When Pizza Lucé was coming up on its 10th anniversary back in 2003, the small restaurant chain's owners and ever-youthful staff opted to put on "an event that would have a lot of different things going on, one of which just happened to be live music," recalled Lucé marketing director Corey Sax.
They called it a block party because it actually took place on a block in a neighborhood adjacent to their Lyndale Avenue location in south Minneapolis.
Twelve years later, Sax rightfully noted, "There's at least one big block party almost every weekend in summer" in the Twin Cities. And most of them actually take place in parking lots and are centered around live music.
Those latter traits are now true of the Pizza Lucé party, too, which takes place Saturday for the third year in a row in a lot outside the chain's downtown location on N. 4th Street. It had to move there because the neighborhood event literally got too big for the neighborhood (blame it on P.O.S).
Despite being just one of many now, the Lucé bash is still arguably the best block party of summer — or at least it inarguably has the most ambitious music lineup from year to year. Especially this year. Sax conceded the organizers upped the talent budget a bit this year "as one way for our party to keep standing out from the rest of the pack."
Har Mar Superstar will return for his third or fourth year at the party, which attests to the event's fun spirit. Two mic handlers from 2008's Lucé headlining act Doomtree, Sims and Mike Mictlan, will also return as a duo act. Two of Minnesota's best and noisiest rock acts of the moment, the Blind Shake and Retribution Gospel Choir, are in on it. So are Pink Mink, Frankie Teardrop, Tiny Deaths, L'Assassins and Rogue Valley.
And as if that weren't enough, Dillinger Four was added to the lineup after their own parking lot block party on July 4 passed. Go to pizzaluce.com for the schedule.
Random mix
Lots of new album announcements for fall: Motion City Soundtrack's "Panic Stations," recorded with indie-rock vet John Agnello at Pachyderm Studio, arrives Sept. 18; Hippo Campus' second EP, "South" — also recorded at Pachyderm — is due Oct. 2; and Prof's long-awaited LP for Rhymesayers, "Liability," will land Oct. 16 with collaborators including Tech N9ne, Waka Flocka Flame and Aesop Rock. …
