With age and experience, bands learn all sorts of hard lessons, but one of the hardest to grasp is also seemingly one of the most basic: Don’t take yourselves too seriously

 Nick Offerman lends more than a little bit of himself to his breakout “Parks and Recreation” character Ron Swanson, the sitcom’s spokesman for all things masculine. Like Swanson, Offerman is a proud outdoorsmen

Though it didn’t receive much attention beyond a handful of appreciative write-ups, Pretty Wounds released one of last year’s most vital local punk albums, a viciously grungy six-song sock to the gut called Whatever, Go

 When Jordan Lee, aka DJ Madhatter, started the Miltown Beat Down in 2005, Milwaukee’s hip-hop scene was as segregated as the city itself, divided by geography, race and culture. For years the chasm between East Side rap

Fans longing for an Outkast reunion should imagine how Big Boi feels. The rapper has made no secret of his desire to see his pioneering Atlanta hip-hop duo end its indefinite hiatus, but his estranged collaborator André

Kevin Hayden has a love/hate relationship with jazz. He loves the music, which he’s been listening to since he was a toddler, when his father began teaching him to play drums. Over time, though, he’s learned to hate the culture

You’d be hard pressed to find a pair of local rappers more mismatched than Dana Coppafeel and SPEAK Easy. The living embodiment of an early Beastie Boys single, Coppafeel is one of the Milwaukee rap scene’s great misfit

 Though it will always claim a diehard following, prog-rock remains one of music’s most maligned genres, dismissed by rock purists who reflexively turn up their noses at any composition that smacks of overwork or indulgence

 Garbage have been on the road for a long time now. By the time they finish their tour behind their latest album, 2012’s Not Your Kind of People, later this month, the veteran alt-rock band will have been touring for over a year