Purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka, the Melbourne band dedicated to celebrating the glory of Minneapolis funk - and Batman.
“Lake Minnetonka is my reimagining of Minneapolis funk and jazz music,” bandleader/ synth and keytar player Adam Rudegeair says.
“Most people would know Prince as probably the most famous performer and composer of that sort of music, and he really was one of the people who invented that sound. We are also influenced by associated acts such as Sheila E, The Time and Vanity 6, things like that.
“We write original jazz funk in that style, and often we feature different vocalists and I always try and co-write with the vocalists that’s going to be singing the song. Then we have our own instrumental music that we do that’s all in that same vein.”
Lake Minnetonka have just released ‘Year Of The Bat’ (recently premiered by scenestr), their epic tribute to both the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Batman and the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton’s 1989 ‘Batman’ film, which featured a soundtrack album by Prince.
‘Year Of The Bat’ is a 20-minute epic medley of songs from the album performed by Lake Minnetonka along with a rogue’s gallery of special guests.
They’ve also released an accompanying video for the song featuring more Batusi than you can swing a batarang at. “This is the first time that we’ve gone full Prince cover mode,” Adam says.
At the time of its release, Tim Burton’s adaptation of Batman set a gold standard for the canon, with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Joker considered almost definitive until Heath Ledger’s turn as the Clown Prince in 2008 pushed the madcap mayhem to a maniacal new level of lunacy.
For Adam, so much of the 1989 film’s strength came from the music that Prince provided on the soundtrack album “I think it’s one of [Prince’s] really fun albums and he really dived into the Batman mythos,” he says.
“It was the only time he did something like that with someone else’s concept, because he was so good at generating his own ideas. A lot of people seem to think of it as this cheap cash-in, but I think it’s a really excellent album conceptually as well as compositionally and musically.
“I really felt that [with] the 30th anniversary, the time had come to pay tribute to it and maybe try to turn some more people onto the fact that it’s a really underrated album. It’s one of my favourite Prince albums and believe me, I’ve listened to them all,” he laughs.
On 31 October, Lake Minnetonka host their Gotham City Gangster Glam event at Spotted Mallard (in Melbourne), with guests encouraged to don their best cape and cowl and put on a happy face. “We wanted to keep the concept a bit multi-faceted, so people have a variety of options,” Adam says.
“You can go the Batman route, you can do comic books in general, you can do Prince or you could be more like a Chicago gangster-type; there’s plenty of ways to intersect with the theme of the night if you want to dress-up.
“This is probably the last time we’re going to play a whole bunch of tunes from the ‘Batman’ album; we’ve done it a couple of times to prepare for the video but I feel we’ve been pushing the bat-stuff pretty hard, so this will be your last chance to see our fully-fledged bat concept live in its entirety.”
