The Killers headline the American Family Insurance Amphitheater with special guest Death Cab for Cutie on Friday, July 5 at 7:30 pm.
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Has the first decade of this century already become a time of nostalgic memories? Check out today’s headliners at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater, The Killers and Death Cab for Cutie, two of the most popular and hippest bands to emerge in the ’00s. Variety is the name of the day with reggae hip-hop artist Matisyahu at Johnson Controls World Sound Stage and New Wave act Berlin at the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse.
The Killers w/Death Cab for Cutie @ American Family Insurance Amphitheater, 7:30 p.m.
Party likes it’s the early 2000s again with this double bill featuring two of the biggest bands of the era.
The Killers burst out of Las Vegas in 2004 with Hot Fuss, a fresh-sounding debut album influenced by New Wave and post-punk music that worked its way into the Billboard Top 10 and, more enduringly, Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time.”
Rather than coast, The Killers continued to evolve their sound without always garnering the same kind of high praise that they did with Hot Fuss. But that might be the reason the band continues to enjoy its status as—according to The Guardian—“one of the biggest rock bands of the 21st century.” The Killers can easily slip into multiple genres and sound right at home.
The band’s latest album, Wonderful Wonderful, landed at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart the week of its release in 2017. Six weeks after The Killers slay Summerfest, they will play Woodstock 50 in Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Meanwhile, Death Cab for Cutie, although formed earlier than The Killers, enjoyed its greatest success around the same time. The band’s 2005 major-label debut (and fifth overall studio album), Plans, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 and was nominated for a Grammy in the “Best Alternative Music Album” category.
Death Cab for Cutie slotted nicely into the indie-pop/emo category, thanks in large part to the sweet voice of lead vocalist/guitarist Ben Gibbard, and the band has been nominated for eight Grammys—including “Best Rock Album” for 2015’s Kintsugi. Thank You for Today, Death Cab for Cutie’s ninth studio album, was released last year and hailed as “another fine stop in Death Cab’s ongoing evolution” by PasteMagazine.com. (Michael Popke)
Matisyahu @ Johnson Controls World Sound Stage, 10 p.m.
Born Matthew Paul Miller, Matisyahu takes his stage name from the Hebrew word meaning “gift of God,” and he blends reggae, rap, hip-hop beatboxing and alternative rock into an intoxicating fusion of sounds and cultures.
Matisyahu was raised a Reconstructionist Jew in White Plains, N.Y., but rebelled against his rigid upbringing as a teenager, turning to drugs and seeking solace in the jam band Phish.
As Matisyahu began to build a career (releasing his first album in 2004) Phish’s Trey Anastasio invited him to join the band on stage at the 2005 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee. Matisyahu opened a few shows for the Dave Matthews Band the following summer, and he supported Sting in Israel.
In 2011, Matisyahu created a stir when he shaved his beard and announced a shift away from the Hasidic Judaism lifestyle. “I started to become more interested in questions,” he said during an appearance in Jerusalem in 2018. “I started to realize that questions led me [to] think more and led me to a much deeper place than pretending I had all the answers ... This way of being fits a lot more with the nature of my neshoma, of my soul.”
Eventually, Matisyahu the solo artist morphed into Matisyahu the band. That transition became most evident on 2017’s Undercurrent, an album that began with hours of studio improvisation without a single lyric sung and underscores Matisyahu’s conviction to sound like no other artist on the planet.
Matisyahu plays Summerfest less than a week after turning 40, but he doesn’t plan on slowing down. “We are doing a mixture of some of the well-known songs and some of the more obscure ones and then with a heavy, heavy element of improvisation so that the show is usually brand new every night,” he told TahoeOnstage.com in May. “The set list is usually not made until moments before the show.” (Michael Popke)
Chris Robinson Brotherhood @ Uline Warehouse, 3 p.m.
In 2015, The Black Crowes called it a day due to disagreements between brothers Rich and Chris Robinson. But by that time, the perhaps ironically named Chris Robinson Brotherhood had been together for a few years. The CRB’s tie-dyed West Coast sound is perfectly suited for an outdoor festival. Robinson and fellow guitarist Neal Casal lock in as vintage keyboard sounds percolate and add to the atmosphere. For the brand-new Servants of the Sun album Robinson explains, “I let my head go to a Saturday night at the Fillmore, and said, what’s the best set we could play?” The CRB begs, borrows and steals from the history of American music and simply deliver their sonic vision to a new generation of listeners adventurous enough to take the ride. (Blaine Schultz)
The Spinners @ BMO Harris Pavilion, 4 p.m.
The origins of The Spinners begin in an Eisenhower-era industrial suburb of Detroit where a group of African American teenagers sang doo-wop under the street lights. Dressed in identical suits and swaying in snappy time, they found work all over greater Detroit and—by the early 1960s—found their way to the recording studio. Their polished harmonies seemed ideal material for Motown. And yet, despite a string of minor hits, they were always considered second tier in a pantheon that included The Temptations and Smokey Robinson.
The Spinners finally came into their own in the early ’70s when they moved to Atlantic Records and were teamed with producer Thom Bell. Bell’s silken orchestrations, coupled with the unthreatening soulfulness of The Spinners’ vocals, proved irresistible on both pop and R&B stations. They were especially strong on ballads suffused with melancholy or uncertainty. The Spinners scored big hits with the rueful, only half-resigned “I’ll Be Around” and “We Belong Together.” They brought similar emotions to social problems on “Ghetto Child,” but were capable of ebullience on “One of a Kind (Love Affair).”
The Spinners underwent many personnel changes since they first sang under those lamp lights; however, the current lineup does include some original members. (David Luhrssen)
MRS. FUN @ Klement’s Sausage and Beer Garden Stage, 6 p.m.
This will be the 28th year that the 31-year-old Milwaukee band will play at Summerfest. This time, the duo consisting of composer/keyboardist/vocalist Connie Grauer and impeccable percussionist Kim Zick will entertain at the Klement’s stage on the north end of the grounds in a backyard setting with picnic tables and barbecue grills.
Waukesha natives, Grauer and Zick met in a seventh-grade drum class where their teacher partnered them in exercises. At each class, they were to start with exercise #1 and work their way to #20, as Grauer tells it, but the teacher always stopped the class at #7. “I’m a rule follower so every time I’d have to start at #1,” she says. “After a couple of weeks, Zick, who never spoke at all, said just one thing: ‘skip to 14.’ That’s how it’s been the rest of our lives. If I write something avant garde, she’ll say it’s brilliant.
“We just released a new recording in the fall, called Truth. I think it’s the best body of music I’ve ever written and that we’ve ever played. It’s complex and thoughtful, provocative for the mind. This is why we’re artists, right? To keep improving? On Truth we do two covers: The Doors’ “Light My Fire” and “Soulful Strut” by Eldee Young and Ken Chaney. So we’ll do those two covers in the show and maybe a Thelonious Monk tune because we do a Monk tune every year at Summerfest. Otherwise it will be all original MRS. FUN music.” What that means is a kind of ultra-funky lounge show full of postmodern jazz, Latin jazz, spoken word rap, witty neo-cabaret and sustained stunning virtuoso displays by lifelong bandmates who are absolute masters of their instruments. (John Schneider)
Rondini @ Northwestern Mutual Children's Theater & Playzone, 1:30 p.m.
Performing since 1977, magician and hypnotist Rondini has appeared on British TV, the Travel Channel and History Channel. He has performed for the Green Bay Packers and was a featured entertainer for the Governor’s Conference on Tourism. According to one urban legend, Rondini may have made a Red Owl grocery store disappear. (Blaine Schultz)
Berlin featuring Terri Nunn @ Harley-Davidson Roadhouse, 4 p.m.
Fans of the band Berlin already know that the California New Wave rockers had nothing to do with Germany’s capital city. Formerly known as The Toys, the group simply wanted to sound more exotic. Plus, they liked the synthesizer-driven music of Kraftwerk and wanted to emulate aspects of European groups.
Those same fans also will be happy to know that Terri Nunn, one of four different lead vocalists to perform with the band since it formed in 1978, is back with a voice as sharp and sexy as ever. Along with Nunn, the band’s current lineup includes Carlton Bost (guitar), Chris Olivas (percussion) and Dave Schultz (keyboards). Founding members John Crawford, David Diamond and others as permanent members have gone their separate ways.
Berlin went through a variety of iterations, lineups and labels prior to Nunn leaving, and then returning in 1980. The timing, along with the combination of talent, finally came together with “Take My Breath Away,” the love song from the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun. It was Berlin’s biggest hit, and one that unfortunately contributed to breaking up the band in 1987. After legal wrangling, Nunn retained the right to use the name, and revolving groups of founders and newbies have performed as Berlin off and on ever since.
During recent concerts the band performed songs such as “No More Words,” “Masquerade,” “Transcendence” and a cover of The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary.” Summerfest fans can also expect “Sex (I’m a …),” the band’s once controversial duet between Nunn and Crawford that was deemed too graphic for airplay by some radio stations. No doubt Nunn will once again tease and taunt listeners with her part of the seduction.
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Expect “Take My Breath Away” to close the set. No band, not even Berlin, turns its back on a megahit. (Michael Muckian)
Local Pick
Tweed feat. Gervis Myles/USA @ Uline Warehouse Stage, 5 p.m.
Here's Today's Complete Lineup
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