The Minnesota State Fair sometimes likes to call itself the state’s biggest music festival — which is hard to argue, given the mix of big-name Grandstand headliners and seemingly infinite variety of live performances at free (with Fair admission) stages across the grounds. The Fair has just announced this year’s free music lineup, and indeed,…

History was made at the Billboard Music Awards last night, when Janet Jackson became the first black woman to receive the Icon Award. Her extraordinary career, which included collaborations with Missy Elliott; her older brother Michael Jackson; and extensively, with Minneapolis’s Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, was recognized at the Las Vegas ceremony. In her…

Chris Stamey (the dB's) told The Current's Jim McGuinn about his new memoir.

May 21 is National Waitstaff Day - a day to show appreciation to servers, bartenders, waiters, waitresses - basically restaurant staff. So for today's 9:30 Coffee Break, what songs do you want to hear that mention waitstaff?

Tomorrow is Minnesota Music Day and this weekend is Art-A-Whirl - one of the biggest collections of local music and art in various locations around Northeast Minneapolis. So for today's 9:30 Coffee Break, what bands do you want to hear that will be playing at Art-A-Whirl 2018?

The Revolution have announced that they will be hitting the road starting in June and running through 2019. The band have been touring extensively since the death of Prince, to bring his music to fans across the country and now around the world. Minnesota fans will have no fewer than four chances to catch the…

The royal wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle is set to take place tomorrow, May 19. The wedding promises to include many big names, from political figures to athletes and musicians. The couple only invited 600 people to the function, and several well-known musicians are among them. Hoping to watch the wedding? MPR News…

This weekend is Art-A-Whirl: the annual art crawl and de facto music festival that brings thousands to Northeast Minneapolis. At the Solar Arts Building, The People’s Museum for Prince is an art exhibit “designed to commemorate the ways Prince shaped and transformed personal lives.” Curator Emma Balázs is an Australia native and lifelong Prince fan who moved…

It’s hard to set expectations much higher than David Byrne did in announcing his American Utopia Tour, promising his most ambitious stage show since Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense performances. Immortalized in the classic 1984 concert film, the Stop Making Sense shows reached the pinnacle of what artfully executed rock concerts can achieve, all the more impressive because…

Nazeem & Spencer Joles – “Rock Lee” Nazeem & Spencer Joles have made a tradition out of setting music videos at Twin Cities hotspots. This time, Cup Foods (on 38th & Chicago) and the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood get the honor. Nate P. is the perfect videographer to accompany them around town, adding wild visual effects to the cartoon-honoring…