Maybe it’s the Scandinavian influence, but Minneapolis is probably the
cleanest rock ’n’ roll city in America. I remember the refreshing lack
of pollution being my first impression, when I began visiting the Twin
Cities in the mid '80s, hanging out on the fringes of the then-verdant
rock scene, back when the Replacements, Husker Du, Babes in Toyland,
Rifle Sport, Breaking Circus, and Soul Asylum were still around. I was
well aware the metropolis had its seedy underbelly– a dark side that New York Times media columnist David Carr documents chillingly in his addiction memoir The Night of the Gun.
In fact, I usually stayed with a bassist who doubled as the scene’s
biggest drug dealer – let’s call him Sven. But even we pale, tattooed
potheads went for hikes around Minneapolis’s many lakes and parks.
Remember that scene in Purple Rain when Prince drives Apollonia out to a lake on his motorcycle? The call of nature is never far away in Minneapolis.

Perhaps
all that clean air offers a stark contrast to the pockets of depravity
and hard-luck characters. Two of the best records of the year so far
come from Minneapolitans skilled at spinning tales of gritty realism
out of a city not known for its grit. On the Atmosphere album When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold,
rapper Slug writes about a waitress trying to pay off student loans, a
lost-soul rock star, and on “Dreamer,” a single mom struggling to make
it from day to day. With a mantra chorus of “but she still dreams after
she woke tight hold on that hope/ sometimes it can seem so cold do what
you gotta do to cope,” it’s probably the best feminist anthem by a male
rapper since Tupac’s “Dear Mama.” Spieled out over jazz piano riffs and
spry, live backpacker hip-hop, these are unsentimental but sympathetic
portraits worthy of Bruce Springsteen or Joe Strummer.

The Hold Steady’s
Craig Finn explicitly toasts Strummer on “Constructive Summer”: “I
think he might have been our only decent teacher.” Finn cut his teeth
in Minneapolis but formed the Hold Steady in Brooklyn. Whereas he used
to locate many of his songs in the back woods and alleys of the Twin
Cities, on Stay Positive, he writes about all of America. On
first listen “Constructive Summer,” with its backdrop of paper mills
and parties, became my instant summer anthem – I was driving around the
Upper Peninsula, after all, in a county where the red steel plant
of a container company is the largest local employer. I interviewed
Finn a couple years ago, and not surprisingly, he knew my old friend
Sven. Sven could have been the model for many of Finn’s characters: the
big-hearted drunk, the tragedy looking for a savior.

Minneapolis
is in the heartland, so maybe it’s not so surprising that it’s produced
two of the aughties’ Strummers – Woody Guthriesque champions of the
downtrodden and unsung. Unlike the Minneapolis bands of the ‘80s, these
bards aim for the anthems. Maybe grit is in the eye of the beholder.