I saw Trapper Schoepp the first time without warning, when he was working as Trapper Schoepp and the Shades on an afternoon with absolutely no plans, early in the day and I was just wandering around Summerfest to see what I could see. They fucking blew me away, and I have been a ridiculous fan ever since, and they released ever better albums, including co-writing a sing with FUCKING BOB DYLAN.
OK, I figured it out, and we now have a completely cute and local oriented video from Trapper. Including many cameos from people you might know, and some great locations.
An earlier video is also Very Local, in that it was shot on location in my neighborhood, and a Certain Celebrity is featured, but let’s just say it’s all about Jumping to Conclusions.
Trapper lived not so far from me, on the East Side of Milwaukee. and the video above was recorded probably a block away from my house.
But I am not here to talk about a band.
What (need to talk about is noise. Noise, and joy, and community, and connections.
We lost our lives back in 2020, after I had seen a great show at a local cafe, with Jon Langford, John Szymanski, Sally Timms and Bethany Newsome, who ripped the head off my concert buddy Rory who has traveled the country seeing blues artists. And then the next weekend we saw They Might Be Giants for like the 6th time.
And then everything went black.
So I will soldier on. As I have for the past 16 months.
Summerfest was canceled. Since we moved to Milwaukee, Summerfest has been an annual target, and since becoming fully employed, we have made it a center of our summer. And suddenly it’s canceled. For many years, I have attended every day, culminating iat one point in 50 consecutive Fest days. But this isn’t happening, obviously….
We broke the seal with a show by the Mountain Goats last week and the band felt the need to get it out as did we and they played for over 2 hours. John Darnielle seemed joyous to be in the Pabst theater.
So, after a couple of health issues, I am approaching Summerfest that is more accommodating and based n the schedule, I am, for the first time in years, am not attending the first day. The legend is fading.
The schedule is kind of legendary. The biggest headliners I looked at was Weezer and Green Day, which I passed on because the tickets were more costly than I paid for Springsteen, so I felt like Maybe, no. But we have tickets for Soul Asylum, Joan Jett and GooGoo Dolls.. But the biggest headliner is, amazingly, Dave Chappelle.
The whole thing also includes Poi Dog Pondering, Drive By Truckers, Berlin, Better than Ezra, Sigmund Snopek, The Whiskeybelles, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Filter the Gufs, Living Colour, Fishbone, Dropkick Murphys, and Thurston Moore. All on a lovely 11 acre state park on the shores of a beautiful inland sea.
It will be noisy, and the Fest has established that attendees need to prove vaccination. — in the face of Delta, it’s not a full protection but at least it makes sure that as attendees, we will not be hospitalized.
But let’s be real. I have been all about music of all kinds since high school, and when I moved to Milwaukee find that there were people just as involved as me and they played in bands – I once had a friend who put in my hand a cassette from someone called Couch Potatoes, and but the time I got to Milwaukee the had to change their name to Couch Flambeau, and they became legendary because the punks hated them and the metalheads hated them and they were ridiculously loud at Gordon Park Pub. It was ugly and loud and glorious. And I then which incorporated one of their songs into my architectural model building classes which made my teacher laugh and give me an A. Not sure whether he knew the band or just like the humor.
Ever since then, I have been a live music insane addict. I have seen almost anyone you can name, most of them more than once. I have seen large names like Rush maybe six times. I have seen Genesis 4 times. I saw Cloud Cult in a crazy small club and they reconfigured my brain.
But here’s the thing.
Music in most forms, hit my brain
And music in live format, makes my brain reformat.. When I see and watch live music – and for that matter live theater– it makes all my brain feel all the feels
I cried more than once during the Mountain Goats show.
we danced and me danced our dance our selves.
And we will dance on the shores of the Mighty Lake Michigan, and then we will be dancing in Turkey, and we will dance and enjoy insane food and coffee.
And if I ever figure out how WordPress works, I will make more entertaining posts.
I promise.
Unless I end up in the hospital again.
Empire Of The Senseless 