Pizza Lucé Block Party returns to celebrate wide array of Minnesota music
by Macie Rasmussen and Sara Fish
August 14, 2023
On Saturday, Pizza Lucé Block Party broke a four-year hiatus to host a showcase of Minnesota music in downtown Minneapolis’ Warehouse District. The seven-act rollercoaster progressed from chaotic to joyful, euphoric to quirky, soothing to angry, and entrancing to finally arrive at a place of heartfelt hometown love. Quick stage setups and brief soundchecks transitioned one act to the next with impressive efficiency, making for almost eight straight hours of music.
Supportive Parents
Taking the stage in the early afternoon with sun rays beaming down, Supportive Parents showed up to party. The punk band opened by slingshotting adrenaline into an almost empty parking lot and singing “All My Friends Do Drugs.” Most of the band’s material was pure grungy punk with monstrous vocals, but unreleased material steered toward pop-punk. As a small crowd began to filter in, lead singer Matt Webster placed a foot on the amps to wiggle his hips. Other members backed vocals, jumped, and smoked cigs. “Let’s get weird. We have an afternoon to f*cking ruin,” Webster said.
The singer didn't take stage banter too seriously. “Are you ready to have some beers in the sun?” Webster asked. Another band member recommended water. “I don’t know if anyone knows, but there is water inside a beer,” he continued. In the middle of a song, he burst a warm Hamms open to spray the stage. Joking that he was a doctor, he instructed spectators to drink more beer, then spit on the stage.
It was harmless chaos, and the youngest people in the crowd seemed to be having the most fun. When Webster said, “Open the pit up, bro,” a woman led elementary-aged children to run in a circle. Webster began the last track by handing a joint to a man near the barricade, which was then passed all around the crowd.
Obi Original: Ozone Creations
Next up was Obi Original: Ozone Creations, a group of six artists — all first-generation Americans of African descent — who came to dance to Afrobeats in joy. Nigerian-born Obi Obikwelu exuded uncontainable energy when he got low in seductive lunges and led songs, but he wasn’t the only star of the show. Each member took a turn on center stage while the rest of the group participated by dancing in the background and singing along. The Ozone Creations members were each others’ audience, embracing and hyping everyone up with excitement as if they’ve never seen their friends perform before.
Sumer showcased a lo-fi R&B tune about wasted time with high kicks. Breezy2Fresh mentioned hip-hop’s 50th birthday before announcing his enjoyment of rock music and flipping his hair to a guitar-led track, and Mack OC shared music from his album, OSINACHI, released that very day.
The crowd wasn’t particularly physically active despite the artists asking them to amp up the energy. The set ended with Obikwelu joining the parking lot to shake up the grooves and sing the words “Pizza Lucé” in between song lines. His final words were “The spirit of Prince is in the house.”
Graveyard Club
Graveyard Club’s synth-pop — emphasis on the synth — may have been the perfect music to enjoy from the THC bean-bag lounge in the back of the parking lot. The group floated through lighthearted and consistent melodies. The cover of “Dreams” by their favorite fruit-themed band, the Cranberries, slid into the setlist smoothly. Lead singer and synth keyboardist Matthew Schufman’s voice reverberated as if he were singing in a cannon, and the combination of his occasional high vocal register and Cory Jacobs’ deep drum rhythms felt euphoric. Like almost all other acts, Schufman made pizza commentary, calling Domino’s “trash,” and Pizza Lucé superior.
Bad Bad Hats
Shortly after, Bad Bad Hats lead singer of, Kerry Alexander assured the crowd that Saturday was not her first time eating Pizza Lucé, calling a single slice of pizza her pre-show ritual. The band followed Graveyard Club’s lead with a whimsical aura to play songs spanning their catalog, which began with an EP that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. For a group that has been together for a decade, their dynamic was fresh and carefree — pop music that holds an unspoken invitation to release stress and reflect on tokens of joy, like one’s first love, on “Nothing Gets Me High.” The band threw it back to end with a gem, “It Hurts,” which communicated the ”I’m heartbroken, but I’m still having fun!” mood. Flexing an arm muscle after a song and announcing she was proud of herself for putting sunscreen on both sides of her body, Alexander’s mannerisms and commentary were warm and wholesome.
The Cactus Blossoms
Turning the silly dial down, the Cactus Blossoms stood in place for a set of old-school country rock, which could be pictured in more than one setting. “Boomerang” transported the five-piece, fronted by brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum, in a prairie of swaying grass. On “Hey Baby” the brothers’ synched harmonies carried them to a sandy beach. The only time the group shifted from their calming melodies was on “Please Don’t Call Me Crazy,” which Torrey called an “anti-social media song.” With subtle angst in the vague lyrics, they sang “Computer in your pocket, nobody has to know / Two fingers in the socket, breaker's gonna blow / Trouble on the line, fodder in the feed / What you want, not what you need.”
VIAL
VIAL amped up the angst tenfold. Members of the punk group walked around in their dark goth outfits under the heat all day. The sun escaped behind buildings before they stepped on stage to scream tons of “F*ck you”s and “I hate you”s. VIAL asked the crowd to scream themselves; straight up screaming, along with words like “piss” to accompany “Piss Punk” and a cover of Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings.” Guitarist KT Branscom forgot the lyrics to a song, so they screamed instead.
The band’s urgent energy, a mixture of sinister and playful, would have been appropriate background music for the wrestling match outside the block party’s gates. While belting rapid lyrics and rolling her eyes back into her skull, bassist Taylor Kraemer’s face filled with rage and disgust. Kraemer took a moment midway through the set to get serious, bringing up the mass shooting at the DIY punk house venue in Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood the night prior, and urging people to donate to fundraisers. When the trio walked off stage, a man in the crowd said “They go from zero to 60 and you feel it,” shaking his fists.
Dua Saleh
A cheer emerged as soon as L.A.-based Dua Saleh announced they were from St. Paul. “Give it up for yourselves for liking St. Paul,” they laughed. The Sudanese-American singer/rapper may be even better known for their recurring role in the Netflix series Sex Education, but they couldn’t seem less like an actor on stage when making fun of themself when tripping over the mic cord multiple times and sharing down to earth commentary: “Give it up for hip hop! 50 years running.”
Saleh prefaced most songs with a question to gauge the audience’s enthusiasm for certain types of music, like “Do y’all like hyper pop” before “pearls” and “Do y’all like rap?” before “cat scratch” and “Y’all like punk music?” before “umbrellar.” Of course, “warm pants” had to be introduced with the question, “Do y’all like bangers?”
Saleh’s music felt less brooding when they performed live. The artist stalked back and forth with a stoic look on their face, but broke out in a smile the second each track ended. Saleh restarted their first break-out track, “Sugar Mama,” joking, “I’m an artist. I’m sensitive about my shit.” Unfortunately, their tender, sultry vocals often got lost under thundering bass and could have benefited from more volume.
Morris Day and the Time
Closing out the night was Morris Day and the Time, whose entrance was met with the most phones in the air all day. Day and the band — founded in 1981 with close ties to Prince — grooved in choreographed side-steps and spins in synch. The crowd grooved along with them. As part of the act, a man with a mirror periodically emerged to allow Day to pat his face with a handkerchief.
The Time appeared proud to perform, proud to be in Minneapolis, and proud to have once been close with Prince. “We do miss our dear brother, just like I know you all do. Do y’all miss Prince? Minneapolis, do y’all miss Prince?” bassist Ricky Smith asked. “This is the Minneapolis sound. It was born here.”
The band also seemed proud to be playing alongside Day. While the lead singer was backstage, Smith said, “When Morris comes out here, I want you to light this stage up and let him know you love him.” Phone flashlights lit the sky when Day returned wearing a white overcoat with “MD” embroidered on the back.
The audience sang along to funk songs like “Gigolos Get Lonely Too” and “The Walk” from 1982’s album What Time Is It? Day led the chant “One, two, three, four, what the hell are we fightin' for?”
“We gotta let Prince know, we still out here partying like it’s 1999,” Day yelled, just a few blocks down the street from Prince’s mural.
