Leaving Duluth: Feel free to write your own caption
“Leaving Duluth” postcard image from Arcade studio, roughly a century ago.
“Leaving Duluth” postcard image from Arcade studio, roughly a century ago.
To mark the occasion of “Macho Man” Randy Savage being inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, Eyewitness News Sports Director Dan Williamson dipped into the PDD Photo Archive and recalled the time Duluth Mayor John Fedo declared “Macho Madness Day” in the city of Duluth.
According to the blurb on YouTube, the Duluth band Darkhood recorded this single in the 1960s.
“These lads allegedly recorded this at Chess Studios in Chicago and then subsequently lost most of the copies of this 45 when it melted in one of their cars,” the video description reads. “The flip side is great, too. Fuzz guitar and catchy garage from the Northlands; ain’t nothing better.”
The tune was ripped for YouTube from the original 45 by the Hold Tight DJ crew in St. Paul.
From season six, episode one of WDSE-TV’s The PlayList, bluegrass band Tin Can Gin performs the song “Duluth.”
I recently acquired a Duluth-Superior Transit Company token from a friend and thought I’d post it in case anyone can pinpoint the year of its creation or share any interesting details.
It was actually a late-2013 release, but Red Mountain’s debut album Scowl Lightly captured the most attention in 2014 among voters in Perfect Duluth Day’s poll to name the top local album of the year. Issued on vinyl and compact disc by Duluth’s Chaperone Records, Scowl Lightly brought band leader Anton Jimenez-Kloeckl’s evolving musical project out of the shadows of the weirdo-experimental scene to top billing at local festivals — with enough performance antics to proudly retain the weirdo label. In a review for the independent music website Wordkrapht, Ellen Vaagen writes that Scowl Lightly is “a baroque pop gem spattered with claps, bells, trumpet, and saxophone floating on a clear stream of fancy-free fun” and the band’s live performances “are a fantasia of dancing, face paint, feathers, masks, and flamboyant sequin costumes that encourage crowds to let their freak flags fly.”
Members of Red Mountain accept the PDD Award for Perfect Album of 2014 at the Red Herring Lounge. (Photo by Steve Ash)
If you’ve followed Perfect Duluth Day closely for more than a year, you might know that my wife and I are the world’s laziest and lousiest birders. We have cheap binoculars and cameras, and basically just try to keep an eye out while we are engaged in an activity like cross-country skiing. Last year, during an owl irruption in the Duluth area, we saw zero owls. The only snowy owls we had seen in our lives, before today, were in captivity at the Lake Superior Zoo and the World Bird Sanctuary in Missouri.
We had a few failed missions last year, seeking the elusive snowy at Rice’s Point and the Bong Airport. After hearing reports of sightings near Duluth Business University and Wade Stadium this year, we decided to give it another try. We saw a bald eagle at Grassy Point within minutes, and figured that was a good sign. We knew from reading Sparky Stensaas’ blog post about Superior Snowy Owls that it’s generally easier to find them in a stupid place, like on a football scoreboard (in his case) or a piece of industrial equipment (in our case) than in a beautiful wilderness environment, so we were only moderately surprised to find our gal at Erie Pier in West Duluth, perched on a bulldozer.
A previous round of voting identified the top three albums by Duluth bands in 2014. Now it’s time to pick the award winner. Ire Wolves’ The Ascetic and Wolf Blood’s self-titled album can be listened to on Bandcamp. Red Mountain’s Scowl Lightly isn’t available for free listening in its entirety, but the single “Home” is on SoundCloud and there are videos for “Forestasia” and “Put Me Through.” Listen up, then pick your favorite.
What was the best local album of 2014?
Loading ...This poll is now closed. The results are:
Red Mountain’s Scowl Lightly – 40.6 percent
Wolf Blood’s self titled debut – 34.4 percent
Ire Wolves The Ascetic – 25 percent
This is by no means a comprehensive collection of the past year’s gig posters, just 126 of them that caught my eye.
Time for another installment of Perfect Duluth Day’s ultra-thrilling photo-trivia sensation. Where in Duluth was this shot taken?
Among the 50+ albums released by Duluth-area musicians in the past year, the nominees are in for Best Local Album of 2014. Log in and click away to help us identify the strongest in the field.
What was the best local album of 2014?
Loading ...Ire Wolves – The Ascetic
Red Mountain – Scowl Lightly
Wolf Blood – self titled
This postcard, captioned “Balloon View Harbor, River and Natural Breakwater; Duluth to Left, Superior to Right” raises a few questions. Perhaps the most important one is, how did that tree on the left edge get so tall?
Yes, it’s time once again to get all judgmental about the local music scene and pick the best albums of the year for further breakdown into a fancy PDD poll. There were at least four-dozen albums released by local musicians in 2014, which means few people have listened to them all. So, how do we begin?
Well, it’s fairly simple. In the comments to this post we ask you, the local brain trust, to mention your favorite albums from the past year, then we use that list to generate the nominees for the poll we’ll run a few days from now. It is acceptable, by the way, to nominate an album that came out late in 2013 and maybe didn’t capture much attention until 2014.
With so much local music being produced, of course, it’s hard for even devotees to feel like they have much of a grasp on everything that’s out there, but note that the list of albums linked above contains numerous links to Bandcamp pages where you can listen to many, many tunes for the low, low price of free. So browse, listen, or just spout off about how good the new album by your best friend’s band is and consider yourself an expert. It’s only rawk and/or roll, after all.
Peterson Arena on Grand Avenue in West Duluth was gutted by fire on Dec. 19, 2004. The image of the wreckage at left is a Bob King photo for the Duluth News Tribune, boosted from USA Today‘s story about the unfortunate and scary, yet still undeniably comical, Zamboni explosion. The fire marked the end of Peterson Arena, which served as the only indoor ice rink in western Duluth from 1971 to 2004. It was replaced by the Duluth Heritage Sports Center at Clyde Park, which opened in 2008.
