An alternative twist on the traditional harvest celebration, the Beet Street Harvest Festival aims to keep Milwaukee’s passion for block parties and street festivals alive even as summer slides into autumn. It distinguishes itself with a blend of more adult-oriented fun—such as craft beer tastings and an excellently curated local music lineup—with more family-friendly seasonal fare, like pie-eating contests and a farmer’s market. However, while the daytime entertainment tries to keep things PG, albeit in a sort of hipster-oriented way, Saturday’s second-annual event, sponsored once again by nearby businesses like the Cactus Club, Goodkind and the Palomino, also came along with a radically different kind of after party, boasting a more hard-edged tone that only intensified as the evening went along.
Lousy weather may have put a damper on, but certainly not a stop to, some of the daytime proceedings, yet it wasn’t much of a deterrent to the crowd trickling into the Cactus Club hours later. In fact, by the time local MC Kia Rap Princess took the stage, she had a good-sized audience to work with, and, as usual, she made the most of it. One of the finest examples of the city’s eclectic, eccentric alt-rap scene, KRP’s sound sports both a defiant, quasi-punk attitude and heartfelt lyricism. Both were best heard on “All I Ever Wanted,” dedicated to her late mother, whose portrait sat at the edge of the stage alongside a T-shirt that simply read: “Fuck Cancer.”
Things only got harder and faster as Sex Scenes launched into their set. The band may trade in a classically hardcore sound and revel in its nihilism and sleaze, but they are also a welcome rarity among the genre by managing to maintain an insistent groove no matter how vicious things get, largely thanks to the airtight rhythm section of bassist Connor LaMue and drummer Chelsea Hays. Harrison Colby, best known for his work in NO/NO, filled things out with some scratchy guitar as frontman Zach Otto stalked the audience, getting in people’s faces. The group’s two releases, a self-titled demo and a suggestively named new EP, do them justice, but they are at their best live in the flesh.
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The trend toward heaviness continued with Population Control, the local opener who most closely resembled the evening’s thrash-metal oriented headliner, and as such couldn’t help but comment on the fact that one their crossover forebears, D.R.I., was simultaneously playing right next door at Club Garibaldi. That isn’t to say there seemed to be much competition as nobody headbanging to Population Control’s juggernaut set appeared to be heading toward the exit. Occasionally poking fun at the old-timers across the street added some needed comic relief and a personal touch to a performance that otherwise rarely let its foot off the gas. In any case, they no doubt earned some new fans, regardless of what any dirty rotten imbeciles were up to.
Chicago’s Oozing Wound have become something of a fixture in Milwaukee whenever the Halloween season kicks into high gear, and there’s a good reason for that. Encapsulating the holiday’s mix of self-aware humor, hard-partying and genuine terror, their irreverent thrash is welcome any time of the year, yet resonates particularly well whenever fall starts to take over. Powering through hits like the frantic “Bury Me with My Money,” what stood out about the trio was their versatility; they were equally adept at slicing the audience to ribbons with razor-sharp shredding as they were grinding them to dust with stoner-friendly riffs. By the end, they literally had people hanging from the rafters, capping off Beet Street 2017 with a decidedly intense twist.
