Glossary of MINѺT Terminology
Contacts/Contracts
Are you interested in giving us your money? Or how about your expert services, pro bono? Are you an A&R guy who likes to party? Please write minotband@gmail.com and let’s talk about a partnership, whereby we get famous and you get mentioned in our liner notes.
We know there are entertainment industry people out there who are feeling down-in-the-dumps because they just can’t seem to find a band with that special something… that inimitable combination of creative deference and ethical plasticity. Look no further than MINѺT. We are ready to hand over the controls to you. We will not read the contract or hire a lawyer - we will simply trust your judgment and assume that we will be treated fairly. As subaltern to your profit imperative, we promise to publicly project an image & attitude coefficient to your marketing strategy. Moreover, we’d be absolutely delighted to play the music that you deem “on-trend.” Sir or madame, we have the special something you’ve been seeking. We want you inside us.
Corr
Shannon Corr (1971–2013) has a really, really nice drum set, for which he paid full-price. For years he had an unhealthy obsession with Mark Trombino. He sprayed his talent liberally on such Bay Area projects as Greenlight the Bombers, Sons Of Oswald, and TURKS. Literally, hella people know Shannon because of his stunning aptitude for photographing live rock bands… therefore, everyone wants a little piece of the legend. S.C. continues to hate and routinely disparage the bandname MINѺT […but if M.S. wanted to hear from an asshole, then…]
Kuhn
In 2009-2010, when M.S. first started recording the ideas that would later become MINѺT, drummer Eric Andrew Kuhn (1981–2080) was an invaluable asset. Kuhn, like most abnormally gifted musical geniuses, was very busy with many different projects such as Silian Rail, Sean Hayes, The Aimless Never Miss, and Dina Macabee, but graciously made the time to help M.S. flesh out these ideas. MINѺT will probably give him a free t-shirt.
The Means Relativize The Ends
In the context of contemporary music, why are guilty pleasures and intellectual challenges mutually exclusive? Why, for example, is it so hard for my generation to conceive of Funk in a way that isn’t ripe with the eye-watering stink of Anthony Keidis? Most can barely remember dub and ska in a world unstaind by Sublime. No need to get indignant about it — it’s only music history, right?
Conversely, why do the contemporary musical intelligentsia reserve the category of “experimental” only for those too obscure even to be available to mainstream listeners, let alone dismissed by them. Only the vanguardists of decades past or today’s hermits of deconstructionism seem to qualify. Is it purely the blue-balled erudition of the critic that’s to blame? Or does it have more to do with how profoundly worthless mainstream pop music has become? (see “Meta 4:4”)
Meta 4:4
Either way, we’re past due for a rhythm-centric (read: trance-inducing) band with the ability to use their melodic instruments with not only enough aplomb to bend the rules, but with enough insolence to ignore the rules entirely.
This is not MINѺT’s first rodeo so we’re through fucking around.
MINѺT
A city located in north central North Dakota in the United States. It was named by Departures Magazine to be the best place to raise a family in 2010. The parents and siblings of M.S. lived there prior to his birth. Minot made headlines in 2011 because the Missouri River overran it’s banks flooded the shit out of it. But despite these notables, M.S. lobbied for the band name because it sounded kind of Sci-Fi.
Solberg
During the From Monument To Masses dissolution in 2010, Matthew Wade Solberg (1975–2013) decided he was going to start a band that was less difficult to play on guitar and more upsetting to children and the elderly. Over the years he diddled around with bass guitar in The Mass, TURKS, and AMMA, but knew that sticking with guitar would provide both the control and the attention he craved. Having met drummer/photographer S.C. while practicing with their respective bands in adjacent practice rooms in South Oakland in 2001, and knowing full-well that S.C. had something to prove because of his candy-ass first name, the future was dully visible. M.S. and S.C. formed MINѺT in like May of 2010 and immediately started rubbin’ out the hits.
Thorne
Low Red Land formed at Hamilton College in Upstate NY and luckily settled in SF after graduation, paving its own way with good intentions. But time had its druthers with LRL and in 2010 Ben Thorne (1982–2013) found himself on the open market with no talent agent to protect him from exploitation. Tartufi laid claim to his left set of bilateral organs & appendages, and MINѺT, the right set. B.T. is now among the corr-membership of the band and is integral to its stuff. Would you believe he’s also a restauranteur? I know, us neither. What’s awesome is that he used to be XveganX.