Dam-Funk Presents A Night of The Minneapolis Sound

MODO Presents...
Dam-Funk Presents A Night of The Minneapolis Sound

A Night of The Minneapolis Sound presented by Funkmosphere’s DāM-FunK

DāM-FunK (Los Angeles)
Special Guests Nick Bike & Kutcorners

PLUS a movie screening of Prince's Purple Rain!

Saturday, October 1st
Doors: 7pm
Movie: 8pm
Show: 10pm
19+

The Minneapolis Sound

The electro-funk style known as the Minneapolis Sound took over pop music in the 80’s. As Dick Clark so famously said in 1980 to a young Prince on his first American Bandstand appearance, “Where'd you learn to do this in Minneapolis? This is not the kind of music that comes from Minneapolis.” But this music did come from Minneapolis. Clark might have been right that Prince’s sexy, light funk didn’t sound like Minneapolis music, but in 1980 no one really knew what Minneapolis sounded like anyway. Within the next four years though, that would all change.

When Prince released his third album Dirty Mind in the fall of 1980 no one was prepared. Gone was the enjoyable, slightly suggestive commercial R&B of Prince’s previous albums and in its place was a wildly ambitious amalgam of funk, punk, new wave, R&B, pop and experimental rock, laced with sexually explicit lyrics and over-the-top shock. This breathtaking fusion of electro-pop, rock and funk not only won over rock and new wave audiences, but it also held on to his R&B audience. More importantly though, Prince’s audacious album set the style and tone for much of the innovative music the Twin Cities would soon be known for.

In 1981, Prince cherry-picked musicians and friends from other Minneapolis bands to create The Time. The dapper new-wave funk band would be Prince’s pet project and an outlet for his extra material and expansive backlog of potential hit songs. He enlisted local players like Jimmy Jam on keyboards, Terry Lewis on bass, Jesse Johnson on guitar, and his childhood friend Morris Day to sing. The Minneapolis Sound had arrived and everybody wanted to sound like Prince and friends.