The Scarring Party

I met Isa Carini at a roller derby tournament. I immediately recognized her as the dress-wearing, tuba and trumpet and whatever else playing femme fatal of the Scarring Party. I tried to be coy. She was selling cigars, jewelry and PBR tallboys. I bought several pieces of jewelry. I asked her if I could watch the band rehearse sometime, she said No. She said though, that the band was looking to replace someone who’d just left, if I played. As it turns out, I didn’t.

This was a little after the Scarring Party had released Come Away From the Light, the follow up to their debut, A Concise Introduction. Their music is definitive, iconic and creepy - sounding like nothing except things that are scary. The sound is exclusively acoustic, arrangements consisting of banjo, guitar, bass, tuba, accordion, typewriter, xylophone and any number of odd things the band manages to scrape together. This is not for the sake of novelty - a band after anything so cheap would’ve bowed out by now.

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Sleighriders 2009

Bringing together an almost ridiculously diverse collection of Milwaukee’s most popular musical talents to perform for charity under one roof for one night is difficult enough, but THE SLEIGHRIDERS have done it every Christmas season for the past twenty-seven years. Combining the expertise of forty performers rotating through the lineup throughout the night and blasting through a musical revue of seasonal Holiday music, R&B, and classic rock, over time, it’s become firmly entrenched as a tradition of the Milwaukee music scene’s Yuletide festivities.

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The Viscous Circle

Madison based band The Viscous Circle is releasing their debut album Escape Wormwood on their own label, TVC Productions October 30, 2010. The band formed in 2006 as a hobby between frontman Shawn Brown and lead guitarist Danny Davis. After composing for nearly a year Danny urged Shawn to bring rhythm guitarist and back up vocalist Jimmie Hill into the fold and then added vets Denny Carney on bass and Chris Sandoval on drums. 

Escape Wormwood is a dark and foreboding album throughout, and the end of October is a good time of year to let it rock your walls. Frontman Shawn Brown talked to me about his appreciation for bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd that have repeatedly put out albums that are conceptual all the way through.  Brown spoke on the new album, “As we went along with the recording of Escape Wormwood it slowly became a complete project rather than an album with random songs. It’s a dark introspective album with hope and beauty but definitely a lot of darkness.”

Brown played with popular Madison rock band Last Crack for a couple years in the mid 1990’s and was the vocalist on their 1994 album runheadstartscreaming. After the album and a short European tour Brown parted ways with Last Crack and formed the band Spiritus with Last Crack drummer Chris Havey. He is now exclusively with The Viscous Circle but remains in contact and friends with members of Last Crack who have a reunion show at Scatz in Middleton on Saturday, November 13th.

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