Upcoming Projects/Programs Supported by DCCAC

• Remeniscence Writing Program, Sarah White, Tues, March 31 (tonight), 7:00-8:30 p.m. Oregon Senior Center, Oregon;  Sat, April 4, 10:00-11:30 a.m. Skaalan Home, Stoughton;  Mon, April 20, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Fitchburg Senior Center, Fitchburg;  Tues, April 21, 6:00-7:30 p.m., South Madison Library, Madison—a series of writing workshops targeting seniors
• Senior Living Establishment Concerts, Dimensions in Sound, Tues, April 7, 7:00-8:00 p.m. Waunakee Manor, Waunakee;  Tues, April 21, 7:00-8:00 p.m., Skaalan Home, Stoughton;  Tues, April 28, 7:00-8:30 p.m., The Jefferson, Madison—a series of concerts in a variety of venues featuring a 15-piece big band performing dance music from the 20s to 60s
• The Wealth in Our Midst, Madison Music Collective, Joan Wildman’s Annimated Music w/ Joe Fonda (bass) & Ben Karetnick (drums), Tues, April 2, 7:30 p.m., Capitol Lakes, Madison—a concert series and lecture/film presentation celebrating creative and improvised music in Dane County

Upcoming DCCAC Meetings

• DCCAC Full Commission mtg:  Tues, April 28, 4:30 p.m. (w/ tour of campus and art collection beginning at 3:30 p.m.), Epic Systems Corporation, Verona

DCCAC Grant Recipients

Spring is here and Madison is slowly but surely coming back to life. After spending the afternoon on my porch with a PBR and a good read I’m already distracted by visions of afternoons spent with a couple of friends, a pitcher of Oberon and a sunset over the Terrace. Nothing like some good tunes on the Terrace in the summer, and having caught a sneak peak at this summer’s music lineup, we are really in for something special this year. Speaking of music at the Union, indie act the Deathset plays in the Rathskeller this Thursday evening. Preceding that will be a panel I’ll be a part of examining hipster culture and its influence on popular culture, appropriately titled “Hipster Culture: What’s It All About?”.

And while I expect it will certainly carry its share of tounge in cheek moments, it should prove to be a legitimately interesting discussion on our generation’s most prevalent counter cultures. With a smartly organized group of panelists, including the editor of local music ‘zine Emmie Bob Marshall, Context Clothing owner Ryan Huber, Crane your Swan Neck frontman Randall Luecke and good friend and Forward Music Festival partner Kyle Pfister and facilitated by the WUD’s Distinguished Lecture Series director Eric Schmidt. So slam a Sparks, throw on your Chrome bag, jump on your fixed gear bike and join us at the Memorial Union Rathskeller at 6pm Thursday March 26th.

If you want to explore the topic prior to joining us, I recommend this recent piece from Adbusters, Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization . Whether you agree with the conclusions drawn it certainly does highlight some relevant observations that few have seriously considered in context to the generalizations drawn on the culture in general and serves as a strong introduction to the context, direction and intent of this panel. For a much wryer–if not equally as enlightening–critique of hipster culture, check out Hipster Runoff , a self described blog worth blogging about. Still not convinced? Here’s a personal invitation Kanye West kindly recorded for the occassion from Paris:

Related event: Transit and Parking Commission meeting, Jan 13, 6pm. On the agenda: reconsideration of denial of fare increase.

The Madison Metro bus system, for all of it’s misgivings, is a great asset to our community and does a good job at getting riders around a pretty significant geographic region fairly efficiently. Even this morning with all of the snow on the roads my bus was only a few minutes behind schedule. But there are still a number of barriers that make me reluctant to use it as my primary mode of transportation. With Metro in the news a lot recently, between the Mayor and Metro management’s proposal to raise fairs from $1.50 to $2.00 and the ensuing battle with the Transit and Parking Commission, now is a good time to start thinking about ways to encourage more riders to use the system and work away some of that deficit. Here are some observations and suggestions for ways I would improve Metro:

• Google Transit integration. With Google setting up shop in Madison there is no reason not to integrate public transit options into the maps and directions like other cities have already done. Metro’s website, while usable, can be extremely intimidating for the uninitiated.
• More room/options for bikes. Obviously not so much a problem in the winter, but there are times in the summer when I ride into work in the morning on my bike and then, either due to poor weather or mechanical issues, would need to catch the bus home. Buses only carry two or three bikes without the option to bring them onboard, so it is questionable whether I am even be able to get a ride home unless I ditch the ride and try again the next day.
• Have a line between the airport and downtown. Seriously, how has this not already happened?
• Focus on the main arteries. To get to work on University in Middleton, the 70 goes down University for a while and then takes a diversion through a few neighborhoods before popping back out onto University Avenue maybe a half mile down. Because of this, it doubles what should be a 15 minute trip into a trip that takes as long as it takes me to ride by bike. The bus is usually empty for that portion of the ride. I’m not suggesting to neglect the neighborhoods, but rather look into bus rapid transit systems for the main arteries and a more sophisticated feeder bus system servicing the neighborhoods.
• Heat lamps. It is damn miserable waiting outside for 10 minutes for a bus to come in the negative temps. Make them solar powered, charging a battery during the day, with a button and timer on it so it isn’t running all the time.
• Make the politicians use it. I guarantee you that if more people who had the ultimate decision on what to do with Metro ditched their cars and actually used it as their primary mode of transportation that the ideas would come pretty fast.

Here at the .com I’ll be making some changes of my own.

I’ll be updating this site more regularly and more content is about to see the light of day. On your right you’ll notice a new section in the sidebar entitled “Twitter Microblog” where I’ll occupy myself with short notes and observations fed from my Twitter page. Up top, you’ll notice a new tab titled “Library” where, beginning in the next few days, you’ll find a collection of stored media and resources; a photo gallery, Google reader feed, books that I’m reading and a streaming playlist of music. I’ve kicked off the tunes with a selection of my favorites for the fall. Check it out.

LeRoi Moore passed away yesterday after complications from an ATV accident that occurred at the beginning of the summer. Just having seen the band for the first time in several years at Alpine Valley, I was eagerly wondering when I’d get to see the band in its original state again, little expecting this untimely and surprising news.

If you are interested, a fund has been created in honor of LeRoi Moore in support of charities that “reflect both his spirit and passion”.  Donations via check referencing the “Charlottesville Area Community Foundation for the LeRoi Moore Memorial Fund” may be mailed to:

Charlottesville Area Community Foundation
PO Box 1767
Charlottesville, VA 22902

Donations may also be made online by clicking here. Please make sure to reference “LeRoi Moore Memorial Fund” in the comments section if making a gift online.

• [Midwest acts will take the mic at Forward Music Fest here] (The Capital Times, 6/18/2008)
• [Neko Case, Bob Mould highlight Madison's Forward Music Festival] (The Isthmus, 6/18/2008)
• [Alesia: Fest moves Forward] (Wisconsin State Journal, 6/28/2008)
• [What's Crackin'? Think of Madison music fest as Wisconsin's own South by Southwest] (Green Bay Press-Gazette, 7/10/2008)
• [Killdozer, Neko Case, Shearwater Play Forward Fest] (Pitchfork Media, 7/17/2008)
• [Forward Music Festival Unveils Line-Up] (Express Milwaukee, 7/17/2008)
• [Jennings added as headliner for Forward Music Fest] (The Capital Times, 7/30/2008)

Full lineup and information is available on the FmF website. The festival runs September 19+20 and is an unprescendented event in Madison history with no corporate sponsorship and absurdly priced $25 tickets for early birds. Hope to see you there!

For now I’ve posted some photos from the trip. Enjoy.

[edit 8.22.2008] - check out this great piece that Mitch wrote for Jambands.com about the trip:

Priorities, Urges and Eulogies with My Morning Jacket

When My Morning Jacket released their Evil Urges Tour schedule, I was initially excited to see two shows scheduled here in Chicago to cap off their six-month tour of the Western world that will produce almost 60 shows in places like Belgium, Mexico City and Montreal. I imagined myself front row as the band relentlessly pushed the muscles in my neck to the limit song after song knowing full well that it would probably be another year before I could incur another rock and roll injury worth the pain. But instead of playing the The Vic or The Riviera like they have in the past, they will rock the historic Chicago Theatre, a venue the size of The Vic and The Riviera combined. I will wearily admit that the days of an MMJ underground are over and neither Schubas nor Fireside will ever attempt to book “America’s answer to Radiohead” again, but I feel a strange serenity surrounding their bourgeoning success.

Most people I have spoken with on this matter, fans and critics alike, acknowledge that My Morning Jacket is one of the few bands that never benefited from overwhelming hype and “put in their dues” with constant touring and an aversion to categorical recorded material. For instance, what other band could receive a 4.7 from Pitchfork and not bat an eye? In these exhausting days of new music output, so many people rely on tastemakers to navigate the scene that one small misstep can ruin decades worth of material. MMJ actually made Pitchfork irrelevant for at least one day. But, I am not ignorant to the fact that most bands worth their salt get bigger, and despite their original fan base’s unqualified resistance to this growth, the bigger a band becomes, the more flexibility it acquires.

This flexibility can manifest in distribution (Radiohead, NIN), exhibition (Sufjan Stevens, Dan Deacon) or, in MMJ’s case, through indulgence. Bluntly put, Evil Urges is a record of Jim James’ musical tangents. There is soul, country and futurism all on one album, a sort of culmination of every other thing they have released to date. I couldn’t predict what this album would be like, but its diverse palate does not surprise me. Make no mistake; this is still very much a MMJ album, it’s just more spread out and less consistent on its own. When the songs are integrated into the rest of their catalogue for a set list, it all makes sense; Evil Urges fills in the gaps.

As I waited for the day when tickets went on sale for the October show, I wondered what it would be like. Who would be at the show? Would it be like the Spoon show I saw a couple months ago – sponsored by Camel and full of bobo’s on their way to the bar? Or would it be populated by teenagers like the M.I.A. show or TV on the Radio’s Lollapalooza set? Whatever the crowd, I knew that I had to be there, so I went online for the presale at 10am and nothing. Sold out. Was this the beginning of the end of my casual obsession? Was I going to have to work to see my favorite band? I had considered seeing a few shows on this tour, but this fiasco demanded a strong monetary commitment, so I reevaluated how I wanted to spend my time and money during the hours of MMJ’s twilight of the niche.

MMJ is popular in Europe, but they cancelled their Z tour over there when James came down with pneumonia and only played a handful of dates in support of Okonokos. They seem to have less of a following in Europe than in the States because of it, but I know it’s only a matter of time before their appreciation turns into devotion, so my friend Wyndham and I picked out shows in Amsterdam and London and planned a trip around them. Plus, fellow fan and friend Lily FM fell in love with a Brit and moved to London, so we knew that the opportunity to see MMJ with relative ease in a small venue was upon us and we seized it with a fury.

Then, a week before I was supposed to embark on my glorious journey, things began to fall apart. I couldn’t get anyone related to the band to ensure me a spot on the media list and because of the time it would take to deliver them, my window for purchasing tickets was gone. I had a plane ticket and an assignment, but no way of executing my plan. My life was consumed with plans for this trip and I had no control whatsoever. Then I got a phone call from my mom telling me that my grandfather was in the hospital. It’s amazing how your mind can shift from one complete set of priorities to another in a matter of minutes. My grandfather was my first role model, a man devoted to his family and the root from which my entire tree grows. He gave my father his first job and put my mother through the schooling necessary that would eventually provide for my own education. His presence permeated every soul that came into contact with him and when he passed away later that week, that same transcendence manifested itself in a collective loss that affected my entire extended family.

My family is Catholic and we mourn together with the body. Some people have hesitations towards wakes, but when you grow up with it as a tradition, you realize how meaningful and helpful it is to say goodbye to the body. We pray our entire lives for our loved ones’ souls to ascend to heaven when they pass and viewing my grandfather’s body was hard, but it confirmed that the soul I lived with for 23 years departed for a better plane. I often see in the movies a person on their deathbed asking for forgiveness or proclaiming past discretions and it is portrayed as an earnest attempt at making good. But there is something calming when at the point of our demise, we have nothing left to do but move on to whatever dream we’ve been living for and there is no dramatic last wish. It’s almost like every moment was lived in truth and there is nothing left to confess, and if you do have any regrets, sins, or wishes, you take them with you into the next adventure. I do not pretend to know the state of my grandfather’s conscience, but the night before he passed, his eyes told me that everything was in order, at least in this life.

Therefore, and probably due to my previous immersion with all things MMJ, the band entered my mind for the first time since we made the hospital our second home for a week. I know that song lyrics are constantly analyzed and interpreted to mean different things for different people and they are usually completely divergent from their original context. But, as I once heard Eddie Vedder say about the song “Jeremy,” once a song is put out there the original meaning bows to the personal interpretation of each individual. Not only did he refuse to speak about the song’s meaning, but he also renounced its origin as irrelevant. So in some weird time-space ripple, I was transferred back to the summer after my senior year of college, listening to “I Will Be There When You Die,” from the Jacket’s first album, The Tennessee Fire, with my dear friend Jamie. I told her that I had a morbid fantasy of Jim James showing up at my funeral and singing this song. She explained the lyrics were conditional and told me I had better keep a straight face my entire life, which would be exhausting and unnatural. She decided she didn’t like the song because of this emotional detachment that seemed like the stereotypical male non-response to something as traumatic as death.

Not one to dismiss her insight, I thought about the meaning of the song and the many ways to interpret it, but not until I saw the strength of my dying grandfather did I learn two things: first, that applying a relative stranger’s thoughts, no matter how poetic they may be, to your own life is only acceptable if they become a part of the foundation on which you personally build through experience and education; second, that I do not want Jim James to “be there when I die,” I want my family, I want peace, I want open doors, I want God, I want the souls of the departed, I want angels, I want acceptance, I want rescued Sudanese refugees, I want the collective unconscious, I want whatever it takes to keep a straight face. And that straight face is not a lack of emotion, like Jamie suggested, but rather a reaffirmation that truth was the basis of life. Not money, fame, or television idolatry, but the sensation you get when an extra guest shows up to dinner and you have an extra chair in the closet or when you receive a gift from a person that actually listened to your ramblings. It is the merging of the unexpected and the deserved.

I left the funeral and immediately got on my flight to Amsterdam. I had reservations about leaving my family, but everyone told me that my grandfather would have it no other way. As much as I wanted to stay, I did not want to burden his soul. It felt like the right thing to do, but my glorious trip would be more reflective that I originally planned. When I landed I received an email from the band’s amazingly helpful manager, Jamie, apologizing for the delay and confirming that I was on the media list. With that taken care of, I was able see MMJ play “I Will Be There When You Die” during the encore in Amsterdam with a new sense of satisfaction. (I wrote a review of the show, which can be read in the show reviews section of this site.) I walked out of the show feeling complete, but with an urgency to sustain this completeness through whatever contribution I could make to the world. For now I write as focused as I can, but whatever tomorrow will bring, I just have to remain in the truth as my grandfather did and as James advised so eloquently, if a bit ambiguously.

Dane County Board meeting for May 22, 2008

agenda | minutes | watch

DANE COUNTY COMMITTEE MEETINGS

May 19, 2008 – May 23, 2008      

MONDAY, MAY 19, 2008

TUESDAY, MAY 20, 2008

WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 2008

THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2008

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2008

Menu:

Brat                     $1.50
Hot Dog              $1.50
Pop                     $1.50
Double Johnny   $3.00