Milwaukee Musings

Milwaukee is still a place where you can encounter guys on the street who look like secondary characters from a Fassbender film from the late 1970s - on Brady Street, on Locust. It speaks to a certain kind of wonderful freedom still present in the city.

WMSE 91.7FM is a formidable radio station. Randomly in the car at 91.7 over three days in the city, I heard: swamp rock psychedelia, gothic new wave maybe contemporary or maybe from 35 years ago, intoxicating slow jams on the Saturday afternoon Boogie Bang & Dewey's Sunday morning show featuring an audience-member recorded Benny Goodman concert from the 1930s and I recalled how Dewey's voice and his music curation defined my Sunday mornings for the decade of the 1990s. And the man persists, still conjuring wonder from stacks of vinyl scavenged from bins spanning the continent, I imagine.

FAUST DRUM CENTER, and its haunting allusions to the idea of selling one's soul in order to be able to play like John Bonham or Neil Pert, may be no more on Kinnickinnick Ave, but the street possesses a heady density of vintage clothing, furniture and record stores. Just walking by the vitrines, one feels less depressed...