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Texas Taco

Like so many Minnesota music boosters, longtime Cabooze booker and indie concert promoter James (Taco) Martin fell in love with Austin, Texas, after two decades of attending the South by Southwest Music Conference. The affair grew so strong he accepted a job offer during the last SXSW and has relocated there. "I just went through a Minnesota winter, and now I have to survive a Texas summer," Martin complained. Also, he was looking forward to all the shows in the flourishing Cabooze Plaza this summer. "There's no way I'm missing the Hold Steady on July 3," he said, noting he'll be back to assist with other shows, too. The Cabooze's booking duties have been turned over to general manager Jason Aukes, while promoter Mr. Chan Presents is likely to play a heavier role there. His new job is only loosely tied to music, but Martin has already hobnobbed with Austin's biggest musician, Willie Nelson. He also pledged to assist Minnesota bands whenever they mess with Texas. He's the kind of guy who stands by his bands, too.

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

A hole is for fixing

It was bedlam at Bedlam Theater last week. The West Bank venue took a hit when the floor in its Fireplace Lounge dropped out. The culprit: a leaky pipe that caused a tiled surface in the 1904 building to give way. No one was injured, but the lounge's entire floor needs to be replaced. Bedlam has benefited from 300 hours of volunteer demolition work and is now ready to rebuild, said co-artistic director John Bueche. They've raised about $2,000 of what they hope will be $7,500. Bedlam also is working with its landlord, who will give them rent credit for the volunteer hours. "If people want to come by and look at the hole, we've got a little picture window set up to look in," Bueche said. "It's very dramatic-looking." The company doesn't expect its main-room shows to be affected, but the lounge's music acts have been moved into the bar area. The crew behind the popular monthly DJ party Bomp is planning a Hell's Kitchen benefit for the rebuilding efforts. Bueche said he'd like to have the work done by the end of May.

TOM HORGEN/GRAYDON ROYCE

Saturday in the lobby with Lyle

JON BREAM

Swift relief

On the day she performed in St. Paul last weekend, Taylor Swift announced she was donating $500,000 to Cumberland River flood relief efforts in Nashville, where she lives. Ke$ha, who also lives in the Music City, is performing a flood-relief benefit there June 16. A day after leaving Nashville to rehearse in L.A. for KDWB's Star Party (Thursday at Epic), Ke$ha gave I.W. a flood report: "Things are little disheveled at the moment in Nashville. We are going to rebuild it, and everything will be fine. Some friends of mine did lose their entire house; I had to take a boat to their house. Thank God, no family members or animals were hurt. That's the important stuff."

JON BREAM

World according to Ricci When he drew a map of the world for Chinese rulers in 1602, Matteo Ricci knew enough about the Americas to sketch in Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and some rocky mountains, but he was really winging it in Russia. There he placed 1-foot-tall cave-dwelling dwarves who were afraid of cranes. Turks, he reported, had the feet of oxen, and the folks of Kazakhstan had just one eye. Even with such whimsy, the Jesuit missionary's monumental map is a cartographic prize, legendary for its size-- 5 feet tall by 12 feet wide -- and its rarity. Only six copies survive, one of which was recently purchased for $1 million on behalf of the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. The only copy in the United States, the map will be the centerpiece of a new show -- opening Saturday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts -- of Ming dynasty objects, porcelain, maps and woodblock prints showing the 17th century's cultural collision between China and Europe. Bring a dictionary, though. The map's all in Chinese.