2008-08 Vital Source Mag – August 2008
20×20
Photos by Dane Haman Jon Mueller, co-manager of Pecha Kucha in Milwaukee. pecha kucha (n) /puh-CHAH-kuh-chah/ Japanese origin. 1. the art of conversation; 2. noisy chatter; 3. coming August 26 to Milwaukee. Imagine if before facing the auditorium on your big presentation day, you could – without inhibition or shutting your office door – swig from that desk-drawer bourbon flask? Exchange auditorium for watering hole, bourbon swig for beer break and big presentation for a brief one, and what’s left is even better: Pecha Kucha Night (PKN), an idea devised by two Tokyo-based European architects in 2003 that gives the projector + presenter + audience equation a novel twist. Though liquid courage is encouraged, PKN is not about the booze; it’s an opportunity to meet, show ideas to the public, and network — with rules. In other words, “productive socializing,” says Jon Mueller, who teams up with 800-CEO-READ (8cr) colleague Kate Mytty to manage Milwaukee’s only official Pecha Kucha franchise. MEET A bulk bookseller 25 years in the business and division of local independent shop Harry W. Schwartz, 8cr “works directly with business authors to help them customize books, organize events, and write about the current and best ideas in business thought.” Clearly much more than merchant, they also print reviews and essays in their quarterly magazine and feature manifestos for change from diverse, yet optimistic, perspectives on their culturally conscious ChangeThis website. “8cr follows business thought and how it changes people’s lives, and Pecha Kucha follows people’s ideas in action,” says Mueller. “There is really a fine line between the two.” Logically, 8cr and PKN aligned, and Milwaukee is now among a worldwide network of 129 (and growing) participating cities. “The amount of work that’s involved would turn many people away from organizing it,” says Mueller, “but we think it’s an important thing to do and we have a lot of fun with it.” SHOW Trademarked and copyrighted by inventive founding architectural firm Klein Dytham, the Pecha Kucha format requires that all slideshows displayed are a standard “20×20” — 20 slides, programmed to automatically advance after 20 seconds on screen — a style that keeps both the speaker and the audience alert and captivated. Synchronizing flow to a fixed timetable is a challenge that is comfortably limiting. “The simplicity is what makes it really effective,” says Mueller. Do the math and that’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds a pop in PowerPoint heaven. But this brevity “can still become an eternity in the wrong hands,” explains Mueller. “Someone basically giving a six-minute commercial, using nothing but charts and graphs, or other typical business type mumblings, doesn’t do much good in any setting,” Brady Street’s stylish Hi Hat Garage included. “I immediately thought the Garage would be perfect,” says Mueller of the space where PKN #1 was held in June of this year. The space offers A/V equipment, a capacity for 160, and an ambiance that most hotel conference rooms lack. The bar’s owner, Scott Johnson, whom Mueller has known personally […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Amber Herzog
I want to believe
A couple of weekends ago I painted my back landing. When I bought my house in early 2001 almost every wall was a flat white – supposedly to attract buyers – and I’ve been meaning to remedy this ever since. But time does have a way of slipping into the future and over the ensuing years my interior has devolved from boring to shabby through the hard wear only a young family can deliver. I was finally motivated to start with the hall by the relatively narrow scope of the project, seven years of little handprints that would no longer wash off and the unexpected acquisition of a cute storage cabinet rescued from my neighbors’ curb. In a fit of largesse, I also bought curtains, rugs and hanging shelves. Forty labor hours and a hundred bucks later I had the sweetest little entryway you can imagine – charming, really, in robin’s egg blue against dark wood, white and brushed stainless accessories showing off my vintage coffee pot collection to perfection. Most people enter my home through the back door, so it’s a great first impression. But now when you walk through to the kitchen, its flaws are immediately evident. Ugly, faded wallpaper peels from more than one corner, the cabinet bases are chipped, the ceiling fan is grotesque and the top of the fridge doubles as cereal box storage. The table and chairs are all wrong and there’s nowhere to put everything away. Frankly, the whole thing is a disaster and it’s making me crazy. Meanwhile, the kitchen continues to be the center of our home, piles of papers and crowded counters be damned. The peeling paper, dust in the corners and imperfect linoleum don’t seem to deter everyone from gathering there, leaving the typically tidy (and much more attractive) living room to gather dust. I’ve tried pointing out the kitchen’s flaws, but no one else seems concerned, suggesting that some well-chosen color would fix it right up. I’m less optimistic: it’s not as simple as throwing down a coat of paint when you have the organizational issues innate to an 83-year-old kitchen – a tiny, counter-less mess with (somehow) three doorways and two windows, plus ancient, energy-sucking appliances. To make any true functional improvements would cost at least a thousand bucks. And that wouldn’t even get me a dishwasher. I feel stuck. I recently opened a home equity line of credit to have my roof fixed, and there’s still plenty left to borrow on, but I’m worried about the payments. I’m not as over-extended as some people, but my apple cart could certainly tip over with a stroke or two of severely bad luck. In other words, I’m just like you, your neighbor and just about everyone else: I’m anxious about what’s still to come and have no idea how bad it’s really going to get. For now, at least, Milwaukee doesn’t have it as bad as many other cities. There’s little comfort there, I know, but at least […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Jon Anne Willow
The Faint
Despite Omaha boys The Faint’s efforts to shock on 2004’s unsubtle Wet from Birth – an overzealous, not-so-scientific take on biology – it was the popularity of a subsequent internet game (allowing haters to drop-kick the dance-punk five piece — for points!) that landed them on the cultural radar. Though the boys have shown strong stomachs in past releases in regards to, say, bodily secretions (“Fish in Womb” satisfies the gross quota here), their fifth full-length’s opener “Get Seduced” draws a clear line of disgust at tabloid mania, where “hot lights” are cast on celebrity hook-ups and cellulite snapshots can turn a pretty penny. Steady single “The Geeks Were Right,” Chopsticks-esque “Mirror Error” and mechanical “A Battle Hymn for Children” concentrate on similar culture-obsessed ground. The first imagines a world dominated by pasty-legged eggheads; the second contemplates face trading (Travolta v. Cage, anyone?); the last satirizes American children’s sense of privilege and their unrestricted access to violent playthings. After beating a few dead horses, The Faint think cross-section and bring focus to relationships and memories. Transforming a tree stump and a 12-foot-plank into a one-way transport to an alternate universe, tightly coiled “Fulcrum and Lever” draws flashbacks to terrifying 80s claymation short Inside Out Boy. “Psycho” (“Forget the words I said/I was not myself/I never really thought you were psycho“) enlists a rock bass-and-drums backbeat to create one pleasurably guilty spree – so guilty, in fact, methinks The Faint doth protest, but still check perezhilton.com as regularly we do.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Amber Herzog
Heartbeat City
Photos by Erin Landry “If you were standing in this spot 150 years ago, you might have been run over by a train.” On a cul-de-sac on the Hank Aaron State Trail – fish leaping in the Menomonee River below, the breeze carrying the scent of summer wildflowers – this interpretive sign is hard to swallow. Before its industrialization, the Menomonee Valley was a natural wild rice marsh, an almost inconceivable place to build industry. “It’s like building on oatmeal,” says Corey Zetts, Project Director for the Menomonee Valley Partners. The land was so swampy that the first rail tracks Byron Kilbourn laid sunk into the marsh overnight. But engineering and ingenuity persevered, and Kilbourn’s Milwaukee & Waukesha Railroad spent years filling the valley with earth and timber to firm up the ground. By the Civil War, the Milwaukee Road had turned the city into an agricultural and industrial powerhouse. In 1895, the Falk Corporation was established in the Valley after Herman Falk’s failing family brewery, built in the Valley in 1856, burned down. Together, Falk, the Milwaukee Road and the dozens of other breweries, stockyards, mills, packing plants and factories in the Menomonee Valley would become Milwaukee’s heart center for almost a hundred years, supplying thousands of jobs to a growing metropolis and bringing citizens from all sides of the city together in labor. But by the time sprawl and technology began to suck the wind out of the Valley’s sails after WWII, what was once a thriving channel of wilderness and wildlife was left polluted, smelly and blighted. There are stories in the Valley that exist beyond the industry triumphant/industry defeated dialectic. Natural history, of course, goes so far back as to render human history irrelevant. In Miller Park’s lot is a wall of 400 million-year-old rock – a Silurian reef, actually, dating from before the time the city was above water. And a huge part of the Valley’s story is a narrative largely omitted from our national history: the site of Miller Park was a gathering place for native tribes, who would meet during the rice harvest. At the top of that hill, the limbs of a tree are bent to point the way to the marsh. The word “Menomonee” means wild rice; when Potawatomi Bingo Casino, in 1991, chose the Menomonee Valley as the site of their development, they were choosing to return to the ancestral homeland. “The history is incredible,” says Melissa Cook, manager of the Hank Aaron State Trail, which cuts through the Valley like a vein. Her mother’s family lived on 39th and Michigan in Merrill Park; her relatives worked for Falk and the Milwaukee Road. The neighborhoods surrounding the Valley were built by investors in the railroad shops; today, they are some of the most diverse and densely populated districts in the state. The Menomonee Valley – “borrowed” from its native residents and the natural order – provided the backbone for Milwaukee’s livelihood. Now, after more than 20 years of vision, planning […]
Aug 1st, 2008 by Amy Elliott
The Melvins
The Melvins have done it again, folks. If you’re already an admirer of this legendary experimental band, which has spawned many a Cobain in its two and a half decades, this is a masterful return to the rock. If you aren’t a fanatic, but enjoy any percentage of the underground metal, alternative, hard rock, noise, punk, hardcore, post-core, ambient or art-wave bands inspired by these eternal originators, this recording is the perfect initiation to the fraternity of Melvinites. Nude With Boots is easily up there with their incredible early ‘90s string of Bullhead, Houdini, and Stoner Witch. Since that holy trinity, the band’s creativity has spread past all previous horizons (read above), but here the emphasis is on nothing but riff and impact. Lead track “The Kicking Machine” is a Zep-boogie riff with a buzz-throated vocal melody (that’s right, melody) that’s downright catchy (that’s right, catchy). Dale Cover’s drums are monstrous throughout, per usual. But he especially shines here with some nice footwork that keeps the beat firmly at the boundary of the pocket. After this opening salvo, they steer us into the noise-scape they do so well for a few songs. But they get in and get out seamlessly, and once they light into the title track, things are back at a locomotive sound and pace, slamming it all home.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
The Scenic
A few months back, SPIN ran an article on what they dubbed “emo voice” – the nasal, artless vocal style of approximately 56,000 soundalike mallpunk bands whose sense of musical history goes no further back than Saves the Day and the Promise Ring. While Victory Records has been responsible for inflicting many a tuneless warble about a relationship gone bad on the music-buying populace, they’ve baked the whitest white bread to date with The Scenic, who have to be the blandest of the bunch by far. Find Yourself Here brings all the standard junior-high target-market tropes to the table: slightly Weezerfied sensitive-boy harmonies (the opening “Lights Out” actually calls to mind Weezer’s far superior songs); that one “the guitarist is playing through a telephone” effect in the breakdowns; lyrical references to adolescent takes on love and obsession that would get normal people arrested — “I watch you from your bedroom/I’m liking what I see” (“Notice Me” — does that sound like a stalking reference to you too? Don’t people realize that MySpace stalking is safer, less obviously creepy – and legal?). Like most of these Warped Tour bands, their greatest crime isn’t that they’re untalented — it’s that they’re not particularly memorable. The Scenic could be swapped out onstage with any number of polite lip-pierced boys prepackaged for meeting Mom, and the teenage girls they’re singing to wouldn’t know the difference. Find Yourself Here advertises itself as pop-rock, but this is a boy band with guitars, O-Town learning to play instruments. The Scenic are that first group your 30-year-old friend in the good local band was in right after high school. His old band gets nostalgic wisecracks; Victory hands today’s version record deals. Dare I say it? Kids these days.
Aug 1st, 2008 by DJ Hostettler
Beck
Beck Hansen, indie/pop/rock’s most accomplished Cancer, has just created his most original – and perhaps most sophisticated – guise. From songwriting to production to subject matter, Modern Guilt has a subtlety that separates it from his other work and serves as its greatest charm, no doubt influenced by his full-on collaboration with Danger Mouse in its making. Examined next to his prolific, excellent, yet somewhat muse-on-sleeve output (which includes one of the greatest break-up albums ever, Sea Change), this one is certainly his most intangible. The funk, the folk and the sonic collage are all reserved by a measure from his norm, and it’s all the more intoxicating as a result. True, lead single “Chemtrails” does carry more than a few strains of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nelson” chemistry in it, but it also has faint touches of Brian Wilson at the apex of his powers. “Youthless” is anything but, and with the title track and “Soul of a Man,” this trinity serves as a microcosm of the entire collection; within these touchstones, he’s searching for the soul of our times – today’s “meaning of it all.” In the past, you could put on a Beck record and know, within the first few moments, what to reach for: your dance shoes, a handkerchief, perhaps even a spliff. This one has all the hallmarks of great Beck rolled into a fleeting 30 minutes, with exceptional songwriting and well-crafted production. But there’s a veiled something extra to it … within the jam, perhaps, is a gem. The fun this time around is finding it.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
Cordero
“Where are you from?” Brooklyn’s answer to Latin indie rock asks its listeners this question with its latest album, which encompasses guitarist/vocalist Ani Cordero’s own personal musings on recent misfortunes. De Donde Eres, the quartet’s latest release, sheds the band’s former bilingualism and plays for keeps with Spanish, creating a deeper authenticity and a more appropriate platform for Ani’s sweet voice, paired with soft but poignant nylon-stringed guitars, horns and keys. De Donde Eres was born from difficulty, but most of these songs are anything but contrite. “Quique” is a bouncy, feisty bass-thumping song with brassy undertones, Cordero singing call-and-response style with her male band counterparts about fiestas and “bailando” over a bubbly organ line. The album transitions into introversion with “Guardasecretos,” its lilting guitar and plaintive trumpet pairing beautifully with Cordero’s husky alto. The band doesn’t forget its indie-rock roots, churning out a boiler with “La Musica Es La Medecina” which, if sung in English, might be mistaken for early Denali. Cordero does it way better than Maura Davis ever could, though, breathing life, originality and culture into every square inch of each measure of her music, her band (including Chris Verene, formerly of The Rock*A*Teens) providing a gorgeously fitting soundtrack for Cordero’s tales of struggle and triumph. De Donde Eres is for Ani Cordero an affirmation; for her audience, it’s a testament to life’s ever-swinging pendulum, as pretty as it can be made.
Aug 1st, 2008 by Erin Wolf
