Last week, the Twin Cities celebrated all things Suicide Commandos, and it reunited all the major players, creators and instigators in the music scene to town.

One of those people was Kevin Cole, the dude who took a chance on me and gave me my first radio job in 1994 at REV 105.

I believe at least in one point in your life, you should be lucky enough to have a renegade spirit who sees something in you and throws an opportunity of a lifetime in your lap. Lacking experience but clearly having an insatiable passion for rock and roll and maybe a little somethin' somethin' else was worth taking a risk.

For that, I'll always be so grateful.

While chatting with him on air last Thursday, I kept thinking this guy is Mr. Right Place, Right Time. Kevin has been at the inception of all things cool in Minneapolis: a trusted record store taste maker, club DJ, and program director of one of the most innovative radio stations this town has seen.

Now at KEXP in Seattle, Kevin's continued rock and roll wingding love of music is on full display every day.

We're all much better music fans because of him.

Thanks, KC.

Transcript: Mary Lucia and Kevin Cole

Use the audio player above to listen to this conversation.

Mary Lucia: There's a million reasons why Kevin is in town. The least of which, of course, is that we've all been in "complicated fun" mode. That would be the celebration of the Suicide Commandos, of their record of all the proclamations and things that are happening. The release of Cyn Collins' great book, which is basically a really nice history of the birth of Minneapolis punk and indie rock in its very earliest of days. Kevin, the thing I've thought about you for many, many years, and I wonder if you think of this about yourself: you are the guy that is always at the right place at the right time. Do you think of yourself as that guy? Because you are always at the inception of the coolest thing in the world.

Kevin Cole: I guess I don't think of myself necessarily like that, but I do feel incredibly fortunate and grateful. When I look back, I'm just like: "Wow, this is amazing!" That all of this cool stuff happened. To get maybe a little philosophical: Just follow what excites you, and your dreams and good things happen. At least, that happened for me.

ML: In Cyn Collin's book, you had said about the Longhorn, which is a place that holds a mythical legend in the minds of people who were not of age and able to go there. What you listed off as the kinds of music, it sounds like it was the template for Rev 105.

KC: Absolutely. Peter (Jesperson) was an insane inspiration and mentor to me. He didn't know it at the time. I was just some shy kid who went there early, even to listen to him spin, as soon as the doors would open. And I can't remember exactly what the setlist was, but it was something like, he would play a new Buzzcocks song and then into something like Donnna Summer into Elvis Presley into The Only Ones into some local thing he was super psyched about. It was great music that really defied expectation as well as genres or categorization. It was great music to be played for the sake of great music. That's the model that we took to First Avenue. Steve McClellan really supported that too, and I think that's why has had such longevity. It never tied itself to one specific trend that then would die. Music lovers, if you look at their music collections, they have a great mix of music, typically. Radio doesn't really program to people that way, for the most part, with some exceptions. How amazing is it that you can play a Bob Dylan song and then go into a ten-minute Television song? That defies formatting expectations or rules in traditional radio. But we know people want that, and music lovers respond to that. Hearing Peter's band really influenced me and reinforced ideas that I had about music, and Steve McClellan did the same. That's the approach we took at First Avenue, which was really funny because during those transition periods it'd go from a dance to a rock set and everybody would leave the floor. Everybody. Then a totally different group of people would get on the floor. It was an interesting, funny and hard transition. A year later, it was great, because at a certain point nobody left. The floor was always full. That kind of mix attracted people who were open to that.

ML: One thing that McClellan says in Cyn Collin's book is that in those early days, Steve was looking at record store clerks as being somewhat of case-makers of the city. Walking into Hot Licks and saying: "Should I book The Pretenders?"

KC: Steve is amazing. Steve has incredible instincts. He's got such a reputation of being gruff, but at the same time he's got a beautiful, warm, open heart. He's always relied on people, and always deflects a lot of credit. Steve had a great vision and certainly was looking to people in the community to help get the intel that he needed. The world was so different then, in Cyn's book, in that era she describes. She did such a good job getting great stories out of people. It's hard to imagine now a pre-internet world where you really had to work hard to find the great music. You had to go to Oarfolkjokeopus, and you had to build a relationship or be a fly on the wall and be hearing what they were talking about and what they were playing. You had to pick up The New York Rocker and the Melody Maker to find out what was going on in New York and London and all over the world. You had to rely on stores that would carry those imports, because you couldn't just hear anything instantly at any point in time. It was really a different time. It's amazing, the things that she covers in her book, and really Suicide Commandos being ground zero of some guys that wanted to play great music and an infrastructure built out of that.

ML: At that time, they were playing punk music when you could've owned every punk record there was, because there was about eight. It's a pretty phenomenal thing, and the reunion is fantastic. We're going to talk to Kevin more, but he's also in town because he's doing his show. He also is on KEXP in the afternoon. Tell us about where you are going to be doing your show and good lord, do you have enough time?

KC: I'm going to be doing my show from here. Jim and everybody at The Current and Minnesota Public Radio have been super accommodating and offered up a production studio. I get to do my show here, looking forward to being able to do it here and it's just super fun.

ML: This is a perfect segue because it's now just over a year that we lost Prince. I know you got 5,000 messages in your inbox. I thought of you. You were the first person I thought of. It's weird because, you being there at that ground level when you were at First Avenue and you were spinning in the club and Prince was standing behind you. The thing is, all you guys have a Prince story, but I bet you kept them pretty quiet. Based on who he was and how he lived his life, you may have told a friend or a colleague, but now that this year has passed, more people have come out with their stories. Maybe they don't feel like their breaching that confidence of privacy like they did in the past, and maybe you had multiple stories that you were dying to tell, but out of respect you didn't?

KC: It's been interesting how there have been stories coming out. This was a source of comfort for me and others in that Prince really policed the internet. Not a lot of his material was available and out there. After he passed away, there was a lot of his stuff on YouTube and interviews that he did on TV shows and stuff that were really funny and compelling. We all know he was really shy and pretty introverted, obviously an extrovert on stage, but over the years he really developed a comfort in talking to people and his allies out there. I found it to be a way to connect and deal with his passing in just watching some of that stuff. Somebody who had access to the vault said something to the effect of they could release a full length Prince album every year for 100 years.

ML: That's the thing. With such a tragic event, maybe there are these things that are popping up that are making people feel a little bit better. I'm going to play a song, and this was one of those periods when Prince was rocking a look that I really, really loved. This song just spoke to me immediately.

KC: What look was that?

ML: You're going to hear it in the first three seconds and think: "Really, Looch, you picked this one?" I did.

Music Set: Prince - RNR Affair; Hypstrz - Action Woman

ML: That was the Hypstrz, recorded at the Longhorn. I'm not sure who recorded that, and I'm not sure I could go so far as to guess. I'm not really sure if they had a permanent house sound person at the Longhorn? Do you know?

KC: I think they did have a permanent or regular sound person for a good chunk of the time. Although I'm sure some bands brought in their own guy. But I was reading about that record, and apparently Paul Stark did the live recording, I think in the room. I can only imagine, at that time, probably just in the room. They recorded it over four nights, and apparently the first night somebody forgot to turn the mics on. That's what was fun about the Hipsters and the Batson Brothers projects, they were super high energy, really fun banter between songs, tons of covers, all revved up. They could just pawn them out.

ML: Another interesting passage out of Cyn Collin's book Complicated Fun, which is a chronicle of the birth of Minneapolis punk and indie rock in the late '70s into the early '80s. Kevin, you and Peter were both fans of a band that I know nothing about. Just pretend that I dropped from a planet and you need to tell me everything important I need to know about the band NNB.

KC: NNB are criminally overlooked. They are the counterpoint, in a way, to the Suicide Commandos, who were fun and very outgoing and super energetic. NNB sometimes gets compared to Television. I know why people do that, and it's easy to do that. In part, it's the guitar interplay between Mark Freeman, the primary songwriter, and Dick Champ. It was just incredible. But they were the dark side of what was going on. As I said in the book, "They live in the metaphysical void." The Commandos were smart and fun and made you think, but were also just really, really fun. There was a tension and an edge to NNB songs. What's amazing about them, the reason why my theory is why people don't really know about them, is that they just disappeared. There was one seven-inch single, both sides are incredible. I play it still for music lovers all the time. It's one of my go-to things. I shared it with a writer for Mojo magazine and The Guardian in the U.K a month ago. We were talking about early scenes and I was talking about the Suicide Commandos and the new album. I said: "Hey, do you know this band?" (referring to NNB) Nobody knows them. Then I sent it to him and he said: "I cannot believe this song has existed for 40 years." It's so well produced, it sounds incredible, the song is great. "Slack" is what I'm talking about. So, they did one song, and then they had two songs on "Big Hits of Mid America Vol. 2" and a song on a flexi. That was the total output. Then, Mark Freeman went to New York, the band went there, they tried to do it there, I don't know what happened. They came back and then he started another band, and it was very similar, called Red House. They had one single. Then, that was it. He's infamously reclusive.

ML: There's so many bands that get name-checked in really great detail in Cyn's book but for whatever reason, and I always remember Peter talking about that band, then to see that you two love NNB. I just felt like a complete moron because I was like: "Who? What?" I just didn't know. How are we going to get our hands on that, on "Slack"?

KC: Mark also apparently recorded a lot, so apparently there's tons of material.

ML: Wrapping all this up together, with the Commandos making a new record [Time Bomb], Twin Tone — or rather, Peter and Paul — are coming together to be what I would assume to be the sole distribution for this record. There was a great article with Jesperson maybe a week ago in which he said, "If this proves to be it, just that we put out this Commandos record, I would be fine with that."

KC: This is like the second studio album, right? They could have called it "Let's make another album." It's great sounding. I can see why Peter and Paul were like: "Hey, this is awesome." The timing worked out well for Twin Tone to re-emerge. Who knows what will happen? Doesn't it seem like there's a confluence of events happening around scene and era?

ML: It really does. The Suburbs have a new record, there's a lot of that going on.

KC: Were you kind of going at Twin Tone should put out an NNB record?

ML: It's even hard to get your hands on those "Big Hits of Mid America" there, just "nowheresville." But there's some amazing things, and people maybe want to know what band was Slim Dunlap in before? And again, this is a pretty large history. A double album? Why isn't this available to all of us music lovers? Kevin, the answer to that is?

KC: Now that Twin Tone has re-emerged, perhaps this would be a good time to reissue "Big Hits Volume 3" and put out five.

ML: That's what I'm thinking. Well, all right, Kevin. I know you've got to go because you are super busy. I appreciate so much you coming in. I just want to share with you, I'm presuming you saw Patti Smith on this last tour?

KC: I did, it was amazing. I thought it was great. Nothing about it was nostalgic, the songs took on new meaning. She was fully engaged in the performance, and had great things to say between songs, and she was inspiring like she always is.

ML: I hope you got to see it because it was Horses front to back. So I will leave Kevin's walk-off music with Patti Smith from "Horses and Free Money." Thank you, Kevin.

KC: Yeah, Mary. Thanks for having me on.

Conversation transcribed by Hanna Bubser.

Resources

Kevin Cole - KEXP

Related

• Rock and Roll Book Club: Cyn Collins's 'Complicated Fun'
• The Suicide Commandos perform live in The Current studio
• Mary Lucia: Q&A with Eric Isaacson of Portland's Mississippi Records
• Mary Lucia: Are you living the life you chose?
• Mary Lucia: Q&A with Reed Wilkerson