2005-10 Vital Source Mag – October 2005
Milwaukee Sound Environment Project
By Haven Langhout Milwaukee is an excellent place for local music of all stripes and it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to say that 91.7 FM WMSE has had a lot to do with it. Since its unlikely birth as the broadcast service of the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1981, WMSE has been regularly playing locally made and played music, interviewing bands and aiding in producing local musicians’ albums. Ask pretty much anyone involved in the Milwaukee music scene and they’ll attest to what a great resource WMSE has been. “WMSE has given us on-air exposure, show opportunities and support. To have a local independent station that acknowledges and reaches out to smaller experimental bands is amazing,” says Faythe Levine of Wooden Robot. “[It’s] Music by the Milwaukee people, for the Milwaukee people.” Until recently, the station’s efforts have been ongoing but ad hoc. This changed earlier this year with the launch of the Milwaukee Sound Environment Project, or The MSE Project for short. WMSE’s mission is to broadcast a wide variety of unique music unheard anywhere else on the local dial, and to provide a venue for artists to expose their work to the community. The MSE Project shares this goal and then some. On a recent Tuesday evening, I met up with WMSE Promotions Director Brent Gohde for a full explanation. Brent quietly greeted me at the station’s front door around 7 p.m. and we walked through the lobby, where the band Clamnation was setting up to play live on the air at 8. Sound engineer Billy Cicerelli checked the musicians’ levels. Behind them in the glass-walled booth, DJ Radio Dave was broadcasting his weekly program, Midnight Radio. We found a quiet spot in Studio C and Brent gave me the scoop. The MSE Project began as the brainchild of Polly Morris of UWM’s Peck School of the Arts and the WMSE Steering Committee. Morris saw an opportunity for a matching grant from the Milwaukee Arts Board to aid WMSE in their support of local musicians. Gohde, along with station director Tom Crawford and Cicerelli, fleshed out the idea for The MSE Project and applied. The Board awarded WMSE the grant for the full amount requested, renewing it again for another two years in June. The Milwaukee Arts Board allows a maximum of three years of funding, but WMSE is planning for the project to be self-sustaining by the time the grant is up. The Project has three components: the Local Live weekly radio program, the website www.mseproject.com, and the release every six months of a CD compilation of live recordings made at the station. Local Live happens every Tuesday night at 8 p.m. and is hosted by either Bob Midnight or Radio Dave of the Midnight Radio show. The featured local band plays several sets over the course of half an hour, their performance professionally recorded by Cicerelli. The DJs interview the band and promote upcoming shows, new releases or other band news. Perhaps most importantly – […]
Oct 1st, 2005 by Vital Archives
The Silent Players
By Evan Solochek With roots in rock & rolls infancy, poster art has long been one of the most defining avenues through which underground music scenes have endured. While in most cases the artists who create it never pick up a guitar or sing a note, they serve just as integral a role as the musicians themselves. We hooked up with three of Milwaukee’s foremost poster artists to find out what moves them. Vital Source: How did you get started making posters for bands? Damian Strigens: Whatever band I was in I just decided to do it. I was the default guy. Mainly it’s just having fun. It’s rock ‘n roll. It’s music. James Kloiber: Back in ‘98 I was going to shows at Globe East like every weekend and I was also going to art school and I wanted to do something to get my art out there. Poster art seemed like a very natural thing. It was something to help out the music scene and keep myself drawing. Eric Von Munz: I was involved in the underground music scene, I was going to shows like every weekend, and thought I could contribute something back to the scene on a visual level because I’m not a musician. VS: What was the first band you made a poster for? DS: The Sacred Order – 1984 JK: Avail w/Straightforward and Codebreaker – May 23, 1998 at the Globe East EM: Gus Hosseini’s Birthday Bash – 1993 VS: What inspires your poster art? DS: Vaughan Oliver really inspired me. He used a lot of inverted images and metallic inks. There is this one story of when the Breeders asked him to do a poster for them and he came back with something totally different from what they asked for and they were like “this is totally different than what we asked for. It’s perfect.” JK: When I got started, Frank Kozik and Coop and Derek Hess. EM: I only do posters for bands I like. So if I like the band, then the band is going to inspire me to do the art. I can’t just pull stuff out of the ether. VS: To what extent do the particulars of the band influence your poster? JK: Sometimes they don’t at all. A lot of times I’ll get the assignment having never heard them, which may or may not be a good way to work. Sometimes I’ll look at their website and see what sort of stuff the band likes for their art work, what the covers of their CDs look like, or look at their song titles for ideas. It’s usually just one little thing that I take to get an idea from. DS: It does and it doesn’t. Sometimes the most obvious thing, like a skull on a poster for a heavy metal show, leaves nothing to the imagination. I like something with a little more mystery to it, a little more abstraction. I like to push things away from the […]
Oct 1st, 2005 by Vital Archives
Snapshots in Analog
By Blaine Schultz To quote the Velvet Underground, “those were different times”… It’s real easy to not get misty-eyed about the old days. Before desktop publishing and 24-hour Kinko’s became commonplace, crude music fanzines and gig posters were laid out by hand and mimeographed. Before laptop home studios and Gap ad campaigns, you could get beat up for throwing original music in the face of the bar band status quo. Bands actually put out their own albums… wait a minute, we’re back to that one. In the late 1970s, the term “Rustbelt” was coined to describe all the manufacturing jobs exiting cities like Milwaukee. But true to its European artistic roots, young bands exploding with original music made sure they had venues to perform in. There really were no rules, maybe just a few role models like the Beats or the Stooges or the Ramones. DIY was not an option, it was the lone muddy trail. So before you groan about the lack of a local music scene, take a look at these folks. Like Crispus Attucks, they were the first. Before punk turned into new wave turned into MTV/college/indie turned into alt-country, there were no lines to blur. Everything was a blur. A real cool blur. Ken Baldwin Drummer Ken Baldwin ran the Starship, a club on 4th and Wisconsin that followed Zak’s as Milwaukee’s top club for live original music. The Starship was a disco, pool hall and a watering hole for hookers and businessmen. Buddy Jim Richardson managed the Voom Voom Room, played drums in Death, Milwaukee’s first punk band, and later with power pop legends The Shivvers. “I lived downtown in the old Klode Furniture building on 2nd and Plankinton,” remembers Richardson. “In the early 80s, there was nothing going on downtown to speak of. Water Street didn’t exist. The Voom Voom Room was the focus of lots of press and when Ben Marcus got behind the push to shut us down, it was just a matter of time. That was around ‘76. The other two clubs on 5th were the New Yorker and the Casino. The Casino became the Starship.” Jerome Brish(a.k.a. Presley Haskel)& Richard LaValliere With the Haskels, and later LaValliere with the Oil Tasters, these guys were two of the city’s musical visionaries. Haskel fronted groups until his untimely murder in 1991. LaValliere lives in Brooklyn, New York. Shepherd Express A&E Editor Dave Luhrssen was a young writer on the music scene in those days. “Jerome Brish was a talented songwriter, but his greatest skill was to imagine that a punk-rock scene could exist in Milwaukee and then to make it happen. He had business sense and people sense along with musical ability. It was Jerome who talked Damian Zak into transforming his club into Milwaukee’s CBGB. But the Haskels wouldn’t have been as interesting without Richard LaValliere, whose songs and slightly wacky stage presence added an arty, surreal edge to the proceedings. “Haskel Hotel was a big old four-unit house on Arlington. They […]
Oct 1st, 2005 by Vital Archives
Melly LeBaron’s Indiana Song
By Melly LeBaron We all have our favorite rock and roll songs. Some tunes become magnets, pulling us back to our past. Jammin’ songs make life downright bearable – sure, your moment of revelation from listening to a gritty rock and roll song may not last forever, but at least you’ll remember a great time before any crap can hit the ceiling fan. My ultimate traveling song for driving down a lone highway is Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.” Barry Hay captures the magic and lure of being out on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other sailing out the window. “No more speed, I’m almost there / Gotta keep cool now, gotta take care / last car to pass, here I go / and the line of cars drove down real slow …” I was bored out of my mind growing up in Indiana. One day, my boss assigned me to clean a chunky white bus with a guy I didn’t know. Plugging the ignition key into the keyhole, my right hand rotated the dial through the different radio stations. It was then I heard the pulsating guitar riffs of “Radar Love” and immediately stopped. Turning up the volume, I sporadically jerked my head around in a crazy attempt to match the beat. Though I am usually a quiet person with strange people, I had no choice but to let go of my sanity with this bluesy rock and roll tune. Surprisingly, Daniel Rader (the staff guy I barely knew), began to wildly play the air guitar along with the music. I joined his antics by twirling imaginary drumsticks onto a giant, invisible drum set. Rader’s shaggy brown hair, tattered jeans and wide grin were all the encouragement I needed. I began experimenting with my newfound drumming skills as Golden Earring huskily sang the unforgettable lyrics: “And the radio played that forgotten song …” During spring break last year, I returned to northern Indiana. My friend Jeff Russ flipped his car stereo on as he drove me through South Bend, my childhood town. Almost as if on cue, Hay sang again of how the road has him hypnotized. Singing along, Russ drummed his fingers on his steering wheel and I let the song wash over me. Third time’s a charm, right? This past summer, Russ and I were visiting Bloomington, Indiana, for the day. The thought about how ironic it would be to hear Golden Earring again did occur to me, but I harbored my usual doubts. I didn’t bother to cross my fingers, and thought nothing more of it. Until, of course, I heard the beginning of my treasured tune on the car stereo. Russ turned it up a few notches, and I again marveled at the timelessness of this classic. Next time I visit the Hoosier state, I wonder if my Indiana song will hit the airwaves. Or if I’ll meet another lifelong friend by bonding on a great rock and roll song. VS
Oct 1st, 2005 by Vital Archives
Redemption Song
Here’s the thing about Liz Phair. If you’re a great admirer (as I am) you might be intimidated by the prospect of speaking to her directly (as I was). Even as a seasoned feature writer with two decades of bylines in my files, I was so nervous that when her publicist patched us together that I kind of froze. “Hello?” she said, her speaking voice a little higher and more melodic than I’d imagined. “Are you there?” Tongue-tied, I almost hung up, but I was on assignment, so instead I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. I confessed my insecurity, potentially sealing my fate as a pathetic amateur in her eyes. “God, don’t you hate that? That happened to me not too long ago.” She giggles, but it’s a conspiratorial girl-giggle, meant to put me at ease. She then tells the story of being in Michael Penn’s home recording studio, working on tracks for Somebody’s Miracle, when Joni Mitchell popped in. Penn invited Liz into the kitchen to meet her all-time musical hero, but, she confesses, “I was so freaked out, my ass was frozen to the couch. Absolutely frozen. I could not get up. When I finally did, I kind of hung back by the doorjamb. I had nothing interesting to say to her.” She goes on to tell about meeting Mick Jagger (again) recently, and how she tried to lighten things up by being friendly and cracking a joke. But everything she said seemed to come off as offensive in some way, so she just shut her mouth. We agreed that it was probably the difference between being Midwestern and being from, well, about anywhere else. I pushed aside unbidden thoughts of the great girlfriends Liz and I would surely have been in a different life and pressed on. Here’s something you may not know. Liz Phair is at peace with herself. This is a relatively new development, a spiritual transition years in the making. Nothing shakes up one’s world quite like parenthood, except perhaps a painful divorce or a career inexplicably on the slide. For some, the death of a much-loved relative can turn everything upside down. And when it all comes down more or less in a continuum, there’s no time to process each piece individually. It’s a true “get real” moment, fall or rise. Liz has risen, and her first big step was self-forgiveness. “There is an acceptance in me now,” she says. “I feel like I turned a corner in my personal life where I stopped running from all my bad qualities and said ‘enough is enough.’ I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone; I don’t want somebody making excuses for me, I don’t want to be somebody that my son needs therapy to get over.” But inner equilibrium is learned behavior for the woman who had the (mis)fortune of releasing one of the most acclaimed debut records of all time, then proceeded to ride celebrity like […]
Oct 1st, 2005 by Jon Anne Willow
Saving the Music
By Phillip Walzak In many ways, New Orleans is the heartbeat of this nation’s music scene. If indeed jazz is the only truly American art form, then the Crescent City is the womb from which it was born. Yet jazz is just one of countless musical genres with roots in New Orleans. Blues, funk, zydeco, gospel, soul, R&B, bluegrass, folk – each of these forms were sparked and/or developed in the creative, impassioned, explosively vibrant atmosphere of that special city. Having friends in New Orleans, I’ve had the chance to get off the tourist trail and the Girls Gone Wild nonsense of Bourbon Street to see some true gems frequented by the locals. These are friends who were forced to evacuate their beloved city as Katrina moved relentlessly toward them, and have no idea what awaits them when they finally can return to their homes. Yet in happier times they took me to Mid-City Lanes Rock ‘n Bowl, a two-level rock club/bowling alley, to hear the distinct rub-board and accordion of Rockin’ Doopsie Junior and the Zydeco Twisters. Or Vaughan’s Lounge in Bywater, where the legendary Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers fire up the grill outside between numbers. I’ve seen the explosive horns and drums of the Rebirth Brass Band on Frenchman Street, blasting out the rollicking jazz of an earlier age with a sound so big it bundled you up like an overcoat. And that was after seeing a young, backroads folk band and a Latin jazz fusion group all on the very same night. Nudged between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River you’ll find the most inspiring music scene in America – eclectic and dynamic, diverse and thrilling. Tragically, that very geographic location has placed the grand New Orleans musical legacy in jeopardy. In addition to the hundreds (possibly thousands by press time) of dead and billions of dollars in damage, hanging in the balance is the city’s culture. And to lose it would only compound the heartbreak. WHAT HAPPENED? What happened is the easy part – Hurricane Katrina. A complete breakdown in the days following Katrina’s wrath, turning New Orleans into a post-apocalyptic hell straight out of a Mad Max movie: death and destruction, depravity and violence, filth and horror, suffering and degradation. Floodwaters swept through the city, engulfing homes, businesses and streets, marooning tens of thousands of our fellow citizens in one of America’s largest and – as you know if you’ve been to the gas pump recently – economically strategic cities. The better question is what didn’t happen. For whatever reason, the local, state and federal government apparatus could not deliver food, water and medical supplies to the city’s stranded residents for days. The blame game began immediately. Former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal blasted the Bush Administration for reacting unbelievably slowly to the crisis and, in an article on Salon.com on Aug 31, pointed out that “in 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps […]
Oct 1st, 2005 by Vital Archives
