Music: Stasiu's: A place for 'little Minneapolis'

Ever since Stasiu's in northeast Minneapolis started booking live music this summer, the first thing people want to know is how to pronounce the bar's name. The second: Have you seen the bathrooms?

So let's get that out the way: Rhymes with "ska shoes," and yes, the men's bathroom has two big marble urinals from an old hotel; urban legend says Al Capone once used them. (I saw them just for you, dear reader.) The women's bathroom has a shower. No one seems to know why.

A neighborhood bar on the corner of Lowry and University Avs. NE., Stasiu's would probably be filled with cigarette smoke if the law would let it. It's a bar for the working class, the locals, the scenesters at Grumpy's NE. and the regulars of the friendly strip joint down the street, the 22nd Avenue Station, aka the Double Deuce.

Christy Hunt, lead singer for Ouija Radio, wants to make Stasiu's ground zero for "little Minneapolis"-- i.e., local bands not big enough for First Avenue (yet).

"I want this place to be easy, no pressure, and dark, so you can be a shadow and slide around," she said.

A natural hostess, Hunt walked up to the bartender in her red minidress and black go-go boots and asked for the keys to show off "the parlor," a room in the bar not open to the public (yet). Since July, Hunt has been booking bands in the main room for owner Brad Schutte, and eventually she wants to fill the parlor with bands, too.

So far, she's had a full lineup in the main room almost every night with help from friends such as Chris Dorn, lead singer of the Beatifics, who launched the Hexagon Bar scene a couple years ago.

"I know how hard it is to get people in here," she said. "But that's my secret." She also confesses that she sees Stasiu's as a chance to really contribute something. She says all of this in a voice made raspy by nodes on her vocal cords -- the curse of hard-working singers.

Seeing bands at Stasiu's is a mixed experience. A big, fat pillar divides the main room into a bar area and the larger performance space, but it blocks the sightlines from bar and stage and disrupts the room's feng shui. Walk around it to the main area, though, and it's a decent space -- the sound is good and although the room is small, there's room to move.

A $5 cover charge is the norm. You probably have never heard of most of the bands, but there's a growing list of more familiar names such as Vampire Hands, Building Better Bombs and Gay Witch Abortion. And most nights, you will see Hunt up front dancing by "her pole," showing her support and getting people to dance.

About the only night you won't see a band is Monday and the reason is Ping-Pong. They set up a table for a regular game night and you might get chance at it if the Ping-Pong regulars don't get there first.

There is no jukebox at Stasiu's, so be prepared on nonband nights for an occasional dose of the "Team America" soundtrack. And sometimes, as you're hitting a Ping-Pong ball all over the room, Judas Priest's "Turbo Lover" will come on. Life is good.

Poison Control impressions

Although it's from Ames, Iowa, Poison Control Center plays here enough -- at Big V's, the Turf Club and the Hexagon, etc. -- that it might as well be a local band. Its label, Afternoon Records, is based here and Saturday it will celebrate the release of the great CD "A Collage of Impressions" at the Triple Rock Social Club (5 p.m., all ages, $8).

PCC often gets compared to Pavement, and there's even an occasional resemblance to Tapes 'N Tapes. It's a band for those who like a little chaos with their indie rock, and guys who play guitar while trying to do a headstand or the splits.

When the band played this summer in a Des Moines ballroom, someone dared lead singer Patrick Tape Fleming to hang from a chandelier. "So I leaped off the stage and hung from the chandelier, swaying back and forth, " Fleming said. "It's not good to dare us because we will probably do something five times worse." PCC seems to have a charmed existence, because not only did the chandelier survive, but a reporter from Jane magazine just happened to be there, loved them and called them her faves.

The other standout about PCC is its lyrics, which are clever but dark. "Magic Circle Symphony" is about the time Fleming was living in Indianapolis and fell in love with a barista -- his future wife -- at a coffee shop across the street. Their first meaningful conversation inspired this happy chorus: "Love is the answer/ until you get cancer/ then you're lying/ dying/ dead."

Random notes

File this one under best deal of the weekend: Jay Awesome's Birthday Spectacular tonight at the Nomad World Pub: 10 bands for $3 -- that comes to 30 cents per band. The lineup includes the Fillmores and post-riot-grrl band Baby Guts, a big winner in the recent City Pages Picked to Click local-music popularity contest (6 p.m., 21-plus). ...

File this one under garage rocker's anxiety attack. On Sunday, two of the genre's most hyped and climbing-out-of-the-basement bands are playing at two places -- Jay Reatard, with locals Chooglin' and the Blind Shake at the 7th Street Entry, and the Black Lips with locals Private Dancer at the Triple Rock. I'm not kidding about the anxiety attack: Both the Triple Rock and First Avenue did what they could to avoid the conflict.

"Yeah, I was working on trying to get both bands onto a single bill," said First Ave booker Nate Kranz, "but it just wasn't meant to be." Thank your dirty power chords that text messaging exists, so you can hear how awesome the show you're not at is.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Christina Schmitt is a local musician, music critic and publicist for 89.3 the Current. She tries to get as much rock 'n' roll into her life as she can.