Damn, it feels good to be a benefactor

Since his backstage habits are as tame as a scrapbookers convention, Brother Ali had time to talk about how much money he wasn't making Tuesday night at First Avenue.

"Actually, we're losing money, because now we can't play here for probably another three months or else we're overplaying the market," said the rapper who was famously homeless a few years back.

"But who cares?" he said, shrugging.

Maybe we should care. Today being Valentine's Day, it seemed like a good time to spread a little love to the musicians in this town. Yes, including the rappers.

All the rappers, DJs and club and record-label staff behind Tuesday's Rhymesayers Benefit for Haiti concert raised more than $25,000 for relief efforts. And that was the second of two big hip-hop benefits held locally within a month of the earthquake. More Haiti gigs have been promised for when the cause is less trendy, too -- when all the "We Are the World v.2.0" stars have moored their yachts off a different Caribbean island.

Musicians catch a lot of crap in the Twin Cities, plenty of it slung by me. But this winter they are proving themselves to be standup citizens. Even Slug, who hosted Tuesday's benefit. And even the nefarious Mark Mallman.

Mallman co-headlined another Haiti fundraiser with Solid Gold a week ago Saturday, also at First Ave. Minneapolis' downtown rock haven -- the one that City Council Member Lisa Goodman said isn't anything special in this column a few months back -- actually hosted four benefit shows over the past eight nights. That's one benefit gig at the club for every two new rolls of hand towels brought to the men's restroom. (I've learned to wear my most absorbent jeans there.)

At best, most local musicians can only expect to draw a decent crowd/paycheck a few times a month. Thus, playing for free twice in one month can siphon quite a bit of moola out of their coffers. It's like an average worker donating a week's worth of salary.

"Everybody in my bands makes a living off of music, so when we play a benefit we all take a financial hit," Mallman admitted, but he didn't show any regret. Not only does the charitable side of these shows warm your cockles, but "audiences at benefits are super-happy to be there and they want to have fun -- so that's a reward."

(Mallman, if you didn't know, is all about finding things that can make a gig special.)

Brother Ali also doubled up on his benefit gigs this month. After headlining Tuesday's concert, he waited a whole three nights before returning to host a charity concert Friday for Matt Lindquist, a local sound engineer who was hospitalized with H1N1 and double-lung pneumonia and didn't have insurance to cover it.

There seems to be a benefit like that every other weekend for some hard-working musician or music professional who's self-employed and thus underinsured. The frequency isn't surprising. The fact that musicians and clubs never get tired of putting them on is.

Scott Herold, who runs the full-time music nonprofit Rock the Cause, cited all those ideas as ways he and his partners could better serve the community. Two weeks ago, Rock the Cause hosted Glitter Ball 3, a glam-rock/hair-band tribute that amounted to a few dozen extra cans of aerosol hairspray going into the atmosphere as a fair trade for $4,500 going toward Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Herold usually insists on paying musicians at his events: "It only seems fair they get paid for their hard work."

Rock the Cause is one of a few organizations that put on benefit gigs year-round. That's right, there actually is enough rock-benefit demand here to make it a full-time business. Another good one is the new/young talent support group DEMO (Diverse Emerging Music Organization), which last week hosted a benefit with a singer who was all over the news after her house in St. Paul blew up from a gas/sewer-line mixup. That musician, Trista Meehan of the band Jezebel Jones & Her Wicked Ways, wouldn't let the show be turned into a benefit for herself.

Then there's the cool new music org Vega Productions, which collects money and musical instruments for local grade-school music programs. Vega puts on the big Rock the Boat floating concerts on the Mississippi, which give new meaning to "flotation devices" (the music is always quite hemp-centric, shall we say). Vega was also behind the excellent new charity CD "The Minnesota Beatles Project, Vol. 1."

Mark Mallman was on that CD, as were his Haiti benefit cohorts Solid Gold. And if somebody had asked him, I bet Brother Ali would've ripped up "Come Together" for the disc, too. Maybe that will be on "Vol. 2."