2006-10 Vital Source Mag – October 2006
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Oct 24th, 2006 by Vital Archives
October 2006
By LEFTY: THINK FOR YOURSELF. I opened the August 2006 issue of VITAL hoping to find some interesting cultural happenings when I stumbled upon “The Distraction in Iraq” by Lefty McTighe. The article reinforced my view of Milwaukee as a bastion of the predictably ordinary. It’s as if Lefty sits in front of his TV watching ABC News then runs to his computer to regurgitate whatever claptrap dribbles out of Stone Phillips’ mouth. Claims like Iran “founded Hezbollah” which is the “same radical terror group responsible for today’s crisis” lack any historical truth or critical analysis. “Iran now stands on the brink of developing its own nuclear arsenal” and “North Korea is learning to deliver nukes to the U.S. mainland” sound like the word-for- word fear mongering that Tony Snow dishes out to help buoy the administration. The basic premise of the article, that Bush has bungled the WAR ON TERROR!, is based on the absurd premise that the war on terror actually exists outside of the Network News. My legal advice is that VITAL Source stop plagiarizing Wall Street Journal articles and attributing them to Lefty McTighe. My business advice is that VITAL Source should consider providing its readers with some fresh perspectives to distinguish itself from other run of the mill Miltown rags. Finally, although I still harbor hope that McTighe’s nickname refers to the hand he favors, I fear he believes it represents his politics. If my fears are correct, I would like to suggest that he change his name to “Hum Drum” or perhaps “Middle of the Road” or “Off the Mark” McTighe. Aron Corbett Riverwest BICKERSTAFF BITES THE HAND THAT FEEDS HIM. I am writing in regards to the head-scratchingly obnoxious tone of Russ Bickerstaff’s contributions to your September cover story (“Thespians, Troubadours, yadda yadda…” ). Now, I will fully admit up-front that I have never been a fan of Mr. Bickerstaff’s writing style, which includes his pre-VITAL Source work, finding it to be generally pretentious – and occasionally even backhanded and snide – in nature. However, I felt I had to comment on two points in the article in question. First, his reference to the upcoming original comedy, “Dracula vs. the Nazis,” I found to be especially petty and uncalled-for: “It’s a fascinating premise for a comedy and should prove to be a really interesting show if [Michael] Neville’s script is competent enough to deliver on it.” Now, as one of the actors involved in that play, I certainly can’t claim to be unbiased, and only time will tell if the show delivers enough to satisfy Mr. Bickerstaff’s discerning palette. But as an alleged writer himself, you’d think he’d extend a little common courtesy toward his fellow local scribes rather than tossing out such cheap barbs. My second point concerns his entire section condemning Broadway musicals as evidently being far worse than all the plagues of biblical Egypt combined. This piece of work is so outlandishly nasty that I almost want to believe he […]
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
The Pernice Brothers
By Frank Olson Now that we know that The Pernice Brothers can make an album as solid as Live a Little, it’s time for them to show that they can do better. Live a Little would be passable as a debut album, but one expects 10-year veterans to develop a more distinctive (or at least less wussy) sound than the one on display here. And there is definitely only one sound on Live a Little; for an album only 41 minutes long, it sure overstays its welcome. Younger bands ranging from The Shins to Of Montreal perform the same type of throwback pop, but do so with far greater playfulness and invention. Live a Little does boast a handful of truly catchy songs (“Automaton,” “B.S. Johnson,” “Conscience Clean” and “Lightheaded” ), but the overall tone is so light and chirpy that the album seems to evaporate as you listen to it. Most of the songs are hampered by tinny orchestral accompaniment that sounds as if it was created on Casio keyboards (though real musicians were involved). It is hard to tell whether the fault lies in the unengaged performances of the session musicians, the uninspired arrangements of Joe Pernice or the airy production of Michael Deming, though I suspect it is some combination of the three. Live a Little isn’t bad, per se, but it does virtually nothing to set itself apart from (or above) the rest of the albums coming out this month.
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Jeremy Enigk
By Nikki Butgereit The new album from Jeremy Enigk, former singer and primary songwriter of Sunny Day Real Estate, is a melancholy trip to the depths of emo. Unfortunately, it never makes its way back from the pits. The album begins with the instrumental track “A New Beginning,” a jubilant symphony of violins and dramatic chiming bells. Here is where the pep begins and ends as the remainder of the album has a folksy, contemplative, philosophical vibe that’s rather depressing. Enigk’s raspy vocals are reminiscent of Perry Farrell, with a touch more whine. While that style fits in perfectly with the quietly dreary tone of the record, it becomes overwhelmingly grating as the songs tick by. Musically, the album is long on depth. The songs layer violin and mandolin on top of piano and guitar. The melodies are sweeping and sometimes powerful, but even the “upbeat” songs are downers. “City Tonight” has the closest thing to a driving rock beat you’ll find on this album, but it still keeps the pace at a slow drag. Enigk’s first solo venture in 10 years has none of the vigor and punch of the early Sunny Day Real Estate, which is unfortunate. While the songs are solid and the compositions lush, the moony lyrics and snail’s pace make the album exhausting to listen to and difficult to enjoy.
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Indigo Girls
By Jon M. Gilbertson As cult artists go, The Indigo Girls are perhaps halfway between Richard Thompson and The Ramones. Unlike Thompson, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have had a couple of hits (although the big ones go back a decade and a half); like him, they have a dependable core audience. Like The Ramones, they have not been encouraged to vary their identifiable style; unlike The Ramones, they cannot claim to have invented, or at any rate, popularized it. For The Indigo Girls, this tricky situation means that minor distinctions take on magnified importance: one disastrous track throws an entire album out of whack, but absolute familiarity breeds boredom if not outright contempt. Under the circumstances, Despite Our Differences is a qualified success. As usual, Ray slips into the role as the plainer singer and more direct thinker of the two (the driving “Money Made You Mean” represents her side), with Saliers being the more sweetly melodic and more poetic (the waltzing “Lay My Head Down” epitomizes her side). Depending on who’s out front, their harmonies have either mid-autumn crispness or mid-spring breeziness. Really, that’s about it. Pink – returning the kindness the duo paid her by appearing on her album I’m Not Dead earlier this year – juices up the loudest track, “Rock and Roll Heaven’s Gate.” Famed producer Mitchell Froom manages, for once, not to bend the sound toward his quirks. True believers will love it. Casual fans will like it. People outside the cult… who knows?
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Bob Dylan
By Blaine Schultz With Modern Times, Bob Dylan finds himself inhabiting the itinerant bluesmen’s spirits he merely impersonated when he cut his first album in 1962. As with the masterful Love and Theft, Dylan immerses himself in American music forms, touching on blues, old-timey country and Tin Pan Alley pop, and lets his band rip into these templates, reinventing them in his own image. If these songs sound familiar it is simply because Dylan is not shy about borrowing generously – a Muddy Waters line here, a slide guitar lick there – from source materials that were magpied plenty of times before he got to them. But like Miles Davis and Bill Monroe, Dylan reconfigures the very DNA of the music. This is the second album in a row Dylan has chosen to record with his current touring group and, musically, Modern Times excels when the players work in their signature driving, roadhouse blues that allows for real-time interaction and bits of improvisation. Not unlike his legendary work with The Band, this lineup is a stellar example of how songs are treated in the hands of sympathetic players. Unfortunately, in Dylan’s tour of the American songbook he seems to have developed a jones for crooners. While his cragged voice woks great for the Old Testament cane-stompers, there’s too much Bing Crosby included here; that’s my lone caveat. Consumer note: some pressings include a DVD of four fantastic performances, and orders from his website include a CD of Dylan’s Theme Time satellite radio show with his hilarious commentary on baseball-themed tunes.
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
A lifetime in color
By Evan Solochek “I don’t even know why you’re wasting your time interviewing me,” Saul Leiter says in a soft, weathered voice. “Really?” I ask sheepishly, “You know you’re kind of a big deal, right?” He just laughs. Leiter’s warm laugh, not to mention unwavering humility, would be a frequent guest during our half-hour conversation. At 82-years old, laughter comes easy to a man who simply doesn’t take things too seriously. Leiter recalls one day a few years back, when a curator from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art met with him at his studio. Upon examining samples of his work she exclaimed, “You must be very dedicated.” “I told her I wasn’t,” Leiter says through labored laughter. “I think that upset her because people expect you to be serious about certain things. I think that if you’re familiar with art, the history of art and all the very great things that have been done, you don’t take yourself that seriously. There are photographers and artists who are very unfamiliar with the history and as soon as they do something they think they’ve done a Rembrandt. I haven’t been burdened by that kind of illusion.” Serendipitous success To hear Leiter discuss his career in photography it seems as though it happened almost by accident, or at least in spite of the man himself. It has been a long and winding journey these past 50 years, and along the way Leiter has sat in the passenger seat and watched as the path unfolded before him. “No one has ever accused me of being a very clever career person,” says Leiter. “In order to have a career you have to want to have a career and have to be obsessed with having a career. I didn’t find that obsession attractive.” From this point of view, Leiter’s success can be more easily attributed to raw talent and a unique perspective than to relentless ambition. Arriving in New York City from The Cleveland Theological College in 1946, the then 23-year-old son of a rabbi was an aspiring painter who quickly befriended Richard Pousette-Dart, an abstract expressionist painter who Leiter calls “one of the great American artists.” It was Pousette-Dart’s experimentation with photography that turned Leiter on to the camera. Originally utilizing black and white, Leiter soon moved to color, for which at one time he received much apathy but today he is most widely regarded. And much like everything else in his life, Leiter attributes this career-defining shift to mere happenstance. “I bought a roll of film one day and it was a roll of color,” he says. “I had been doing black and white and I bought a roll of color and I used it and I liked it so I went on using it. That’s how it all began. There were people who looked down on color; it was considered inferior by some people to black and white. I don’t understand why. The history of art is very often the history of […]
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Jet
By Jon M. Gilbertson There was no denying that Jet’s 2003 debut, Get Born, was energetic. That distinguished both the Aussie band and their songs from Oasis, with whom they have otherwise shared numerous characteristics: brotherly consanguinity (the Cesters vs. the Gallaghers), a producer (Dave Sardy) and a fetish for wearing yesterday’s fashions as though they were today’s. Not a lot has changed on Jet’s follow-up, Shine On, but it is a stronger album because of how every little evolution accumulates over the course of its 15 tracks. The most noticeable improvement lies in the band’s ability to vary tempos. Get Born’s best songs were its faster ones, period, and never mind that the clumsy “Sexy Sadie” rewrite “Look What You’ve Done” was a hit. Now, whether tearing through the mid-tempo AC/DC-derived “Stand Up,” gently developing a Pink Floyd tangent via the title track, or throwing noise all over the garage in “Rip It Up,” Jet sounds just that significant bit less reverent of their sources. As frontman and lead singer Nic Cester spearheads the turn toward determined looseness, both his shredded-speaker scream and his Abbey Road-era croon have gained something akin to personality. Mostly, though, Jet and Sardy don’t tamper with what worked before: Chris Cester’s Ringo-solid drums, Mark Wilson’s power-trio bass (which sounds heavy in the quartet setting) and Nic Cester and Cam Muncey’s too-perfect guitar interplay. Yes, what worked before for Jet was actually what worked 35 years before Get Born got born. It still works, and probably shall as long as cheeky bastards like this have the energy and arrogance of youth.
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Shoot from the hip
By Jon Anne Willow You may have heard of Cedar Block, Milwaukee’s premiere presenter of offbeat creative events with an emphasis on group participation. You may have heard of Saul Leiter, the New York street photographer who blazed the trail for the use of color in art photography in the mid 20th century. And you may have heard of lomography… or not. But even if none of these are familiar to your ear, you will surely have heard of the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) and of Milwaukee Street in Milwaukee. And whether you’ve heard of all these things or only the last two, you will soon see them brought together in what is perhaps one of the most interesting collaborations of local and national photography this year. In Living Color: The Photographs of Saul Leiter opened at the Art Museum on September 28. Unlike his ersatz contemporaries in Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko and Richard Pousette-Dart, Leiter’s work wasn’t embraced by the formal art community until recently. But like Fellini or Bergman among filmmakers, his influence has been felt among photographers for decades. And now Milwaukee will be first to acknowledge his contribution to the form with the first-ever major exhibit for the 82-year-old photographer. As early as the late 40s, Leiter worked primarily in color, shooting scenes of New York City that stunningly captured urban life in saturated frames and off-kilter focus. At that time, color photography was not only expensive to process, but viewed by many as a baser form of the medium. Leiter’s photos further insulted the “art world” by presenting technical “imperfections” rather as augmentation, an approach with which he was rewarded by resounding silence from curators around the world. To his vast credit, Leiter didn’t care: he continued to ply his trade his own way, presenting his work as slide shows with his photographs blown up to the scale of full-size paintings. The MAM exhibit will include a room devoted to a digital slide show in that vein, along with around 70 color prints, a selection of black and white photos and four of his watercolor/govache paintings. Enter Cedar Block, the brainchild of Brent Gohde, ostensibly a member of Milwaukee’s emerging DIY Art Movement. (Though the city has yet to be recognized nationally as a haven for such, we are confident it will, so we’ll just say it now). Gohde, like his peers, is firmly committed to the principle that there is a place for every artist who wants to work, even if their talents and opportunities don’t fall into traditionally accepted tracks. To that end, Cedar Block stages unusual events, from Weird Science Fairs to essay contests, and now an exhibit of lomography-inspired photographs by local artists in conjunction with the Leiter exhibit. “There’s never been a voice that shouldn’t be heard,” says Gohde. “These events provide a venue for the non-traditional artist to show their work, have it displayed in a world-class museum. My fondest hope is reaching further quarters of the Milwaukee community […]
Oct 1st, 2006 by Jon Anne Willow
Pegi Taylor
By Blaine Schultz + photos by Philip Krejcarek Pegi Taylor is a performance artist and writer. And she herself has been a piece of art for the past 25 years as hundreds of photographers, painters and sculptors have used her as both inspiration and subject. But according to her, “Artists and the Model: A Quarter Century with Pegi Taylor,” her upcoming Gallery Night show at the Elaine Erickson Gallery, “is really not about me. It is about the artists who have drawn me. The chapbook I’m writing for the show has short essays about how all of them have changed me.” 1.If you were headed for a desert island and could only take one work of art, what would you choose and why? “The Flaggellants” by Carl von Marr. Marr was born in Milwaukee and the painting hangs in the West Bend Art Museum. It would remind me of home. The only reason I’d be going to a desert island is if the world had descended into ruin, and the painting portrays followers of a medieval religious sect flogging themselves as an act of penance for the plagues. I’d want to be right there with them. There are hundreds of figures in the painting, so I would have lots of “company.” It is 13’ by 25’ so I could use it to shelter me, if necessary. 2) What goes through your mind during your modeling sessions? I’m thinking most about the next pose I will take. There is so much to consider. Should I stand, kneel, squat, recline or sit? Where should I face my body? Should my legs be apart, crossed, together? Maybe one leg should be higher than the other. Is the pose short enough that I can twist my back and not hurt at the end of it? What should I do with my arms? What about my hands and fingers? Maybe I want my palms up, or to make a fist or point. Where should I turn my head? Do I want it tilted up or down or to one side? What attitude do I want to express with the pose? 3) Your job is to inspire artists. How do artists inspire you? The attentive quiet in the studio calms me and slows me down and ideas flood into me. Making art, though clothed, they are so much more vulnerable than me. Their willingness to expose themselves demands that I be as fearless as possible. 4) What is the craziest comment you have heard about donating your skeleton to MIAD? I don’t get crazy comments. It makes people think about how our bodies have value. If anything, it leads to discussions about the nefarious body parts trade going on throughout the world. After the show, I want to return to my goal of establishing a national maceration site where people can legally donate their skeletons. 5) As an artist you value and appreciate your senses. If your child were to have only one sense, which would […]
Oct 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
What kind are you?
By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, My boyfriend is my favorite kind of conservative. A drive past a “Give Peace a Chance” yard sign is enough to get him started. “I don’t want to hear from anyone about being unhappy with the way things are going unless they have a plan to change it,” is one common complaint. If I mention that he himself is unhappy with “the way things are going” he is quick to point out that he’s not complaining. (God forbid we ever end up at a red light behind a “Republicans for Voldemort” bumper sticker: The only thing that bothers him more than liberals without a plan is fantasy andscience fiction.) When afforded these impromptu opportunities to engage in political debate, the conversation plays out predictably. He lays out his argument with the usual tent stakes of the superior organizational power of the Republicans and his support of decisive action and a clear agenda over ideological drift and Tower-of-Babel pluralism. His resolve typically begins to falter, though, when questioned directly on whether the decisive actions to which he refers represent sound policy, and whether the clear social and moral agenda of his party truly adhere to the founding principles of Republicanism. Like many conservative individuals, he is a person of common sense, secretly disappointed in just how far his party has strayed from its core values. I’m pretty sure I’m also my boyfriend’s favorite kind of liberal. I pound the tent stakes of our nation’s fall from grace: of a once-compassionate government which no longer guards the interests of its most vulnerable, which thumbs its nose at the rest of the world’s economic and social interests, which aggressively seeks to erode such basic personal freedoms as privacy and reproductive choice. My resolve typically begins to falter, though, when he points out that despite the fact that many Americans on both sides of the political fence share my views, my party has done nothing to effect change except make the aforementioned charges. Yes, Democrats are working hard to win back Congressional seats in these midterm elections on a vague platform of curing these ills, but the party was beset on all sides for over a decade before it started to retaliate with any force. “The war has been such an effective distraction,” I attempt to argue. “People don’t want to buck the leadership when faced with such a crisis.” I even sometimes add lamely, “Besides, these things take time.” (God forbid we end up at a red light behind a “Democrats Have Moral Values, Too” bumper sticker. The only thing that bothers me more than liberals without a plan is whining statements of the obvious.) Not so secretly, I am also disappointed in how far my party has strayed from its core values. But what is the solution? The events of the last five years have shown in stark relief just how little difference there is between elected officials. Even if given a free pass on the […]
Oct 1st, 2006 by Jon Anne Willow
