JOHN’S FAVORITE MILWAUKEE MUSIC
A DAY LATE
My personal relationship with the city of Milwaukee is “complicated.” I grew up in the suburbs and started going to shows around the age of 12. I spent the next decade of my life participating in Milwaukee music from a variety of vantage points. I booked shows. I played shows. I helped to put out records. I had a contrarian outlook and confused sense of ambition that sometimes put me at odds with the local DIY scene, but being involved in a music community gave my life a sense of purpose. It also led to a series of increasingly severe mental breakdowns and a disastrous viral video moment, but I don’t blame anyone but myself for any of that.
Yesterday was Milwaukee Day, a fairly new holiday that started when some heads came to the mindblowing realization that April 14th (4/14) has the same three digits as the Milwaukee area code (414). Every Milwaukee Day, I consider doing some sort of a blog post or playlist, but it never seems to happen. This year, though, things are different. I have a lot of Milwaukee music knowledge stored up in my dumbass dome. Too much, one might argue. Look, people, this list is very specific to my personal history and by no means definitive. In fact, even as I write this, I’m realizing just how much good stuff I have left untouched. Just an absurd amount. I guess I am going to have to do a second edition next year. God help us all.
When I was growing up, I was obsessed with regional dance and rap scenes. Stuff like club music in Baltimore, juke in Chicago, and hyphy in the Bay Area. I never would’ve thought Milwaukee could incubate its own signature regional sound, but it seems like the city has done it, slowly and then all at once. It’s been fun to watch from afar. “Shmackin Town” is a prime example of the lowend style in action: fast New Orleans bounce-style claps; woozy Auto-Tune; a good sense of humor. It’s party music for the screen and the club.
Seven Days Of Samsara “Live at Cleveland Fest 8/17/01”
My father had the musician Andy Silverman in his high school photography class. Silverman is not only a founding member of the band Seven Days Of Samsara but also one of the creators of Milwaukee Day. It’s not a huge city. I’ll never forget the afternoon my dad came home with a copy of the first Seven Days EP. I was listening to a lot of ska back then—I think I was 12—so their mid-tempo brand of screamo was hard to process upon first listen. But then, a little later, I saw them live at a suburban community center. It’s one of those moments that will be etched into my brain forever. Etched isn’t the right word, actually, because it’s pretty blurry. All I really remember is a lot of jump kicks. My memory is just a flurry of jump kicks.
“My Projects” looms large in Milwaukee rap lore. Though it remains the biggest rap hit that the city has ever produced, it’s far from a household tune. For a variety of reasons, Coo Coo Cal’s career never reached its full potential. Still, the track exists as a testament to the city’s long-striving rap scene; as a song, it rocks with a bit of a pan-regional feeling, its brassy stutter style somehow reminding me of both Cash Money and Ruff Ryders. Two years ago, Quality Control-signed Milwaukee rapper Lakeyah did a freestyle over a flip of the beat.
Both myself and Doom Buggy were banned from the 8th Note Cafe, a coffee shop located on the ground floor of the student union at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Why were we banned? That detail is lost to time. We also once played a show together at a Christian goth coffee shop in Decatur, Illinois. We didn’t get banned there, though I did once get kicked out of a different Christian coffee shop in Illinois—that one in Rockford. All of these shows happened before any of us turned 18. Anyway, Doom Buggy used to start and end every set by covering “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath while Willy, their guitar player, wore a motorcycle helmet with a strobe light attached to it. “No Scrubs” is not a cover. All of Doom Buggy’s original songs were named after other famous songs. It was the 2000s; maybe you had to be there.
Mildew "Live at Milwaukee Noise Fest 2010"
A long-running Milwaukee noise act helmed by two brothers, Mildew has been going for something like three decades now. Mike Mildew is a healthy participant in the Milwaukee lowend scene and a bridge between generations. The band has been responsible for plenty of legendary shows. I especially used to like it when the two would put on football helmets and charge into each other. Those shows were usually over in a few minutes.
Doormouse is a unique figure in not just Milwaukee underground music but American underground music at large. From punk gabber mayhem to breakcore experimentation to a second act in Miami as a CrossFit gym owner, I don’t think anyone else has lived the life Dan has lived. And that’s why I interviewed him for this blog in 2023. The Ed Gein-referencing “Skelechairs” ties together two famous Wisconsin exports: intense rave music and gruesome psychopaths.
Holy Shit! “Live at The Vault May 2008”
If you want a glimpse into what a Milwaukee basement show felt like in the 2000s, here is a pretty good clip. Holy Shit! came out of a storied Green Bay punk scene that centered around a venue called the Concert Cafe and a whole lot of garage rock and pop punk; just to give you a little idea of the flavor of that moment, Concert Cafe was the first place to book The Donnas outside of California. A generation of Green Bay kids moved to Milwaukee after they graduated from high school, picking up where they left off up north and opening up a punk house called Endless Nameless, which got shut down by the FBI in 2003 because of a flyer design, if you can believe that.
I already wrote about Neon Hunk for my rainbow rock post a few weeks ago, so it seems redundant to include them on this list, even though they are my favorite Milwaukee band. The duo were in a bunch of other projects around the same era, mostly garage-related in one way or another, which was kind of the spirit of the city back then. Local bands like The Mistreaters were playing early White Stripes gigs. The city’s dive bars were awash in denim. Kill-A-Watts featured Neon Hunk keyboardist Mothmaster and played fast, lo-fi punk in the Rip Off Records mold. They even put out two seven-inches on that label. We do not have time to get into that lineage.
It feels like this list is focusing on either music from my childhood or more contemporary Milwaukee rap. There’s plenty of good stuff that I’m skipping; I’m sad I’m not able to throw on a 2010 tune, for instance—“All Night Long” by Sat. Nite Duets comes to mind—but it’s hard not to prioritize a lowend flip of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That’s just my burden as a music blogger.
The Promise Ring “We Did Ever We Meet”
The “listening station” is one element of record store culture that is maybe lost to the ages. I remember being at Atomic Records on Milwaukee’s East Side, strapping on some headphones, and pressing play on the first song on The Promise Ring record Very Emergency. It was a crisp Milwaukee autumn day and I had recently turned 12. A little while later, I copped Nothing Feels Good, the true classic Promise Ring release, from a CD store near my place in the suburbs. That record is the highwater mark of second-wave emo, and I’m not just saying that because the band are hometown heroes. A show I saw when I was 14: The Promise Ring, Alkaline Trio, and The Dismemberment Plan. Pretty decent triple bill.
Citizen King “Better Days (And The Bottom Drops Out)”
“Better Days” was an actual hit single, a song big enough that I have had people from outside the city tell me they know it, and they know that Citizen King is from Milwaukee. My friend Kyle referred to it as “that fake Sublime song.” In 1999, it hit number 25 on the Billboard charts. The band’s major label debut, which I bought the day it came out at Atomic, is a mind-blowing display of fake Dust Brothers-isms. It’s ripe for rediscovery by some breakbeat-crazed Zoomer. Citizen King’s DJ now plays at Packer’s games. That’s a dream job right there.
Midnight Reruns "There’s An Animal Upstairs"
Regular readers of the blog know that I am a big Graham Hunt booster. Now that I think about it, his music doesn’t not sit in a place somewhere between the breakbeat pop of Citizen King and the earnest anthems of The Promise Ring. His recent records sound like an alternate reality version of an artist I maybe would’ve bought a CD from at Atomic in 1999. “Canadian Summer” is a song by Graham’s old, underrated Milwaukee power pop unit Midnight Reruns. To give you an idea of its overall vibe, Tommy Stinson produced the song.
Mariboy Mula Mar "David Gruber"
I would assume that every mid-sized American city has a handful of celebrity lawyers, the kind that blanket the town in billboards and local television spots. David Gruber is a certified Milwaukee legend. His tagline: “One call, that’s all.” The man deserves a song dedicated to him, and he has been properly immortalized by Mariboy Mula Mar. “David Gruber” is one of the catchiest Milwaukee rap tunes of the past five years. It does justice to a man who already has one of the greatest local ad campaigns in Milwaukee history.
Die Kreuzen “Live on Public Access TV 1983”
It’s hard to know how canonical to get here. I’m not not a fan, but I don’t really have any history with The Violent Femmes, so the most famous Milwaukee band of all time is omitted from this very important list. Speaking of important: Die Kreuzen is the most important hardcore band in Wisconsin history. Their early jagged records are eternal, their later records confusing in the best possible way. I’m excited for my friend Sahan’s book about the group that’s dropping in August. Doom Buggy member Willy D was in a band with Die Kreuzen member Keith Brammer when he was in high school; Keith must’ve been close to 20 years older than him at the time. Willy and I were in a grunge cover duo called Body Jazz, among other projects, past and present.
2000s high school heroes Terrior Bute wore white jumpsuits adorned with tap lights and played an urgent style of synth-punk not unlike Devo or The Screamers. They put out records on Vicious Pop, a label run by my former roommate, who also released some Baltimore club 12 inches and the sole vinyl document from the art collective Paper Rad. The clip for “Little Albert” was shot in another basement in Riverwest. I’m glad some of these younger rap kids have been throwing basement shows. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The beat goes on.
Certified Trapper “Trapper Of The Year”
We started in the present tense, and that’s how we are going to fade out. Certified Trapper’s singular, almost outsider take on clap-driven Southern rap seems to have served as the conduit for a whole new wave of Milwaukee dance rap. Look, what I’m about to say here is more than sort of wack, but I don’t think it’s altogether wrong: Certified Trapper is the Velvet Underground of lowend music. And with that questionable sentence, I will be ending this year’s look back at some of my favorite Milwaukee music.
//Machine That Flashes\\