2007-08 Vital Source Mag – August 2007
Found in translation
By Evan Solochek With so many misconceptions, half-truths and flat-out ignorance surrounding the Middle East, immersing yourself in its diverse culture and rich history for a weekend seems a good first step to enlightenment. In a time where stories of bombings and body counts are a nightly fixture on local and national news, it’s easy to overlook the positive and encouraging aspects of one of the oldest and most influential cultures in history. During Europe’s Dark Ages, Arab nations took in its “heretical” scholars, especially those practicing science and medicine, fostering their work and saving the world from losing invaluable knowledge. They gave us our system of numbering and have produced some of the finest architecture, artistic artifacts and textiles known to man. This month, Milwaukeeans can witness first-hand what we won’t be likely to see on television. Now in its ninth year, Arab World Fest is a multi-cultural celebration loosely grouped under the label “Arab World,” which is itself one of the biggest confusions. Much greater than just the Arabian Peninsula, the Arab world spreads across 22 countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, and while most Arabs are Muslims, the Arab world also includes significant Christian and Jewish communities. Yes, there will be falafel and belly dancing and camel rides. But more importantly, there will be the opportunity to foster a better understanding of and appreciation for Arabian cultural heritage and the political awareness and sentiments of its citizens. To that end, one of the Fest’s newest and most highly anticipated attractions will be its film festival, highlighted by Occupation 101. “We brought this last year and were showing it in a small tent and there was standing room only,” says Ihsan Atta, President of Arab World Fest. “We were surprised at the overwhelming positive response, which led us to have a film festival this year.” A powerful and moving documentary, Occupation 101 details the current state and the historical roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From the first massive Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880s and the 1948, 1967 and Yom Kippur wars to the Oslo Peace Process and Intifadas of 1987 and 2000, this film offers one of the most comprehensive analyses – along with first person testimonials – of this seemingly unending conflict. Other entries of note include Paradise Now, which was released in 2005 by Warner Independent. The harrowing story of two Palestinian childhood friends who are recruited for a suicide strike on Tel Aviv, Paradise Now chronicles their last two days together as they say goodbye to loved ones and family and prepare for their mission. While en route to meet a driver who will take them to Tel Aviv, the two young men are separated from their handlers and intercepted at the Israeli border by a young woman who, after discovering their plan, tries to make them reconsider their path. It’s a first-hand look at the lives and motivations of two would-be faceless martyrs. Most Westerners don’t really understand what the […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
The Spitfire Grill
“Shoot the moon, life is hard and gone too soon,” sings Percy, Hannah and Shelby in The Spitfire Grill. Set in the north woods of Gilead, Wisconsin, this production was adapted from Lee David Zlotoff’s film. Fellow Wisconsinites Fred Alley, co-founder of American Folklore Theatre in Door County, and James Valcq, who started at the Skylight Theatre in Milwaukee, collaborated on the themes of hope and redemption. Those familiar with Alley’s music, including the often-produced Guys on Ice, will reconnect with some of the haunting lyrics in this piece of musical theater. Several include “A Ring Around the Moon,” “Wild Bird,” “Shine” and “Shoot the Moon,” which are all made more memorable by Valcq’s melodies. Brenda L. LaMalfa, who plays the poignant main character of Percy, captures each note perfectly. Her persona of the young girl being released from prison radiates every nuance. Struggling to create a new life, Percy is placed in Hannah Ferguson’s Spitfire Grill, the only restaurant in town. When Hannah breaks her leg, Percy and Shelby, another young woman imprisoned in a stifling marriage, carry the responsibilities of the grill as Hannah recuperates. But the town busybody, Effy, and Shelby’s husband, Caleb, complain as Percy continues to bring her rays of hope to Gilead. Throughout the two acts, every character tries to shoot the moon as secrets are revealed and light flickers through the windows of the Spitfire Grill once again. But full summer moonlight shines on this production. Elaine Rewolinski as the cantankerous Hannah acts with appropriate audacity while beautifully singing every measure. And only 18, Cherissse Duncan as Shelby is an admiral addition. But LaMaffa is a Percy the audience will remember, as even a faulty sound system during the first half refused to let her character or vocals dim. This trio enlightened the stage with a glow that gives life to Gilead, their performances enhanced further by live instrumental accompaniment. Acacia Theatre’s Spitfire Grill would make Valcq and Alley proud as it retains the spirit of their script and score. These were to be Alley’s last lyrics, and final time the two long time friends combined their talents. He was unable to receive the prestigious Academy of Arts and Letters Award for New American Musicals in 2001 that was given to this show as he died that spring of a heart attack, and for him life was indeed gone too soon. The tragedy of September 11 followed closely, and this musical resonated more deeply than ever as the then Skylight Opera produced the show the following fall. Six years later, the themes are ever timely and the ability to shoot the moon still illuminates hope. As the production continues until July 22, spend an evening in the light and shadows cast by this Spitfire Grill. VS The Spitfire Grill is presented by Acacia Theatre Company in the Todd Wehr Auditorium at Concordia University through July 22.For tickets or information call 414-744-5995 or visit www.acaciatheatre.com. .
Aug 1st, 2007 by Peggy Sue Dunigan
Bunny Rabbit In A Box Of Chocolates
As 8 p.m. neared on the night of July 21st, people milled about the Broadway Theatre Center. Casual conversation drifted through the lazy summer evening as show time approached. Alamo Basement had been at it for nearly 24 hours – writing and rehearsing the show that was about to make its debut that night. The Play In A Day concept is deliciously simple – get a group of people together (playwrights, actors, etc… ) and give them 24 hours to develop an entire feature-length play that they will then perform. Alamo Basement did something much like this last year. It was successful enough that they decided to do it again. Not long after the scheduled start time, Alamo Basement co-founder Michael Q. Hanlon and the play’s director Chris Scholke introduced the show. Taking suggestions from the audience, the title Bunny Rabbit In A Box Of Chocolates was chosen. Then the script was auctioned off to the highest bidder. A gentleman in the front row ended up winning the script, paying some $30 for something about which he, like the rest of us, probably knew almost nothing. After these small bits of business, the play began for the 50 or so people in attendance. A comedy set in a hotel in Transylvania, Bunny Rabbit In A Box of Chocolates was exceedingly entertaining. The script had been passed through a series of local DIY playwrights over the course of the 24 hours leading up to the performance. Pink Banana Theatre guru John Manno (Golden Apollo) got the script first. He worked with the actors to get a general feel for what the actors were interested in and went to work. The ensemble played characters they had a hand in developing, which made for an interesting stage dynamic during the actual performance. Alamo Basement co-founder Mike Q. Hanlon (who also served as one of the playwrights) played the hotel concierge, a classic comic straight man with a bit of a feral twist toward the end. The cast of characters parading through the hotel included a pair of honeymooning Wisconsinites with a sexual fetish for the history of warfare, a socialist hotel worker and his wife (a sexy maid with an inexplicable New York accent), a pair of dim-witted traveling thieves, a world-famous scientist and her eager assistant, a deposed Eastern European princess and others. In addition to Hanlon and Manno, playwrights included Peter J. Woods (Made In The Mouth) and Rex Winsome (co-founder of Insurgent Theatre). The script was remarkably coherent for something that four people took turns writing with very little sleep. Light comedies and farces try to capture a certain kind of mindless guilty fun, but something invariably gets lost in endless rehearsals. Impov comedy emulates freshness by giving the illusion of spontaneity, but all too often it’s simply actors forming pre-existing, pre-formulated characters and skits around audience suggestions. With Play In A Day, Alamo Basement seems to have hit on a sense of vitality that’s so glaringly missing in contemporary […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Green is the new black
“In 60 seconds, you can make toast, water a fichus, take a power nap and, now, save the Earth.” That’s heavy stuff, especially coming from renowned global climate expert Cameron Diaz. She’s teamed up with Al Gore on his latest megalomedia campaign, 60 Seconds to Save the Earth, a contest where young people can submit video shorts meant to “inspire change.” “Because the planet needs a good publicist,” is the tagline, delivered with a big smile by JT’s sometimes main squeeze. Plus the winners earn neat, energy-consuming electronics or even a hybrid SUV! I feel better already. It seems like Al’s back on track to change the course of global environmental decay. His worldwide Live Earth concert was a total bust with its insanely high cost (the citizens of Hamburg, in fact, are stuck with a $1.3 million tab from their event), insulting resource consumption (the private jets for artists alone used enough fuel to fly around the world over nine times), unforgivable lack of focus (no money was raised) and even lackluster ratings. I was also a little worried when the news media outed him for his scandalous personal consumption of energy. It really was pretty lame when he justified his 20-room Nashville estate by bleating that he and Tipper both work from home. It doesn’t count anyway, he added, because they buy “carbon offsets,” paying to have trees planted elsewhere. And the zinc mine on his property continually cited for dumping toxic chemicals into a nearby river and from which he receives about $20,000 a year? Fear not, Green Warriors, the mine was closed in 2003 so he’s all done with that little embarrassment. Just don’t ask him about the shares in Occidental Petroleum he continues to manage for his family. That’s none of your business. And that’s what this is all quickly boiling down to, isn’t it? Celebrities jumping on yet another bandwagon, donning hemp t-shirts and organic cotton jeans to show their solidarity with Mother Earth. The “in” crowd is batting around terms like “carbon offsetting” and “biodiversity” at cocktail parties by chlorinated pools, having arrived in their Escalades. For the rest of us who want to appear socially conscious, there’s the industrious J.C. Piscine Company, also out of Nashville (they make both the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish – clever!). They can’t keep fake hybrid badges that go on the backs of cars on the shelves. The weekly shipping alone could probably supply Africa’s U’wa tribe with electricity for a year. Do I seem bitter? I am, a little. Everything we do as individuals will have negligible overall impact on our climate. Change must come from the big polluters, so it appears we’re pretty much at the mercy of commerce. What can we do while we’re waiting? First, it can’t hurt to familiarize ourselves with some popular terms from the Green Movement. Awareness begins at home, after all, and it’s always nice to be able to understand what the stars are talking about. It’s […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Jon Anne Willow
Misalliance
The first non-Shakespeare show in this year’s American Players Theatre season, George Bernard Shaw’s early 20th century dramatic debate, Misalliance, works much better on paper than it does on the stage. In principal, the idea of a play consisting almost exclusively of characters having lengthy discussions about love, marriage, justice and so on without much real action is a very clever one. In practice, it can be very difficult to sit through. Chicago actress Carrie A. Coon (who starred in Anna Christie with the Madison Rep last year) stars as Hypatia Tarleton, the restless daughter of the wealthy underwear magnate John Tarleton (Jonathan Smoots). Things seem perfectly dull in the house as things begin. All the characters seem nearly content to play out Shaw’s debate with only the slightest hint of any real action. True, there is a great deal of wit in what’s being sad, but it merely feels. Characters lounge around inside talented actors dressed in conspicuously tidy Rachel Healy costumes as everything rests in a tasteful early 20th-century Takeshi Kata set. Then a plane crashes into a building offstage and everything gets considerably more interesting. The play is an intellectually lively ensemble piece and the APT manages its usual magic of arranging a highly talented and cohesive cast. Chris Klopatek is pleasantly intolerable as the nuisance Bentley Summerhays. Bentley is that annoying brat with deafening smugness who always seems to know exactly what he can get away with. As the play opens he’s engaged in some sort of general frustration with Hypatia’s conservative brother Johnny (Marcus Truschinski). Truschinski is sharp in the role, which limits him to smooth, controlled bursts of passion accompanied by occasional bits of wit. Truschinski gives the character precisely as much range of emotional movement as he needs to get through the play without over-exaggerating any of his finer personality details. At some point early into the play’s first stretches, Bentley goes offstage to be intolerable elsewhere and in comes Lord Summerhays (Brian Mani) – a friend of the family. Mani is fun here. His character has a tendency for the type of humor Mani is so good at delivering . . . sparkling, little unassuming bits of semantic cleverness that creep up in response to things other characters say. Lord Summerhays has some entertaining bits of dialogue with Hypatia. He’s an older man taken with the younger woman who seems a bit taken with him as well and marriage is proposed between the two of them. Actually, marriage is proposed quite often in Misalliance – it’s a refreshing little parade of diversions the playwright has concocted to pass the time between the play’s beginning and end, which ends up being a central part of the play. Shaw seems intent on exploring the nature of love and marriage between many different pairings within the ensemble. There’s also this whole theme of women beginning to become individuals that Shaw wanted to explore. Apparently, he felt as though men at the turn of the last […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
The legends live on…
Photos by Kat Jacobs It’s a warm dusk, and the SV Mai Tai, a handsome catamaran, is cruising away from the harbor. With Milwaukee’s silhouette behind us, Captain Rick Hake is steering us into the streaks of a storm. We are less than a mile and a half from the dock. Captain Rick – a lanky, youthful man with an exuberant mop of hair – assures me that the boat can handle a spate of pretty bad, even vicious, weather. This is a good thing to hear, as in a matter of minutes the wind has kicked up from four knots to 22. The boat is dipping and rolling, and the water is capped white. The sturdy, luxurious craft is Rick’s second home. It’s also home to Adventure Charter Boats, Rick’s dive charter business, and several times a week it ferries divers out on Lake Michigan to see the bones of less fortunate crafts. Milwaukee is a city of well-kept secrets, and the diving that draws in-the-know dive tourists from around the world is one of them. Few realize just how many sunken ships are pinned down in the Great Lakes; thousands have slipped under since the very first ship to sail them, Rene La Salle’s Griffin, sank after leaving the Door Peninsula piled with furs in 1679. Some divers have dedicated their lives to finding the wreck of the Griffin. Others seek less tangible prizes – adventure, mystery, serenity – in Lake Michigan, a body of water the size of Croatia with a fickle and very cold heart. The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead Lake wrecks are incomparable. The water lacks the corrosive properties of salt and destructive saltwater organisms, and the near-freezing temperatures refrigerate everything, slowing down the process of rust and decay. Milwaukee, in particular, has a higher concentration of wreckage than other shores, and conditions are ideal for divers –unlike, for instance, Chicago which, despite a number of spectacular wrecks, is too shallow and heavily trafficked. Jerry Guyer, with a white beard and a grizzled manner, is something of a freshwater cowboy. He started diving out of casual curiosity after a high school classmate told him about a scuba class he was taking. Forty years later, after decades of marine salvage, training dive rescue teams and running charters, Jerry knows the bottom of Lake Michigan better than anyone. He’s discovered more than 20 vanished wrecks in the Great Lakes. Diving is about pushing frontiers for him. “What’s beyond the next rock?” he asks. “What can I find out there that no one else has seen?” He shows me a map of the shoreline with Xs on the wrecks and several tiny ultrasounds that make the boats look like creatures growing in the womb of the water. “Every one of these wrecks is something different,” Jerry explains, and points to each as he tells their stories – unsophisticated navigation technology, bad lighting, old boats, freak accidents. The Hiran Bond was run over by […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Amy Elliott
The Merchant of Venice
The American Player Theatre delves into sticky realms of ambiguity with its production of what is arguably one of Shakespeare’s most questionable plays. The Merchant of Venice concerns money lent to a man by a Jewish moneylender named Shylock. If the money is not paid back in a timely fashion, Shylock has the legal right to one pound of the debtor’s flesh. It’s not an overriding problem unless one happens to be exquisitely sensitive, but there are enough allusions to anti-Semitism in the script to make modern audiences cringe. The APT glides its way gracefully through what is essentially a courtroom drama with as much style as it can muster. This includes some of the best acting in the state filling a comfy outdoor theatre in the middle of a wooded area west of Madison. Sadly, however, the biggest disappointment in the acting here is James Ridge in that oh-so-central performance as the Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It should be pointed out before this review goes any further that James Ridge is a phenomenal actor. In 2005, his performance as Tartuffe was exquisite and insightful – something of a revelation. This past year as the title character in Dickens In America with Next Act (which he picks up again this summer with the APT and next December with the Madison Rep), Ridge put forth a spellbinding, highly charismatic performance. In light of these recent successes, Ridge’s performance as Shylock is a colossal disappointment. Ridge affects an accent, which may serve to distinguish a sense of otherworldliness in the villain, but it never quite feels natural enough to make the character entirely believable. Ridge goes a long way toward making up for this lack of realism by playing the role sympathetically. We see depth in Ridge’s performance as Shylock. His motivations for behaving as cold as he is seem firmly defined in Ridge’s portrayal, but the larger picture of who the character is never fully resolves, leaving this production’s Shylock feeling like more of a shallow villain than Ridge’s efforts should have allowed. The rest of the performances here live up to the play quite well. James DeVita plays the title character who borrows money from Shylock to give to his friend Bassanio (Matt Schwader) so that he may have a chance at marrying his one true love, Portia (the charming Colleen Madden). As the play progresses, Bassanio gets ever closer to his dream as Portia plays reluctant host to a series of wealthy suitors played by frequent Rep actor Jonathan Smoots. Madden is in particularly good form here playing subtle comedy in perfect timing and DeVita plays the title role as a very rational man in very real peril. The best part of his performance is the intrinsic believability of his friendship with Bassanio. It would seem all too easy to play a friendship between two men in which one is willing to risk his life for the other’s well being as some kind of mysterious male code of honor for […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
BUDGETMANIA!
THE ANGLE In this corner, we have the Senate Democrats, who took control of the legislature’s upper chamber after last year’s election. Flexing their muscles, the Senate Dems passed a $66.1 billion version of the 2007-2009 budget, featuring a controversial $15.2 billion universal health care program. The Senate’s “Healthy Wisconsin” plan for universal coverage would provide all Wisconsin residents with the same coverage members of the legislature have. It would be paid for by a new payroll tax on businesses and workers. And in the other corner, we have the Assembly Republicans, who retain control of the lower chamber and have rallied around their commitment to oppose any new taxes. They passed a $56.3 billion two-year budget rejecting any expansion of health care coverage but also sharply reducing the state’s support for local governments and for the University of Wisconsin System. Among the dubious provisions slipped into the budget by the Assembly Republicans is a sales tax break for people who buy gold bullion and the elimination of funding for the University of Wisconsin’s law school. That latter proposal came courtesy of Representative Frank Lasee (R-Green Bay), who last time we heard from him wanted Wisconsin to arm its teachers to prevent violence in schools. He feels we have too many lawyers, which is pretty ironic coming from someone in government. It is shaping up to be quite a fight, as Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson’s (D—15th Sentate District) “Health Care for All” Progressives take on Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch’s (R—9th Assembly District) “No New Taxes” Conservatives in a brutal, no-holds barred, match to the death. THE BOOKER In the wonderful and wacky world of wrestling, it is the booker who decides the outcome of the match. Without ever stepping into the ring, the booker writes the storylines for the feuds that drive the ratings, deciding who wins and loses, who gets promoted and who falls down through the ranks. Occasionally popular opinion can sway the booker, but smart money is almost always on who he or she favors. After all, the booker works for the wrestling company and holds the heavy responsibility of making sure the money comes in and everything comes off without a hitch. Wisconsin’s constitution gives a very special role in influencing the budget to its governor, who is said to hold the broadest veto power of any governor in the United States so chances are good that the “No New Taxes” hardliners on the Assembly side can’t be very happy that their old nemesis, Governor Jim Doyle, is the current occupant of the Capitol’s East Wing. With a strong re-election under his belt and his fellow Democrats in control of the Senate, Doyle is hardly a neutral spectator in the budget process. Both the Senate and Assembly budgets were reactions to Gov. Doyle’s initial $58.2 billion budget submitted last February. Doyle’s budget proposes expanding state support for education and local government. In addition, his “BadgerCare Plus” proposal would extend health coverage to 98 percent of […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Ted Bobrow
Much Ado About Nothing
It can be the smallest things that make any production of a popular Shakespeare classic more memorable than the last. In an American Players Theatre production, this always seems to come from the least expected places. Maybe the production design is so impressive that it nearly overshadows the play it’s presenting. Maybe there’s a subtle, brilliantly unspoken joke woven into the set design that plays on a drastic height difference between the diminutive James DeVita and a towering supporting character. In this year’s APT production of Much Ado About Nothing, it’s the villain Don John. More than simply being a marginal character, Don John almost seems to be an afterthought in an otherwise giddy comic script, which is fun enough to make Much Ado one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. Precisely why Don John would leave such a strong impression is a bit of a mystery, particularly when said production features such strong performances in all of the other more central roles. Milwaukee Rep actor Ted Deasy stars as confirmed bachelor Benedick who is unsuspectingly dragged into a relationship with Beatrice – a woman with which he is quite reluctantly head over heels in love. Beatrice is played brilliantly here by Milwaukee actress Tracy Michelle Arnold. Beatrice has a stinging, level-headed wit about her – a wit that Arnold rings to the stage with a considerable amount of flair. At the center of the story rests young Claudio (Marcus Truschinski) who has fallen for Hero (Leah Dutchin), the daughter of the Governor. Brian Mani plays the governor with a characteristically charismatic stage presence. The love here is pure and played remarkably well between Truschinski and Dutchin. With a central supporting cast consisting of such considerable APT/ Milwaukee talent as Sarah Day, James Ridge and Jim DeVita (among others) this is a solidly executed production of Much Ado. While little of it seems overwhelmingly impressive, it’s all executed very well. Milwaukee Shakespeare recently did a brilliant production of this play, so APT’s production may suffer from being produced so soon afterwards, but taken on its own it is exceedingly enjoyable. Why should it be then, that the marginal villain Don John is the single aspect of the production that makes this production worth seeing? The character only serves to provide the conflict that is the central obstacle in Claudio and Hero living happily ever after. There are few characters as far from the center as Don John, yet Milwaukee Shakespeare talent Michael Gotch plays the character with such dazzling flair that the character seems almost essential to the plot in this production. It doesn’t take Gotch long to establish the ostentatious personality of his particular Don John as he begins scheming to ruin the wedding plans of Hero and Claudio. Once he’s established his presence, all eyes are on Gotch every time he makes an appearance and the audience responds openly to even his most subtly comic movements. In Milwaukee Shakespeare productions (notably Taming of the Shrew and Richard II) Gotch […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Bad Religion
“We’re animals with golden rules/Who can’t be moved by rational views/Welcome to the new dark ages.” Iraq’s a mess, our civil liberties are eroding and Scooter Libby was basically pardoned. Leave it to six years of an oppressive Republican regime to light a fire under Bad Religion’s ass. Anyone who’s heard a Bad Religion song, much less an entire album, knows what to expect from New Maps of Hell: hyper-intelligent lyrics, dramatically gorgeous vocal harmonies and punk riffs that spawned legions of imitators who took more time explaining what their songs were about than actually playing them. But to criticize Bad Religion for not evolving over the years would be a futile exercise; one may as well complain that AC/DC has recorded the same album 18 times. While other bands would be accused of having run out of ideas, New Maps of Hell feels more like re-visiting a favorite book, if that book were Dude, Where’s My Country? Ironically, as solid as the formula tracks are, it’s when the band changes things up a bit that we find the standout cuts – notably the single “Honest Goodbye,” which uses a thundering mid-tempo verse to anchor a sugar-coated hook. Closing track “Fields of Mars” does the same thing using piano while fantasizing about a time when we can get off this rock, away from the Neanderthals running the show. But how fun woul these guys be if they were happy? If you’re not already a Bad Religion fan, you could pick a worse starting point than this. After all, it’s important for us Americans to familiarize ourselves with our most venerable institutions. VS
Aug 1st, 2007 by DJ Hostettler
Your elbows on my knees
Say what you will about the wisdom of writing a monthly column that often features your deepest, darkest secrets (my affinity for The Gin Blossoms immediately comes to mind), but it’s incredibly heartwarming when, after a piece detailing a particularly devastating month hits newsstands, a complete stranger approaches you and says, “Sorry you’re having a shitty summer, man. Better luck next month.” It’s crystal-clear, razor-sharp moments like this that allow you to appreciate the simple, honest kindness of your fellow man, and momentarily forget that your shtick is about as fresh as a Dorf on Golf video. So what will you get when you bite into this month’s installment of SubVersions? Well, along with the usual soppy final paragraph and obscure Tim Conway references, you’ll get… Botched High School Reunions!! After weeks of icy stares and veiled death threats (see last month’s column), a strange light begins to beckon, promising to absolve my sins and return me to a different time – or, at the very least, take me out of Milwaukee for a weekend. I’m talking about my 11-year high school class reunion (hold for applause)! For reasons unknown, my graduating class couldn’t seem to get their shit together for a 10-year reunion, though a series of poorly-worded emails promises me that the 11-year will indeed be a hoot. For even more reasons unknown, I find myself giddy with anticipation during the weeks leading up to this sure-to-be epic soirée. So I prepare: I use a precious day of vacation (the reunion falls on a Friday); I get a haircut (The Cutting Group, natch); I ready any number of outright lies for the inevitable “What have you been doing for the past 11 years?” question (day trading, scuba diving, lion taming). Two days before the big event, however, I receive a short email from the class president: “The reunion has been cancelled due to lack of interest. Maybe next time.” It’s only a few minutes later that I start contemplating suicide-by-blowtorch for the following reasons: 1. I’m old enough to have an 11-year class reunion 2. I was actually excited about going to said reunion 3. Apparently, I was the only one that was excited 4. To clarify: I was actually fucking excited about going to my high school class reunion Life-Affirming Local Bands!! Being something of a recovering music snob with precious little free time (what with my side-career as a color commentator for tournament cribbage), I can only really bother myself with one or two local bands. One of those is The Candliers, whose recent crowd-pleasing show at the Riverhorse I was lucky enough to attend. In a perfect world, these fine folks would be headlining any number of cleverly named outdoor music fests, though I’ll stand by my conviction that their ideal venue (and I mean this in the best possible way) would be some sort of hipster-patronized Chuck E. Cheese. (Fun Fact! Chuck E. Cheese founder Nolan Bushnell also invented the Atari video game system, […]
Aug 1st, 2007 by Matt Wild
Coventry Jones
A fixture at Summerfest’s lake path stage or busking around town, Coventry Jones has finally released another album of original tunes. Sure he can hack out requests for covers with the best of the weekend warriors, but on the 10-track Time Stands Still Jones takes a few strides away from the ever-smiling Summer of Love persona with which he’s been tagged. Bolstered by Gregg Slavik’s drums and producer Scott Finch’s killer piano “John Glenn & I” rocks like a Chuck Berry nugget until it hits a woozy psychedelic breakdown before cranking it up again and “Delta Queen” mixes Jones’ wailing harmonica and slide guitar with Mike Woods’ sax for a particularly thick swampy gumbo. “Standing at the Station” finds a hapless Jones trying to get bailed out by his family, his lawyer, hell even Perry Mason – Wood’s soprano sax lends a music hall vibe that would not be out of place on them dodgy ‘70s concept albums by The Kinks. Utilizing a different lineup of acoustic players (mandolinist Bob McDermott, John Banshaw on banjo and upright bassist Jeff Coulliard) Jones taps into his British Isle roots on traditional tunes “Wild Rover” and “Whiskey in the Jar” – not exactly Thin Lizzy but a nice move away from patchouli pathways. Then again, if you just can’t live without a money shot, the opening track “Elissa” finds Jones back in mellowed out Allman Brothers territory, singing about a wooden ship on the water. VS Coventry Jones Time Stands Still CD Release Party is Friday July 27 from 7 p.m. – Midnight at Rip Tide Seafood & Grill, 649 E. Erie Street. 414-271-8433
Aug 1st, 2007 by Blaine Schultz
