Borgs and Ugly Sweaters

"So there was this cool cat with an autotunes guitar who went to the bar to tune his guitar... the bar tender asks if he wants a tune-a-sandwich..." If you walked in at this moment of the performance with a blindfold on you might have thought a stand up comedian voiced a futile introduction to a terrible joke. If, hypothetically, you were thinking that, with a blind fold on, you would have been wrong.

I stay tuned to 'MSE no matter the play format, and I keep hearing about this band Sleeping in the Aviary. A friend of mine during the same time period keeps hounding me about this show at the Borg Ward, for over a month she's been raving. Well, yesterday I happened to be at this place and these cool cats are tuning their guitars, and you probably can't guess who they are.

Drawing a crowd of anti-scenesters, bad sweater-wearers, beat up chucks, broken-in skull caps, some onlookers that could have been extras in Deliverance, and good old average southsiders of with their customary above average good sportsmanship, Sleeping in the Aviary mid-lined a small independent show of deadpan spaz rock brute force.

Tuning done a riff breaks out: a chorus of drum, guitar, bass, and accordion reminiscent of a 50's sock hop ditty ode, but that damn accordion is making the music so randomly today that the toe tapping of the spectators soon turns knee bopping. Next song, a little less 50's with a little more DIY alternative, and torsos start getting in the action. Before the set starts my girlfriend sees a friend of hers and his friend claims he has nothing bad to say about this band. A first time listener, I can't say that I do either. Even luckier for me my first time is live.

Midway through the show the moppy haired band member stalls by picking up where he left off earlier, "So this guy at the bar, wanted to tune his autotune guitar, was going to get something from the guy at the bar, uh... what did he get?... [pause]... [pause]... he got nothing...[crowd laughter]." His punch-line delivery, an effort to disguise a bubble machine controversy from going public, didn't keep the slow-train-wreck-like "story" of spending too much on the bubble machine that doesn't work from happening anyway. Meanwhile, the accordion player managed a wardrobe change into a 1992 Shaq Diesel Orlando Magic jersey and suddenly brandishes a saw to be chorded with a cello bow.

Bubbles spraying lightly into the crowd initially provide ambiance for a crowd member who counts the band back in for the next song. Since lightly spraying bubbles at the wall is no fun, bubbles are cranked up and aimed into the center of the light mass of town folk. The majority of said bubbles are landing on a fairly large fellow you would not expect at show of this sort on a prime Magic: The Gathering card game night. Heads on loose necks are now joining the rest of their bodies on most of the Borg clan. Even the those of southside-patented least affect are noticeably enjoying the show, although still lacking movement or affect.

Fun is contagious. This axiom proves true for Sleeping in the Aviary: a bright and motley clothed bunch who are barely mumbling one minute and screaming manically the next; a pretty sick musical ensemble (in the previous metaphorical way, which is far less sold out than in the old school snow boarder slang sense). You have to be entertaining if you get bored enough to think up a band name like Sleeping in the Aviary. I heard they might be playing in Mini-soda soon. Go see, they really don't suck that bad.

Summer Soltice Season Reprise: Pitbull Show Recap

Is it June, I mean July 19th already? I have gotten the most out of the summer outdoor (and indoor) concert / fest season while it has lasted. I was not going to post this a month later but I am anyway. It's worth sharing. I think I am still recovering from the damn Pitbull show, and I think his web managers are too. They have only posted one story since the show at Summerfest on June 28th. The show in Milwaukee was extra live, and I have seen a lot of shows in my day. Here's the recap...


Pitbull barks hard and bites harder

If it wasn't obvious what the Pitbull show was all about, something is very wrong with your cognition of body language. I was packed in tighter where I was standing than the cornucopia of glutes on stage that were stuffed into spandex thong singlets and sequined Carnaval showgirl costumes. I'll give you a hint, at fifteen rows back and ten feet off of the seating area, I could barely see the top of Pitbull's shaved dome. Did it really matter?

A true testament to a music artist’s pull is the turnout they draw on an off-night like Monday. Seriously, any day, any time, except Sunday morning, Mr. 305 could have shut the Brew down. 3/5 parts honeymoon for his latest album Rebelution, 1/5 part ode to his fans, 1/5 part charging the air with lust because he can, Pitbull early on broke into Triumph, a single-worthy anthem from his newest joint. Fans were feeling it, but they responded most to the hard tracks like Calle Ocho, Hotel Room Service and WATAGATAPITUSBERRY.

While people were loosing their minds jumping up to the song KRAZY, bouncing, popping, shaking, and thrusting without millimeters separating appendages and supplely cleaved muscle groups, Pitbull was saturating his marquee skinny tuxedo, the first of which was some kind of blackish-purple, which quickly liquefied into deep violet from repeated end-to-end gallops of the stage, weaving between booty dancers and hype-men alike that were donning head dresses of mohawked multi-colored feathers; some standing on hydraulic stilts giving them the Jar Jar Binks gait.

A set break ensued. At the crowd’s impatient beckoning, in the nick of time, Pitbull emerged through the stage lighting, starting this round in a perfectly good white tux before spitting classic cuts like Go Girl, Mentirosa, and neos like Shut It Down. Mr. 305 had intentions of mongering perspiration like that Axe commercial, as he gyrated dangerously parallel to the stage apron, caring little for the condition of his ankles, Achilles tendons or cumber bun.

Without warning there was a planned power outage, and Pitbull disappeared, only to come back on cue with the rest of his entertainment squad. What happened next can only be described as utterly ridiculous. Pitbull unleashes a cover of the LMFAO ditty Shots, and the secret to world peace is revealed, as every person in sight went absolutely AWOL, jumping in unison like newly freed South Africans.

The show mercifully ended, no one could even scream for another encore. Groups and solo exhibitionists all-the-way to the main promenade, with bloodthirsty gazes, refused to stop dancing: swaying their hips, hands waving and mouths screeching. Last I looked, from the back of the Harley area, the front areas of the stands(it had become an entity unto itself) still overflowing unfurled a Mexican flag, stubbornly cheered and pulsated in the glare of the illuminating flood lights. For all I know the party is still going on. Even Pitbull had to admit Milwaukee is KRAZY. Dale!

Soltice Season Part 1: Summerfest Shows - Public Enemy

Summerfest is the biggest thing going, in the world they say. The Milwaukee masses come together and do what they can to forget about the winter that past and the one that's coming.

I covered the PE concerts as a guest writer on MKE Wired.

Finally I'm back in the sphere... follow the link Public Enemy Wrap: Not out of the cross hairs yet.

45 minute Patterns Excercise

If you look through my school notebooks, binders and books throughout the years you'll see just about as many doodles, sketches and scribbles as notes. I've always been into street art style letter graphics. Every now and then I pick a few letters to string together in some graffiti style sketches. As my adopted artist name, Sane now appears on many of my free-time free-hands.

Wild Style is an intricate selection of colors, shapes, lines and shadows used in graffiti to produce visually stimulating pieces of art. It's like a dialect of written English, an self-taught cursive sort of speak, very much a cipher. Think tagger = padawan learner and graph artist piecing Wild Style = Jedi. I've been playing around with a archaic version of Wild Style more focused on using shapes and colors to obscure the text.

Here is the first



Wild Style is also the title of the landmark Hip - Hop culture film released in 1982. It chronicles a story of a graffiti artists named Zoro in turn of the 80's New York. Many have heard the title track of Wild Style as the intro to the seminal Nas album Illmatic but never caught that the sample was from Wild Style. It definitely serves equally as good a purpose introducing one of the most awe-striking 40 minutes of hip - hop you will ever hear. If you follow the link to the movie's website they actually have the clip from the opening scene posted with the Nas sample (navigate to the movie tab and its the third clip). This movie is also good for a interlude sample used by the Beastie Boys on Check Your Head proceeding the Maestro. The influence this movie had on other hip - hop artists doesn't stop there. I'll let you do some homework on your own.





When you watch this movie don't blame me for wanting to jump fences and climb steel girders.

Here 45 (technically 90) minute exercise number second (hint: relax your eyes). The point of this one was to draw all the interlocking empty z-shapes first and then fill them in. I'll do some time-lapse beginning, middle, end picts next time.

Really? Brew - Tang Clan

Wu - Tang Clan karaoke y'all. This past Saturday night at this spot called the Highbury in Bay View these local Milwaukee Hip - Hop heathens, using the moniker Brew - Tang Clan, played the Wu- Tang instrumentals for eager Wu - Imposters to bring the vocals to. One catch separated the real from the faulty... no lyrics on teleprompters. It was a nice touch for weeding out johnny come new Wu - enthusiasts.

Mostly ODB verses were recited... Shimmy Shimmy Ya and the Wu Forever track where ODB is screaming about sh*tting on lawns and rap souffle where requested. There was a notable rendition of the Raekwon overclassic Knuckleheadz that reminded that when you listen to that album you become invincible.

I was harassing the host to get the Liquid Swords track Duel of the Iron Mic and he came through. The DJ had to dig through the internet for that beat. I had to take my turn ripping a track. I only had the first verse down but people were definitely feeling it like the track just came out. Just goes to show some classic take time to mature. The host Dana Coppafeel actually turned out to be pretty cool. He's got his own music out and its worth of listen if your into indy Hip - Hop.

Next time it goes down I'm going to have an arsenal ready.

Airing It Out!!!

I never imagined how much fun I would have partaking in the spectacle that someone else's dream built... but I did. The US Air Guitar Championships tour made an emergency stop in Milwaukee, between jaunts to Cleveland and Minneapolis. This is serious business and the faithful die hard. Luckily the Milwaukee stop was just an exhibition thus allowing me to mime a rendition of Devo's Whip It with a couple friends (aptly dubbed the Furious Danger Purple Kangaroo Band).

Mid riff, I dashed into the crowd and managed to free a lamp shade from a rather curvy lamp, before knocking the lamp part to the floor. The prop increased the Devo affect 15 fold...

This type of outing was definitely worth the time on a Friday night. In addition to the comedy that is air guitar, I also worked myself out of breath on the air drums, as well as, the air bass and guitar. The cardio-vascular aspect relieved any guilt I did not have post performance. Bonus!!!

So I guess these two guys just started doing this one day... one is named Hot Nix Hulahan (while at the karaoke console, he personally gave me the nod of approval for the lamp shade stunt) and the other Bjorn Turoque. Thank you for bringing novelty to an participatory entertainment form that had lost its novelty. If only I remembered my camera!

I definitely plan to check out the movie. So many nations with in a nation! The US Air Guitar website has a schedule on the main page... so it may be in your town soon!