Of Milwaukee’s many venues, the Circle-A Café often gets somewhat overlooked, probably because, in all honesty, it’s not much of a venue at all. Tucked away on an odd Riverwest intersection, the neighborhood watering hole has

 Picture a small, dingy barroom with crushed cans of Hamm’s and Pabst Blue Ribbon strewn everywhere, like offerings to the dark gods of punk rock. The room is packed wall-to-wall with people; everyone reeks of cigarettes and body order. There’s a tiny stage shoved into the corner, and a band

They should have been bigger...

As I have noted in this column time and time again, Milwaukee is quickly becoming a center for quality hardcore bands. Groups like Get Rad, Protestant and Party by the Slice are all pushing the genre to the limit...

While hardcore may not be the most female-friendly genre, there is a long history of punk bands using the stage as a sort of bully pulpit to get their fans to think about such issues as domestic abuse, rape, and sexism. As a young suburban hardcore kid...

Dan DuChaine, veteran drummer of the Speedfreaks, has seen it all. Along with vocalist Stephan Tremblay and guitarist Carl Steinhagen, he crashed through the hardcore and punk scenes in the early '80s when shows were "brutal," and not just in terms of sound. These days, "if you see a kid getting beat up in the front line, you stop the show-that's etiquette," DuChaine says. "But violence was a big problem back then." The punk scene itself may be more forgiving, but the Speedfreaks' music remains largely unchanged, filled with raw, positive energy. A quarter...

It is often taken for granted that hardcore punk is—and perhaps should be—the domain of the young. Young adulthood is a scary time for most of us, and what better way to express one’s youthful angst than by identifying with a music scene that embraces those feelings of alienation and confusion? I don’t think I would have made it through adolescence with my sanity intact without records like Black Flag’s Damaged and Minor Threat’s Out of Step. Those albums provided me with a useful outlet for my youthful rage and, perhaps more importantly, made me realize that I wasn’t the only one feeling so, well, out of step. At a time when one’s identity is incredibly unstable, any sense of community becomes paramount, and hardcore punk became the one place where I felt truly accepted.

After a year and a half of inactivity, the Milwaukee hardcore band Since By Man made it official, announcing plans to break up following one last show this Saturday. Band members have already begun moving on to other careers, projects and cities. That it took them months to settle on a date for their long-planned farewell show speaks volumes about how divergent their paths had become. “We still enjoyed playing together, and our shows were great,” explains singer Sam Macon, “but the writing process was becoming stressful, and we were having difficulty coming up with material for our third album. Creatively, we were growing apart.”