Never mind the Governor’s Mansion: a private Paisley Park party is turning into the Minnesota version of a White House reception. After bashes welcoming the National Association of Black Journalists (in August) and Madonna (last week), Prince helped the Minnesota Lynx celebrate their WNBA championship by inviting them to his Chanhassen studio for a private…

Marlon James, a professor at St. Paul’s Macalester College, has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for a novel that explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. Though the novel is a work of fiction, the assassination attempt that inspired the book actually happened, when gunmen stormed Marley’s house in 1976 and shot the reggae legend,…

If you’ve listened to previous episodes of The O.K. Show, you’ll know that I am very interested in how artists’ health affects their ability to make music. We’ve talked about mental health, disease, depression and grief—all such serious topics at the core of some of today’s most moving songwriting. Today, I’m taking things a different…

In mid-summer, an open Google Doc started floating around the Twin Cities music scene. It’s a spreadsheet meant as a booking resource where musicians who identify as women, queer, and/or people of color can add their contact info, links to music and “identifying factors” into the appropriate cells. In the “identifying factors” column, dozens of local artists have described how they identify.…

John Berg, a longtime art director for Columbia Records, has died at age 83. Among his most recognizable designs were Bob Dylan‘s Blonde on Blonde and Greatest Hits album covers, and Bruce Springsteen‘s Born to Run. (Rolling Stone) Wayne Coyne says that Miley Cyrus and the Flaming Lips are planning a show where everyone—audience members included—will be completely naked while…

Flamin’ Ohs: Hear and Now EP Dating back to 1977, the Flamin’ Oh’s are classic. I mean, they have a star on First Ave. They’re back again with their newest Here and Now EP. They haven’t released anything from the new from the EP, but you should be able to grab physical copies at their…

After a couple of jam-packed years on the road, Lizzo is getting ready to unleash an artistic masterpiece: The tightly focused, empowering, and inspirational Big GRRRL Small World, which is coming out on her own BGSW label. “When you see the world, you’re able to write about it in a different way. And that’s why…

Today, Greater MSP—a regional economic development partnership for the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area—is launching a new site for its initiative Make It. MSP. The site serves as a welcome mat for everyone in the MSP area, especially newcomers and those who are considering moving to the area. I’ve had the privilege of working with this…

Twin Cities rock legends Hüsker Dü have their first-ever official website. The site is just a merchandise mart—but still, notes the Star Tribune’s Chris Riemenschneider, “marks the first thaw in a glacial ice pack that formed in early 1988, when the influential Minneapolis punk trio broke up.” The band’s bassist Greg Norton tells Reimenschneider that “there’s ongoing communication…

Veteran local record-collector John Kass has recently been in the news for his quest to sell 200,000 of his records at once. David Campbell talked with Kass in an episode of The Local Show last year. Here’s a transcript of their conversation. David Campbell: How is it that in a time when the record industry…