We're playing songs for the 9:30 Coffee Break for the Great American Smokeout. What should we play?

This past weekend I got to live the rock and roll dream like I haven’t for nearly a decade, joining local noise pop band BNLX as second guitarist for a weekend of shows at BNLXFest 2 at Cause. The fest featured five local acts per night, from buzzy new kids on the block Gloss and…

Though it was one of the largest and longest-running regional gatherings in the metro area, Stillwater’s Lumberjack Days garnered enough negative feedback from its community and ran into steep enough financial challenges that it was shut down by the city in 2011. But residents in the area knew that the St. Croix riverside community deserved…

Lou Barlow (Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion) was in The Current's studios with Sebadoh a couple weeks ago. We asked him about how he found his guitar, and he described how it was influenced by 80s band the Neats and by a dream.

Today's Coffee Break theme: real songs about real people. You helped us pull together a playlist that would surely make the Biography Channel proud.

Duluth Mayor Don Ness can still remember the marquee lights of the NorShor Theater shining bright on East Superior Street in the 1990s. “It was the birthplace of the Homegrown Music Festival,” Ness said, “and a lot of prominent bands in Duluth all started at the NorShor. It was a really important part of my…

I hope you didn’t have anything important you wanted to get done today. Seriously. If you can pull yourself away from this new interactive Bob Dylan video for his song “Like A Rolling Stone”—a video that was released today, approximately 48 years and four months after the song’s debut—after playing it just once, then I…

What songs that feature the title as the first words should we play for today's 9:30 Coffee Break?

Congratulations to the Varsity Theater for winning the award for America’s Best Restroom. Here are a few suggestions as to other local music venues that deserve to have their restrooms recognized. Best Restroom View: First Avenue. On your way to the sinks, take a look outside to see whether the Timberwolves game is out yet.…

Just over six months after Sue McLean’s passing, a tribute show on November 23 at First Avenue will honor the memory and influence of one of Minnesota’s most prominent music promoters. The show, organized by friends and fans of McLean, will feature Eric Hutchinson, Soul Asylum, and the BoDeans, among other local artists. “We could…