Forty years ago (September 22 and 23, 1979), I was in the crowd at M-80, a two-day lineup of bands at the Field House on the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus organized by Tim Carr, then with The Walker Art Center. Officially Marathon ‘80: A New No-Now Wave Festival, it showcased bands on the Punk/Post-Punk/New Wave spectrum.
Something like 18-20 bands performed. Among them, The Suicide Commandos, always fun guys to be around:
MN Rockestra was an ad hoc band consisting of members of several Twin Cities based bands, here performing The Suicide Commandos’ Complicated Fun:
The late Terry Katzman engineered the Commandos’ set. He would go on to become a key part of the Minneapolis music scene for decades. At some point along the way, I ended up in his apartment, staring in awe at his massive vinyl collection.
The Fingerprints played a set:
DEVO played M-80, rebranded as DOVE, in lime-green leisure suits and accountant’s visors, channeling corrupt televangelists (no sound in the second half of this video, WTF?):
Most of the video from M-80 was in black and white, but this one of DOVE is in color:
The Suburbs (at the time I had a love-hate relationship with the ‘burbs since one of the members, who shall remain nameless, had recently said unkind things to me about my then-girlfriend) playing Underwater Lovers:
The Monochrome Set (M-80 was only about a year and a half after they’d formed in London):
Slim Dunlap with Curtiss A:
The Contortions, The Fleshtones, NNB, The dB’s, and The Flamin' Oh's (they might have still been called Flamingo at the time) are all bands that I remember seeing there too, but beyond that my memory’s a bit fuzzy. Did The Replacements play M-80? Dunlap did, but did I see the ‘mats there, or was that later? Same with Hüsker Dü — did I see them at M-80, or was it somewhat later at the Longhorn Bar, in the seventies and eighties the best venue for music in the Twin Cities?
I’m pretty sure that neither Roxy Music nor The Talking Heads played M-80. I think I saw Richard Hell and the Voidoids at M-80, but was it elsewhere? Was Jonathan Richman there? Per Ubu? And there may well have been Brits other than The Monochrome Set there, but I can’t remember who they might have been.
You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all... Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.
— Luis Buñuel
