Early Prince for a price
When photographer Robert Whitman mounted a show this year in a Los Angeles gallery of Prince's pre-Warner Bros. publicity photos, his lawyers heard from Prince's lawyers. Whitman didn't have a model's release for those photos taken in 1977 for brochures to help Prince land a record deal. "We're selling them as fine art," Whitman told I.W. last weekend at the Minneapolis opening of the show, which runs through Nov. 16 at Douglas Flanders Gallery, 818 W. Lake St. Yes, 30-by-40-inch black-and-white photos of Prince with a giant Afro are going for $3,500. Smaller ones cost as little as $1,500. At one point in the mid-1980s, Prince's management company contacted Whitman about buying the negatives, but the managers never followed through. Whitman, formerly of Minneapolis and now of New York City, hasn't heard from Prince's people about the Flanders show. But he noted: "Prince is litigious."
Jon Bream
Ready to Rock 'SNL'
With word getting out that he will play one eight-minute montage instead of the usual pair of one-song appearances, Prince fans around the world seem extra pumped for his return to "Saturday Night Live" this weekend. Foremost among them is this week's host, Chris Rock. All of the promo spots made by the stand-up king center on Prince, including one in which women scream off camera every time he says "Prince." Rock also wrote a short essay in Billboard this past week screaming his love for "Purple Rain" on its 30th anniversary. He said of the album, "There's no 'Baby Be Mine' on it," referring to a filler track on Michael Jackson's "Thriller." He also recounted going to repeat screenings of the movie the day it came out: "We were all like, 'Where the [expletive] is Minneapolis?' "
CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER
Talking the Dog
The Twin Cities blues community lost one of its characters with the Oct. 16 cancer death of Tim "Dr. Dog" Bradach. A dapper charmer from the hippie heyday, he ran two record labels (Cold Wind and Narnian) that released albums by Big George Jackson, Doug Maynard, Lamont Cranston Band, Lazy Bill Lucas, the Liquor Pigs and Lynwood Slim, among others. Bradach was even better known in canine circles, earning his "Dr. Dog" moniker by judging dog shows all over the world while breeding giant schnauzers and marketing his own line of dog shampoos. In a picaresque career, he owned a Wisconsin blues bar for a while and played Louisiana-style rubboard with the original Liquor Pigs, and with Wain McFarlane, Spider John Koerner and several jug bands. Bradach was always great barroom company so it's apropos that his memorial gathering will be at Palmer's Bar on Minneapolis' West Bank. The stories, and there should be some doozies, start at 3 p.m. Saturday.
TOM SUROWICZ
Where the women aren't?
Female composers remain almost entirely unrepresented in the concert programs of major U.S. orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra. That is among findings of a new study by a writer attached to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Ricky O'Bannon pooled the 2014-15 classical concert seasons of 21 orchestras and looked at ages and gender of composers, whether composers were living or dead, and the countries of origin of composers being played. Female composers represent 1.8 percent of the works performed. When looking at works by living composers, those by women increases to 14.8 percent. In the current season, the Minnesota Orchestra will perform one work by a female composer (Polina Nazaykinskaya's "Winter Bells") Nov. 13-15, and pieces by two female composers (Kati Agocs' "Perpetual Summer" and Loren Loiacono's "Stalks, Hounds") as part of the Future Classics program on Jan. 16.
Claude Peck
