Back in the late 1970s punk rock and prog rock seemed as opposite as the architecture of the Bauhaus and the Baroque. For punks, progressive was code for pretentious bombast; for progheads, punks were no-talent poseurs.

The idea of punk rock as an antidote to bloated, spectacle-ridden rock 'n' roll has become a standard trope in many versions of popular music history. This stripped-down, simplistic style of play, conventional wisdom tells us, came along to cure the perceived excesses of classic rock and rid the world of the fashion-first consciousness of pop.

Hair metal is viewed in many ways: Reverence, distaste, obsession, incredulity and even humor are all evoked in descriptive commentary by crit ics and fans who debate the genre. No mat ter what your take on it, though, metal is still alive and well. With a mission state ment that is geared toward injecting "new" into "old school," Milwaukee's Bone Shaker is one of the genre's biggest local proponents.

Hair metal is viewed in many ways: Reverence, distaste, obsession, incredulity and even humor are all evoked in descriptive commentary by critics and fans who debate the genre. No matter what your take on it, though, metal is still alive and well. With a mission statement that is geared toward injecting "new" into "old school," Milwaukee's Bone Shaker is one of the genre's biggest local proponents. The band has toured relentlessly since forming in 2006. Bookings picked up particularly after their well-received debut, 13 Ghosts, and they've since played large stages supporting bigger-name acts throughout the Midwest . . .

When he lived in Milwaukee, guitarist Jason Seed was often thought of as a jazz musician, probably because he was often seen at the Estate club on the city's East Side. But one listen to his music and any one label begins to sound tiny, incapable of encompassing the sonic space Seed inhabits. "So, basically, genre be damned," says Seed, who now mostly splits his time between Chicago and Austin but returns to Milwaukee periodically to gig and record. He calls his music "rockdixiefunkinjazzgypsyclassicadelitango" and that only begins to describe . . .

It was raining Monday morning when Radio Milwaukee 88.9's airwaves broadcast a solemn set of music, with a somber Scott Mullins hosting at an unusual time slot. Milwaukee awakened with the hard truth that DJ Rock Dee, born July 27, 1968, had passed away. Though known most recently as a DJ for Radio Milwaukee, Rock Dee had deep ties to the city's hip-hop scene. This is a tribute to him, a story told by just some of those he knew and loved. Hip-hop was our way of life. It wasn't about the dollars; it was about the love for the music. -Doctor B, owner of the Scratch Pad, one of the first sources for hip-hop records in Milwaukee, and a famed local DJ who mentored Rock . . .

Mike Mangione wanted out of his comfort zone. That's why he left Milwaukee-his home for almost four years now-and spent two weeks in early 2007 living in a hotel in Lexington, Ky. At nearby Shangri-la Productions, he recorded Tenebrae, a stirring, brutally personal and critically acclaimed record that takes emotional cues from such albums as Peter Gabriel's Us and Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind.

Today’s bands need a hook. The hook could be a number of things—novel influences, Halloween masks, a highly publicized substance abuse problem, whatever—but they’ve got to have some panache and an inimitable shtick. The Daniel Nathan Band has both. The Milwaukee-based band is a self described psychedelic soul trio, its tunes undeniably inspired by the ’70s and stewed in Southern blues. It’s not the well-crafted songs or Nathan’s mannish boy vocals that make the boldest first impression. Instead it’s what Nathan calls the band’s “procedural weapon”: his flute, “the psycho flute.”

A cautious optimism has permeated Milwaukee’s once demoralized music scene. As local bands—through a mix of talent, vision and, perhaps most importantly, strategic self-promotion—begin to make a name for themselves and as radio stations and print publications make a more visible effort to cover the local scene, there’s an increasing sense that Milwaukee musicians may now actually have a shot at national exposure. That feeling is certainly driving The Heavyheads.

Alongside the sounds of copy machines churning out paper and staplers crunching zines together, the first Milwaukee Zine Fest will feature three free music shows with 18 local and touring bands. The majority are punk bands, rounded out by some acoustic, hip-hop and indie rock groups. Zine fest coordinator Jessica Bublitz and Corey Baumann, of local band Louis Tully, organized the shows. “Almost all the bands had an immediate interest,” Bublitz says. “We’re hoping this gives people attending from . . .

Since 1998, the Garfield Avenue Festival has shined a spotlight on local music while dishing out some of the best soul food in the city. After modest beginnings as a blues festival, the free event has grown each year, offering more food vendors, more street performers, more visual artists, more activities and demonstrations for young children and more music. The festival, which runs from noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 19 on Garfield Avenue between 4th and 7th streets, now attracts about 15,000 people a year . . .

It’s been said that desperate times produce desperate music, and the current scene in Milwaukee would appear to bear this out. Bands such as Father Phoenix, Cougar Den, Pigs on Ice and Call Me Lightning are cranking out uneasy, volatile songs that provide the perfect soundtrack for our current era of anxiety. These groups, with obvious roots in the world of hardcore, have managed to craft a sound that captures the anger of punk while avoiding the generic tendencies that mark much of the genre. Simply put, these groups are innovative and exciting. It’s a rare breed of band that is able to pull off such a delicate balance, and Milwaukee is lucky to have so many of them.

A sonic screech sounds as Holy Shit! rips into their 12-minute set in the basement of a Riverwest punk house called Mint Mint Chocopocalypse. About 30 or 40 people huddle around the band, and once they get going it becomes hard to separate the band and the audience. The basement is lit by a single bare bulb. The singer flails wildly, his hair flying back and forth. There is a problem with the microphone and it constantly cuts out, leaving the image of a mute wild man screaming his head off. The music plays at breakneck speed, with one song instantly bleeding into the next.

In 1969, the band Deep Purple made history by performing Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Since then, Metallica has performed live with the San Francisco Symphony, KISS has collaborated with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and indie groups like Belle & Sebastian and The Decemberists have joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic on stage. Milwaukee adds a new chapter to the history of symphony-rock this summer with a series of four free concerts featuring live performances by The Gufs and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The beloved local band and world-renowned orchestra will join forces at Boerner Botanical Gardens at 7 p.m., June 25; the Lake Michigan . . .

Rhonda Begos keeps a full schedule, typically performing several times a week, but Summerfest is her true busy season. With each successive year, the singer has secured more and more bookings at Milwaukee’s signature music festival, and this year will be her most active yet. She’ll be performing at least nine times, doing two gigs with her R&B band, Midnight Groove, and four with the kid-themed group EROCK, in addition to appearing . . .

Like a good jellyroll, the heart of jazz is the jam. The organized spontaneity and free-spirited approach to familiar material that can ignite at a jam session has always been emblematic of the music. In healthy jazz scenes, players get together regularly to improvise with one another. Milwaukee hasn’t had a regular jazz jam in years—until last November, when a weekly session debuted on Wednesday nights at Treats, 2221 N. Humboldt Ave. There had been blues jams and jam-band jams . . .

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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 . . .

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

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.

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 . . .

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.