Following a weeklong escape to northern Ontario, it’s good to be back in the City of Festivals as the summer winds down. Of course, the most notorious festival event of the past weekend was probably King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Field of Vision II, held in Meadow Creek, Colorado, and six months ago I probably would’ve told you that’s the place I would’ve most wanted to be, but my enthusiasm for the band has rapidly cooled, culminating in the surprise release of a new album this past Friday called ALIEN METAL. It features supremely badass cover art, and…super generic electronic music. It gives major Tame Impala DEADBEAT vibes, artists so assured of hype no matter what they do, they’re not even trying. Or you could make a comparison to modern Phish, still (until the past couple years anyway) pumping out new music, but it mostly sucks, and all anybody cares about is the live show.
Except Gizzard don’t really play many shows any more, either. While the band publicly rejects being lumped in with jambands, forcing fans to trek to a camping weekend in Colorado is the wookiest move possible, a sharp turnaround from last year’s very underwhelming orchestral tour. Worse, if reddit is any indication of reality, this festival will be remembered primarily for rampant public pooping, the most popular discussion topic regarding FoVII currently. Whether it’s cyclospora to blame or just the continued degradation of wook culture, I’m feeling very relieved (sorry) that I got my camping-festival urges out of the way before we hit the indiscriminate-shitting era. Not that it’s only wooks pooping in the pit lately! I fear this pervasive idea of FOMO has gotten impressionable young festival-goers a bit mixed up, so in case any are reading this: you can still hear the music from the porta-potties, and nobody’s ever gonna know you weren’t moshing during the techno version of “Hog-Calling Contest” or whatever. Get out of there if you have to poop. And not via crowd-surfing! What is wrong with you??
Nothing like this ever happens at Irish Fest thank goodness. The annual lakefront celebration is always one of my favorite Milwaukee things and this year was no exception. It’s always good to start the day with the Trinity Irish Dancers, and if you don’t get your fill there, rest assured that there’ll be dancers onstage with half the musical acts you’ll see the rest of the evening. I was inundated with Irish MUSIC as a child, but America killed the dance impulse in my ancestors, apparently; it took decades for me to realize that anything besides standing still or attempting to clap in time was socially acceptable in public. For most Irish people, dancing is as natural as humming a tune—JUST DON’T MOVE YOUR ARMS hahaha.
We also discovered that Irish Fest already offered more N/A drink options than Summerfest, and I hope Summerfest picks up on the trend for next year. Also, I got a handheld shepherd’s pie from one of the vendors on the main thoroughfare that was tastier and a better value than anything I’ve EVER eaten at Summerfest. It seems Jameson has bullied away all the other whiskeys, sadly, and you STILL can’t get a FUCKING GUINNESS at Irish Fest, but these are my only culinary complaints.
As for the music, we decided to try and check out some of the most-hyped acts. Ally The Piper seemed to be a good bet, although if I’d done a little more research, I would’ve discovered that “social media personality” is a primary element of her identity and thus I’m probably not gonna be bowled over. Not that Ally’s just some novelty act; yes, her bagpipe rendition of “Crazy Train” was the highlight of the set, but she’s an absolute marvel on the instrument. Unfortunately her guitar player seemed to just pluck random riffs from the Buckethead catalog and claim them as his own, making most of Ally’s original songs sound painfully unoriginal. I’d love to see her play on her own some time, or with musicians more suited to accompany bagpipes, and I could also do without the self-serving toxic-positivity banter.
We departed Ally’s set early to check out Tommy Sands, whom I’m now embarrassed not to have been familiar with previously. The 80-year-old Northern Irish folk singer doesn’t make it across the pond very often these days; he’s not a household name, but when you mention to someone that his most famous song is “There Were Roses” they usually go “Ahhh” or “Ohhh” in recognition because almost anyone born in the 1900s has heard a version of it or else read it as a poem somewhere. He’s known as much for his political activism as for his music, having played a crucial role in peace processes in Ireland and beyond, his rhetoric a far cry from the hard-line exclusionary bullshit we have to suffer through constantly in this country. His stories were as moving as his songs; in particular I found it inspiring when he talked about democracy versus majoritarianism and illustrated how lasting peace is never achieved until opposing sides come together in a spirit of unity. As he sang and spoke, it was impossible to imagine him in a state of anger or violence, yet he’s accomplished more good in his lifetime through purely peaceful means than any politician or celebrity alive. It was good to be reminded how powerful a simple folk song can be. I was not able to fight back tears.
Then it was time for Biird, an all-woman group I’d actually read about previously. Supposedly ‘controversial’ in the trad realm, the articles I’d read (mostly in British publications) focused on their gender and clothes, so I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be anything actually outlandish about them and I was right. Biird is “trad” in the sense that the Avett Brothers are “bluegrass”; traditional instruments and occasional dalliances in legit old-timey music, but it’s a modern band playing modern-sounding music and doing a superb job of it, although you wouldn’t know it from the small, lifeless crowd assembled at Irish Fest. I’ve been going to this festival for many years and the crowds Friday seemed positively funereal for some unknown reason; it was a gorgeous evening, the beer and whiskey were presumably flowing, the music was hot and the audience sat there like stumps. This is a group that toured with Ed Sheeran last year; I honestly thought Milwaukee would show up for this, and maybe it was more packed Saturday, but if not I can’t imagine them agreeing to return to Irish Fest after such a lackluster reception.
I suppose this is why Irish Fest struggles to book the actual tastemakers in Irish music; Milwaukee is just too small for niche talents to thrive. We have to draw from the suburbs and surrounding areas to entice a crowd, and those folks only come to Irish Fest to show off their green clothing and/or see Gaelic Storm. We city folk, meanwhile, don’t need to spend big bucks on corporate festivals when we usually have something going on within walking distance for free all summer, and I suspect the relative expense of FUCKING EVERYTHING these days bit into Irish Fest (as well as Summerfest) attendance this year. Meanwhile, Center Street Daze was hoppin’ on Saturday despite forecasts of two-inch rainfalls all week. It was instead hot and sunny except when a light mist fell for about ten minutes late in the day, which surprised nobody except the meteorologists.
I got down there in time to catch the Andrew Trim Trio, a masterful set of wide-ranging jazz and jazz-inflected music. The Jazz Gallery had quite the setup for its outdoor stage; special kudos go to the sound engineer, who had the notoriously difficult 12-piece Group of the Altos dialed in about as perfectly as I’ve ever heard them. As usual, Altos didn’t play any material they’ve actually released, so even as husband of the bari sax player I can’t single out any song titles, but that one where everything deliberately collapses multiple times and then restarts, they’ve been playing it for years and it’s never sounded quite right until this performance, and there were a couple other songs whose arrangements have been slightly tweaked and significantly improved since last time I saw them as well.
I also managed to catch Harvard, Illinois’ Peach Vomit on the Quarters stage in between, and they became my new favorite current punk band (only because I so rarely go to punk shows any more, but still). I’d never heard of them before but glancing through their bandcamp page I can definitely say “Rock N Roll Birth Control” and “Fast Pants/Anal Probe” were highlights of their set, as well as “Jurrassic [sic] Dead”, during which we were all commanded to ugly-dance as if we were zombie dinosaurs. I’m still kicking myself for not getting down there earlier to catch more of the loud/fast stuff at Quarters. I’m also bummed to have missed DJ Xtra Large with Coo Coo Cal—did Cal actually show up? If so, he must’ve done a really short set; I only ask because the sign outside Diaspora didn’t actually have his name on it so maybe he canceled, I’m not sure.
As the outdoor activities were starting to wind down I made my way to the west end of Center Street, where I found out reggae nightclub Timbuktu now serves food? They just apparently don’t want anyone on the internet to find out about it? I had the jerk chicken eggrolls which were delicious, and there was a bunch of other stuff on the menu that looked very enticing, but their social media accounts haven’t been updated in years and a google search yields no website or menu, except at a site called “places.singleplatform.com” which I definitely can’t vouch for, so maybe you just have to pop in and hope for the best. In any case, Tony “TNT” Washington And His Explosive Divas played a lively set of funk and R&B classics while I waited for my food and made friends with dogs.
The main event wrapped up at 7, but music continued on into the night at the various venues along the five-block stretch. Things were slow to get going at Quarters so I popped into High Dive, where I’m pretty sure LoBi and the Big Sleep were playing. A small crowd trickled in for some lo-fi indie rock; I definitely enjoyed their arrangement of Bill Withers’ “Just The Two Of Us”. Then I checked back at Quarters but there was still no music happening, so Bar Centro it was. With The Estate having sadly closed, this is becoming my favorite jazz club around; you walk in and instantly feel transported by the vintage cocktail-lounge atmosphere. The nine-piece Big Style Brass Band was appropriately ramshackle and joyful for a New Orleans-style party, and I particularly enjoyed their arrangement of Bill Withers’ “Just The Two Of Us”.
Aaaand I was spent. I was hoping to pull off a weekend trifecta and make it to Wisconsin State Fair but that doesn’t really count as a festival (and it’s in West Allis anyway, the City of…Dirt?). But summer’s not over; we’ve still got Mexican Fiesta and WMSE’s Backyard BBQ coming up this weekend, Bay View Bash on September 19th, and, um, apparently nothing at all those weekends in between, weird. Anyway I’m sure I’ll see some of you outdoors yet before we all go back into hibernation in October!