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, her new bandmate Arzu Gokcen accidentally kicked one of her heels into the crowd while jump-starting the song "Black Door."
"I've never done that before," Gokcen told the guy who returned the shoe despite nearly being whacked by it.
There aren't a lot of rock-related occurrences that the members of Pink Mink haven't experienced before, so little accidents like that are big fun in their eyes. The pop-punky, Ramones-ian, slightly girl-groupish all-star quartet has been enjoying a lot of happy accidents over the past three months.
Since the band's first semi-rehearsed gig at Honey in early May -- clips of which went viral via YouTube, somewhat to the members' horror -- Pink Mink has stumbled into a steady stream of fun summer gigs, including the Art-a-Whirl and Chiang Mai Thai block parties, and culminating this Saturday at the big kahuna of street fests, the Pizza Lucé Block Party, also featuring Brother Ali, Lookbook, Red Pens, Dessa and more.
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 internationally with Detroit band the 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 while she studied up for a new job as a wine seller over the winter. 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.