Cool Eating: Rockabilly Chili Contest

College radio giant 91.7 WMSE is hosting a chili contest fundraiser in early March. I [heart] chilli and I [heart] WMSE enough to don two bumper stickers on my vehicular, so I guess I will have to attend. Plenty of local restaurants will compete including mainstays like Beans & Barely and Milwaukee Ale House, but also local favorites like the Bremen Cafe, and unknown to me's like Hotch-A-Do. The event has and admission of $6 and $1 charge for chili samples but it's for a good cause.

If you're from Milwaukee and over the age of 30, you know the only place on the FM airwaves you could get the illest in underground, above ground and unappreciated rap beats was 91.7 WMSE. First it was 'K-J the D-J' that used to come on once a week at about 12:30am (only original true masters know what night it was, I'm not giving all the gems away). I was a middle schooler back then and to catch the full broadcast I would have to set a cassette tape to record all night and position my boombox just-right next to the window to get reception. Then Mike J featuring Pitt and the Pendulum took over, they held down the time slot proper through the late 90's until, I stopped following them around the turn of the century. This fool Pitt had the only feature length "black" karate movie at the time, I wonder if you could still get it from somewhere. Now-a-days the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang carries the baton for hip-hop heads, with cameos by local legend Doc B.

Ninety-nine percent of the station's programming is non-urban music and worth supporting. You get seldom exposed glimpses of all genres from indie rock to instrumental to Lo-Fi slop rock (it's punk music with a bad show name). WMSE definitely keeps my music diet regular. Too much Daughtry and all that ganster-pop r&b mash that is served on the commercial stations can get you mentally constipated. Thanks to the internet you can tune in anytime and anywhere you can get a broadband signal. Rockabilly Chili Contest will take place Sunday March 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the Milwaukee School of Engineering Kern Center, 1245 N. Broadway in downtown Milwaukee.