers, the place was not being run the best by the owners at the time. The money wasn't going back into the club. The money was going somewhere else. And they lost some good booking people. Steve and Jack were gone. It was being run by a team that – I don't know how to say it. They just weren't quite on top of it. They didn't have the luster that the people do now.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Bankruptcy rumors had been swirling around First Avenue for a long time, often enough that First Avenue DJ John Smith, aka DJ Smitty, had become desensitized.

DJ Smitty: Because it seems those murmurings happen like every five years.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Nate Kranz, who'd play a crucial role in First Avenue's reopening, was so used to the chaos that even he didn't expect the club to actually close.

Nate Kranz: It didn't seem like it was all hunky-dory, but it didn't seem odd. It just seemed like the normal environment with which First Avenue operated. You were always one foot on the banana peel, the other in the grave. Right? And that was just the whole attitude.

Cecilia Johnson VO: But near the end of 2004, it all came crashing to a halt.

DJ Smitty: Halloween of 2004.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Smitty was set to DJ that night.

DJ Smitty: I got to the club, and I saw Fingerhut, and this was the first time – let's see, 2004 – in 11 years of working at the club, that was the first time I saw Allan Fingerhut.

Cecilia Johnson VO: But he recognized Allan anyway.

DJ Smitty: It was like literally, the minute I looked at him, I was just like, "That's Allan Fingerhut," even though he was a disheveled man with a satchel. Who else could it be? [laughs] It was either the ghost of Christmas past or it was Allan Fingerhut.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And that didn't seem to bode well for the club.

DJ Smitty: I was like, ok, the odds of this talk have just gone up significantly, and whoever was in the office was like, "Eh, don't worry about it; nothing to see here." I was like, "Ok." I did my first couple of sets, no problem, and then during my last set I was closing, 1:30 a.m. to 2. Um, and I was in there with employee Nathan Anderson and now-general-manager Nate Kranz. We were in the booth, and he looked at me and Nathan and was like, "Yeah, I think this is it." And we're like, "Really?" Like, "Yeah." And we thought about the closing of First Avenue for a minute, and then we had to figure out what songs we were gonna play, so we pulled some Lifter Puller and some Mighty Mofos and closed out the night.

[🎵 "Lifter Puller Vs. The End Of The Evening" by Lifter Puller 🎵]

DJ Smitty: And the next day, I got a phone call at my day job, telling me to come grab my records, because the feds were coming to padlock the doors.

Rob Milanov: We got a call at like 9 a.m., like, "All your bikes, records, and everything you got stored at the club, go get it right now because the doors are locked at noon and it's done."

Cecilia Johnson VO: Rob Milanov could not believe it.

Rob Milanov: It was just such a spur of the moment thing, um, like the entire story was, we're working Halloween night, which is one of the busiest nights of the year, and Allan Fingerhut comes around and says, "Don't worry; you guys all have a job for as long as you want it – I love you guys, blah-blah-blah." He shook each of our hands throughout the night, and we got off work at 4 a.m.; five hours later, we get a call – come get your stuff out.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Dan Corrigan, First Avenue's longtime staff photographer, got to the club as fast as he could.

Dan Corrigan: There were people basically taking stuff and walking away with stuff. I went into the office and got hold of three binders of my photographs that I just didn't want to disappear into whatever happened. And I think we all walked down the street to a bar on Hennepin and started commiserating that it's done. You know, all my friends are in shock – literally in shock, like, what the hell.

Cecilia Johnson VO: But here's where the future of the club gets a little brighter. Nate Kranz and Sonia Grover, who are now First Avenue's general manager and booking manager, respectively, had both worked there since 1998. Research assistant Taylor Seaberg interviewed them together for Rewind last winter.

Sonia Grover: We met each other in '98 working at Cheapo. So we worked at a record store together, became friends, we'd hang out or work together, or go to see shows with each other, or run into each other at shows. And we lived just a few blocks apart, so I'd go over to his house for parties. And then he started at First Avenue in July of '98, and then I started in October. Sat right next to each other every day until 2009 or '10. When did you move offices?

Nate Kranz: 2009 or '10. [laughs]

Sonia Grover: 2009 or '10, and then a couple years ago, put me right back next to him [both laugh] with our poor assistant in between us. But I mean, I was his maid of honor when he got married. We are very tight, for sure.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And the minute they heard about the bankruptcy, they hurried down to First Avenue, grabbed their desk calendars, and started trying to rebook their shows at different venues. They couldn't control First Avenue's fate, but they could try to make sure that the bands who'd been scheduled there could still play shows somewhere.

Sonia Grover: There was no inactivity with me and Nate. That is for sure.

Taylor Seaberg: You were still going.

Sonia Grover: We were going nonstop every day, because Nate had internet, and I don't think I did at my house at the time. So we'd go over to Nate's house, and email, call, making sure we didn't cancel all the shows, but just try and keep track of the shows we had, shows that were coming up, letting the agents know what was going on, letting the local media know what was going on with shows. My phone bill was like $300 after that, because I made the mistake of not upping my plan. But yeah, we were working nonstop for those few weeks in between.

Nate Kranz: We were locked out of First Avenue. We started – the first day, we went to the Fine Line and worked. They were nice enough to let us use their offices. And then after that, like Sonia was saying, we worked out of my house. While my girlfriend was moving out. [laughs]

Cecilia Johnson VO: Sonia and Nate had to deal with the immediate questions – where could they send the bands who were supposed to play First Avenue? – and some bigger questions.

Nate Kranz: The first stage was moving the shows that were supposed to happen on those days, like the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. So we were moving shows into the Cedar or the Turf Club or the Fine Line or whatever – just trying to do whatever we could to find homes for the shows that we had booked that were displaced. Once we got through that period, which was obviously super hectic – and it was [only] us. And Steve was helping us, but it was, you know, nobody was getting paid. We didn't have jobs. We were just basically being like, ok, we have nothing else to do; let's save these shows, and then we'll figure out what's next. But we know saving the shows was what had to happen first.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Journalists from the Star Tribune, New York Times, City Pages, and beyond reported on First Avenue's closure. But Nate and Sonia were mostly getting calls from the agents of the bands whose gigs were in danger.

Nate Kranz: Had to do interviews, yeah, but get yelled at a lot. Like, I'd really emphasize that. We got to make a lot of phone calls on the day that we lost our job, to people that just yelled at us but ultimately came around. [laughs]

Sonia Grover: One of the agents threatened to call the police and get me put in jail. He's a friend now, and I bring it up every now and then.

Taylor Seaberg: Whoa. But I'm confused. Why?

Nate Kranz: Us too. We were low.

Sonia Grover: Yeah. You have contracts, you have bands booked, contracts signed, and –

Nate Kranz: They were fighting for their artist.

Sonia Grover: Yes.

Nate Kranz: But then, for 90% of those shows, things calmed down, and we were able to accommodate those bands. I mean, I think there was one or two bands that ended up actually canceling, and at least one of 'em, they weren't going to let the situation be fixed. They just weren't. We gave them plenty of options, and they turned every single one of them down.

Sonia Grover: The community was so amazing, still going to all these shows, and I think we probably sold tickets that we may not have otherwise sold, because people sort of wanted to show their support for First Avenue.

Taylor Seaberg: Like, in the era when it was closed?

Sonia Grover: Yup. And I don't think – Nate, I don't think you and I paid for our own drinks for like two or three weeks.

Nate Kranz: Most of the deals were able to stay intact, and reputations were saved. And after a couple weeks, we started looking toward the future again.

Cecilia Johnson VO: The future was a company called F-Troop. Whereas "The Committee, Inc." was Allan's business, F-Troop was led by Byron Frank.

Nate Kranz: We were in communication with Steve and Byron Frank, and so I knew the process that they were going through to try and expedite the bankruptcy. And so, because of that line of communication, we were trying to take care of business in the moment, but we also kind of knew that, all right, there is gonna be First Avenue. We don't know if we have jobs there. We don't know what that's gonna look like, how they're gonna wanna operate it. But we did know that it was coming back online, or very likely to come back online, after a short amount of time.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Writing for the New York Times, David Carr described the Nov. 12 Bankruptcy Court hearing in Minneapolis where the business changed hands: Quote, "In that courtroom high above the city on Friday, a simple agreement was reached: Mr. Frank, along with Mr. McClellan, Mr. Meyers and a trust made up of members of the Fingerhut family – but not Mr. Fingerhut – would be allowed to buy the First Avenue business, lock, stock and punk rock, for $100,220. Judge Robert J. Kressel was presiding, and he not only approved the offer, with a few minor tweaks, but waived the traditional stay of 10 days, because, as he noted, "I gather there is some urgency to the situation." Enquote. And the Honorable Judge Kressel wasn't the only official who helped usher First Avenue into its future.

Nate Kranz: I mean, shout out to R.T. Rybak, right?

Sonia Grover: Hell yeah, for sure. For sure.

Nate Kranz: He was the mayor at the time, and he went above and beyond to make sure that anything that he could do in his power as mayor, he was not gonna let First Avenue go away.

R.T. Rybak: Over the years, I've spent a lot of time at First Avenue. Right when I got out of college –

Cecilia Johnson VO: This is R.T. Rybak, who served as mayor of Minneapolis from 2002-2014.

R.T. Rybak: For the five years first out of college, I spent three, four, five nights a week at First Avenue: dancing, music, all that. So I got to see some pretty great shows.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Before becoming mayor, he was a journalist covering the local arts and culture scene.

R.T. Rybak: So First Avenue was a huge cultural icon to me, and way before the bankruptcy at First Avenue, I was having lunch with the late and wonderful Brian Coyle, who was a city council member in Minneapolis, and I was a reporter at the time, and we got in this weird conversation, like, Minneapolis has torn down too many of its great buildings. What building would we most stand in front of the bulldozer to prevent being bulldozed? And we almost at the same time blurted out, "First Avenue!" Ironically, Brian, who was at City Hall when we had that conversation, sadly died. But I was at City Hall when there was that moment when First Avenue could close, and I don't think I waited for their call. I called them and just said, "I wanna do whatever I can do to help."

Cecilia Johnson VO: Byron, Steve, and Jack needed First Ave's liquor license to be transferred to them before they could reopen.

Jack Meyers: And we were in R.T. Rybak's – the mayor at the time – his office when R.T. called the head of the liquor license, and he said, "Do you have that application for the First Avenue liquor license?" They go, "Well, as a matter of fact, I do." He said, "Do you see anything wrong with it?" No. He said, "Well, can they have it by Monday?" They go, "Oh yeah, no problem." You know, and you don't get that. Also, unbeknownst to us, bankruptcies, take years to go through the courts. What'd we take? A week? Somebody said, "I don't wanna get this tied up in court," and I can only guess it's good old R.T. Rybak again. He was a real sport. He really loved the club.

Cecilia Johnson VO: And so it was that on Nov. 19, 2004, First Avenue reopened with a show by costume metal legends GWAR. Steve and Jack returned to work, and Jack would stay on until 2010. But Steve was gone within months.

Steve McClellan: I think Byron just kept me on for as long as he needed to. Larry Johnson actually explained it best to me. He said, "Byron's playing a big Risk board, and he's gotta get rid of Allan and Allan's brother, Ronny Fingerhut," [who] were both on the license some way, or the business. He had to get rid of them before he'd come at me, but I remember Larry Johnson looking at me and saying, "Steve, you're gone the moment Allan and Ronny were gone." And of course within three months after, I could see the sights were on me, then. And I guess everybody warned me. I just didn't see it coming kinda thing. But it was already, you know, the damage had been done, in my mind. The club was becoming something I no longer had control [over]. And I am a control freak, just like everybody I couldn't get along with. When two control freaks meet, somewhere in the middle, it –

Cecilia Johnson VO: Byron wasn't able to speak with us for this show, so he can't weigh in on Steve's second departure. But Nate's description of Byron does seem to align with Steve's.

Nate Kranz: Yeah, when Byron bought it, all of a sudden, for the time in the history of the club, you had one person. You had a person in control of the real estate and the business. Anybody that's leasing a space will tell you, how much money do you wanna put into improving that building so that your landlord has a more valuable property to market or whatever? So if First Avenue the club ever made money, it went to Allan. And if it didn't make money, well, it just didn't make money, but it certainly never got reinvested into the actual physical space. And so, by the late '90s, when we got in there, it was pretty rough. And so, when Byron came in, he was like, how are we gonna do this business? And we met and kinda came up with a plan. And the plan was, all right, we're gonna try it this way, and if it works, then we got a business. If it doesn't, then I gotta find somebody else that's gonna make it work. And so as a team, us as bookers and the operations staff and everybody, we kinda came up with a plan, started booking shows, started putting in more – I'd say, kinda professional approaches to the behind-the-scenes. Not that it's not fun, but it's gotta be less chaotic. It's gotta be run a little bit more professionally.

Cecilia Johnson VO: First Avenue ended up hiring back about two-thirds of the approximately 120 staff who'd lost their jobs. But Rob Milanov said his loyalty to Steve and Allan kept him away.

Rob Milanov: I retired. And at the time, the Triple Rock [Social Club] was the First Avenue retirement home. That's what we called it. [laughs] Because the entire staff there had worked at First Avenue at one point or another, and they were moving on to quieter pastures, so to speak.

Cecilia Johnson VO: After the change of ownership, First Avenue upgraded the air conditioning and fire sprinklers, and even during the Great Recession, they had some profitable years. You know that enormous billboard on top of First Avenue's roof? That revenue source was installed shortly after Byron took over, with another assist from R.T. Rybak. In 2009, Byron had a health scare and considered selling First Avenue. But his daughter Dayna Frank, who'd grown up seeing shows at First Avenue, volunteered to learn the business and take care of the club. For almost a decade, she's been commuting from Los Angeles, where she lives with her wife, to First Avenue in Minneapolis. But Nate and Sonia say she's much more hands-on than Allan Fingerhut was.

Nate Kranz: He was completely off, like he did not come to the venue, he did not have meetings, he did not have anything to do with the day-to-day operations. Steve and Jack managed it, and they had a contract to manage it. Literally, their relationship was, Allan's not gonna manage it. He's gonna hire this other company. That was Steve and Jack's company, and that was what was managing the business from my perspective.

Sonia Grover: Then whereas for Dayna, it's super rare to go a few days without seeing her at First Ave, and I talk to her, email her several times a week. I know Nate's in contact with her way more.

Nate Kranz: Every day.

Sonia Grover: But she is an "every day, every hour" presence at First Ave.

Cecilia Johnson VO: Allan Fingerhut didn't respond to our interview requests last winter, and sadly, he passed on Oct. 12, 2020. But he did give a final word on First Avenue to David Carr in the New York Times in 2004. Quote, "I got beat out of my bar fair and square, but I don't want to be attacked anymore. How can I be the bad guy in all of this? I lost $800,000 and half my hearing keeping this place going as long as I did."

After Byron Frank took over, First Avenue instituted health and retirement plans for its employees. But even now, it's hard to make a living wage at a rock club. Of course, the pandemic has brought new focus to the overall sustainability of the entertainment industries. But even before the pandemic, the live music industry as a whole was facing huge challenges, even if First Avenue is a much healthier business now than it was in 2004.

[🎵 "Hive Sound" by Icetep 🎵]

This episode of The Current Rewind was hosted by me, Cecilia Johnson. I produced this episode with the help of Jesse Wiza, and Taylor Seaberg contributed research and consulting. Marisa Morseth is our research assistant, and Jay Gabler is our editor. Our theme music is the song "Hive Sound" by Icetep. This episode was mixed by Johnny Vince Evans. And I want to say "thank you" to Jeanne Andersen, Rick Carlson, David Safar, and Shelby Sachs for additional support.

If you're enjoying this podcast, the number-one thing you can do to support us is to tell a fellow music fan that it's out there. To find a transcript of this episode (or any other one), go to TheCurrent.org/Rewind.

The Current Rewind is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. It is a production of Minnesota Public Radio's The Current.

[🎵 "Hive Sound" by Icetep fades out 🎵]

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