Limewire Music blog has an interview with Peter Jesperson, former club booker, ex-Replacements manager, a co-founder of Twin Tone records in Minneapolis and in the last decade, an executive with New West Records in Los Angeles. In 1977, he began booking shows at MPLS rock club The Longhorn, where Husker Du and the Replacement both played early gigs. That same year he founded the Twin/Tone record label with recording engineer Paul Stark and sports writer Charley Hallman. Here he shares some local history of what was happening BEFORE the Huskers, the Replacements and Soul Asylum helped put the Twin Cities on the indie rock rock.
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Q: With the Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, Minneapolis is thought of having a pretty lively music scene in the ‘80s. Obviously, though, three bands do not necessarily make a lively scene, so how would you characterize that time?
PJ: "Well, first off, you have to look at what preceded those three bands. The music scene that spawned them really began with The Suicide Commandos in 1975. They were the granddaddies. They did short, fast, smart and funny rock ‘n’ roll songs — sort of comic book punk rock. It’s very telling that, when we heard the first Ramones album, someone said, “Wow, cool! Someone else is doing what the Commandos have been doing.” Leader of the Commandos, Chris Osgood, was a guitar instructor for awhile and gave both Bob Mould [of Hüsker Dü ] and Dave Pirner [of Soul Asylum] guitar lessons. My personal favorite was Thumbs Up, fronted by Curt Almstead, an imposing frontman with a big voice. We called him “The Mitch Ryder of Minneapolis,” a white guy that could really belt out soul music. He did songs by Wilson Picket, James Brown, Hank Ballard, etc. but he also loved the British Invasion stuff, so the blend of those two things created something very distinct. I’ve often said the reason I wanted to start a record label was to make Curt Almstead records. (It’s also important to note that Curt’s right-hand man for years was Bob Dunlap, who was later nicknamed Slim when he joined The Replacements.)
The other big band of those formative years was Flamingo, a more traditional, Stones-y sounding group. I adored them too. Then, in 1978, The Suburbs came along and they became the biggest band in town for the next six or eight years. Curt (under the name “Spooks”), The Suburbs and a group called Fingerprints were the first releases on Twin/Tone; we put out three EPs in June of ’78. These aforementioned groups set the stage for Hüsker Dü , The Replacements and Soul Asylum, but there were dozens of bands that popped up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in many different genres — Riff Raff, The Pistons, The Hypstrz, The Jets, The Urban Guerillas — so many great ones in fact that Twin/Tone was practically forced into existence. I would add that one of the things that made the Minneapolis scene so strong was that the audiences were open to hearing different kinds of music. Punk rock co-existed alongside art rock, electronica, folk, blues and more straight ahead rock ‘n’ roll."
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