Front Row Seat

"Front Row Seat" was the name of Jay Gabler's movie column when he was a teenager contributing to the High School High 5. As Daily Planet arts editor, today he writes about all aspects of the Twin Cities arts scene.

Chill summer: Claire de Lune, Theresa Andersson, Chicha Libre

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

This spring, I've had to eat my words. For the past few years, I've been advising bands to skip the physical CDs and just send download links to journalists—the hard copies, I've said, get tossed in a pile that may or may not ever get excavated. Then last month I bought a car that has a working CD player, and lo and behold! Suddenly making it into that pile is the best way to get my attention. Some of the discs I've had to resist tossing straight out the window (Dwight Hobbes said it all when it comes to Paul Spring: I should've had a V8), but three have made for very chill soundtracks for warm-weather cruising.MORE »

Are critics too snobby?

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

When a movie critic says something my dad doesn't agree with, Dad will grunt. "Those critics see too many movies! They have no idea what the average person likes." Of course, if a critic says something Dad agrees with, he'll cite it favorably. "Did you see they gave Zorba the Greek four stars? That's a classic." Welcome to the world of the critic, where favorable reviews are greeted as the sage musings of a discerning viewer and negative reviews are dismissed as useless hackwork.MORE »

Remembering Adam Yauch: What the Beastie Boys meant to us

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, a founding member of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, died on May 4 after a long battle with cancer. In the wake of Yauch's death, I asked our arts contributors to share their Beastie Boys memories.MORE »

Re-use of the day: Alec Soth's art crate becomes Aunt Betsy's patio table

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

My aunt Betsy Gabler—a regular Daily Planet contributor—worked for a time at Alchemy Architects, a firm sharing a St. Anthony Park building with the studio of well-known photographer Alec Soth. Soth's work is shown around the world, and his prints would return to the studio in wooden art-shipping crates. Betsy remembers that Alchemy principal Geoff Warner, a re-use advocate, would say, "Don't throw away those crates!"MORE »

A new media manifesto: Set my content free

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

“Are you really coming out against Record Store Day?” my friend wrote in an e-mail. “Like, for real, not just in an attempt to gain online traction?”

I stopped and thought about it. It had been a few days since I wrote a post titled “Why I’m Not Celebrating Record Store Day,” and in retrospect it did seem a little strange. Had I actually become a person who would rip on record stores?

Well, yes and no.MORE »

Al Franken disdained by fellow Harvard grads in letters to alumni magazine

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

As a Minnesotan and a Harvard grad, I was glad to see a feature on Al Franken (class of '73) on the cover of the March-April issue of Harvard Magazine, the university's official alumni magazine. Other alumni, it seems, didn't share my feelings.MORE »

Should news publications get on Pinterest?

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

Today on the Zeus Jones blog, Becky Lang argues that the hot new social networking site Pinterest is suitable for some brands—"products that have a connection to the world of design, emotion, inspiration"—and not others ("Products like, say—aspirin, are going to feel out of place unless you get real creative"). Are news organizations like the Daily Planet brands that should be on Pinterest?MORE »

Minnesota Opera's "Madame Butterfly" Twitter experiment: Epic fail or surprising success?

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

This morning (Sunday, April 15) the local media Twittersphere is buzzing over a series of tweets issued last night by the Minnesota Opera's official Twitter account, @mnopera. After warning via Facebook that "someone is sneaking in to the opening night of Butterfly to tweet her super hip interpretation of what's really going on," the opera issued a series of irreverent, slang-filled tweets about the opera as it unfolded. Example: "Oh dayummm. Pinkerton’s totes a hawtie. Would be better w/hipster glasses & less showering."MORE »

Joe Soucheray vs. artists: Is Lowertown finally an active front in the Culture Wars?

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

I just sat for 20 minutes, thinking about Joe Soucheray's Pioneer Press column "Saints ballpark would feed starving artists, but do they want to eat?" It seemed like I should have something to say about it, but what? Soucheray's rhetoric is almost unassailable in its flamboyant offensiveness.MORE »

Golf in Minnesota: Interesting facts from Rick Shefchik's "From Fields to Fairways"

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

As a battle-worn veteran of four years on the worst golf team in Minnesota, I was pleased to open a package from the University of Minnesota Press and find a copy of Rick Shefchik's new tome From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Clubs of Minnesota. Here are a few of the fun (and not-so-fun) facts about golf in Minnesota that I picked up from Shefchik's book, which will be an eye-opening, entertaining read for any Gopher State golf buff. Shefchik will be presenting the book at a release event on April 14 at Theodore Wirth Golf Club.MORE »

Front Row Seat

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