The documentary on Milwaukee’s early punk rock scene, Taking the City by Storm, takes its title from a song by Jerome Brish, a key member of The Haskels, the scene’s most prominent band. And his name comes up repeatedly throughout the film like a motif in a symphony of memories.
Subtitled The Birth of Milwaukee’s Punk Scene, Taking the City by Storm is directed by Doug LaValliere and produced by Judy Simonds and Clancy Carroll. LaValliere and Simonds have lived in Austin since 1991 but came from the explosion of Milwaukee talent released by punk’s emergence. Carroll remains in town; he continues to play original music and has documented the late-‘70s/early 80s scene through a series of albums of previously released and unreleased recordings by local bands. Among them, two Haskels’ LPs featuring the indefatigable Jerome Brish.
Taking the City by Storm is built around interviews with musicians and contributors to the Milwaukee scene. (Full disclosure: I’m one of the dozens of interviewees.) Interspersed between the snippets spurred by LaValliere/Simonds’ questions is a wealth of archival material. Seen are reams of posters and flyers (some of them graphically striking and worthy of a book on the subject); band photos (ditto the previous parenthetical remark); and most of all, video of the bands.
Milwaukee’s punk scene began at the end of the analog age. No one was shooting from cell phones because there were none. Video cameras were rare and expensive. And yet, LaValliere and Simonds amassed a trove of footage, ranging from blurry, jerky 8mm club scenes to professionally composed music videos. The Shivvers, to name a standout, were ready for MTV before MTV was ready to broadcast. LaValliere faced many technical challenges, starting with locating and often repairing VHS and BETA players before the tapes could be digitized. Much work went toward maintaining consistent audio levels, given that some of the music heard in the film is from deteriorating cassettes and some was produced by bands with a principled objection to high fidelity.
The story begins in 1972 with advent of Death, a band whose vocalist was an Iggy Pop impersonator and whose saxophonist, James Siegfried, became prominent a few years on as James Chance. Death was the antithesis of everything going on in Milwaukee. One of their (few) fans was named Jerome Brish.
Before long Brish was fronting a glam band called Marilyn. Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson and Rick Nielsen, interviewed for Taking the City by Storm, remember him well. “What an entertainer!” Nielsen remarks. Cheap Trick played in town so often in early days that they were virtually a Milwaukee band. When Marilyn became the punkier In a Hot Coma, Brish linked up with Richard LaValliere (Doug’s brother), whose brilliant imagination did much to elevate Brish’s next band, The Haskels, into something beyond being simply a great rock and roll band. LaValliere’s genius found even longer rein with his next group, the guitar-less Oil Tasters.
The film focuses on Zak’s and The Starship as the welcoming hubs for the new music. In both cases, Brish overcame the skepticism of their owners, Damian Zak and Kenny Baldwin, toward punk. He played the role of ambassador and salesman for the nascent scene.
The potential cacophony of differing voices and memories are harmonized throughout by Doug LaValliere’s editing. The story told is coherent and chronological, with any bad memories or old grudges smoothed over by the nostalgia that inevitably accompanies the progress of time. The sense of being outsiders brought many of us together and there was a palpable aura of danger. Guns were pulled, a car blew up, arrests occurred, and when The Haskels or Die Kreuzen played far afield from welcoming sanctuaries, they often had to sneak out of the bar’s back door to avoid angry anti-fans—or face slashed tires. The most popular band to emerge from Milwaukee, the Violent Femmes, were too outré for most club owners and were forced to play on city sidewalks. Anyone who looked a bit different had to endure taunts from passing cars.
Despite or because of all difficulties, Milwaukee nurtured outstanding bands in many genres, including full-tilt punk (The Lubricants), power pop (The RPMs), mod (The Orbits), psychedelia (Plasticland), techno-pop (Colour Radio) and post-punk (Tense Experts). Taking the City by Storm name checks (or sight checks amidst the sequences of flyers and 45 sleeves) virtually every band of substance (and some with little substance) to emerge from Milwaukee’s new music milieu in those years. The role of radio, especially WZMF and WMSE, is fully acknowledged.
Taking the City by Storm covers many miles of ground in a couple of hours and of course, there is more that could be said. The importance of zines is largely ignored (albeit issues of X-Press and Express flash on screen), most of the record stores where adventurous music fans gathered go unmentioned and the film has no time left to follow anyone’s post-Starship bands or even Brish’s 1991 murder near the corner of Brady and Humboldt.
But how could it do all these things? A fuller exploration of the subject would require a multi-part documentary series (calling Milwaukee PBS!).
Taking the City by Storm was given a sneak preview last summer at Shank Hall and a theatrical debut earlier this year at the Green Bay International Film Festival. Cosponsored by the Milwaukee Independent Film Society, it will finally appear on a big screen in Milwaukee at the Avalon Theater, 3:30 p.m., Aug. 12. The 6:30 p.m. screening on that same day is sold out.
Judy Simonds answered some questions about Taking the City by Storm.
When did you begin work on the film and when was it finally wrapped?
The idea for doing the movie occurred in 2012. By 2013 we started doing interviews, and because we lived so far away, we had to do a lot of interviews in very short windows of time. Doug just completed some recent edits last week. The entire movie was completely DIY. It was just the three of us and we were all working full time, dealing with what life throws at us and flipping houses along the way. So yeah, it took a long time to complete because there were a lot of bumps in the road, but also because it was a daunting task for three people.
Were you surprised by the amount of video that existed of local bands?
I wasn't only because friends and fans of the bands were in college and taking classes at MATC for television and production. Some were film and photography students at UWM. They would attend shows and video tape or film the shows. And don't forget MATA.
How did you choose the people you interviewed?
We chose a timeline from 1975-1985 which helped narrow down which bands and members to interview. We also focused on the two seminal punk clubs, Zak’s and The Starship. We were able to track down bartenders, patrons, friends, etc. via social media. In the end, we interviewed a total of 82 people and everyone had great stories to tell.
How did you decide what to include and what to leave out?
The first thing we did was create a set of questions for each interviewee. We did this to keep the storyline consistent. In the end Doug had over 45 hours of interviews to listen to and glean out what he could or could not use. It was an extremely difficult and long process for Doug.
Related: Listen to an episode of Sonic Rendezvous featuring the team behind Taking The City By Storm.
