Party Over, Oops, Out of Time

Well, Carolyn and I had our first date at First Avenue back in MPLS days,

marrying at the south side's Park Avenue Methodistwhere Prince tied his first knot a bit later. 

The Cities (including St Paul) were a great place to live - downtowns just minutes away from a rural environment along the Mississippi and a cluster of 5 large lakes within Mpls - really nice from an Angeleno's perspective.

Because of an arts-based corporate culture, along with unusually high education emphasis owing to the Lutheran college system, the Cities were remarkable for culture-vultures. More live theater per capita than NYC, we took in some great Shakespeare at the Guthrie.

 And the innovative, excellent art gallery, The Walker Art Center,

 connected to next door's theater complex.

 +++++

I was so pleased that the local boy's Sign "O" the Times beat out the boys of Ire's The Joshua Tree in the Village Voice's critics poll, as did another homegrown band, The Replacements. Mpls struck me as an inhabited and vibrant urban space I never knew in suburban LA.

A fair amount of time spent at the Electric Fetus record store/headshop, where Prince visited last Saturday, apparently. The Cities in the '80s were a pop music mecca, later passing to Seattle.

But all the sentiment over fallen pop icons makes me consider how much media has replaced the church as a platform for meaning.