Not that there was anything wrong with a post-rock duo at Summerfest’s Briggs stage. It was just odd that the Benevento Russo Duo stage was PACKED. And it wasn’t old Rush fans, or hipsters, or music nerds — it was a lot of bro-ey college and high school kids who seemed to know what they […]
June 9, 2008
Someone asked me how the Indigo Girls concert at Pridefest was last night. “Everyone was wet,” I replied. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Indigo Girls, and the thing that annoys me the most about being a big fan is how dismissive the general public is of their music because of their sexual […]
June 9, 2008
How apt. Watching Mark Kozelek in tornado weather — humid, rainy and dark — mirrored my mood inside Turner Hall. Mark Kozelek’s songs in Red House Painters and beyond colored my adolescence — and not the particularly good bits. Whenever I dealt with break-ups or deaths or mopey sadness, I played his songs. It was […]
June 4, 2008
What Mark Kozelek; Davey von Bohlen of Maritime opens When 8 p.m., Saturday, June 7 Where Turner Hall Ballroom, 1032 N. 4th St. How much $15 When I was a teenager in the Philippines, my friends and I would listen to Red House Painters songs whenever we fancied ourselves as poets. We would lie in […]
May 9, 2008
Glen Hansard leapt up on stage with just his guitar; no mic, no band, just him and his powerful voice singing “Say It To Me Now,” the way his busking character did in the movie “Once.” That set the tone for the rest of the night, where it seemed that Hansard and his partner, Markéta […]
April 27, 2008
It was like being inside a washing machine, Bay View Post, on Saturday night. People in the crowded all-ages show were swirling around the moshpit, rubbing against each other, surfing above the crowd, pogoing up and down the audience, music pounding down on the crowd in waves — first from Seven Days from Samsara, then […]
April 25, 2008
Derek Fudesco used to be the bassist of the now-defunct art-punk band Pretty Girls Make Graves. Now he’s the guitar player for The Cave Singers. It might seem like a stretch, but the leap from gut-wrenching punk rock to gut-wrenching folk music isn’t that big, he said. Over the phone from not-quite-sunny Seattle, Fudesco talks […]
April 21, 2008
I’m still picking up pieces of my brain off the ground from the Kraftwerk show. Luckily I have photos of the first two minutes: people waiting around got their first vision of Kraftwerk through the curtain. These giant shadows of human beings against a red light, for “Man Machine.” And the wall behind them said […]
April 20, 2008
Kansas-bred Mac Lethal says Milwaukee reminds him of home a lot — a fact he noted onstage both times he’s performed here with Atmosphere. “I’ve never grown up in a place with a lot of music and bands,” he said of Kansas’ music scene. “I know that here there’s a lot of gangster rap…there’s not […]
April 8, 2008
I was kind of nervous about watching the sold-out Vampire Weekend show at Turner Hall Ballroom on Saturday, mostly because I didn’t want them to let me down. There’s a lot of hype, backlash, and clothing commentary involved in the band’s coverage so far, but the bottom line is their debut is one of the […]
July 3, 2008
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