💜 Minnesota's music is worth preserving

Preserving Minnesota's Music

The Diverse Emerging Music Organization (DEMO) has an ambitious goal with the Minnesota Music Archive: to catalog and preserve digital copies of all released music from Minnesota's music scene. On today's episode of the podcast, executive director Mitch Thompson shared about what inspired the project and where it's going. [🎧 City Cast Twin Cities]

• The archive today: Firstly, the archive is meant to be a sound research tool. They have partnerships with Hamline University, the Minnesota Historical Society, and other organizations, and they are following professional standards for documenting and cataloging their library. You don't have to be a researcher to browse the library yourself though – host Sean McPherson recently used it to reconnect with the music of early 2000s Minnesota rockers The 757s.
• Shaping our 'algorithmic reality': Thompson says that as algorithms are filtering what we see more often and websites get more visits from bots than real people, the Minnesota Music Archive can serve as a central database that AI tools can reference to accurately represent Minnesota's music scene into the future. "We really punch above our weight," Thompson says of Minnesota's music scene. "Really what I hope ultimately is that this is a way to continue that being a part of who we are."
• Contribute to history: DEMO will be hosting a live event featuring performances from local artists at Art-a-Whirl May 15-17 at Twin Ignition Startup Garage. If you have any old cassettes from your uncle's Minnesota-based music project, or any other pieces of Minnesota music that could be documented, you can donate them to the archive at the event. Anyone who donates music will get a free drink from Fulton and be entered for a chance to win a First Ave membership.

Investigating ICE: Ramsey County is investigating five cases of potential crimes committed by immigration agents during Operation Metro Surge, including kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment. The only publicly detailed case involves ChongLy Scott Thao, a U.S. citizen who agents dragged from his St. Paul home into freezing temperatures while looking for two unrelated men. Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said, "we’re not going to let it go." [Minnesota Reformer / Sahan Journal]

Tenant union win: The Brentwood Tenants Union will be awarded more than $49,500 in court fines after their landlord failed to comply with housing court proceedings, marking one of the largest tenant union victories in Hennepin County. Tenants are still fighting for the full amount of a settlement reached back in January after extended heating outages in the 2024-2025 winter season. [Spokesman-Recorder]

Cyberattack cancels classes: School was canceled for 6,000 students of the north metro Spring Lake Park school district yesterday after an outside actor had gained access to school systems. The hack comes just a week after a similar incident in Winona county, and represents the latest in a growing number of attacks on local governments' technology systems. [MPR News]

Save the moose: If you see a moose walking around with a collar on, that's not someone's pet. Researchers from the Northern Moose Alliance have been placing GPS collars on moose in northern Minnesota to try to understand why so many moose don't survive to adulthood and to help boost their population. Minnesota's moose population has stabilized around 4,000 individuals after years of steep decline, but experts say that doesn't mean the species is out of danger. [MPR News]

Watch out, HOAs: The Minnesota legislature appears poised to pass a bill to curtail the power of home owners associations in Minnesota. If passed, the "HOA Bill of Rights" would bring a number of changes to the way HOAs operate, including making it easier for communities to dissolve their HOAs, capping fines assessed by the HOA at $100, and requiring more transparency. [Star Tribune / Minnesota Legislature]

Far from home: New data shows that out of the approximately 3,400 people in Minnesota who were detained by ICE and sent to Texas during Operation Metro Surge, 530 people are still in Texas detention facilities. Attorneys are raising concerns about the conditions inside the detention facilities, and say that transferring people to Texas makes it harder to get them legal help. [Sahan Journal]

Tuesday, Apr 14

• 🆓 Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day | Ben & Jerry's
• 🤘 Bleed from Within | Varsity Theater
• 🎸 Big Ocean | Fine Line
• 🆓 Attica Locke and Celeste Ng in Conversation | Carlson Family Stage at Northrop
• 🎬 Demolition Man (1993) 35mm | The Parkway Theater
• 🎼 Horse Vision with Lipticism | The Cedar Cultural Center
• 🆓 The Old Town Tuesday Night Jam | Whitey's Old Town Saloon

Wednesday, Apr 15

• 🆓 2026 Season Opening | Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
• 🆓 MayDay Parade Workshops | Powderhorn Park Building
• 🆓 Sociable Ride | Sociable Cider Werks
• 🆓 Poetry Night | Magers & Quinn
• 🎸 Riley Mulherkar | Berlin
• 🗣️ The Moth: Suspicious | Amsterdam Bar & Hall
• 🎛️ Nettspend | First Avenue

• Digital Services Manager at Minnesota Department of ​​Human Services | $95k – $137k per year
• Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation at City of Saint Paul | $118k–$176k per year
• Marketing and Communications Manager at UMN School of Social Work | $70k – $85k per year
• Healthy Aging Data and Evaluation Specialist at MN Department of Health | $68k – $100k per year
• Development Associate at Twin Cities R!SE | $50k – $60k per year