On this week's wide-ranging episode of The Disclaimer, WMSE's near-weekly crosstalk between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, we consider a recent Journal Sentinel editorial that contended "too many of us like Milwaukee just the way it is," and concluded that, yeah, that's about right. Then we turn the discussion to a contentious OnMilwaukee p...

Almost every Wednesday at noon, WMSE’s Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee's Matt Wild and I spend a half hour cracking each other (and probably nobody else) up while discussing Milwaukee, music, arts and culture on a show called The Disclaimer. On this week's episode, we made the most of some low-hanging fruit, spit-balling ideas about The Shops of Grand Avenue, then we gave some props to the ...

A robust local scene is a plus year round, but January is when you really feel thankful for it. Big names and national touring acts are, quite literally, like fair-weather friends. They seem almost omnipresent in the summer

 It’s not without irony that Peder Hedman now plays guitar in the ’80s-style punk band Bicentennial Rub, since Hedman spent the actual ’80s far removed from punk. He was too deeply ingrained in psychedelia at the time

On this week's episode of The Disclaimer, WMSE's near-weekly crosstalk between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, we discuss Milwaukee's recent ranking as one of the city's top "Arts Places," and what, if anything, that ranking means. We use that as an excuse to talk about Mary Louise Schumacher's excellent end-of-the-year column considering wh...

The self-titled debut album by Painted Caves has become a quiet

On this week's especially chatty episode of The Disclaimer, WMSE's weekly crosstalk between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, we take issue with the latest slab of trolling from the Milwaukee-ish preppy-pop duo Chester French, who jumped on the mock slow-jam train with their dreadful latest video, "Drop." (No need to click that link.) We ask w...

On this week's episode of The Disclaimer, WMSE's weekly crosstalk between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, we consider whether Milwaukee can sustain a busy (and sometimes overbooked) events calendar, debate the logic of creating a playground under a bridge, and ponder the future of the UWM Post, which, like so many newspapers, has had difficu...

On this week's episode of The Disclaimer, WMSE's weekly crosstalk between station promotions director Ryan Schleicher, A.V. Club Milwaukee editor Matt Wild and I, we admonish fundraising efforts that exploit Milwaukee pride—even really cool-sounding ones—and share some thoughts about the Journal Sentinel's recent "Wisconsin bands to watch" feature and how some local-music coverage reduces th...

Though it’s only been part of WMSE’s busy calendar for four years, the WMSE Backyard BBQ has quickly...