Filmmaker David Roth and musician David Moe visited The Current’s Morning Show to talk with host Nilufer Arsala about the Twin Cities PBS (TPT) docuseries Minnesota Hardcore, which will be screened on Sunday, April 26, at James Ballentine VFW Post 246 (Uptown VFW) in Minneapolis. Called MPLS Hardcore Revival, the event will feature performances by Eye Mind, Red Meat, Church Picnic, Outcry, Iron Fist, and Virgin Whores in between segments of the series.

Listen to the full interview in the player above, and find a complete transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Nilufer Arsala: You are listening to The Current's Morning Show, I'm Nilufer Arsala. You know, April is Minnesota Music Month at The Current, and that means we celebrate all local music from all different time periods. And today, we are putting our focus on punk rock from the early ‘80s. The docuseries Minnesota Hardcore premiered on TPT in 2020. The seven-part docuseries focused on the Twin Cities punk scene from 1980 to 1985, and coming up on Sunday, April 26, there will be a mega reunion of six bands that have all played roles in the Twin Cities hardcore punk scene. The event is at the Uptown VFW, and joining me to talk about the docuseries and the reunion event is David Roth, Director of Minnesota Hardcore, and Dave Moe, who's helping to organize the upcoming event. David and Dave, welcome to The Current's Morning Show.

David Roth, Dave Moe: Thank you so much. Aloha.

Nilufer Arsala: So tell me, David, this is for you. Tell me about Minnesota Hardcore, the docuseries, and what made you want to create it?

David Roth: Well, I grew up in the Minnesota hardcore scene. I got involved when I was about 13. And for about three or four years, it was the full extent of my life, my cultural life. And, you know, years later, I become a documentarian at public television, and things kind of melted down there in around 2019 where they they just kind of asked us to stop working. And I can't do that. So I started coming up with this idea of portraying my history, and I just started interviewing all of my old friends who were part of the scene, and I got about 30 of them together. And then by that point, I kind of had wrestled TPT's arm into letting me do it. And they said, Fine, go ahead.

Nilufer Arsala: Well, I was just watching it, and it's really like in-depth with the history there. So who are some of the bands that are featured in the series?

David Roth: Well, the big one that everyone knows is Hüsker Dü. And not a lot of people know that Hüsker Dü started out as a very ferocious, loud, punk band. They pretty much were our hard hardcore band, the band to match in 1980.

Nilufer Arsala: Yeah, and I saw in the documentary when people are talking about their early years of just how fast they played, faster than The Ramones, I think is the quote.

David Roth: Yeah, so we used to call them the fastest band in the world, and that's because Land Speed Record was the shortest running time with the most songs of every record at that point, I believe. But I've gotten a lot of online criticism where they're saying, "No, Adrenaline O.D. is faster or Bad Brains are faster," but regardless, they were very fast for us at that time.

Nilufer Arsala: You're listening to The Current's Morning Show, I'm Nilufer Arsala. Talking with David Roth, the Director of the Minnesota Hardcore docuseries, and Dave Moe, who's helping to organize an upcoming Minneapolis hardcore reunion event at the Uptown VFW. So let's talk about the reunion event, because it's this Sunday, April 26 at the Uptown VFW, there's a big reunion of a lot of bands. So Dave, it's also a multimedia event. So what's going to be going on at this reunion show?

Dave Moe: What's going to happen on Sunday is we're playing six chapters of Minnesota Hardcore and so we'll watch a chapter, and then the screen will go up, and the band will play, and the screen goes down, we'll play another chapter. So it's a little bit of a showcase, in a way, you know. We kind of said this is like, I don't think Dave went to his high school reunion, I know I didn't. And for a lot of us, this is our punk rock high school reunion. That's what we're most looking forward to.

David Roth: We're calling it a low-class reunion, yes.

Nilufer Arsala: The length of the episodes, they're not super long, right? They run about 15, minutes, something like that. So in between the bands, that's when they're going to screen. And I was thinking about this earlier, and I was like, if you want to know about this time period of Minnesota music like you'll pretty much be an expert by the time it's over.

David Roth: I think that's right. And I think that was one of the things that got me excited about the project, was that I knew it. I was there. I knew all the people, and that history was never recorded by mainstream media. We have some records, we have some fanzines, but a lot of people didn't know what it was like. And I thought it was like one of the funnest times of my life.

Nilufer Arsala: What bands are playing the show?

Dave Moe: So my band, Church Picnic, we're going to play, we haven't played for over 40 years. Red Meat, same situation, they played the same era we did, so first time they're playing in 40 years. Then we have Iron Fist, first time they playing for about maybe 35 years. The band Outcry, have played a few times of late, but it's been about 30 years overall for them too. We have a band Eye Mind, who the bass player is Michelle Strauss, and she used to run garage productions that brought in a bunch of hardcore punk bands from all over to play all age shows in Minneapolis. And then we have the Virgin Ws, they've been playing now for years, but they're kind of the third wave of punk rock here in Minneapolis, and so they're carrying the torch, and they have been very helpful in us putting this together.

Nilufer Arsala: It really is just like a mega reunion.

Dave Moe: It's a mega reunion, yep, of all ages.

Nilufer Arsala: You are listening to The Current's Morning Show. I'm Nilufer Arsala talking with David Roth, the Director of the Minnesota Hardcore docuseries, and Dave Moe, who's helping to organize an upcoming Minneapolis hardcore reunion event at the Uptown VFW guys. Why have a reunion now?

David Roth: It may be a chance for us all to get together one last time before we start dying. I mean, we have been dying. I'm putting together an In Memoriam for the for the concert that will show the people from the scene who have passed away. I mean, that's kind of a dark answer, but yeah.

Dave Moe: No, it's really true. And I was surprised when I reached out to my drummer and guitarist, just to hear that they had that interest. Like, man, maybe we could put it together, and could we put it together? And I think I'll just have to speak to some of the tragedies have been gone in Minneapolis, as we all know, it seemed like also a time to rejoice, one of the best times we all had yet as younger folks. And it's a time to celebrate that, and it was really a community back then, honestly.

Nilufer Arsala: You're listening to The Current's Morning Show. I'm Nilufer Arsala, talking with David Roth, the director of Minnesota Hardcore docuseries, and Dave Moe, who's helping to organize the Minneapolis Hardcore Revival. It's going to be this Sunday, April 26 at the Uptown VFW. And you know what? I don't think we even mentioned the special DJ that's going to be spinning, Dave. Can you tell me about that?

Dave Moe: The legendary Lori Barbero, drummer with Babes in Toyland. And of course, we grew up with her too. And I even knew her before Dave did back in Jay's Longhorn, which was the first punk band in Minneapolis, who were both kids back then. And I was super excited to have her. She was definitely a part of the scene, the whole music scene, but even more so, in a way, the hardcore punk scene in Minneapolis, early 80s, mid 80s. So excited to have her spin. Good friends, Tracy and Chad, who are DJ Rock the Monkey. And then we have a special MC, Dale T Nelson, the lead singer from Otto's Chemical Lounge. He used to hang out where my band, Church Picnic in East Side St Paul used to rehearse with Hüsker Dü. It's a community. And so it seems almost natural we're doing this, in a way.

David Roth: The one thing I want to say about Dale T Nelson is he was already pretty old when the Hardcore scene was going on, and he had been a part of the late 60s music scene, and was telling us young punk kids about seeing Blue Cheer at the New City Opera House in Minneapolis, and playing us records of all the old 60s, psychedelic and underground garage bands which really fed into the punk scene.

Nilufer Arsala: Absolutely. You're listening to The Current's Morning Show. I'm Nilufer Arsala, talking with David Roth, the director of Minnesota Hardcore docuseries, and Dave Moe, who's helping to organize the Minneapolis Hardcore Revival that'll be this Sunday, April 26 at the Uptown VFW. So David, I was watching the docuseries, and I was just really loving it and soaking up the history. Do you have any plans to do a sequel or maybe update it at all?

David Roth: Well, no. I mean, a lot of people who watched it said, "oh, I was involved in 1989, why didn't you portray that era of the scene?" And I was like, I was out of the scene by then. Why don't you make that documentary? I have been developing a pitch for, it's kind of the history of Minnesota music in the rock and roll era from like the 60s to the present. I think we need a survey of I mean, everyone loves Minnesota music, I'm at The Current, but I haven't seen a full length feature doc about that, and I'm very interested in trying to get something like that going.

Nilufer Arsala: All right. Well, we are going to keep our eye on it, but I do want to mention that people can still watch the Minnesota Hardcore docuseries. It's still up at pbs.org and on TPT's YouTube page, and you can do it, there's episodes, there's a little bite sized chunks, or you can, I think, what they call it the binge episode, where all of them are on just one video. And so that is still up. But where can people keep up with you? Any future screenings or events that you're doing?

David Roth: Well, I've got a website: davidsroth.com. I'm currently working on a documentary short at post production, so I'm trying to continue to make documentaries.

Nilufer Arsala: Well, the Minneapolis Hardcore Revival is this Sunday, April 26 at the Uptown VFW, and tickets are available at the Uptown VFW website, you can keep up with events going on in and around the Twin Cities at the current.org/gig list now Dave Moe is helping to organize that Minneapolis Hardcore Revival. David Roth is the director of the docuseries Minnesota Hardcore. Dave and David, thank you so much for coming on The Morning Show today.

David Roth, Dave Moe: Thanks. Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Nilufer Arsala: You are listening to The Current.

Credits

Guests – David Roth, Dave Moe
Host – Nilufer Arsala
Producer – Nilufer Arsala
Digital Producer - Natalia Toledo

External Links

Minneapolis Hardcore Revival – Tickets
David Roth - Official Website