| Articles | Madison
Street
by: Matt Johnson/Photos by: Kevin Braley
Tonight, Calloused, a punk band from the Twin Cities, along with a few others, is playing. This is the first concert at Insight, a punk-run infoshop and lounge located at 508 Madison Street. It is still early in the evening, but already there is quite a large turnout, including a healthy dose of new faces. Some hang around outside, others in the cigarette smoke-filled, dimly lit concert area, talking to friends and in no hurry for the show to start. They sit on the throw-away '70s furniture that someone rummaged up for free, or they check out the records that someone has brought to sell. One person that has been going to shows regularly for a while now, Nate Sorensen, says that he doesn't really like the type of bands that are playing tonight. "I'm pretty much only into Oi. This crusty stuff gets annoying. I want to be able to understand what a band is saying." Oi is a sub-genre of punk that is very different than the style of bands this evening. The name comes from the fact that most songs have a catchy chorus followed by shouts of "Oi! Oi!" Tonight's bands feature vocals characterized by harsh screaming that makes lyrics almost completely unintelligible in a live setting. Nate comes to the concerts to see his friends, pay his $4.00, and support the local scene. The black Xs he draws with a marker on the back of his hands signify his straight-edge beliefs: anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, anti-smoking. This is an anomaly in a local scene where, to most, beer is the life-blood and cigarettes are an extension of the body. This general love of alcohol could pose a problem. While tonight everyone is in good cheer, visiting with friends and having fun, they are doing so without being able to drink inside the venue. The rule of no alcohol had to be enacted in order to keep the place open to all ages, which is important seeing as the bulk of the crowd is under twenty-one. However, it has yet to be seen whether this rule will dampen turnout in the long run. Nationally, and even internationally, the punk rock scene is in a fairly healthy state, as evidenced by the thousands of bands and tons of great record labels putting out quality punk rock. The relative cheapness of pressing CDs and records or publishing fanzines, 'zines for short, has allowed more people than ever to take the D.I.Y. (Do-It-Yourself) ethics that punk was built on into their own hands. Although most of these independent releases are hidden from the general public, who often think of punk-influenced pop bands like Green Day or the Offspring as punk, there are many really great bands out there for those who are willing to do a little digging. The Eau Claire punk scene, which actually stretches out to Chippewa Falls, Menomonie and other smaller towns nearby, has been active for several years. It is made up of a tightly knit core of regulars, including the people who set up the concerts, the few bands and other more active participants, as well as many others who are less involved and show up at concerts on a more sporadic basis. At first glance, this doesn't seem like an ideal location for such a scene, considering Eau Claire's clean, conservative nature. However, its proximity to the Twin Cities, which has a punk scene that has been thriving for a long time, has helped to lay a strong foundation here. Bands from the cities play locally all the time. Likewise, local bands play the cities regularly. The first band that plays, I'm the Pirate, He's the Ninja, prelude their set by announcing that they don't do punk songs and that all of their songs deal with either Pirates or Ninjas. They follow with an acoustic instrumental set of seafaring and swashbuckling that, if nothing else, demonstrates the type of originality tucked away in corners of the punk scene. This is the first punk concert that high school student Carrie Sutton
has been to. "I wasn't even completely aware that there were punk concerts
going on anywhere. I've been listening to punk, like the Dead Kennedys
and whatever for a couple years, but I never knew about the concerts."
When a friend told her about this, she decided to come along. At first,
Carrie states with some hesitation, she was a little intimidated by all
of the people here. "Everybody's wearing black, it's different, like culture
shock, you'd think this was a heavy metal concert." She says that everyone
has been nice and that she plans on coming to more shows here.
Some punk shows had taken place in Chippewa Falls before the action moved to Eau Claire, around the fall of 1996. An early Eau Claire venue was Ted's Throne, a plain looking warehouse noticeable only by the Xeroxed concert flyers posted on the door. It hosted several shows by bands such as Civil Disobedience from the Twin Cities before being shut down due to conflicts with local zoning laws. It turns out that if a building is not zoned for it, live music cannot take place. Concerts then shifted to the town hall of Seymour. The first show there was by the catchy, poppy punk band Boris the Sprinkler from Green Bay. Trouble arose in trying to find steady venues for local concerts. Seymour wouldn't allow any more after a police raid for underage drinking. Shows at Eagle's Club in Hallie lasted a short time before some members of a band who received jeers from the crowd decided to start some fires. They were from out of town and it didn't matter to them if they disrupted the scene. Most of the time, everyone is careful to do what they can to keep everything going. Mike Olson, one of the local mainstays, started having concerts in his basement, but eventually grew sick of people treating the place recklessly. It only takes a few careless people to ruin something for everyone. Currently, Insight plans to host shows on a regular basis. It is building up steam and everyone involved in the scene is hopeful that it will last. The difference between it and previous places is that it is an actual store being rented and run by people who want to see it work. Other places were rented out on a nightly basis, and much control was in the hands of the actual owners. Insight is nonprofit and paid for by patron donations. The purpose of this place is not solely as a concert venue. It is also an infoshop, a shop based on the sharing and exchange of information, and lounge open seven days a week, offering a place for people to get together and just hang out, listen to music, or read something from the growing library of 'zines. It also holds regular discussi'n groups on various political and social issues, such as commercials and the media's ability to manipulate the public, and the case of political prisoner Leonard Peltier. "Nelson" Stieg is the publisher of Crazy Nelson's Porn. CNP, for the most part, is not pornographic. It is a mini-sized, photocopied 'zine that parodies, somewhat pointedly, the national punk scene. He's been doing it for a couple of years now on a very sporadic basis, giving out copies at school and at concerts. "It just started it as a joke. I don't think I even planned on making copies at first, I was just messing around in school with it and thought it would be funny." Since a friend of his was almost expelled recently for distributing profane flyers in school, Nelson doesn't plan on handing out copies there any more. He's going to keep coming to concerts. "I can't describe this... I live for it. It is just a lot of fun. Everyone's got a lot of energy and they want to have fun... I don't know. It's crazy." Calloused, who are from the Twin Cities, are the last band to play. The female vocalist roars through song lyrics dealing with war and other political and social themes that have always been present in punk songs, and unfortunately, never seem to lose their importance. She does so with such amazing energy, constantly moving, pulling the crowd in. The band plays with a passionate fury, laying down a wall of sound that is dense, yet constantly moving forward. Sound pours into the crowd, around them, pushing them to move also, and they do. |
