It's hard to believe that Teenage Pagans, the 12-song debut album from Appleton-based Technicolor Teeth, was made by a collection of musicians a few years out of high school. Teenage Pagans sounds confident and cohesive, as if the players...

There wasn't a name for what Mark Shurilla was doing when he started a Milwaukee band called the Electric Assholes in the mid-1970s. A couple of years later when punk rock came to town, Shurilla found a context for his inventive spoofing...

When asked what music has inspired her the most, Victoriah Banuelos, half of the sister-sister Milwaukee pop outfit Vic and Gab, answers readily: “Rush.” Victoriah isn't over the age of 35, and she isn't clueless about current independent pop...

Pop music has a natural snap to it, thanks to its youthful motivations. Nobody has done it quite as winningly as the punk legends Buzzcocks, but the Milwaukee pop group Coo Woo is game to try their hand at it. Coo Woo takes on the British...

In 1999 drummer Dave Somerscales and guitarist Jeff Callesen were informed that a band had canceled a show at Quarters. They stopped into the Riverwest bar and made the case to management to give their hastily assembled two-piece act, Floor Model, a shot on the stage. Quarters' management agreed and the band's 13-year-long (and counting) history began. Somerscales and Callesen have remained consistent members of the band since that first gig. After using three different bass players over the years....

The Extra Crispy Brass Band has a sound that is distinctly Dixie, finding inspiration from the “second line” traditional style of New Orleans jazz. “The first line was the funeral procession and the second line refers to the up-tempo brass band and dancers...

“I wanted to put a name on the forward thrust of what we're doing,” Paul Cebar says of his decision to change band names a few years ago. Except for the group he once shared with John Sieger, the R&B Cadets, he had performed under the handle of Paul Cebar...

The Florida nonprofit 1000 Friends of Florida conducted an extensive study...

Jerry Grillo has been at it long enough to call himself a veteran—even if he answered his calling as a jazz singer relatively late in life. Only after retiring from a career as a schoolteacher in 1992 was Grillo able to devote himself to his first love...

The founding fathers of Dads—Matt Chic, Tab Man and Jim Zajackowski—are active members of a specific scene composed of local punk bands. These bands play a circuit of basement shows and bars and are more devoted to parties, pizza...

If Eileen Worman's medical problems are somewhat unusual, the financial...

It's hard to turn 30. That and 60 were my troubled birthdays. The helpless dismay and self-absorption provoked by those milestones can wreak havoc on a person's hopes. Present Music turned 30 this year...

Are the '90s coming back? That's a question echoing throughout fashion and music, as some say the recession is leading Americans into a place of cultural nostalgia for a decade that, though it certainly had its ups and downs, held a clear-cut and...

Waxing nostalgic is inevitable with any reunion, and Dan Didier, drummer for lauded Milwaukee band The Promise Ring, has more than good reason to do so. “There was a...

The memorial service for Richard LaValliere on Feb. 16 gave relatives and friends an opportunity to share their thoughts about the wildly creative bassist and songwriter, the engine behind the Oil Tasters, who died recently in his Brooklyn apartment...

Whether it's called Mardi Gras or Carnival, the idea of a final blowout before the austere season of Lent has traveled widely across the world. In Armenia, the big party is called Poon Paregentan (literally, “Good Living”), and this weekend the Milwaukee celebration features the Wisconsin band MidEast Beat...

If you want to get all intellectual about it...

Though it's unlikely to ever reach the extremes of the modern rap scene, where burgeoning artists are now expected to release a constant stream of new music if they're serious about building an audience, rock music is gradually taking on some...

For months, KingHellBastard rapper DNA traveled with a video camera, compiling footage for a project he intended to call This Is Spinal Rap, a documentary about the travails and indignities of being a touring hip-hop group. It's unlikely he'll ever...

I'll never forget the band's set at the Charles Allis Art Museum on that hot summer night last July. The sunset burst through the venue's windows as if Choir Fight's immaculate presence was evidence of divine...

Huddled around the bar at the Cactus Club, the members of The Mistreaters are remarkably humble about their place in the history of Milwaukee underground music. In fact, vocalist Christreater notes, with a laugh, that the process of looking back on his band's legacy makes him “uneasy.” When pressed, Christreater will go as far as to admit that “I feel like we were a good band.” As the band gears up to play what they promise is going to be their final show and release a double LP singles collection (on guitarist Kevin Mistreater's Dusty Medical record label)...

Whether your tastes in holiday music run toward the sentimental or the grandiose...

Sometimes a picture extends so far beyond the moment it captures that it stands as an enduring metaphor. For the Milwaukee blues-soul-rock band Herman Astro...

A simple instrument anyone can pick up and play, the harmonica can also be tremendously powerful and emotionally expressive...

Dave Raeck began his migration to Milwaukee from the wilds of Germantown when clubs like Zak's and The Palms ruled the scene. Too young to get into the venues, he spoke of his dad accompanying the rock'n'roll starved teen to shows...