Minneapolis’ Legendary First Avenue Has a Podcast

Prince’s Minneapolis’ historic music venue First Avenue, along with its loyal sidekick the 7th St Entry, has a weekly podcast filled with music and Twin Cities music news.  It’s definitely worth checking out for any midwestern guy or gal.

MP3: Atmosphere-The Woman with the Tattooed Hands [Live at First Avenue]

MP

Prince on Leno…watch the bootleg video while it lasts!

Prince is doing a few nights on Leno in promotion for his recently released double album set with protege Bria Valente, available only through Target stores nationwide.

MP3: Prince-Ol’ Skool Company (Live on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno) via the Culture Bully

MP

New Music: Dent May

Dent May fell onto our radar screen recently, and the group has put together some interesting tunes.  The guy apparently plays with a ukelele and has a clear, distinct tenor voice that floats over his loungey songs. He has put together an impressive touring calendar, hitting classic venues such as Minneapolis’ 400 Bar, Chicago’s Schubas, and New York’s Bowery Ballroom.  Additionally, he is making appearances at important music festivals South by Southwest and Sasquatch.  The icing on the cake may be who he is traveling with: hitting the Northeast U.S. with A.C. Newman and the U.K. with Animal Collective.

Oh, did I mention he also does a great Prince cover? See below:

MP3: Dent May-When You Were Mine

MP

Prince to Release 3-Album Set Through Target

Nary a Prince news item should pass without mention on this blog.  Via Pitchfork, exclusively at Target, Prince will be releasing two of his own albums, LOtUSFLOW3R and MPLSoUND, with a third album by Bria Valente, a vocalist who backed 2007’s Planet Earth album. The interweb seems to have been scrubbed of anything in which you could hear her own material.  So, I guess it is to Target we shall all go to see what this mystery man of pop has in store for us.

MP3: Prince-I Would Die For You

MP

Love Is All cover Prince’s “Darling Nikki”

And this time Nikki’s a boy.  Slow the song down, grind around a bit with some wrong notes on the guitars, add in a few tempo changes, and take the vocals up an octave while sprinkling a little Joanna Newsom-on-shrooms voice, and you’ve got this latest cover from this Swedish group.

Stream it at their MySpace page, and download the original below:

MP3: Prince-Darling Nikki

MP3: Prince-All the Critics Love U in New York

MP

MUST READ-Text Messages from Horny Middle Schoolers

As a teacher in the south Bronx, one must do many things to show the students that you care about them. Often times they have difficult home lives and a caring teacher is the only person who expresses a desire to be a part of their lives.  For myself, part of this strategy has been to give out my personal phone number to the students in case they ever needed it.

A few students have called for homework throughout the year.  It has been used to meet up for Saturday field trips.  All of its uses have been innocent…until today.  No, today, I received three sexually explicit text messages from one of my students that included words that, in the words of the Bloodhound Gang in “Bad Touch,” only Prince would sing about.  So in honor of Prince, check out a few mp3s after the jump, as well as the text of the sexually explicit text messages.

Prince Covers Radiohead @ Coachella-UPDATE

Here is a video clip of the Minneapolis master in his near perfection:

Buy Prince/MP3: Let’s Go Crazy (the song he closed his Coachella set with)

Buy Radiohead/MP3: Creep

BOOM: In case you hadn’t heard…

From NME:

PRINCE COVERS RADIOHEAD AT COACHELLA PERFORMANCE

Definitely click on that link for a great read about his performance.

MP3: Kiss

MP

Plus Prince!

NME has it: Prince has been added to Coachella! While my attendance will be at Lollapalooza this year (Bonnaroo last year), maybe he will make a repeat performance when I maybe attend next year…?  Too much talk, not enough Prince:

Kiss

Buy Prince

MP

Name Dropping 4 Prince

Name-dropping is a self-glorifying tactic likely used since Plato first began formulating arguments and is used to many ends.  A probable exchange:

Polemarchus: A just man helps a friend.

Socrates: That is true, but he does not do harm to another.  That would injustice.

Polemarchus: Well, I was hanging out with Thrasymachus the other day, and he thought otherwise…

Republicans (and a couple of Democrats) have invoked the name of Ronald Reagan on the campaign stump, hoping to be associated with the conservative leader.

Hell, even blogs such as ours, drop names of artists or bands at times in order to increase the  traffic to their web sites.  For instance, if we wanted to increase traffic immensely, we could just include the names of currently popular artists such as Cat Power, Vampire Weekend, Justice, Hot Chip, Xiu Xiu, and Radiohead.  Including these names in a post would increase the likelihood of the blog showing up on search engines.  But we wouldn’t stoop that low.

Instead, we would like to right a wrong on this blog.  In its short existence, for one reason or another, this blog has never mentioned Prince.  Why this is, I do not know.  He is a favorite of the authors of this blog, and any individual should include a certain standard level of appreciation for the sex fiend.  And so, without further ado, a playlist of artists  that name-drop Prince in their songs (most likely in each and every case to increase their levels of sexiness).   List and MP3s after the jump.