2003-04 Vital Source Mag – April 2003
The “Other” Baseball
By John Hughes There you sit, at Miller Park again. The new leaders – Payne, Melvin and Yost – have made a good impression on you, and so, as an act of faith, you have trekked out to the ballyard and paid dearly for parking, tickets, peanuts and Cracker Jack. You are seated in this vaulted structure, which, despite the leaky creaky roof, impresses you. The losing doesn’t torment you like it once did, because by now it’s as familiar as a March blizzard in Milwaukee. But even amidst all the splendor Brewers baseball has to offer, you’re still feeling bad. If you are any sort of baseball fan, this is a scenario not unlikely to play itself out in your life soon. The 2003 season begins while this edition of Vital Source is on newsstands. The Brewers will resume play and you will find yourself watching them, thinking “what is wrong with this picture”? And if you give it a moment’s thought, the answer will come. For all the talk about the market offering the price it’s willing to bear, about these players just getting what they can as anyone else would, it troubles you that they are paid so much. True, it is just one symptom of a greater illness – the mass profiteering of professional sporting organizations on every front, from palatial stadiums to insane merchandising – and salaries are just another side effect. But the magnitude of their income, compared to the rest of us, seems a dishonorable allocation in a sport to which the majority of Americans, most working class, once felt a deep connection. The Brewers’ payroll this year will be roughly $50 million. Their opponents, on any given day, will have a payroll varying from $50 million to over $100 million. So, with 25 on each team, that’s 50 athletes out on the ballfield you’re observing, making $100 million to $150 million, or higher, for laboring from mid-February, with the beginning of spring training, until October 1st, or, if they’re quite good, until around November 1st when the World Series ends (and they are awarded an enormous bonus). That is a stupendous sum of money. In a world in which school teachers and nurses and social workers and construction workers and waitresses do heroic feats daily, and face budgetary pain nightly, to see young men making that sort of money, without even passion to offer fans, makes you feel like an accomplice to a crime each time you pay for your ticket, each time you pay $5 for a macro-beer. The yearning for passionate baseball If you’ve been a fan awhile you can remember Clemente, Yount, Yastrzemski, Aaron, Munson and Seaver, can remember the passion they poured into their treasured craft, and what it felt like to revel in their joy. Now, you feel nausea, or worse, echoes of the ennui that permeates the field below as you watch now. In comparison, players today mostly seem like poseurs, who would rather be at […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
April 2003
Dear Readers, Between the time this issue of Vital Source was created and actual press time, America entered into war with Iraq. This is one of the disadvantages of being a monthly publication, and our lack of coverage of the war and its implications, for April anyway, cannot be helped. For May, I would love to share reader letters and short essays on the war, especially from people whose lives are directly touched. Please send all correspondence to editor@vitalmilwaukee.com, or by mail to the address in the staff column. The war is being televised, and things are happening quickly. While I feel confident we’ll never fail to support our troops again (a la Vietnam), there are underpinnings to this particular conflict that, if unchecked, will bring fundamental changes to our democracy. In an increasingly technological world, access to information is the key to power. But the stripping of personal freedom and overt censorship are not the answers. Individual liberty, access to due process, and innocent until proven guilty are the cornerstones of our Constitution. Fundamentally, we as a nation agree on two key points: we want our men and women home quickly, and a swift end to the war. But we must take care that, in our zeal to “end oppression” in the Middle East, we do not eliminate oppression’s most powerful natural enemy – a nation of free peoples – our nation, the United States of America, and the democracy for which it stands. A perfect snapshot of our confusion occurred on Oscar Night. Michael Moore, in his acceptance speech for Best Documentary, was met with a mix of boos and cheers (boos were later mostly attributed to Teamster crew members) when he said (speaking on behalf of himself and others present onstage): “… we live in fictitious times. We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president… We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it’s the fictition (sic) of duct tape or the fictition (sic) of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush.” All Oscar winners are technically given 45 seconds to speak from the stage. At precisely 45 seconds, Moore’s microphone was cut mid-sentence and the orchestra began to play. Conversely, Richard Martin’s acceptance speech for Chicago ran well over a two minutes, but contained no political references. He was not cut off. And even though Adrian Brody mentioned the war in his four minute accectpance speech, he only went so far as to wish a speedy end to the conflict and to express his support of the troops. Brody was also not censored. This may seem a small event, but all who watched the Oscars witnessed censorship first hand. We must pay attention to these breaches of free speech, whether or not we agree about their content. Consensus is not the point. Free speech is at risk. Please read Paul McLeary’s We The People. It covers […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Jon Anne Willow
Kelp Chofs Takes GbV on The Road Less Traveled
By Kelp Chofs Sweat. Grime. Arms. Legs. Face. Had the air-conditioning even been working in John’s ’80’s-something Toyota it may not have done much good on that sweltering day in the Summer of ‘97. John and I were bandmates (and still are) driving out of St. Louis toward a show in Iowa City. Were we on tour? Well, technically not. We had left our hometown of Milwaukee the day before to catch a show in St. Louis. Another band’s show. A Guided By Voices show. My first. The plan was to catch GbV (as the hip refer to them) then motor away toward Iowa City to dish out our own brand of rock and roll. The rest of our band would catch up with us there. For me, the soundtrack for that weekend was GbV’s Mag Earwhig! It was the latest addition to their already stunning catalog. That made it a top-pick among their other releases and bootlegs littering the car floor among the remnants of our fast-food sins. After settling into a particularly, um, quaint St. Louis Motel 6, we headed over to the club early for lack of anything better to do. Arriving early did serve a purpose — we had to buy tickets. Well, I did. John had gotten his online before we left. Yup, I was the last-minute addition to his plan. I remember the city streets being exceptionally quiet during those dusk hours. Businesses were all closed for the most part. Hell, we had to walk a mile just to find a bar that was open. We certainly weren’t in Milwaukee anymore. “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” We walked back to the club to find the box office still closed. But John did spot Pete Jameson. Pete was GbV’s right-hand man. Surely if we struck up a conversation with him, explaining how we’d driven 400 miles to the show, he’d make sure I got a ticket. As it turned out, the show was nowhere near sold-out. But as we were to find out, that was a good thing. St. Louis’ The Galaxy club was much smaller than I imagined it. But that was also to be a good thing. After tolerating the unusually pedestrian opening act, GbV began to set up. Who were they? Who played what? Is that Pete Jameson putting an ice-filled cooler of Rolling Rocks on the drum riser? The show started, guitars and cigarettes blazing. Never before had I been treated to such an intimate and powerful rock ‘n’ roll show. This was it. This was the real thing. The intensity. Right in front of me. I could touch it. I could barely contain myself. Wicked voodoo indeed. “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” “Two Rolling Rocks, please.” “Two Rolling Rocks, please…” John and I made several jokes on the trip down about his training me for this show – making sure I was familiar with most of the songs GbV might be performing. And a fine job he did. The revolving door of […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
The Homeschool Choice
By Lucky Tomaszek “Where do your kids go to school?” “Well, actually, we homeschool,” I answer a little hesitantly. “I really like being with my kids, and homeschooling works well for our family…” I’m trying to be PC, trying not to start another controversial discussion with this well-meaning woman at Chuck E Cheese. But after letting that last sentence trail off, the silence thickens. And I realize that there is more I would like to say. I want to tell her that I have been teaching my children since the day they were born. I know them better anyone else, and know how each of them learns. I am intimately aware of their strengths and weaknesses and I know how to push them a little farther, without pushing them so far that learning becomes a chore. But it seems my opportunity has passed as we both go back to laughing at the antics of our children ascending into neon colored tubes and dropping into the ball pit. After several minutes, she says… “No offense, but why would you want to do that?” To start with, my interest was piqued when a homeschooled child won the National Spelling Bee in 1997, and again when first, second, and third place were all won by homeschooled children in 2000. And a little later in 2000 I read an article by Helen Cordes that said that homeschooled children are accepted to Stanford at “twice the rate of conventional schoolers.” I did a little more research and discovered that the average homeschooler scored in the 75th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, compared to conventional schoolers who scored in the 50 percentile. I must admit that the tragedy at Columbine High School in April 1999, and all the other shockingly similar tales weighed in to my decision making. Of course, there was also the personal journey I made as a mother. I stay home with my kids, and I have devoted a lot of time to guiding them through childhood and helping them become loving, generous, and freethinking little people. When my oldest daughter turned five, I put her into kindergarten. I had obviously thought a lot about homeschooling, but in the end I decided that it would probably be better for her if she went through conventional school. We gave it our all! We bought the cute ‘first day of school’ dress and the box of crayons. We took a lot of pictures that day, and she was adorable. The first week went well, she seemed to enjoy school and had lots of new songs and finger plays to teach us at dinner each night. The second week was a little harder. She was more reluctant to go to school in the morning, and when I picked her up after school she had less and less to say about what she was doing all day. “What did you learn today?” I would ask. “Nothing,” she would respond. The third week was worse; […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Lucky Tomaszek
St. Thomas
By Jeremy Saperstein I’ve gotta start this review with the same thing I’m sure every other review will start with: singer/songwriter Thomas Hansen sounds remarkably like Neil Young, in lyrics, delivery and musical construction. Okay, now that’s out of the way… If you’re already fond of the works of Mr. Young, the odds are good you’ll very much like St. Thomas as well. Formed in Norway, the band’s record is like nothing so much as country music or Americana, but from the land of the fjords, not Fords (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Without knowing him personally, I’d have to guess that English is not Hansen’s mother tongue, which leads to some inspired lyrics like: I’ve never seen a cowboy before Never told a story so sore Hey, baby, take a look at me I think I’m ready for the kick-down I can never give you in Have you ever seen my chin An umbrella is dancing on the corner Now everything is beyond her But it’s easy to poke fun at people who don’t use English well (late night talk show hosts prove that about our president every night). St. Thomas is exactly the sort of record to listen to in your car as you drive I-94 late at night between LaCrosse and Tomah, or in the echoes of your empty house after your lover has left, or if you can’t understand why other people think your Nick Drake records are depressing.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Nuna
By Jeremy Saperstein This Milwaukee trio delivers an extremely energetic and catchy disk that seems to defy pigeonholing under any convenient label. Because they’re a trio and their music offers many of the dynamic shifts that Nirvana (and the Pixies before them) did in their ascendancy, I’m sure most critics will identify them as grunge, but there’s a quality to the songs that transcends easy categorization. While leader/singer/songwriter Nuna Minch has a tendency to use the ‘f’ word as a conversational stop gap (like some people say ‘uh’ ), he has a definite way with a pop tune as evidenced in the lilting instrumentation and sing-along melodies in “Nose Candy”. While Headcase is a fine disk on its own, I’m looking forward to watching Nuna grow and expand (and to seeing them live – they play in the area fairly frequently, according to their website).
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Collections of Colonies of Bees
By Brian Barney The latest from Collections of Colonies of Bees is comprised of musical murmurings that crescendo to eclectic swellings with acoustic guitars and analog keys. Each song seems to fade into the next with a fluid motion that mimics a boat drifting down a stream, occasionally bumping flotsam represented by sharply picked harmonics and blips of carefully manipulated notes from the keyboard. Chris Rosenau handles acoustic and lap steel guitars along with keyboards while Jon Mueller adds percussion and miscellaneous noises. This journey toward serenity in track after track of image shaping music sounds like Ravi Shankar spending an afternoon with Pink Floyd, where the occasional pop of a snare drum or rattle of a sundry percussive device shakes the listener out of a pleasant state of rapture. While probably best-suited for ambience, the occasional thud, or electronic swell of pitch causes a deviation from the flow, leaving the listener peering around the corner in anticipation of what might happen next. "fa.ce (a" will be a welcome addition to any new age collection.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Greg Koch
By Brian Barney When Greg Koch was in the third grade, he cut out a cardboard guitar, and while using a sewing machine foot controller as a makeshift wah, proceeded to emulate Jimi Hendrix. Yeah, sure, we all did that, but Koch kept the delirium alive and went on to become one of the best and most original guitarists to ever pick up an axe. His latest release is a collection of songs, not quite songs, and spoken word that mixes music, mayhem and Kocks’ wet/dry sense of humor into a gelatinous substance called Radio Free Gristle. From its’ opening track, “The Mansqwatch Chronicles”, where a Steve Vai-like tone rides over the top of a friendly yet frightening arrangement of chord meets discord, to the last, “Your Blues” (do the math); the disc reads like a hard-boiled crime caper that you can’t put down. Standout cuts like “Chopin’s Redneck Hideaway” and “The Joy of Ax”, show Koch’s amazing approach and a style that simply can’t be categorized; where scales derail, and madness becomes melodic. Interspersed throughout the record are snippets of spoken word that range from the hilarious to the unexplainable (mostly hilarious). Koch is a Frank Zappa type for today with his musical prowess and humorous musings, and, while Radio Free Gristle will probably never reach the mainstream, fans are in for a treat with Greg Koch’s most complete work to date.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
By Haven Langhout What can I say? It’s a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, but more mellow than ever this time around. I’m a big fan of Cave’s earlier work so I didn’t enjoy this album too much on first listen. But the more I listen to it the more I like it. There are still the somber violins and tinkling pianos, but now the love ballads have happy endings to them. There is a theme of hope and redemption throughout. Could it be that the Godfather of Goth has finally gone (*gasp*) happy on us? Well, sort of…but not quite. My favorite track off the album is “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a moody ballad where Cave admonishes his dour listeners to cheer up by singing lyrics like: “We can build our dungeons in the air and sit and cry the blues/We can stomp across the world with nails in our shoes/We can join the troubled chorus who criticize and accuse/ It don’t matter, we’ve got nothing much to lose but this wonderful life.” Kinda hopeful, huh? Another song with a positive feeling is “Bring It On”, where the tempo picks up a bit and Cave sings “Every little tear, bring it on and I’ll make them disappear.” Not too much moping on this album. On previous albums, bittersweet ballads such as “Where the Wild Roses Grow” or “The Ballad of Henry Lee” ended up in one of the lovers meeting such gruesome ends as being knifed or hit in the skull by a rock. (Yeah, it’s funny in a dark way- admit it). But that isn’t the case with the love ballads on the new album. Nick Cave is obviously very in love with his wife- as evidenced by “Rock of Gibraltar.” He pledges his eternal unwavering devotion and love to his wife with lyrics like “The best thing I’ve done is make you the one to walk with me to the altar” and compares their love to the rock of Gibraltar. It sounds like Nick Cave has finally made peace with all his demons on this album. On Nocturama, growing up sounds good.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad
By Paul McLeary The Bush administration’s use of the English language reads like something out of a dystopian political novel. Some of its recent concoctions, like The Department of Homeland Security; Rumsfeld’s “old Europe” bon mot; the Office of Information Awareness (OIA); the USA PATRIOT Act; Weapons of Mass Destruction; the Axis of Evil and the Information Exploitation Office (IEO) are just a few of the more Orwellian terms that seem to inspire a mix of the Weimar Republic and doom itself. There are two new programs – one which has been stalled by Congress, while the other was just recently leaked to an unresponsive press – that seek to give the government broad powers to spy, gather information on and imprison American citizens on ill-defined national security grounds. The first, dubbed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, is being developed by the OIA, but, for the moment, has been blocked by a bipartisan coalition of skeptical Congressmen and several watchdog groups. The TIA- data mining for a safer America? The TIA program is a Defense Department research project aimed at developing and implementing broad sweeps of commercial data, called “data mining.” Targets include credit card records, Internet logs, medical data, merchant purchases and travel records. The goal is to “mine” this data in search of suspicious patterns that may indicate possible terrorist movement. If the program worked properly, it would be a boon to investigators trying to weed out possible sleeper cells in the United States. Data mining is already an established practice within companies that retain customer data. Large retailers, for example, comb customers purchase history, usually attached to indexes such as credit card numbers, customer names or other “index keys.” The information is used to identify customer habits, and ostensibly, to allow the company to make “more compelling offers” (in marketing speak) to their existing customer base. The problem, however, is that none of the drafters of the program has come forward to explain how to avoid errors in its implementation that may result in people mistakenly being tagged as terrorists, making them subject to false arrest, smear campaigns or government harassment. According to the program, the government wouldn’t have to inform anyone about the investigation, allowing officials to gather information on private citizens with no public oversight or accountability. Developed in February 2002 under the auspices of The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose ancestor, ARPA, invented the Internet, the new office has quietly been instilled under the dubious leadership of John Poindexter, who was indicted in 1988 for defrauding the U.S. government and obstructing justice as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. Although the convictions were overturned in 1990 when Congress granted him immunity in exchange for his testimony, the joke was on Congress as the testimony he gave them turned out to be false. Since those good old days, Poindexter has been Vice President of Syntek Technologies, a major government technology contractor. We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Syntek, with Poindexter at its […]
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
The Blow
By Jeremy Saperstein The Blow is Khaela Maricich. Formerly known as Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano, Maricich has released at least a pair of tremendously idiosyncratic records featuring her strong breathy vocals, and appeared with other artists from the K stable, including Phil Elvrum (The Microphones) and Calvin Johnson (K czar). Sounding like a multi-tracked cross between a child’s nonsense rhymes and the tight harmonies of some sort of weird classical chamber music, Maricich’s songs never fail to make me think, either because of her clever turns of lyrical phrase (“Don’t you think we should kiss while Hüsker Dü is playing?/Do you like Grant Hart’s songs?/Do you like Bob Mould’s songs?/Have you ever sung along to ‘New Day Rising’?”) in “Jet Ski Accidents”, for example, or “Someone said that you’re a piece of paper/a piece of paper just pasted on the sky/I’ve a hunch that you’re a giant ball of rock/a million miles from me and all the people in the town”) in “The Moon Is There, I Am Here” or her clever and sophisticated-seeming (while maintaining a blisteringly charming naivety) compositional skills (the aforementioned “The Moon Is There…” or the contrapuntal harmonies in “The Touch-Me”). Throughout, the sparse instrumentation and smooth pop melodies make Bonus Album a far better bet than the studied twee of other new pop bands. Khaela Maricich is a hardcore original, like Beck or Captain Beefheart or any of a thousand others. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next as I enjoy this release.
Apr 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
