A week or two after New Year's Eve, Christy Hunt told her Facebook friends she was "thinking of hanging up my rock 'n' roll shoes." Last weekend at the 501 Club, though, not only was Hunt back onstage in high, pointy heels, but her new bandmate Arzu Gokcen accidentally kicked one of her heels into the crowd while jump-starting a song.
"I've never done that before," Gokcen told the guy who returned the shoe despite nearly being whacked by it.
Pink Mink, the pop-punky, Ramones-ian, slightly girl-group-ish, all-star quartet, has been enjoying a lot of happy accidents over the past three months. Since the band's first semi-rehearsed gig in early May, it has stumbled into a steady stream of fun summer gigs, culminating this Saturday at the Pizza Lucé Block Party.
Pink Mink's rosy summer is a far cry from Hunt's dreary Facebook posting last winter, which luckily caught Gokcen's attention. "The winter blues had set in, and I was seriously thinking of going back to school," recalled Hunt, who also fronts Ouija Radio and spent the past two years touring with Detroit's Von Bondies. "Arzu responded that she'd lock me in my closet before she'd let me call it quits."
A Twin Cities rock heroine from the Selby Tigers, Lefty Lucy and Strut & Shock, Gokcen had been on hiatus from performing. She and Hunt had been longtime casual friends who finally discovered they had a little chemistry last year when they joined forces to sing on a track on the Birthday Suits' latest record. When the idea arose of starting her eighth band with Hunt, Gokcen said with a laugh, "I always think of that part in 'An Officer and a Gentleman' where [Richard Gere] yells, 'I got no place else to go!' I don't know what else to do with myself but be in a band.'"
Gocken and Hunt both still have their own extracurricular music-related activities. Arzu hosts her popular Staraoke karaoke shows three times a week at Grumpy's Downtown. Christy is now the talent booker at the Hexagon Bar and will soon return to booking at the former home of Stasiu's Place, currently under construction to become Stanley's Northeast Bar.
With all their experiences and grunt work over the years, one might suspect that Pink Mink's members (including local-scene veterans Jacques Wait on bass and Charles Gehr on drums) would be disinterested and even jaded about playing in a new band again. They say the opposite is true.
"I book all these younger bands that have bigger egos than any of us, and I get why they're that way, and I even sort of missed it," Hunt said. "I get that kind of feeling in this band: that we can play a million shows and conquer the world, and I love it."
