Shuffling up dozens of local musicians like a deck of cards and dealing them out to form a bunch of brand-new bands, the beauty of All Messed Up, “Milwaukee’s randomized musical experiment,” is that you never quite know what to expect. Yet despite the total unpredictability of this chaotic collision of musical styles (and skill levels), there is one constant you can count on every time: an unanimously supportive, overwhelmingly positive embrace of all those brave souls willing to step outside their comfort zone and collaborate with complete strangers, no matter how ridiculous the results may be.
All Messed Up’s ninth-annual showcase kicked off as usual in the cozy confines of Linneman’s Riverwest Inn, a venue which has served as the festival’s longtime home but, considering the attendance, one that is beginning to feel a little tight, especially with the plethora of cameras set up in every corner of the room. They were there to catch the action, starting with the genre-bending, guitar-heavy Dorsal Service, but presumably also recorded their hunt to replace a broken bass drum pedal, the first of the night’s many technical problems. Before long though, the band was back in business, showing off some crowd-pleasing Gregorian chants.
Next up was Crawfather, whose free-associated banter was initially just killing time, while sound issues were sorted but still segued nicely into their set, particularly their cover (one of which each act is required to attempt), a nearly note-for-note rendition of The Fall’s “Totally Wired.” Still, it was mostly the originals the crowd responded to, especially with the subsequent band, Linneman’s Toast Crunch (if you haven’t noticed by now, temporary bands tend to lead to silly names), who constructed catchy alt-pop tunes around such true-to-life themes as the perfect sandwich and, apparently, watching middle-aged women bare-knuckle brawling outside neighborhood bars.
|
|
Next up was the elaborately entitled Just Four Goddamn Mouths to Feed, a female-fronted outfit whose post-punk inflected pop was fully formed and confident enough to suggest the members might continue playing together. But, if that kind of musical kismet is in part what All Messed Up is all about, what’s vastly more important to the event is the kindness extended to those whose sets didn’t go so well. The alt-country-oriented IPAholes, for instance, had a rough go of it but, as they put it in one of their more successful songs, “Fuck it all, we did our best.”
And that’s all anybody attending All Messed Up will ever expect of you: to show up and do your best, whether you’re a scene veteran or you’ve never played a note in your life. That upbeat attitude also saw the audience through a few patience-testing delays before the Gluten Free Family Band, a cinematic synth-driven group who spun AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” into a novel medley, and, in turn, the progressive heavy metal vibes of Notorious BLT, closed out the night. Nobody can predict how good any All Messed Up show might be, but in the end, that’s not what really matters.
