By: Charlie Vaughan
There was a long shivering line of fans peeling back from the entrance to the 7th Street Entry. It was a cold, granite colored afternoon with a sharp wind sweeping between the towering glass buildings of downtown Minneapolis, and I was bearing down on First Avenue like a wayward cannonball. One by one, the head of the line was slowly being swallowed by the squat black-bricked building through its nondescript doorway. I tucked my ears deeper into my coat collar and barreled toward the end of the line.
“Sweet Jesus,” I said to my companion as the line of people filled in behind us, “we've got to get in there before the food is all gone.”
First Avenue isn't exactly a fine dining establishment—it's a fine place to have music shoved down your throat—but Saturday the 7th Street Entry was piled high with homemade cooking and hometown rock and roll for the 4th Annual Lunch Show. This year's lineup was co-headlined by local big-wigs STNNNG and Signal to Trust in a dual CD release show. For the six dollar admission, fans also got an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of juicy pork sandwiches, potato salad, chips, cookies, a host of other eats, and a surprise opening act.
After a few minutes standing dumbly in the cold, the line rumbled forward and I was shoved out of the pale daylight and into the terminal darkness of the Entry. Inside it was packed like a deck of cards, swarming cheek to cheek with fans carrying paper plates weighed down with free food catered by the bands. The turnout was far greater than I had anticipated and it was a struggle to wade through the bobbing mass silhouette to reach the buffet spread. I loaded a flimsy paper plate to its breaking point while on stage someone was making final adjustments to two sinister amplifiers with single unblinking green eyes.
The amplifiers turned out to be the mad creation of Shellac, the legendary indie-rock outfit from Chicago. Shellac, scheduled to perform later that evening as headliners in the Main Room, continued their quirky habit of playing oddball shows by serving as surprise openers for the Entry's Lunch Show—the last time they played Minneapolis was for a breakfast show, the time before that was for a performance on a riverboat. Fronted by recording gurus Steve Albini on guitar and Bob Weston on bass, their set was a potluck of witticisms and distorted yet sparse guitar rock that lurched like rush-hour traffic. The staggering music got the crowd defrosted, but it was Albini's off-the-cuff comedy that broke the ice.
“I'd like to dedicate this song,” Albini said, “to all the sluts in Minneapolis...it seems like you couldn't drag your dick through the gutter here without getting at least three bites.”
“You sound like an underground Garrison Keillor,” replied Weston.
And so it went for almost an hour with the cheerful members commenting on sluts, pork sandwiches and Canadian bands while filling the gaps with rhythm-heavy favorites from the Shellac catalog. Albini has a reputation for being doggedly cynical; some of the characteristic is on display in his lyrics, but throughout his time on stage he was overtly friendly and plainly funny. It was the perfect attitude given the hour and the casual atmosphere that accompanied the Lunch Show.
About the time Shellac finished, shortly before my third steaming pork sandwich, a savage rumbling broke loose inside my stomach.
“Do you feel alright?” I asked my friend between bites.
“Yeah. That was great. I can't believe we got to see Shellac.”
“Did you have any potato salad?” I asked again.
“It was really good,” he replied. “You should try the cookies.”
Right, the cookies. I wandered back over to the Tupperware container filled with chocolate chip cookies and stashed a half dozen in my pockets. Then I walked to the bar for a third gargantuan beer to wash them down, grabbing a handful of potato chips on my way past. The stomach rumblings picked up their pace. My face grew slack. Trouble was brewing.
A short time later STNNNG came onto the stage. The local five-piece, fresh of the road, were playing their first show in Minneapolis since early August. The 4th Annual Lunch Show coincided with the release of their new album, Fake Fake, on the Modern Radio label. Singer Chris Besinger sauntered up to the microphone wearing a radiant orange floral Hawaiian shirt and a thick beard . With his soft mop of brown hair he looked like a pint sized Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
Five seconds into the set, STNNNG exploded into a bombastic post-punk performance the likes of which garnered the band the Star Tribune's “Best Live Act” and City Pages “Picked to Click” awards in 2005. Hanging from the rafters and screaming with a devil's pitch, Besinger suddenly looked less like Brian Wilson and a lot like Charles Manson. And STNNNG never took their foot off the gas from there, winding guitars over rough bass lines and jackhammer drums while the vocals rolled through the gravel. The energy was instantly pushed about threefold as the two guitarists slashed their instruments to the pounding rhythm of the kick drum and the bassist matched the pluck of his fingers with a wicked head-banging. It was a king-hell spectacle to witness with a half eaten sandwich in your hand and a pocket full of cookies.
The set featured songs from Fake Fake and the previous record, Dignified Sissy. Live on stage, it was hard to discern a musical departure in material. All the songs were up-front, in your face ball-busters of volume and angst. It seems STNNNG have decided not to fix what wasn't broken and to stoke the fires a bit higher; Fake Fake sounds like a well deserved encore.
As the STNNNG performance died out, I felt the pin slip on my own hand grenade. And as much as I wanted to hear Signal to Trust, this particular kind of explosion wasn't for public consumption. I unexpectedly had to get out of the Entry at all costs.
Do or Die.
Code Red.
Abandon ship.
The stomach rumblings had drastically moved south. While the 7th Street Entry proved to be an entertaining, if not dim and unlikely, venue for lunch... the lunch itself sent me scrambling for an early exit.
Photos by Bill Rammer.
Location Info:
7th Street Entry
Artist Info: STNNNG, Shellac, Signal to Trust
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