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What’s up Sorry Staters?
Another week, another newsletter, amirite? I remember feeling like I was being kind of a downer in the opening of my newsletter write-up last week. Sorry about that. I feel very much the opposite today. I feel like I’ve made some healthy choices for myself lately. But, this isn’t my journal, so y’all don’t care! Ha.
Some exciting news: Public Acid announced that we’re playing K-Town Hardcore Fest in Copenhagen in June. I’m so pumped. Last year’s K-Town was one of the best weekends my life, no joke. So yeah, I’m ready to do it all over again. I don’t even think I’ve mentioned, but Public Acid is also playing Noise Annoys in the UK in May, so the beginning of summer is lookin’ to be a good time.
I’m predicting that my line of thinking while writing this staff pick will be kinda all over the place this week. Apologies in advance. I’m kinda not picking one record specifically. Actually, I wanna begin by talking about a couple movies. If you read my staff pick last week, you’ll know I talked about The Outcasts singles collection on Radiation. In that write-up, I talked about Northern Ireland and the whole scene revolving around Good Vibrations Records. After that newsletter came out, Daniel approaches me at work and says, “Man, have you seen the Good Vibrations movie?” Of course, me being the uncultured neanderthal that I am, I had not seen it nor did I have any idea that the movie existed. That night, I watched it on streaming. And I loved it! For my money, Good Vibrations is one of the better music-related biopics I’ve seen in recent memory.
The movie mainly centers around the owner of Good Vibrations, Terri Hooley. I’ve seen so many music biopics not unlike Good Vibrations where the acting is super cringey. As opposed to like the CBGB’s movie, which comes across as so corny. It annoys me that the costuming of how people are dressed and how the actors portraying the band look while performing feels cartoony or like parody. But on the contrary, the club scene where Terri goes and sees Rudi play for the first time actually feels pretty believable! Well, maybe not, but it didn’t make me wince. It captured how uplifting and exciting it was for Hooley to discover something new. Also, the backdrop of social unrest and “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland didn’t feel too heavy-handed, but rather provided a strong sense of atmosphere, giving context for what the feeling on street was like behind the music scene. I just thought it was really well done. I recommend checking it out if you’ve never seen it.
So, I guess this will be kind of a twofer. Watching that Good Vibrations movie has been making me crave super melodic punk that puts me in good spirits. And dare I say… power pop? Oof, that term is just the kiss of death, isn’t it? I’ve used that line before. Don’t care. I always think it’s funny. Unrelated, I was revisiting my Die Kreuzen records a couple weeks ago, and randomly stumbled across this documentary on YouTube called Taking The City By Storm. The subtitle is the “birth of punk in Milwaukee’s punk scene.” I watched the movie on a whim. Funny enough, the movie cold opens with grainy footage of Die Kreuzen on tour in 1985, stranded at a hotel in the middle of nowhere with a tour van that won’t start. Very relatable haha. But this opening was a bit misleading, I’d say. I assumed a good chunk of the movie would be about hardcore. Die Kreuzen does appear in the movie of course, but the emergence of hardcore doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. If I’m being honest, I think I would probably categorize a grand majority of the bands featured in the movie as “power pop” or more underground music than straight punk.
The documentary takes the viewer way back to the vibe of the music scene in Milwaukee in 1972. The movie starts off talking about a band called Death (not to be confused with the Detroit band). As I might’ve guessed, all the members of Death met because they were fans of The Stooges. The documentary establishes Death as the catalyst for the underground music exploding. The way the narrative evolves is super interesting, stitching together key figures in the community in a manner that feels incredibly in-depth and personal. The movie talks about this guy Jerome Brish, who seems like he was a strong personality and real instigator in the music scene. A lot of the bands discussed in the movie I had never heard of, one of them being Jerome’s band In A Hot Coma. Funny enough, even before the movie mentions this, I recognized the keyboard player from In A Hot Coma. Turns out, this woman Jill Kossoris would end up leaving In A Hot Coma and become the lead singer for The Shivvers! Much like many other cities, the scene in Milwaukee seems like it was incestuous. While watching the movie, I was like “I called it!” I remember loving The Shivvers reissue on Sing Sing Records when I first heard it many years back. So needless to say, watching this documentary got me on a binge of jamming The Shivvers once again. And tying it into the Good Vibrations theme, Sing Sing also did reissues of Rudi, Protex, etc. It’s all connected, my friends.
What point am I trying to make exactly? I dunno. This is where my head’s been at with music, I suppose. So yeah, check out these movies and jam some Rudi, Protex, and The Shivvers. I highly recommend the Shivvers song “Please Stand By”. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. As always, thanks for reading.
‘Til next week,
-Jeff