Defunct bands revive ’90s music
Six groups to play first gig in decades
From the Lest We Forget Facebook page and concert in 2012, to the new book “Brick Through the Window,” there’s been ample nostalgia and celebration surrounding Milwaukee’s rock scenes in the ’70s and ’80s. Now it’s the ’90s turn. Saturday at Turner Hall Ballroom, six bands that found a fan base in the North Avenue scene will step on stage for the first time in decades.
“One of the interesting things was Nirvana happened, and then bands like Dinosaur Jr. got major record deals,” said show organizer Richard Jankovich, founder for the night’s headlining band, Big Mother Gig. “There was a moment, where if you were in a loud rock band, suddenly there seemed like a pathway to success that hadn’t been there before, and it fueled the Milwaukee scene.”
After record labels in the early ’90s snatched up some of Chicago’s brightest stars — Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill, Liz Phair and others — A&R reps starting driving into Milwaukee to assess the alternative rock talent pool. The Promise Ring, a seminal band for late-’90s emo wave, got a record deal. So did Citizen King, Alligator Gun and the Gufs.
There were scores of bands that never got out of town, but had their local fans and made good music. Saturday’s show, Jankovich said, is about “appreciating the scene as it once was and really celebrating that.”
Along with Gig, the concert features power pop group Pet Engine, which opened for Oasis and Goo Goo Dolls before disbanding in 2003, and R&B rock act the Probers, whose bassist Jeff Hamilton tours with the Violent Femmes and is a premier record producer in town.
To help people prepare for the show, Jankovich, who runs an in-store music promotion agency, Shoplifter, in Los Angeles, digitally released the bands’ catalogs for the first time last month, under his Sweet Sweet Records label.
“One person told me, ‘Thank God this is on Spotify. The cassette deck in my car stopped working eight years ago, and that was the only way I could listen to this music,’ ” Jankovich said.
For most of these bands, Saturday’s concert will be a rare moment of activity, but it could be the beginning of a new chapter for Gig. Breaking up after releasing its lone full-length album “Smiling Politely” in 1996, Gig released a new EP, “Almost Primed,” last month, that picked up some attention from Paste and Alternative Press.
“This is an art form that deserves to be around. The rock forum still is a place to tell new stories and create new ideas in the form of guitars turned up really loud and drummers banging the hell out of their drums,” Jankovich said.