2008-05 Vital Source Mag – May 2008
The Black Keys
When music nerds think of Akron, Ohio, they usually conjure images of proto-punk college nerds as much influenced by neighboring Cleveland’s industrial wasteland as by whatever they were learning down the road at Kent State that semester — i.e. DEVO. But thanks to Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, aka The Black Keys, the new sound of Akron dates past devolution and slinks back into the primordial ooze of dirty, gritty delta blues. Their latest, Attack and Release, shuffles and shambles like the soundtrack to one of those run-down city skyline montages in some old ‘70s film where the main character is just driving and driving through town. The music’s rusty, broken-in and comfortably warm. Although the Keys are a duo, Attack and Release takes advantage of the recording studio and fills out its riffage with bass, organ and even flute (!) in the intro to “Same Old Thing.” The extra instrumentation never gets in the way, leaving plenty of space for the songs to breathe. You don’t need to get the band back together to hear their brand of blues (although I doubt they’d refuse the whole chicken and toast). Drums and guitar will suffice just nicely. The Black Keys sound like road movies and cigarettes smoked at 3 a.m. while drunkenly drifting away on your couch after another Friday night at that same damn bar again. In a good way. Seriously, if I don’t turn on TBS in another 10 years and hear “Things Ain’t Like They Used to Be,” Attack and Release’s dynamite closing track, in some flick involving either Patrick Swayze and truckers or Dennis Hopper and motorcycles, I will have lost faith in Hollywood.
May 1st, 2008 by DJ Hostettler
Exercising Ideals
“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” Dave Casillas, of the newly founded Echo Base Collective, is not only familiar with this proverb; he is actively trying to live by it. “People don’t appreciate what they have. They’ve got cars, but don’t treat their cars with respect; they don’t drive respectfully. Bike riders, too. They should stop at stop signs instead of plowing through them.” This motivated 23-year-old isn’t merely preaching Utopianism. Echo Base Collective (Milwaukee’s second bike collective – the other is at 2910 W. Clybourn Street) is located in the industrial environs of Walker’s Point, between Milwaukee’s Third Ward and Bay View. It’s an exercise in idealism, but with the proper pushes from the right people, it could become a place where anyone can not only find a bicycle to get them out of doors and into a more active lifestyle, but also learn how to maintain their own bikes and help build bikes for others. Casillas’ motivation comes from his own volunteer experiences and via a cross-country biking expedition that introduced him to collectives on the west coast. He was impressed with what he encountered there. “In Portland, there are four different free bike programs. [In Milwaukee] I’ve gone through the hard work of finding the space and providing the ability to create something. It’s up to everyone else to own up to the fact that they can better their community and own lives.” Ready The collective, a bare-bones space for the moment, houses over 50 bicycles, both kids’ and adults’, mostly donated by The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee and salvaged from Casillas’ own scouting for discarded bikes. They hang from racks on the wall of the collective, ready to be worked on; many wait in storage. The trick is to find enough people to pitch in and make them all working machines. “I’m very motivated, more so than most people,” Casillas says of his mindset towards his collective. “When someone says, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll totally help you,’ I would have to go to their house, wake them up, drag them out and probably dress them just to get them to come down. I’m really looking for people who are motivated enough to take their own initiative.” “[The other collectives I’ve worked in before] have already been established for two or three years,” explains Casillas. “Starting out is the hardest part – it’s as grassroots as you get. I need teachers, people who just want to sweep the floor – anything – even to sort through all these tires. I want to create an environment where you can just enjoy the company of other people.” Set This is the bottom line from which Casillas is building the foundation of the collective: enjoying the company of others and developing mutual respect through hard work. “I pretty much started Echo Base as a facility to put a bike between every pair of legs – […]
May 1st, 2008 by Erin Wolf
Story of the Year
By Kyle Shaffer Defining one’s sound on a passing trend can prove a death blow for most acts. But, perhaps even more daunting a thought is that of trying to reformat a band’s sound to remain relevant. Story of the Year’s heyday was the release of Page Avenue amidst an explosion of screamo bands. Two albums and a few Warped Tours later, the St. Louis crew emerges with The Black Swan, a supposedly seamless integration of the catchiness of their debut with the heavy riffing of 2005’s In the Wake of Determination. While this album may mark the group’s ability to survive without major-label support, it’s full of enough generic guitar riffs and less-than-inspiring lyrics to make the dudes in Avenged Sevenfold hold back chuckles. Throughout, this record is shaking with the fear of committing to a sound. Opener “Choose Your Fate” attempts Thrice-like energy and lands somewhere between 30 Seconds to Mars and whatever “band of the week” Vagrant Records is promoting. This is not a giant step forward in Story’s growth. Lyrically trying to tackle more serious subject matter, songs like “Message to the World” struggle to articulate communication problems between the U.S. and the rest of the planet. Even more painful is listening to lead singer Dan Marsala feign his concern for racial equality in “We’re Not Gonna Make It.” These are serious issues in the modern world, but Story of the Year’s contrived sound minimizes their importance. For a band that left a major label for ethical reasons, The Black Swan sure sounds like a record written for a paycheck.
May 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Beloit
The winter had been cruel and callous, leaving the author teetering on the brink of insanity. Could a simple trip to Beloit – complete with 60-degree weather and a ridiculous house party – finally turn things around, as well as begin to rectify a decades-old sin? Of course it could. When I was 16 years old, I took a trip with my then-girlfriend to her hometown of Shawano, Wisconsin. We stayed with the family of one of her childhood friends, a family that seemed to be a Midwest version of Salinger’s Glasses – all artistic brilliance and deep-seated neuroses set loose in a picturesque northern Wisconsin town. Appropriately, our weekend was filled with an endless array of off-center adventures: smoking pilfered cigars in a nearby park, cutting each other’s hair in the driveway while blasting the Violent Femmes, trying our hands at hot-wiring a car, getting drunk at a play that one of the family’s older siblings had written. It was one of those improbable, perfectly summer-tinted weekends that stay with you for the rest of your life, and one that I managed to totally cock up at the last minute. Saying our goodbyes on a bleary Sunday morning, my girlfriend’s friend politely asked how I had slept the night before. For whatever reason, I decided to give her a nasty, semi-sarcastic response, something along the lines of, “Pretty lousy. Thanks for sticking me on the smallest couch you could find!” My incredibly lame sense of humor lost on her, she shot me an icy glare and hissed, “I think it’s time for you to go home.” Fourteen years later, this inexplicable faux pas rattles through my head as I arrive in lovely Beloit, Wisconsin. Vital’s own Amy Elliott has graciously agreed to spirit me across county lines – and to the home of her alma mater – in hopes of saving me from certain doom at the hands of an unrelenting winter and increasingly suffocating city. Scenic strolls, cocktail parties, and absolutely no benefits for injured roller-girls have been promised (joking!). The weather calls for 60 degrees and uninterrupted, unprecedented sunshine. We’ll be staying with Amy’s friend Lynn, operating under the assumption that my houseguest manners have improved slightly in the past decade-and-a-half. Having never visited before, I’m pleasantly surprised to find Beloit a charming little getaway of a town, and absolutely nothing like the awful Kenosha/Racine hellhole I had envisioned (not joking!). Checking in at Lynn’s, we decide to take a walk through the nearby campus. Beloit College is everything my 16-year-old self imagined a college would be: sprawling, idyllic, and home to at least one guy named “Davis.” Far from the concrete nightmare of UW-Milwaukee, it’s the kind of place that reminds you that college, in fact, is a good thing. Well-worn student houses dot the grounds, and an on-campus bar/venue – the C-Haus – is busy with out-of-town bands loading in their gear. Amy even points out a dorm tower where all the, um, “indoor” kids […]
May 1st, 2008 by Matt Wild
