For The Record- 24. May. 2025

You have nothing to fear. I'm just making inquiries

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It's 11:30 PM as I type this. It's late. There will be typos.

I'm just back from my first show in, well, a long freakin' time, but hopefully, this kicks off a good run into the spring and summer. There are quite a few gigs I'd like to make it to: here, in Milwaukee, and the Midwest at large. And when you come from a place where people are cool with driving to Florida, well, there's no excuse for not going 2 hours south to the Second City or 4 hours the other way to the Twin Cities.

We'll see how it goes.

In the early 2000s, Rathergood.com had a motley crew of crudely drawn recurrent characters. The site got big enough that a couple of characters wound up in a Quiznos TV ad campaign. The early Internet was a wild frontier. The other fan favorite—or at least of my wife and me—was a clip of a cute little dog doing things like flying a biplane while Electric Six's "Gay Bar" played.

Today, those ads are the stuff of hallucinations (did…did that really happen? Spoiler: You bet it did), but Electric Six is very much still chugging along. We owned a copy of 2003's Fire but had fallen away from the band after that. Meanwhile, they just kept making records. Recently I had a chance to check out Frontman Dick Valentine's solo record and got the sense I'd been missing out. Tonight proved my hunch was correct.

Valentine's record is out on Madison's Shortwave records. Labelmates and friends of On Repeat Records, The Flavor That Kills, were also on the bill¹. I've kept up with them since Keith R. Higgons first connected us.

Having heard their records, I knew I'd been missing out. The show did not disappoint. More on that to come, but the short version is this: They ripped.

If we could figure out how to harness that sort of energy, finding sustainable power would be cashiered to the world of things we no longer have to worry about.

Earlier this afternoon, I was looking for my copy of Fire and realized we'd likely sold it, probably in the heady early days of the iPod. New tech–and a new baby– tend to make you do things like that. C'est la Vie. As I looked at Book of Secrits to refamiliarize myself with the song titles, it got me thinking about a question asked last week in the NY Times where a reader asked (paraphrasing) if it was ethical to buy used books and records instead of new copies that will bring revenue to the artist.

What do we owe artists/writers?

It seems strange to me that this is even a question, but in an era where we're all mainlining Spotify and essentially coattail riding, I appreciate the reader at least wrestling with the idea of trying to do the right thing. My take is that it's fine; music, books, and art all deserve to be in homes where they'll be enjoyed and not in a basement box next to those cross-country skis you bought on impulse years ago and have yet to use. Just me? Oh, okay, then. To be fair, I did demolish my knee in between…

At any rate, the ethicist felt similarly, responding that we don't owe the artists a cut of every subsequent sale but rather a system that allows them to sell their work, earn a fair price for it, and operate in a system that's sustainable. Making new records is hard when you're worried about making the rent.

I say 1000% yes to that. The world is a better place with art in it, and we're better as people when we actively support that in whatever form we can.

He went on to note that places like used bookstores and record shops also serve a valuable role. They are also destinations unto themselves and a great place to connect with fellow travelers you might never meet otherwise, kibitzing about whatever as you flip through the crates. Powell's Books is a tourist magnet and a place big enough to (purposely) get lost in.

Suppose you want to make an economic argument. In that case, it's usually pretty easy– these shops are almost always locally owned, and any money you spend there tends to stay in the community. It goes toward the wages of your neighbors and becomes things like rent payments and discretionary income that get you into a show like this one. It's entirely possible that the records you bought last month translated into a ticket for the person standing next to you. We are living in the era where you can finance tickets, and I've gotten some shit for suggesting that this is a horrible road to be going down, but that's a rant for another day.,

In the interim, an infinite number of shows are taking place near you, offering something for everyone. They are, frankly, a steal, and you don't even have to know what BNPL stands for to get in. Tonight was the perfect example. Moreover, it's a little more air in the raft that keeps artists like Electric Six and The Flavor That Kills afloat. They might make enough money to keep going, but it’s we, the fans, who are richer for the experience.

As always, thanks for being here.

Kevin—

Now for some weekend reads, and a playlist: