The Forkes Report - The Arts

The Milwaukee I Knew

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:01:00 -0700

There was something else written that was supposed to be posted yesterday, but it just didn’t pass the smell test and believe me, it gets pretty smelly in this room! It had to do with Saul Alinsky, the obscure reference New Gingrich uses to criticize President Obama. One sentence about Saul Alinsky: He was a good guy who was neither a communist or socialist and were I to be compared to Saul Alinsky it would be a great compliment.

Instead, this morning, after being awakened by my digestive tract, I logged on to Facebook, that world-wide, possibly galaxy-wide, social networking phenomenon just to catch up and see what people I know — or know of — ramble on about their lives.
 Did you know: due to the recent IPO Facebook is now estimated to be worth $100,000,000,000? That’s 100 billion, if you just got dizzy. I should have been a software engineer.

My niece posted a YouTube video about gay rights that was pretty interesting. We’ve overturned Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, now it’s time to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. My primary reason for serving in the U.S. Marine Corps was to defend our Civil Rights (the Bill of Rights). Ensuring all of us enjoy equal rights under the law is long past overdue.

My other reason for joining the Marines was to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley. Turns out there were about 150,000 other Marines who were badder motherfuckers than me. Oh well.

Then there was this new group, relatively new … new to me anyway, about the deceased icons of the Milwaukee Music Scene. Lots of pictures from that era and names of people who have left this Mortal Coil. That brought back some memories. Someone posted a link to an On Milwaukee Article about the 21 best bars/nightclubs that no longer exist and that was a trip.

It brought back a lot of memories, not just of the bands on the list, but many others. The Electric Ballroom, The Palms, the Odd Rock and Unicorn, Café Mélange, Century Hall — saw Pinetop Perkins there with Muddy Waters’ band — The Factory, Jabberwocky, the Up-n-Under — just Brady Street in general — Zak’s; a lot of places where a person could have a nice drink and listen to some great live music. Ironically, my best memories are from the time after I stopped drinking and drugging.

A fire took out Century Hall, arguably the best nightclub ever in Milwaukee. Shank Hall burned, but relocated. That was after I left Milwaukee. Then there was the Murray Tap. That was an awesome bar with live blues bands twice a week. Who can forget Hooligans? Across the street from Hooligans was the old Oriental Drugs. Arguably the best lunch counter ever in Milwaukee. I had many a breakfast or lunch with some of Milwaukee’s finest musicians there.

Down the street from the Oriental was Ma Fischer’s. Damn big omelets! In between them were the Landmark Lanes. Besides a bowling alley, the place had a nightclub that featured live music and then poetry readings and slams. When we were in high school we’d get in to hear the George Pritchett Trio. The drinking age was 18 so getting carded was never a problem.

The last time I was in Milwaukee seven years ago, both the Oriental and Ma Fischer’s were gone, but Landmark Lanes was still open. It was such a disappointment. I so wanted to have lunch at the Oriental and see if there was anyone I knew. They say you can’t go back and it’s so true, especially if the places you loved are no longer there.

One of my favorite bands in the 1980’s was the Rollins Band, fronted by Henry Rollins. One of the best live acts ever, I never missed a chance to see their shows. I’d love to get another RB, “I Am a Hard Volume Experience” T-shirt. Anyone remember those? It came out with their Hard Volume CD and tour.

Saw a bunch of bands there local and otherwise. It was one of the few clubs that featured local bands playing their own music. Here’s a shoutout to Johnny and the Losers!

One year the Odd Rock had G.G. Allin throwing his poo at the audience. True story: I was writing for the Shepherd Express at the time and the Odd Rock’s proprietor Jack Koshick called me and asked for a favor. No kidding. He wanted me to drive to Chicago to pick up G.G. Allin and bring him to the gig because his band didn’t want to make the trip in the same van with the guy. Shut the Fuck Up!

Why the hell would I want to spend two hours in my car with a guy who wasn’t even welcome by his own band? There was something seriously wrong with that guy beyond the drug addiction. He died in the mid-90’s in Michigan from an overdose.

Then there was the time the Odd Rock had Flock of Seagulls, minus the weird hair. I didn’t stay past the first song. Does anyone remember the free show Pearl Jam did at the Varsity Theater?

They tell me Shank Hall still exists. A lot of great bands played there, like the Forkestra. We opened for Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek. So many bands rolled through there, most of them local bands. Anyone looking for a place to play would try to get booked at Shank Hall. Shortly before leaving Milwaukee some locals organized what became an annual event: a benefit concert in honor of John Lennon. A bunch of bands would play Lennon songs all night and all the proceeds from the door would go to a gun control cause. I forget the name of the benefit, who put it on and the organization that got the money, but it was a cool event.

There were so many shows at Shank, but I can’t remember any specific, other than Rollins Band played there and just wave after wave of good to excellent local bands. Usually I would start out sitting at the bar and if the band caught my attention I’d move closer to the stage.

Okay, Monks of Doom played there, Masters of the Universe with Ginger Baker on drums, Brian Ritchie’s band, don’t know if it had a name, but it was great music. I just read he now lives in Australia and is going to become a citizen down under. Brian Ritchie, if you don’t know, is the bass player for the Violent Femmes. It’s hard to remember all the bands of national or international note who played there or anywhere.

The Unicorn. Easily my favorite nightclub. In the basement of Sidney Hih. It was the place where Johnny and the Losers most often played. No matter which room the bands played in, the audience was crushed up to what was considered the stage. Once in a while they would have bands playing on both rooms. That was a sonic meltdown. Was the proprietor’s name Joe? He once corrected me and said he was Persian, not Iranian. He had no use for that current regime.

He also had a Mexican restaurant in the same building.

Don’t know why I have Johnny and the Losers on the brain lately. Maybe because they were the Milwaukee band most like Rollins Band. And the guitarist, Chris Tischler could and would shred. I think it was Chris, but one night we got to talking about Ozzy Osbourne’s Tribute to Randy Rhodes and then the band Rush. The drummer, can’t remember his name, reminded me of Neil Peart of Rush.

One thing I always believed was that Milwaukee grew great guitarists like corn. Every band had a great guitar player. Most, if not all, could shred, whether the music featured shredding or not. They just could. Most musicians back then could literally play anything. I’d be listening to a band playing some really cool original music, pick a genre, and then between songs the guitarist would wail a lick and I’d think, Really?
 This thing can’t go without mentioning Greg Koch. But then I’d have to remember Al Ek and Jim Eannelli and then the finger’s out of the dike and the this thing gets flooded with names.

But it wasn’t all metal and hardcore. Hell, I was a Deadhead too. Don’t get me started. This thing has gone on long enough as it is and I’m still thinking about getting some sleep — at 6:19 a.m.

So many other clubs that didn’t get mentioned, but if you want, Click This Link and read the article. They have a far better list than what’s on this page. It’s time to put this thing to bed.

Rest in Peace Jerome Brish.

On The Wire

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:05:00 -0700

Merry Christmas once again and congratulations to the Packers for lining up home field advantage for the playoff and to Drew Brees for breaking Dan Marino’s single season passing record — at home on Monday Night Football no less! That’s how to do it! And they have home field until that time when and if they meet the Green Bay Packers, which would be for the NFC Championship game.

For the past two nights and wee hours of the morning I’ve been having my own little TV marathon, watching the first season of the best show to ever be on television: HBO’s The Wire. Right now they have the first eight episodes of the first season (2002) on HBO On Demand, which is like having DVR without paying for it.

All five seasons were good, but the first is my favorite. The program grew out of an HBO documentary, The Corner, about the drug trade in Baltimore, MD and the politics of failure inherent in the power structure of that city, as well as the acclaimed TV program Homicide, another show about Baltimore police.

We grew to love many of the characters, like Detective McNulty, the alcoholic neer-do-well who’s lack of civility and respect for authority makes him a driving force behind the special investigations unit. Then there’s his Homicide partner Bunk Moreland, another “natural police” and the often-quoted bad guy, Omar Little. “Omar don’t scare.”

These two nights of The Wire marathon just happened to coincide with the holiday programming on MSNBC, The Squeeze, which was all about cultivating snitches in the drug trade, in and out of prison. The parallels were uncanny. The producers of The Wire did their best to keep it real so we saw snitches as well as the gangs of bad guys doing what they do.

On the MSNBC program, it was real and the snitches were helping police in the Chicago, IL area drop one drug house after another.

One of the parallel messages, a fact that has been known for nearly as long as there’s been a “War on Drugs:” if and when you take out one drug dealer, two more spring up to take his (or her) place. More importantly, the amount of drugs on the streets doesn’t diminish for more than a few days as the dealers set up new distribution points and open new drug houses.

Or, new dealers move in to pick up the slack. On The Wire, the Barksdale Gang was slowly pushed out by the police going after them and then, after the Barksdales were weakened by the police, they were muscled out by a younger, more ruthless dealer by the name of Marlowe.

Then of course stick-up man Omar became the thorn in Marlowe’s side.

Tell you what: if you haven’t seen The Wire but were (are) a fan of Homicide and the earliest incarnation of Law&Order, rent or buy the DVD’s of The Wire. It goes were the commercial and basic cable TV shows can’t go, with graphic language and scenes and the story arc of The Wire first developed over two seasons and then expanded to include the Port of Baltimore and then the diminishing news publishing industry.

Another message of the show: no matter the industry, the drug trade, law enforcement, organized labor and news, they all have a “game.” One of the recurring themes in the show is that as bad guys get killed the others say this was the life they chose when they got in “the game.”

Then we see how law enforcement is managed, all the politics that gets in the way of good police work, some of it fueled by continuing budget cuts that take personnel and resources off the streets and that becomes a game as one police or elected official tries to gain power and territory of their own, just like the drug dealers.

And the politics of managing labor unions and running the editorial staff of a newspaper. All have their own “game.”

What was really interesting, disturbing and ultimately a sad commentary on our present state of affairs, on The Squeeze one drug unit commander spoke about his dwindling budget, the number of officers that were leaving the force and not being replaced, adding to his biggest fear: taking on more responsibilities with fewer officers.

When we couple that with the reality that the drug trade has only expanded in recent years, spreading out from the inner cities into the suburbs, the prospects for the drug cartels looks so much better. For those of us who live in these cities and suburbs, the prospects aren’t so good.

One issue not on the agenda for any of the debates and definitely not in President Obama’s talking points is the legalization of all drugs. For whatever reason, candidates want to stick with the “law and order” mantra about drugs, which is: let’s continue to throw billions into that money pit, doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

Which brings up season three of The Wire. Frustrated with the lack of any progress, real or imagined, with the drug trade, a police major, Bunny Colvin, decides to pursue a strategy outside the box: he makes an area of Baltimore that is nothing but empty, boarded up housing units a drug dealing zone in which gangs and dealers can sell drugs without interference from law enforcement. The only rule: no violence.

It works well, crime is down significantly and everyone is praising Bunny for bringing crime under control in his district. Problem is, no one, outside of his district staff, knows about the drug-dealing zone, called “Hamsterdam” by the drug dealers.

The residents know, but no one is complaining because the dealers are no longer sitting on their porches or blocking the corners of their neighborhoods. All goes well for a while until a reporter from a local newspaper finds out about Hamsterdam. He starts digging and has the story. So, before everyone in the police chain of command gets a surprise in the newspaper, Major Colvin starts introducing everyone, including the mayor and commissioner, to Hamsterdam.

There was a big outcry from politicians and civic leaders — none from the residents whose homes were spared, if only briefly, from all the drug-related crime—the police major is forced to resign and the success of creating the drug zone is hidden behind the façade of law and order rhetoric from politicians using the moment to further their careers.

It’s no surprise institutes that rate television and crime rated this season of The Wire as the best programming ever on television. The John Marshall Law School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Justice Institute, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson says The Wire is the leading educational tool on the problems facing urban America.

J.M. Tyree of the Film Quarterly said, “The Wire is in the business of telling America truths about itself that would be unbearable even if it were interested in hearing them.”

Even President Barack Obama says it’s his favorite TV program. One more thing he and I have in common.

So, what about the political and social solutions to the blight of America, the decline of our society in the 21st Century? If we listen to Republicans, we just let these micro communities go, cutting back or removing entirely the social systems that keep some of the residents in these blighted areas from falling deeper into poverty and becoming homeless.

Others want to stimulate the economy and put more money, i.e. more police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers, into the communities, which is actually a good thing. But the complexities of the problem require some serious direction and a drastic shift in strategy.

Number one: stop fighting a losing war on drugs. Start the process of legalization and get conventional distribution of these drugs set up. No doubt tobacco and alcohol manufacturers, not to mention the quasi-legal growers and distributors in states like California, are more than willing to step up to the plate. Collect taxes like we do with alcohol and tobacco.

Set up systems to provide recovery from addiction, including tobacco, for anyone who wants it. It’s been proven over the years by many institutions that education and recovery efforts cost a fraction of drug intervention and work far better than fighting a losing war on drugs.

Because there is one fact that stands out more than any other and is often the elephant in the room: the drug problem isn’t one of supply, it’s of demand. As long as there is a percentage of Americans, maybe 25%, who want to at least smoke pot, there will be a drug trade to meet that demand.

Which means the question for us should be this: Do we want that drug trade to be legal, or illegal?

The 20th Century Limited

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:01:00 -0700

On Thursday I was watching the Alfred Hitchcock classic, North by Northwest. Cary Grant is the reluctant hero, thwarting international spies and as political irony, set against icons of American culture and heritage: the big cities of New York and Chicago, the farm fields of Indiana and the epitome of Americana: Mount Rushmore.

Ah, the grandeur of American grandiosity. We have more skyscrapers and at the time the film was released, 1959, we had the tallest. And then of course we couldn’t just craft statues out of metal or blocks of granite or even marble; no, we had to carve one giant monument on the side of a mountain. I’m disappointed Hitchcock didn’t weave the Hoover Dam into the story.

So the story is an ad man, Roger O. Thornhill, working on his version of the American dream, creating ads to entice the rest of us to be consumers, he gets sucked into a plot to sneak state secrets out of the country. We don’t know what the secrets are, but that isn’t important. All that matters is Mr. Thornhill is getting chased from New York to Chicago, to Indiana and Mount Rushmore. Besides, if they told you they would have to kill you.
 Mr. Thornhill has monogrammed hankies: R.O.T. Get it? Advertising man equals rot? If you didn’t get it right away Mr. Thornhill explains it on the train.

Which brings into the story Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint. As it turns out Miss Kendall is no innocent. She’s the mistress of the main evildoer, Philip Vandamm, played by James Mason.

If you haven’t seen this movie from beginning to end, you really must. It’s probably Hitchcock’s best and one of the few that wasn’t shot entirely on an enclosed set. It has a great cast that includes Martin Landau as a great villain and Leo G. Carroll as the Professor. He’s most remembered as Mr. Waverly from the TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

This is what got my attention though: when the plot turns and R.O.T. finds out what’s up with the game and the true nature of Miss Kendall’s involvement in it all, he suggests, with a touch of bitterness, the “Good Guys” need to learn how to lose a few Cold Wars before getting young innocents like Miss Kendall involved in all this international intrigue.

Not losing a beat, Mr. Waverly … err … the Professor, replies, “I’m afraid we’re already losing this one.”

There you go. For those old enough to remember “duck and cover” and the fear of it all coming to an end in one big, bright flash of nuclear destruction, you’ll understand the push back against the exploding arms race of the times. And the fear of Sputnik and what it meant. We may have had more warheads pointed at Moscow than Moscow had pointed at us, but the Rooskies were winning because they won the Space Race.

For those too young to remember or live through that period, that was a big deal and the reason Mr. Waverly … I mean the Professor, told R.O.T. we were losing.

Then just four months into his administration, President John F. Kennedy declares, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” I gotta wander: did this movie have any influence on Kennedy’s grandiose vision? Just over 42 years ago we achieved that goal, about eight years after Kennedy declared we would.

The nation was gripped in hysteria over the creep of Communism. We had purged Hollywood! We had purged government! And yet we were still screaming about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust and world domination by the Soviet Union — they were out to bury us! Within months of the film’s release, Cuba would fall to Castro and we would have a Soviet satellite parked 90 miles off our Southern Coast!

A couple years earlier, fueld by that fear, we made “In God We Trust” our national motto, inserting it on all our money, in direct contradiction to the spirit of the Constitution as the Founders had envisioned it; a nation free of any national religion and its citizens free to worship as they please, or not to worship at all. Then we inserted those two words into the Pledge of Allegiance, “under God,” just to prove we were different from those atheistic Commies! Superior because we believed in God, Goddammit!

No, I won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, not with those two words in it. They weren’t there when the Pledge was first written nor when it was rewritten. They were inserted during the height of the Cold War, just to appease the religious kooks and prove, once and for all, we were better than the Soviets.

Ultimately, North By Northwest is a love story. The middle-aged ad man finds a beautiful young blonde half his age, every man’s midlife crisis fantasy and a Hitchcock staple, and they fall in love. He, the reluctant hero, risks all to save her from a most horrible end and in the process saves the U.S. from the spies looking to give aid to our enemies.

In the end, the man and woman return to New York City on the train named the 20th Century Limited. What an appropriate name, considering the era when this film was made. Were there limits to the 20th Century? Yeah. McCarthyism, The Hollywood witch hunts, the nuclear arms race; we were limited by our fears.

And maybe, just a little, the growing popularity of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. You see in the end, just before the credits start to roll, R.O.T. pulls his new bride up into the sleeping car’s bunk just as the train they call the 20th Century Limited enters a tunnel.

If I had an ounce of patience I would have e-mailed the screenwriter and asked him if all the imagery and symbolism was intentional, or just figments of my imaginative and conspiratorial mind. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Don’t You Forget About Me

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:01:00 -0700

Remember the movie, The Breakfast Club? Released in 1985, it ushered in the era of the “Brat Pack,” the generation of actors who were the top of the hip Hollywood scene of the 1980’s. Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and Emilio Estevez were its teenage stars and John Hughes, who wrote and directed what many consider his best movie, cemented his place in cinema.

Oh, I don’t know, as good as it is, when you look at his credits there are a few chestnuts in there, including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, one of the greatest films of all time! Who doesn’t want to be Ferris Bueller? If you weren’t a wisenheimer before seeing Ferris Bueller, you aspired to be one — at least just a little.
 Ben Stein in one of the iconic moments of the film: “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”

So, John Hughes has a string of hit films to his credit, the two best being The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Sadly, John Hughes departed this Mortal Coil August 6, 2009, but he left behind a legacy that won’t be forgotten.

It’s been decades since last watching The Breakfast Club, mainly because I hate watching good movies that have been censored for television and then interrupted for commercial messages. Monday it came on one of the HBO channels, uncut and uncensored.

The buzz about the film at the time was that it was the coming of age film to define the era of the Brat Pack: A different style of dress, a different kind of music and a new attitude. It was, but every generation has their coming of age film that defines their generation. American Graffiti, Easy Rider, Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause to name just four that I’ve seen.

And who can forget American Pie? There’s another coming of age classic. But what’s so special about The Breakfast Club? Well, for one thing it speaks to every generation as it comes of age. If you read the message boards for the movie on imdb.com there are comments and reviews from people who weren’t even born when it was first released in 1985, yet it still resonates with the generation that first saw it 26 years ago.

Most from my generation, the one that came of age ten years earlier, liked it because it spoke to the disparity between the different castes common in most high schools, especially public high schools. The big deal about the message of the film was not just the different castes, but how that disparity was approached: from the view that all five characters felt trapped by the roles that had to play to be members of their particular cliques.

The film took stereotypes, made them almost unbearably exaggerated and then deconstructed them for a feel-good moment at the end when all five students walk out of the school as a team, as opposed to the beginning of the film when they walk into the school one at a time.

To refresh your memory: there is the pretty and popular socialite girl (Molly Ringwald), the popular jock (Emilio Estevez), the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall) the goofy girl (Ally Sheedy) and the criminal (Judd Nelson).

The stereotype that gets left out of this film says a lot about the filmmaker and us, as a society. The one faction from high school that isn’t represented in the film is the average student that doesn’t aspire to be in any clique and just does their best to graduate and hopefully go to college or get a good paying job. Just like in real, adult life, the silent majority is rarely noticed.

I really didn’t identify with any of the characters, although part of me wanted to be the bad boy, John Bender. Bad boys are always portrayed as the coolest and pretty girls always seem to like bad boys best. Jocks always get the prettiest girls because they are the sports heroes. Few girls like nerds, until they grow up to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

All the boys want to be with the most popular girls, but avoid like the plague the weird girls, until they become Playboy Playmates or hot and sexy actresses.

And that is the core of The Breakfast Club: the angst we endure while in high school. The pain of that awkward time remains with us forever. Boys — men — for instance, understand a character like Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) in the film American Pie trying to masturbate with a warm apple pie because we all did something ridiculous in an effort to have an orgasm. As we get older we refine our techniques.

In the age of the Internets and new synthetic materials, we get all kinds of aids to jack-off and some life-like (I’m told) devices in which to do it. A man almost doesn’t need a real woman anymore. And we sure as Hell don’t need to try the vacuum cleaner anymore. Not that I ever did …

With The Breakfast Club, anyone and everyone can understand the inner pain of feeling like we don’t fit in, no matter how much we appear to fit in with whatever clique, or no clique, we belong, whether we knowingly join that group or get dumped in it by everyone else.

I was one of the “stoners” in high school, one of the “hippies.” But I secretly wanted to be one of the people who smiled everyday without being high. When I was in the school play I met some of them and they were really nice people.

But just like The Breakfast Club suggests, on Monday we — I — went right back to that comfort zone where we knew the rules and the role we played in our little clique, where our silent desires, fears and resentments took over just like they did every day in school. The Breakfast Club puts all that out there for us, better than any movie has before or since.

Now, nearly 40 years removed from high school, it brings out yet another angst-filled moment with the most useless, but most often asked question to ourselves: “If I could go back and do it over again …” There’s no point to asking “What if,” other than to fill our hearts and minds with regret.

What’s done is done and the best we can do is accept it. if we can make restitution to those we have harmed, then we can do that. One of the moments in the film that struck me was when the jock, Andrew, recounted how he had humiliated a smaller, weaker student, all in an effort to impress his jock friends, and more importantly, his dad. Many of us have little skeletons like that in our closets and they creep out to haunt us from time-to-time.

So, it’s time to move on. The Breakfast Club is a great film, quite entertaining, over the top at times, like when they’re dancing throughout the library, but one I might watch again in another ten years, just to remind myself I was a teenager in high school once, a long time ago.