Checking out a new Chris Mills retrospective CD in advance of his appearance in Milwaukee this week makes me wonder how I missed a decade of his well-crafted pop songs elevated by Mills' distinctive, emotive voice.
Chicago's Mills plays Saturday, June 25 at the Cactus Club with Trapper Schoepp & The Shades and Quinn Scharber and the... The show starts at 10 p.m.
Mills – currently based in Brooklyn – has shared stages and collaborated with the likes of Jon Langford and Sally Timms of the Mekons, Kelly Hogan, Neko Case, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Andrew Bird, Lucero, Ben Folds and others.
Though I'm no stranger to Mills' music – having opened for him once and seen him on at least one other occasion – I failed to grasp just how good his records were over the past 10 years.
The 14 songs on "Heavy Years: 2000-2010" (Ernest Jenning Record Co.) – released earlier this month – are drawn from four studio records made during that decade: "Kiss It Goodbye," "The Silver Line," "The Wall to Wall Sessions" and "Living in the Aftermath."
The tunes range from the acoustic pop of "All Our Days and All Our Nights" – which almost recalls The Cure in some ways – to the driving guitar pop of "Atom Smashers" and "Sleeptalkers" to the "Exile On Main Street"-style roots rock of "Suicide Note" to the uptempo, horn-laced "Escape From New York."
Don't miss him when he returns to Milwaukee. As a double-bonus, there are two great home-grown bands on the bill, too.
Make that a trifecta, because I bet we get a sneak preview of some of the material from Mills' next record, tentatively called "The Soldier Is the Castle."
San Francisco's Street Eaters are on tour to in advance of the release of their debut album, "Rusty Eyes and Hydrocarbons," due out July 12. Get the jump on it when the band plays at Linnemann's Riverwest Inn on Tuesday.
Metal heads and KISS fans won't want to miss the Motley Crue and Poison afterparty on Saturday, June 25 at 9:30 p.m. at Turner Hall. Admission is free with your Crue ticket stub and you get to see Slutter, an all-female KISS tribute band.
The foursome is touted as "the ultimate female KISS tribute band in all the land."
No stub, bub? Then it's $10.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
