Milwaukee's summer months bustle with so many festivals, block parties and concert series that it's impossible to catch every can't-miss event. It's an enchanting season but also profoundly maddening. With all that excitement packed into such a short period, the remainder of the year

Despite Chris Cornell’s best attempts at sullying it, including a gig fronting the ’90s alternative supergroup/Frankenstein’s monster Audioslave and an ill-conceived Timbaland collaboration, Soundgarden’s legacy remains more or less firmly intact. While not as ahead of the curve as Nirvana

Music clubs and concert venues have come and gone in Milwaukee, but every now and then, one hall comes to represent an era in the memories of music fans. When the powerful Balistrieri family opened The Scene in 1965

If there's a shortage of anything within the musical mainstream nowadays, it's mainstream rock—not alt, indie, metal or anything indebted to folkloric traditions. On Through the Grey Veil, Milwaukee's Dave Fitzpatrick Band keeps its rocking straight...

Paul Nelson was one of the first critics to analyze popular music with the seriousness that had previously been reserved for classical and jazz. All of the notable, first-generation rock critics such as Lester Bangs, Ellen Willis, Richard Meltzer...

Nowadays rock is everywhere. Real rock ’n’ roll, however, has become a rarefied taste. It may be going the way of the connoisseur, the path of bebop and pinot noir. Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s Aimless Blades are doing their part to keep rock ’n’ roll alive and in the moment, delivered with unpretentious intelligence and grit, with their fourth CD, Rara Avis. Released on Madison’s famed Boat Records, Rara Avis features guitar riffs of surging melancholy over solid yet forward rolling rhythms. The lyrics suggest more than they say, opening the window in the listeners’ imagination that began to close with the advent of literal-minded music videos. There are echoes of swampy Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Stooges‚ serrated psychedelia, Bob Dylan’s husky twang, even the stately folk rock of Fairport Convention.

It's the type of news that usually turns out to be a hoax. Late last week, an unreleased 1967 Velvet Underground bootleg with a never-before-heard song hit the Internet. Even without the new cut, this would be a huge deal. While the Velvet Underground's post-John Cale line-up was bootlegged often enough, little live material from their early days has surfaced. The band mellowed considerably o...