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Wednesday, May 28,2008
John Sieger’s Subcontinental Revue
The Nashville that John Sieger experienced during the mid-’90s was just as many music lovers picture the city, a friendly haven for songwriting talent where hungry up-and-comers intermingle with established legends. During his time there, Sieger performed with Lucinda Williams and rubbed shoulders with Shelby Lynn. His friend lived next door to Emmylou Harris.
Sieger, who has written songs for Dwight Yoakam and The BoDeans, had some success in Nashville—he hosted a weekly night at the city’s renowned Pub of Love—but, he explains, “I wasn’t making enough money to really say I had a career in music.”
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Wednesday, May 21,2008
Warm Weather Cruise
Skipper Michael Drake sets sail
Long as anyone remembers, the Iroquois made its way along the Milwaukee River every summer, saluted by raised drawbridges on its way to the harbor. The pleasure boat Iroquois has carried generations of sightseers onto the water during the warm months. What better entertainment for the Iroquois’ first cruise of the season than a shipboard show by the No Tan Lines Band, purveying what bandleader Michael Drake calls “island music.”
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Tuesday, May 13,2008
Revisiting Tyler Traband, Milwaukee’s Piano Man
Tyler Traband’s self-released Re-issue EP is not a repackaged collection of five old tracks, but five songs rerecorded and issued for the first time in their new versions. For Traband, a pianist and prolific songwriter, the disc was an easy opportunity to showcase five old songs with his new band. “The hope was to catch the live vibe we’ve been getting,” he explains.
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Tuesday, May 6,2008
Two Sides of Waukesha
Bone Shaker does hard rock, Francesca folk
For many people, metal-influenced hard-rock belongs to the past. But Waukesha’s Bone Shaker is looking to bring it back. In the tradition of ’80s icons like Iron Maiden, the band has recultivated a sound that metal maniacs still crave.
After two years and two releases, the band has managed to land on some big stages with the scene’s heavy hitters. Performances opening for groups such as Metal Church have put them in front of large crowds, which has helped to grow their following. Band members say that sticking to the old-school formula found in the recordings of favorites like Maiden, Priest and Dio will be their ticket to acceptance from this sometimes fickle fan base.
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Tuesday, April 29,2008
Power Pop or Not?
Trolley Recalls ’60s Brit Rock
Pete Townshend coined the term “power pop” in the 1960s to describe The Who, but the phrase was forgotten for more than a decade. In the late ’70s, rock critics began applying the pithy phrase to Big Star, The Plimsouls, The Last—bands recovering the endangered verities of mid-’60s rock in three-minute testimonials to melody and harmony, two guitars, bass and drums.
Power pop never produced another Beatles but has survived as a handy marketing label for a genre of melodic rock. When one such band, Material Issue, recorded a song called “International Pop Overthrow” in the early ’90s, they intended it as an anthem for the music they loved . . .
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Wednesday, April 23,2008
Rumba and the Rest
Rumbrava’s Caribbean rhythm club
Milwaukee has been called a big small town, but it’s large enough for musicians in overlapping circles to know each other without actually playing together for decades. Such was the case with respected Latin jazz percussionist Luis Diaz and the funky pop jazz duo of Connie Grauer and Kim Zick, aka Mrs. Fun.
“When we started jamming together once a week, we commented that we’ve never collaborated after all these years,” Grauer says. And then there was a relative newcomer to town, Cuban-born cellist Ana Ruth Bermudez
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Wednesday, April 16,2008
The Lackloves’ Modern (Retro) Pop
Local Music
At this point it’s fair to recognize songwriter Mike Jarvis as an elder statesman of Milwaukee’s pop music scene. In addition to a résumé that includes time with The Blow Pops, Root Cellar, Simpleton, Chicago’s Green and three albums with The Lackloves, guitarist/vocalist Jarvis has toured Europe and Asia. The Lackloves’ latest album, Cathedral Square Park, marks a lineup shift back to the band’s original trio incarnation after spending much of its existence as a two guitars/bass/drums quartet. Drummer/vocalist Tommy Dougherty and newcomer bassist/vocalist Kevin Ponec round out the current lineup.
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Wednesday, April 9,2008
Midwest Western
The Championship embrace rural Americana
One of Bay View’s rootsiest bands has just gotten rootsier. The Championship’s 2005 debut album was a more modern exercise in Americana, firmly grounded in contemporary folk-rock and alt-country, but there’s little about the group’s rustic new album, Midnight Golden, that couldn’t have been recorded decades ago.
“We wanted to get back to that late-’60s, early-’70s, AM gold feel,” explains singer/songwriter Joe . . .
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Wednesday, April 2,2008
Danny Price and The Loose Change
Local Music
Let’s run through it one more time, then listen to the CD,” Danny Price says to his band, The Loose Change. They are practicing a set of mostly covers for a St. Patrick’s Day show at a Riverwest bar known simply as The Pub, and are trying to master a cover of a traditional song, “Sinnerman,” made popular by Nina Simone. It is an intensely soulful, rolling piece.
“When I first heard her version of ‘Sinnerman,’ there wasn’t another song I listened to for a week,” Price says. The Loose Change—Paul Setser, keyboard, Ben Rousseau, bass, Russ Nadasdy, guitar, and Ken Zanowski, drums—are crowded in Setser’s living room in his secondfloor flat. The drum set is by the couch, the keyboard by the TV and everything else somewhere in between. All the band members have a glass of wine within arm’s reach.
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Wednesday, March 26,2008
WMSE Announces New Hip-Hop Show
Plus: Atlatl and The Good Luck Joes
In recent years, DJ Aaron Wade’s “Late Night Hype Show,” 91.7 WMSE’s independent hip-hop program— by most accounts one of the longest running of its kind in the country, and certainly one of the best—had begun to feel less like a labor of love and more like a public service. Wade has often voiced his disillusionment with the state of hip-hop, and he could never muster the same affection for modern rap as he felt for the classics, so it was to great disappointment but not much surprise that he announced plans to end the show this March.
Read more...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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Top Stories
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.
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.
Consumer prices rise by largest amount in 7 months
(AP)
AP - Consumer prices rose in February by the largest amount in seven months as gasoline prices surged again and clothing costs jumped the most in nearly two decades.
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