2007-03 Vital Source Mag – March 2007
The Higher
That maddest of alchemists, the music industry, has managed to seamlessly spin the two most popular genres from the two most dominant high school cliques (punks and preps) into SoundScan gold: the Mallpunk Boy Band, personified by fresh-faced and darling (but edgy and badass) kids like Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy. And now, Epitaph Records has jumped into the game with The Higher, a competent quintet of lads who expertly paint by numbers with their debut, On Fire. This has the makings of a top seller, so I suppose it’s hard to blame Epitaph, formerly home to politically-charged, socially relevant punk rock like Bad Religion, for releasing something this languid and dispassionate. The performances are solid, the production slick, the hooks not out of place on a Justin Timberlake album. The Higher are destined for commercial success, sure to dominate the Warped Tour mid-card for years (and getting close—so close!—to finally headlining over Motion City Soundtrack). And good for them. Having Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump remix one of their tracks (“Pace Yourself” ) won’t hurt, either. It just sounds like a band looking to cash in. With On Fire, one must, at the very least, hope that the kids discovering punk rock through bands like this will take note of the label releasing them, stumble upon Bad Religion and look back at this release with the critical eye of a suddenly more seasoned listener. Perhaps then they will file The Higher away as a band that served their purpose: a junior-high gateway drug to music with substance. Then, in their own special way, The Higher will have mattered. VS
Mar 1st, 2007 by DJ Hostettler
Strong medicine for the healthcare access crisis?
By Ted Bobrow When Governor Jim Doyle laid out his health care proposal during his State of the State address in January, he dramatically transformed the debate about health care in Wisconsin. He summed it up succinctly: “The simple truth is, the time has come for the wealthiest nation in the world to provide access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance for its citizens – and Wisconsin can lead the way.” It’s an attractive scenario and perhaps very timely. Health care in today’s United States is truly Dickensian: the best of worlds and the worst of worlds. For the very wealthy and for people with good health insurance, there is practically no limit to the quality of available care. Double, even quadruple bypass surgeries are routine. Many cancers can be detected early enough to be treated completely. And promising new treatments are in the works for neurological disorders like epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and depression. What a wonderful world we live in, eh? Well, some of us do. In reality, the U.S. is a nation of haves and have-nots, where 47 million people, including 9 million children, have no health insurance. For many in this group, paying out-of-pocket for a routine mammogram or even going to an emergency room at the onset of chest pains is not an option. And the problem is only likely to get worse. With the cost of health care and the insurance to pay for it escalating at twice the rate of inflation and the primary U.S. employment base shifting from large companies to small (less than 100 employees), fewer and fewer employers are able to offer decent health coverage. Early innovations in our own state served as the model for the nation’s current system of unemployment insurance. The time may be right to turn Wisconsin’s progressive tradition towards the problem of the uninsured. The Clinton plan: a costly lesson While access to basic medical care would seem to be a need most appropriately addressed at the federal level, neither the President nor Congress have shown much interest in comprehensive health care reform since Bill and Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated attempt in the early 90s. When President Clinton took office in 1993, he identified health care as the first big challenge of his presidency and he appointed his wife to head a task force to come up with a solution. First Lady Hillary Clinton, now a senator from New York and the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, assembled a group of the nation’s leading thinkers on health care and got to work. The Clinton task force eventually put forth a proposal that sank like a stone. There were many reasons for this failure, but the most instructive of all was that the Clintons did not build adequate support for the proposal among several key stakeholders including, incredibly, Congress and the American people. The Clinton proposal was complicated, and it became an easy target for opponents, most notably health insurance companies and small businesses, who […]
Mar 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Trouble
By Matt Wild Asked why he decided to dismantle The Pixies, frontman Frank Black once replied that when another bandmate’s lifestyle “starts to irritate you,” it becomes virtually impossible to be in the same room as that person, much less share a stage together. Black was no doubt referring to bassist Kim Deal, whose unexpected mainstream success with The Breeders almost certainly drove him absolutely ape-shit. Likewise, my recent source of irritation – my very own Kim Deal, if you will – has been nothing less than this entire city. I’ve been irritated by the constant closing/opening of restaurants, the conversational shorthand brought on by winter weather, the unspoken disdain of friends and colleagues. I’ve been annoyed with the shoddy state of local weeklies and bored to tears by the meager accomplishments of our hipster elite. I’ve been so desperate for a cure, so anxious for an all-purpose salve that I recently decided to face my fears head-on. Like those episodes of Maury where he cures a guest’s irrational fear of mustard with – you guessed it! – a giant fucking bowl of mustard, I decided to break my anti-Milwaukee funk by attending the single most irritating event I could find: a home-brewed burlesque show. Following a few hours spent at the Nut Factory open house (Kyle Fitzpatrick’s paintings – all the size and texture of burnt-out Buicks – are particular standouts), I’m dropped off at Mad Planet for the Pixel Pussy Ski, Sky and Stage Show. Sponsored by Blam! Blam! – a local publication that provides readers the unique pleasure of seeing full color photographs of their friends and former roommates giving each other head – the scene is pretty much what one would expect: some low-rent fetish gear, a bunch of free lube and condoms (so naughty!), awful music and a $10 cover. No matter, I think, a few stiff drinks and a sharp blow to the skull will be all that’s needed to spice things up. Hell, maybe I’ll even strike up a conversation with the guy wearing a top hat and a strap-on. Notebook and camera in hand, I decide to hang up my coat and dig in for the long haul. It’s then that I see the sign: “Coat Check Begins At $10.” I stare at it dumbly, unable to process a $10 Mad Planet coat check, much less one that begins at $10. In fact, what kind of coat check begins anywhere? Are there better options – sturdier hangers, perhaps – in the $12-$15 range? Complimentary lint-removers? Free pony rides? And what is it about this sign – and now, suddenly, these people, these costumes, these affectations – that seems so horribly wrong, so overwhelmingly depressing? Out of respect for both Mad Planet and my own well-being, I decide to do the only thing a rational person would do after just forking over $10 to get into a local sex show: I leave. Flee, escape, haul ass is more like it, the bitter irritation […]
Mar 1st, 2007 by Matt Wild
Consolidating control of the Titanic
By Donald Kaul Admit it, you were fooled. You listened to that wimpy State of the Union address and you thought President Bush was in full retreat before an angry electorate. Yet again you misunderestimated the man. The retreat was merely tactical. Less than a week after the speech, he returned to the fray, guns blazing. He signed a Presidential directive that, in effect, grants him control over all federal rules and policies developed to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy. The directive, which does not need Congressional approval, requires regulatory agencies to have a policy office run by a political appointee who makes sure proposed regulations don’t cost the regulated industries too much. (And by “too much,” I would imagine, they mean “anything.” ) In the past, such regulations have been the responsibility of career civil servants and scientists. From now on, political hacks will be running the show, preferably ones who don’t believe in abortion, stem cell research or evolution. If you liked Katrina, you’re going to love the next two years. As Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) said: “The executive order allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health and safety issues, even if the government’s own impartial experts disagree. This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests.” It occurs to me that what President Bush is doing, in his way, is resurrecting the administration of Richard Nixon. Like Bush, Nixon tried to put his political operatives at key positions in virtually every department of the government, to better exercise power. Like Bush, he wire-tapped his enemies, opened their mail and spied on them. He also had a burglary team working for him and we don’t know whether President Bush has one of those – yet. The genius of Bush, however, is that while Nixon had to resign his Presidency and nearly went to jail for his crimes, Bush commits them openly and no one lays a glove on him. It’s the War on Terror, don’t you know. Everything he does is legal because he’s a war president and he says it’s legal. It’s a terrific hustle and you have to give him credit for pulling it off. So he’s down in the polls a little, so what? The people he’s taking care of now will take care of him down the road. I do worry about our vice president, however. He seems to have gone a little…I don’t know…soft in the head, I guess you’d call it. A couple of weeks ago Mr. Cheney sat down with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and answered critics of the war in Iraq. “Hogwash.” That’s what he called the criticisms. The war, far from being a failure, has been a string of “enormous successes,” he said. We got rid of Saddam, we got rid of his sons, we established a democracy in the Middle East, we gave the Iraqis a constitution. “The world is much safer today because […]
Mar 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
