Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Show 98: The Pangea House, Minot, North Dakota

TURNOUT: 12
MONEYS: $50
INJURIES: I fell on my head. Normally, I'm supposed to fall on one knee, then my butt, then my shoulder, but instead, for some reason i can't remember, this time my head went directly to the floor. Hard. Hard enough that i saw stars.

STORIES: Why not Minot? Probably because everyone assumes that a little town in the middle of North Dakota is a dumb place to try and make an infoshop or visit on a tour. Everyone is wrong. Minot rocks.

The show started out with a song circle, everyone taking turns playing songs on keyboards or acoustic guitars, sad songs, funny songs, covers. It had a real friendly community feel. Seriously, it was nice. Then it was time for Peter to play his harsh drooly loud set and for us to perform our messy violent play about powerlessness and futility. Suffice to say we felt uncomfortable and a little out of place.

But, we needn't have worried, cuz people loved the show, and we had a great group discussion about confronting empire and building radical alternatives. We learned a lot from the Minot kids, apparently North Dakota is one of few places in the US that didn't get too badly ruined by the financial collapse. Of course, oil speculators and real estate brokers are now moving in and blowing the economy up into a nice unstable bubble, with the help of the local government. Tearing down low income housing while a bunch of oil workers move into town driving up rents and tearing up the landscape to get at oil trapped in shale. Yes, neoliberalism seems to be targetting North Dakota. I'm hoping the kids we met might be able to convince the people of Minot that this money flowing into the community will even more rapidly flow out to big banks and corporations, that the inevitable bubble-bust is the fault of capital, not the minorities and non-xtians the right will surely blame, and that local politicians are working for the banks, against the people. We'll see.

Also, the Minot folks warned us that Fargo is a tough place to try and play. Their warnings proved justified. There will be no show report from Fargo, because nobody promoted the Fargo show, and thus nobody turned out. All we did was eat shitty over-priced taco salad and fill up with silent hate, then get back in the car and drive to Minneapolis.

Hiwayku:
This drive was very
long and very boring and
we had some soup too.


Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, ask us some questions or comment on it. We'd love to hear it becuase we believe in artistic transparency.




3 comments:

  1. Thanks for coming guys! We all hope you can make it back someday.

    Safe Travels,
    Chris

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd definitely agree that Minot is truly a great place and this is probably why more and more people are getting interested in buying real estate in that area which is offered by www.55thCrossing.com.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh hell no.

      Frances, our friend in minot want you to get the fuck out and stop ruining their housing market. Please. You are destroying everything that makes the place great and replacing it with strip malls and extractive industry workers. Fuck off and die. Pig.

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