Friday, July 18,2008

Good Morning Editorial

milwaukee

By Anne Siegel

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Wednesday, May 28,2008

The Untimely End of the Echo Base Collective

Police shut down Walker’s Point bike co-op and performance

By Tea Krulos

On April 23, the Echo Base Collective prepared for what they thought would be a quiet Wednesday night of folk and performance groups. The 20 people who showed up had just heard a New York spoken word group, Batter Recharger, and were waiting to hear a Chicago band and the local group Dharma Bumz. Members of Dharma were loading equipment through a garage door on the side of the building when two police officers appeared. “I told them they should talk to Dave,” said Keith Armstrong, singer for the Dharma Bumz, referring to Dave Casillas, the organizer of Echo Base. “They said they already had and were already in the building.”

Thursday, May 22,2008

“Rock ’n’ Roll is in a Pretty Dire State...

An interview with Panic at the Disco’s Ryan Ross

By Evan Rytlewski

Call them Panic at the Disco 2.0. In the short time between their blockbuster debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, the band almost entirely reinvented themselves. They dropped the pointless exclamation mark from their name; they gutted their overblown, circus-themed live show, and, most importantly, they exorcized their music of almost all its emo excesses. On their recently released sophomore . . .

Tuesday, May 20,2008

Rilo Kiley’s Incidental Pop Album

By Evan Rytlewski

For every band that finds wealth, stardom and happiness after signing to a major label, there are countless others crushed by the experience. Rilo Kiley doesn’t quite fall into either camp, guitarist Blake Sennett explains. The band’s tenure on Warner Bros. has been pleasant enough—marked by friendly, helpful people and devoid of interference from calculating executives or other horrors—but, Sennett concedes, “In ways, we probably shouldn’t have made the leap to a major label. “It seemed like the next natural step, something we had to do to reach people, but I think it was probably a miscue,” Sennett adds. “I’m not going to say it was a mistake, but I’m not going to say it was … well, the opposite of a mistake.”

Wednesday, May 14,2008

Healthy Living with Laura Veirs

Online Exclusive

By Evan Rytlewski

With her acoustic guitar, Daria sunglasses and poetry-laden lyrics, Laura Veirs certainly fit the mold of a typical modern folk singer-songwriter. For her most recent album, however, Veirs broke that mold, aggressively smashing it into tiny shards. Recorded with her newly christened backing band of the same name, Saltbreakers is a sometimes fierce, rock-driven album detailing—yup, you guessed it—a break-up. Veirs is currently on the road doing solo shows behind the record, and she took some time to chat with ExpressMilwaukee from Denver in advance of her Milwaukee performance Wednesday night.

Tuesday, May 13,2008

Protestant: True Believers

By Michael Carriere

It is often taken for granted that hardcore punk is—and perhaps should be—the domain of the young. Young adulthood is a scary time for most of us, and what better way to express one’s youthful angst than by identifying with a music scene that embraces those feelings of alienation and confusion? I don’t think I would have made it through adolescence with my sanity intact without records like Black Flag’s Damaged and Minor Threat’s Out of Step. Those albums provided me with a useful outlet for my youthful rage and, perhaps more importantly, made me realize that I wasn’t the only one feeling so, well, out of step. At a time when one’s identity is incredibly unstable, any sense of community becomes paramount, and hardcore punk became the one place where I felt truly accepted.

Tuesday, May 6,2008

Music Industry 101 with Marty Willson-Piper

By Evan Rytlewski

Marty Willson-Piper takes a hands-on approach to his career these days. He keeps watch over the business dealings of his longtime band, The Church, and micromanages every aspect of his solo career and many side projects. He spends as much time behind the merch table as he can, and for the current tour behind his new album, Nightjar, he’s selling homemade EPs he burned to CD-R himself. He even designed the artwork. Of course, he honed his business acumen the hard way. “Ohhh,” he moans when considering what his life would be like had he been as involved behind the scenes during The Church’s early years. “I’d be dining at the Ritz right now!

Friday, May 2,2008

Same Hives, New Sound

Online Exclusive

By Evan Rytlewski

As Chris Dangerous tells it, The Hives formed with expiration in mind. “We always had these plans to record three of the best punk albums ever, then just break up,” the group’s drummer says. Of course, those plans changed after their single “Hate to Say I Told You So” became an international hit, making The Hives a bankable commodity—or, to put it in words the infamously self-aggrandizing group would use, one of the biggest bands in the world.

Tuesday, April 29,2008

The Intimate Confessions of Tegan and Sara

By Evan Rytlewski

Songwriters have long understood the poignancy that results from exposing their less-becoming side, but Tegan and Sara take self-disclosure to masochistic extremes. On their latest album of hyper-dramatic, uncomfortably autobiographical power-pop, The Con, the singing identical twins unabashedly cast themselves in the vilest light possible. “Sara and I both have this very self-deprecating, almost abusive way of looking at ourselves,” Tegan Quin explains. “We both feel like we can be very destructive and very pessimistic and very tortured and very weak, but in a weird way those are some of our best qualities.”

Wednesday, April 23,2008

R.I.P. Since By Man, 1999-2008

By Evan Rytlewski

After a year and a half of inactivity, the Milwaukee hardcore band Since By Man made it official, announcing plans to break up following one last show this Saturday. Band members have already begun moving on to other careers, projects and cities. That it took them months to settle on a date for their long-planned farewell show speaks volumes about how divergent their paths had become. “We still enjoyed playing together, and our shows were great,” explains singer Sam Macon, “but the writing process was becoming stressful, and we were having difficulty coming up with material for our third album. Creatively, we were growing apart.”

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Elections 2008

Obama seeks greater rein on financial institutions (AP)

AP - President Barack Obama says he wants Congress to pass legislation giving the government greater regulatory authority over financial institutions like American International Group.

Sources: Pentagon to stop forced tour extension (AP)

AP - The Army will substantially reduce use of the unpopular practice of holding troops beyond their enlistment dates and will pay $500 to those still forced to stay in the service, defense and congressional officials said Wednesday.

AIG head shares US anger of bonuses but backs them (AP)

AP - The chief executive officer of failed insurance conglomerate AIG acknowledged Wednesday that the company's multimillion-dollar bonuses were "distasteful" to many and had provoked a firestorm of wrath. "I share that anger," Edward Liddy, chairman and CEO of the American International Group Inc., said in testimony prepared for Congress.

Analysis: White House, Dems backpedaling on AIG (AP)

AP - For the first time since last fall's election, Democrats and the Obama administration are backpedaling furiously on an issue easily understood by financially strapped taxpayers: $165 million in bonuses paid out at bailed-out AIG.

Pence: Return AIG donations (Politico)

Politico - House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence is urging politicians from both parties to strongly consider returning campaign contributions from AIG.

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Going Out on a Pier to Buy A Home

Late last week, New York City went out on a limb, or a pier to be exact, to help a group of people in Queens. For almost 100 years the 17 houses on Beach 84th Street Pier were owned by the state or