2008
The Long Blondes
If Kate Jackson, vocalist and co-songwriter for the Long Blondes, were really the “glamorous punk” she proclaims herself to be, she’d understand that it takes time before an “out” trend can become “in” again. Still, her Sheffield, England-based five-piece insists on reconstituting what Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party did better just a few years ago. Angular post-punk guitars and new-wave synth are go-to on their sophomore release, but Jackson’s voice puts a unique stamp on the boys’-club genre. Her whimper is solid, backed by snarls from bassist Reenie Hollis and keyboardist Emma Chaplin on tracks like “Here Comes the Serious Bit,” a vivacious romp about emotionally listless hookups. But when something more exact is required (“Nostalgia,” “Century”), she wavers. The undeterred Jackson continues to challenge her larynx’s limits on drag-racing, trash can stomp “Round the Hairpin,” but in this instance, risk pays off and compliments the song’s reckless overtones. Driving the album’s relationship concept home, songs about slip-ups in fidelity and perpetually being the third wheel – “Guilt” and “The Couples,” respectively – possess peak pop danceability. Though the Blondes pointedly avoid the autobiographical in their songwriting, taking on perspectives from country bumpkin to jet-setter, they must get out of their heads and be less procedural. The Blondes think they’re clever, they think they’re smart, but they’re “just too clever by half,” says the song titled by those lyrics. Fashion lesson number two for Miz Jackson: the coolest girl in the room is always the most effortless.
Jun 1st, 2008 by Amber Herzog
The Undiscovered
By Ken Olson A door closed noisily. With a lazy start, Greg Norton woke up. Even in the dark, he squinted as he propped himself up on one elbow, listening. Had the door been one of those inside his apartment? Or even the front door? It took him a moment to remember that he wasn’t home alone as he normally was. Tonight he was babysitting his best friend Gina’s son Adam. Maybe the kid had gotten up and gone to the bathroom. Only, it didn’t look like the living room light was on. If it were, he could see it under the bedroom door. Surely Adam would need to turn a light on in order to find his way to the bathroom. The layout of Gina and Adam’s apartment three floors above Greg’s, 602, was the same as his, so maybe not. Greg listened for a minute or two, waiting to hear the toilet flush, or any other sound. But after a few minutes, there was still nothing. He clicked his bedside lamp on, and the room was filled with a golden light, throwing deep, black shadows to all corners. He pushed the sheets behind him and got out of bed, picking up a T-shirt that he’d dropped onto a chair. Greg put the shirt on and stuck his head out the bedroom door. From there, he could see the rest of the apartment. The bathroom door was ajar and the light wasn’t turned on. In the living room, the fold-out bed was indeed empty. There was no one in the kitchen. “Adam?” he called, stepping toward the bathroom door. He leaned in and turned on the white light. Nobody there. He rushed into the living room and turned on the nearest lamp. The kid was gone. “Shit,” Greg said aloud, throwing a glance at the front door. The bolt was unlocked, and the chain was hanging loose. He’d locked them both after he’d put Adam to bed. He jogged to the front door and opened it. He called Adam’s name again, looking side to side down the pale green hall. He didn’t see anybody. “Fuck. Adam?” he called more loudly, stepping out and closing the door behind him. Greg suddenly realized that he wasn’t wearing anything on his feet, and he didn’t want to leave the apartment unlocked if he left to go looking for the kid. With another curse he returned to the apartment and put his keys in the pocket of his sweat pants. He sat on the edge of the fold-out bed and put his shoes on. While he tied them, he thought back to the previous day, Saturday, when Gina had first asked him to babysit Adam. When he’d hesitated to say yes, Gina had said, “Please? Come on, there’s no one else.” “But I don’t like kids.” Out of range for Adam to hear it of course. “It’s just for one night. I’m not leaving until seven, he goes to bed at eight, and […]
Jun 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
My Morning Jacket
For all intents and (media) purposes, My Morning Jacket is at the crucial fulcrum of their career. Thanks to a catalog consistent in its evolution, they have cred galore (from the critics to the punters) and are revered as one of the best live acts today. So it’s crucial that Evil Urges, their fifth studio full-length, is the one that cements their status as a true American musical treasure and catapults them into the upper strata. Jim James throws down no less than four different voices within the 14 tracks. His falsetto is right on in the saccharine groove of opener “Evil Urges” and the tight, lean funk of “Highly Suspicious.” He handles the country psychedelia of “I’m Amazed” and “Thank You Too” smoothly, and he gets loud and playful on the rockers “Aluminum Park” and “Remnants.” And perhaps most gloriously, Jim evokes Nashville Skyline-era Dylan on the ascending, poignant and goddamn incredible “Librarian.” His performance throughout is simply masterful. The melodies are steeped in soul, with a nice measure of rock and roll. Lest we forget the band: the arrangements and production create the essential atmosphere for Jim to fly. Each instrument, though easily recognizable, slices and bends the air with an array of tones and rhythms that are fresh and that refresh. This recording comes at a perfect time for the rock community. It’s something all of us can put our arms around – and never let go.
Jun 1st, 2008 by Troy Butero
Pygmies in Chimayo
By Justin Burke Long before they filed for divorce late in 2004, Mr. and Mrs. Bourbon had lost their hankering for the Corriente cattle ranch. Over the last decade they had made the venture successful and had profited greatly from the growing rodeo market. In March of the following year they auctioned off the stock, equipment, and work vehicles while a realtor out of Las Vegas placed a “For Sale” sign to the left of the massive log placard that arched over the entrance and read in a deep wood-burned script: Bourbon Ranch National Corriente, Ltd. Ocate, New Mexico Mr. Bourbon moved to Phoenix where he had a girlfriend and she moved back east to be with her own people. After cleaning out and locking up the living quarters, the score of ranch hands embraced and wished each other luck before sauntering out in a dusty line of pickups. They all had plans, or at least they all claimed to have work lined up elsewhere. Everyone, that is, except Darren. Until the dissolution of the business and the dispersement of the family of co-workers he had known for the past five years, he assumed — at the age of 28 — that he would grow old on the Bourbon Ranch. Darren had imagined an unbroken destiny of outdoor work, busy hands, the daily pitting of man and beast, the surreal midnight birthings, hooves of horse and calf pounding an anxious beat along the pink earth and the whir of hemp cycling through a dry blue sky. The young man could hardly fathom an end to the monthly Saturday dinners at the Las Vegas Hotel — hearty meals courtesy of the Bourbons, chased by cold pilsners, petty gambling, shots of whiskey that fell in quality at every round, jovial boasts and fibs, and finally, with any luck, a shrugging off of desire and waking to a quiet Sunday morning with Sandy the hostess, who, for the last two years, had demanded nothing of him. All in all his ambitions were met. During the sell off, the most commonly asked question around the ranch was “What are you gonna do?” And until he turned and looked for the last time at the weathered placard towering above the “For Sale” sign, Darren still had little idea. Since they had barely spent a sober moment together and though she had offered respite, he was wary of imposing upon his goodtime girlfriend in Las Vegas. A mother and sister in Oklahoma held no interest for him. But he did have an open invite from an old school friend living in Chimayó and thought he’d pay him a visit—Tricky Nick, currently managing properties and as always, selling marijuana on the side. Without enthusiasm Darren made up his mind and throttled his old S-10 outside of the gate, kicking up dried sprigs of chamisa on his way out. “No, Bro. You can have it,” said Nick as he jarred the entry door, rattling the length of the […]
Jun 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Abigail Washburn
When one thinks of bluegrass and old-time mountain music, the mountain range that typically comes to mind is the Appalachians. Abigail Washburn, though, doesn’t care much to stay planted in Bluegrass’s accepted Olympia. Instead, she creates a musical Pangaea, merging the Appalachians with the Qinling or Wudang Mountains of China. Washburn, an experienced claw-hammer banjo player schooled in the classical style of bluegrass, has effortlessly morphed her musical training with another interest: the language and culture of China. A visit as a freshman in college introduced Washburn to a world full of challenges, stories and uncovered beauty. Fascinated, she devoted her time to learning about Chinese culture and the Mandarin language. A newbie to bluegrass at the time, she decided ‘for kicks’ to translate a Gillian Welch song into Mandarin. A recording fell into the right hands, and the rest fell into place. With bandmates Béla Fleck (who also produced her new album), Ben Sollee and Casey Driessen, Abigail and her Sparrow Quartet combine resonant Americana tones with tales told in Mandarin and English to form a baffling study of what you might call ‘globalization.’ “What I am trying to do is capture what it is like to be caught between two cultures … it’s like being a bridge,” said Washburn in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet is a lively showcase of each musician’s incomparable talent, as well as Washburn’s great voice, as engaging in her natural alto as in her falsetto soprano. Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet is definitively atypical – a promise, perhaps, not only of the vitality of American musical history, but of a new chapter in a dynamic book of stories told in many languages across the globe.
Jun 1st, 2008 by Erin Wolf
The smell of fresh water
This short story was a finalist in VITAL Source's 2008 fiction contest.
Jun 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
The Phreaks
By Ken Brosky I knew this guy, babe, he could do things with his mouth you ain’t never seen. And I ain’t talking about sex here, all right? All right? Get your head out of the gutter and listen to me, because this is a story that’s gonna blow your mind. There was a guy named Steve who called himself Nines and a guy named Simon who called himself Case. And they were both Phreaks — not the kind we used to make fun of back in high school, not those freaks. I’m talking about Phreaks, babe: phone hackers. Guys who could work the phone system like a clitoris. They could do things that weren’t even supposed to be possible. Getting free calls was just the beginning for these guys, babe. Let me start with Nines, because Nines was the godfather of them all. Nines didn’t really start the whole idea of phone hacking, I don’t think, because there’s no way to tell who really first started hacking phones, you know? But Nines was something incredible, and he knew it and he flaunted it. What did he do? I’ll tell you what he fucking did. He whistled. It all started in the 1960s, when Cap’n Crunch cereal included a free toy whistle in every box. The whistle just so happened to produce a 2600hz tone, which is the exact same tone that AT&T used as a steady signal for unused long-distance lines. Bear with me, babe, bear with me. I’m gonna explain this so even you understand it and appreciate it. What happened was someone figured out that by dialing a number and blowing the whistle into the phone, the phone company was tricked into assuming that the line wasn’t being used. After you blew the whistle, you could call anyone in the world for free. You get it, babe? We’re talking free phone calls anywhere in the world, just by blowing that whistle into the phone. Think of AT&T Bell as a big fat bitch—she’s tough to get by, but she’s gotta have a sweet tooth of some kind. You get it? Good, so get this: Nines taught himself to whistle that tone. Not only did he match the 2600hz pitch, he could whistle all of the tones for each of the numbers, which made it even easier to dial free long-distance anywhere. It started as a parlor trick, something he could do at college parties to get free beer or to get laid. Hey, how bad could that have been? Sure the guy was ugly as hell, but those long-distance bills to the parents could put a dent in the drinking money. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t consider it, babe — three minutes of sex with the lights out in exchange for a free half hour of family talk? Hell, I’d consider too, back in those days when there weren’t any cell phones and shit. We’ll get back to the sex, because the sex turns out to be […]
Jun 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Chickens
By Craig Reinbold It was already mostly bone when he found it, the rooster, white ends picked clean, marrow exposed, sucked dry, bone still stuck here and there with pieces of feather, little strings of meat. The head was untouched, preserved, pristine, except for the eyes, which had been eaten. Chickens will eat their own, once it’s dead, if it’s left, if it’s not cleaned, not disposed of. It had been there for days. He only found it then because she had driven off that morning and in the new quiet he had heard them—and remembered it had been a week since they’d been fed. That was the morning. Now it’s night, a Friday in August. The air is warm, the sky is clear, and at this time, this far out from the city, there is nothing to do. He sits at the edge of the patio behind their house, a glass with more whisky than coke on the concrete beneath his hand. His feet kick at the dirt that will still someday—he hopes—be grass. He listens for something, but there is nothing to listen for and he knows that — this is what he wanted. To live next to nothing, and in doing so to have everything. That was the idea, his idea. The chickens had been hers. He can barely hear them now, all their squawking, though there are a dozen of them twenty feet from the house, cooped up. He thinks of sleeping, but doesn’t want to move. Stars, stars, trees, and darkness, and nothing in the world to do. He wonders when she will come home. * They drove his Civic out to the lot on a Sunday so Sarah could see the land before they made it theirs. Forty minutes on the freeway, twenty more on small roads past land separated by wires and fences. It was being offered cheap. The owners were an old retired couple. One had died, the other was put in a home. They had lived there less than a year. The house was almost new, but none of their family wanted to live that far out, better to sell it quick, get what they could for it. The mailbox was one of those big specialty mailboxes, painted with a muscular bass splashing out of green water, an oversized hook caught in its lip. The driveway was unpaved and lined on either side by a row of small pines. They parked the car, stepped out onto the gravel. Some small deciduous trees, it was hard to tell what kind exactly, were scattered around the yard. “Someday these trees are going to be big.” “Where’s the grass, George?” “He said the yard needed some work.” She surveyed their potential land. “Is the house at least finished?” “He said it’s in perfect shape.” They looked towards the single-story saltbox house at the bottom of the driveway, light-blue, with a black shingled rooftop. “The yard’s why we can get it so cheap.” “Right.” He […]
Jun 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
VITAL’s 2008 Farmer’s Market Guide
By Amy Elliott & Lindsey Huster The big city grind is tough in the summer. It’s hot, smoggy and crowded. Whole city blocks are periodically shut down for sticky parties and loud, smelly rock shows. Most of us keep our day jobs for the season and then act like we don’t have anywhere to be in the morning. It wears a person out. For a break – an idyll in the heart of the city, or a day-trip to sleepier regions – consider a trip to your friendly neighborhood farmer’s market (or some other neighborhood’s friendly farmer’s market). Replenish yourself with a stroll through the flowers, fresh herbs and handcrafts; some markets even feature cooking demonstrations, live music and – thank God – coffee. Stock up on fresh, locally-grown fruits and vegetables, conscionable meats and cage-free eggs, and the best cheeses, preserves and honey you’ll ever taste. Not only will you and yours be healthy, well-nourished and ready to take on the summer – you’ll enjoy connecting to your community, relaxing in the sun and refreshing your soul. Brown Deer Farmers Market 43rd St. and Bradley Road 9 am – 6 pm, Wednesdays through October. Annuals and perennials, produce and herbs. 414-354-6923. Brookfield Farmers Market City Hall, 2000 N Calhoun Rd 7:30 a.m. – noon, Saturdays through October. Annuals, perennials, fruits and vegetables, Piedmontese beef, cut flowers, maple syrup, chickens, eggs, bison meat, baked goods, dried floral, garden art and much more. Weekly entertainment and demonstrations. Monthly Market and More event featuring handcrafted items. 262-784-7804 or brookfieldfarmersmarket.com. Burlington Farmers Market Wehmoff Square, Burlington. 3 pm – 7 pm, Thursdays, June 5 – November 20. 262-210-6360 Cudahy Farmers Market 4723 S. Packard Ave., Cudahy 10 am – 4 pm, Fridays through October 31. Locally grown and produced baked goods, fresh produce, honey, flowers, plants, crafts and more. 414-769-7799 Delafield Farmers Market Fish Hatchery parking lot, 514 W. Main St. 7 am – 1 pm, Saturdays through October. This producer-only market features locally grown vegetables, fruits, herbs, honey, cider, fresh and dried flowers, annual bedding and perennial plants, ironworks, homespun woolen yarns and handcrafted items by local artisans. 262-968-4471. East Side Open Market Beans and Barley Parking lot, 1901 E. North Ave. Thursdays 3 pm – 7 pm, June 12 – October 9. Produce, agricultural products, flowers, herbs, farmers, amazing artists and weekly live entertainment. 414-226-2113 or theeastside.org East Town Farmers Market Cathedral Square Park, 520 E. Wells St. 7:30 am – 12:30 pm, Saturdays through October. Fresh produce, jellies, jams, cheeses specialty foods, arts and crafts. 414-271-1416 or easttown.com. Fondy Farmers Market 2200 W. Fond du Lac Ave. 7 am – 3 pm Saturdays; 8 am -2 pm Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays; 12 pm – 6 pm Wednesdays. June 14- November 22. Regular cooking demos, prepared food, and fresh locally grown produce. 414-933-8121 or fondymarket.org Fox Point Farmers Market Stormonth School, 7300 N. Lombardy Rd. 8 am – noon, Saturdays, June 21-October 18.Wisconsin-grown fruits and vegetables, mushrooms, native plants, flowers, honey, bakery, […]
Jun 1st, 2008 by Amy Elliott
The Boys Next Door
Staging Tom Griffin’s The Boys Next Door can be a tricky endeavor. The comedy about a group of developmentally disabled men and the social worker who looks after them uses a brand of humor that doesn’t always make people feel comfortable. The audience is encouraged to laugh at the cognitively impaired not because they are strange and freakish, but because their offbeat idiosyncrasies are honest reflections of neuroses common to even the most functional among us. The key to a successful staging of the play is the delicate balance between the comedy of the individual and the comedy of disability in a way that maintains a universal level of human dignity. The Sunset Playhouse production, which opened last weekend, comes perilously close to presenting its subjects as stereotypes of mental retardation, but only in brief, fleeting moments. For the most part, this is an exquisite production of a well-written contemporary comedy. Mark Neufang plays Jack Palmer, the social worker keeping track of four men who live in a group home for the developmentally disabled. The play charts Palmer’s uneasy desire to find better, less stressful work elsewhere. Neufang has an impressive amount of nice-guy charm, but the subtleties of his character’s mounting job dissatisfaction are largely missing. However, Neufang brings more than enough compassion to the stage to make up for any other shortcomings in his performance. Scott Kopischke plays group home resident Arnold Wiggins. Wiggins is a reasonably functional individual who works at a movie theatre. Wiggins has a mildly obsessive compulsive personality that is warped by an aversion to internally consistent logic. Kopischke recently played Elwood P. Dowd in a Sunset production of Harvey. His performance here is far more accomplished. Here he shows a profound amount of humanity and a clear aptitude for performance in a larger ensemble piece peppered with a few clever stretches of monologue. Lawrence J. Lukasavage plays group home resident Norman Bulansky. Norman’s cognitive development seems to be stuck at grade school level, but he’s functional enough to hold a job at a local donut shop. This is Lukasavage’s first performance with Sunset and probably one of the few he’s had outside Off The Wall Theatre. Lukasavage takes to the new stage quite well in a brilliantly subdued performance. It’d be all too easy to simply pretend to be a child in the role of Norman, and Lukasavage gracefully avoids this in a very sympathetic performance. Kurtis Witzlsteiner plays mild schizophrenic Barry Klemper. Klemper believes himself to be a professional golfer. Probably the most functional of the four men, Klemper may be one of the trickiest roles to play. The character has to seem completely functional until a key moment when everything turns around for him. Witzlsteiner is capable at conveying the character’s emotional dynamic, but seem to lack the kind of stage experience necessary to make the role as powerful as it could be. Mario Alberts rounds out the central cast in the role of Lucien P. Smith, a profoundly impaired man […]
May 29th, 2008 by Russ Bickerstaff
A stitch in time
Woodland Pattern Book Center Devotion to Thread 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee Now – June 13 Reception: Saturday May 31, 5-9pm, with a Gallery Talk at 7 pm Photos by Faythe Levine Woodland Pattern has long been a mainstay of the Riverwest neighborhood, and over the years, it has extended its reach to include the greater Milwaukee area with programming ranging from music to workshops to art exhibits and beyond. The venerable non-profit venue is a mix of hippie, uber-hip and points between. A mural fronting the building reads “28 years of power to the people.” Frankly though, some of that power should have been used to quell the endless, booming chatter of the 20-something woman whose loud mindlessness invaded the quiet gallery where I was trying to concentrate on writing this review. Apparently, she’d just dropped by to chat up the worker behind the desk. Quiet Please! Reviewing the work of 15 artists is all but impossible, and I felt myself pulling away from examining each of the approximately 40 pieces. That changed as I circled the room. The lone work I gave a zero rating was “We Other Victorians” (Xander Marro), primarily because it was a bad fit with the other works. A quilt of sorts, with an edgy motif, the colors were heavy, and, well, depressing among the mostly pastel threads used in the balance of the work. That said, I understand it satirizes the dark creepy era of Queen Victoria, so perhaps it was included in the exhibit to add a note of contrast. Jenny Hart’s 23”x36” wall-hung wonder “Pink Forrest (Flattery plus Charm)” is, even at the lofty price of $2,300, what I most wanted to take home. Ms. Hart hails from Austin, Texas and her exquisite naughty threads stitched on sleazy orange-pink satin fabric conjure the balls-out flavor of Western kitsch. If your grandma has a really awful tourist pillow from 1940’s Texas, you’ll get my drift. Kristin Loffer Theiss from out Washington way stitched three lovely heads (perhaps family members?) in black on white material. They reminded me of loose line drawings, or threads unspooling from a bobbin gone wild. Faultless to a tee, they are marvelous in the way that Jean Cocteau’s line drawings are marvelous. Orly Cogan contributed five works, one priced sky-high at $10,000. But what a piece it and her four others are. Surely she must know the work of self-taught Chicago artist Henry Darger (you can see his scroll drawings in the Milwaukee Art Museum folk collection); if not, it’s a real coincidence that her figures resemble Mr. Darger’s “Vivians,” sweet little girls with less than sweet attitudes who now and then sprout penises. Look here at this one: a lady, quite naked, playing ring toss with her naked partner, the object being to toss the ring over his waiting penis. These are delicate sensational works, none more so than “Bittersweet Obsession” where girls snort blow and, wearing nothing but fishnets, crouch while eating cupcakes. The thread work […]
May 29th, 2008 by Stella Cretek
The Spitfire Grill
The Spitfire Grill still sparkles. The award winning musical, a reprise production from September 2002, literally glows through the book, music, and lyrics by Wisconsin natives and friends James Valcq and Fred Alley – especially on this particular Saturday night, when the four piece orchestra played under composer Valcq’s guest direction. Based on the 1996 film The Spitfire Grill by David Lee Zlotoff, first screened at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, Valcq and Alley adapted the movie to one of a small Midwestern town: Gilead, Wisconsin. This is where the young ex-convict Percy Talbot dreams of starting over and setting down deep roots, but finds little to love when she reaches Gilead’s only restaurant and discovers its few inhabitants discouraged by life. But as Percy learns to forgive what others think and say about her and how they treat her as she participates in rural living, she also learns to forgive herself for committing a crime of desperation. Overlooking a bright morning sunrise, Percy ultimately begins to believe when she sings that “A diamond of hope shines a light in this dark heart of mine.” The cast of The Spitfire Grill lives out the frustration of a bleak Wisconsin winter on the Skylight’s spare, rough-hewn set, showcasing an open staircase of timber. Yet Alley’s compassionate lyrics, set to Valcq’s lovely melodies, resonate as a paradise of color, similar to a hill of October trees, enhances the backdrop through scene changes on the stage. From the opening “A Ring Around the Moon” to the charming “Into the Frying Pan,” Valcq’s rhythms use every frying pan lid, clanking car chain and snow shovel as percussion in a perfectly-timed performance. In an exceptionally poignant moment of music, Shelby Thorpe — the young woman helping in the grill when owner Hannah breaks her leg — comforts Percy after she reveals her personal grief with the haunting “Wild Bird.” The audience remains as silent as the night woods as the vocals haunt the theater throughout much of the performance, except when down-home humor punctuates the dialogue. This profound attention focuses on a strong professional cast including Katy Blake as Percy Talbott, who at first is all bravado but settles in to the softer aspects of the role as the evening progresses. Leslie Fitzwater as Hannah Ferguson and Elizabeth Moliter as Shelby Thorpe bring touching voices to the musical harmonies, and Becky Spice creates notes of laughter with her portrayal of Effy Krayneck. Today’s audiences still applaud this tale of redemption and hope, which won the Richard Rodger’s Production Award in 2001. Alley, who died only a month before the honor was awarded, continually lives on in through this performance and all his art. The musical resonates evocatively when the lyrics, “Shoot the Moon … Life is hard and gone to soon” resound on stage. His songs speak to the simple but profound truths in life, always delivered with a smile. Since its 2001 premiere in New York, The Spitfire Grill has played continually across the […]
May 27th, 2008 by Peggy Sue Dunigan
