Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Monday, May 11, 2026
New book gets deep into details of Violent Femmes debut album
If more than 7 million copies sold and a public-television special are not already enough validation of the classic status of the Violent Femmes' 1983 debut album, here's another indicator:
That album is now the subject of a book in the famed 33⅓ series about individual recordings.
Books in this series can vary widely from detailed music journalism to idiosyncratic personal takes. "Violent Femmes" (Bloomsbury Academic) by Nic Brown, a drummer as well as a writer, is both fannish and deeply reported. Brown interviewed original band members Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo at length. He also spoke with album producer Mark Van Hecke and other figures.
As someone who has read many Milwaukee takes on the Femmes over the decades – and has written a few, too – I also enjoyed Brown's view of the band from outside the local hothouse.
Brown explores the band's formation, its unusual instrumentation and how it worked in the studio. He also goes over each song in detail, both lyrically and musically.
Here are a few takeaways gleaned from Brown's book. While passionate fans may already know some of these, you'd have to be a certified expert to know them all.
- Bassist Ritchie coined the Violent Femmes name as a label for the rhythm section he had with DeLorenzo, at a time when the pair played with various other musicians.
- By the time he met Ritchie and DeLorenzo, the prolific Gano had already written all of the songs that would appear on the Femmes' first two albums, and some of the songs that would turn up on the band's third.
- What led to the Femmes' acoustic instrumentation, particularly Ritchie's acoustic bass guitar? "I just thought that we should all be equipped to play acoustic music because there was an imminent apocalypse on the horizon," Ritchie told Brown. "I thought we probably wouldn't have electricity."
- The trio's first gig was in the basement-level Beneath-It-All-Cafe on Downer Avenue (under the old Wash Tub laundromat).
- The person who actually "discovered" the Femmes busking outside the Oriental Theatre on the day of a Pretenders concert in 1981 was Peggy Sue Honeyman-Scott, the wife of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. It's often written that James or even singer Chrissie Hynde was the initial talent spotter.
- Who bankrolled the recording of the album? DeLorenzo's father loaned the group the $10,000 they needed.
- Castle Studios in Lake Geneva, where the album was recorded, was a facility that had been installed in the main lodge of the fabled Playboy Club there.
- Given the enormous backlog of songs Gano had written and the limited studio time the band could afford, how did they decide what to record for the first album? Gano said Ritchie had "the brilliant idea" to pick only "the poppy songs." That's why the band's second album, "Hallowed Ground," is so different: it has the Gano songs influenced by gospel, country and jazz.
- DeLorenzo calls the distinctive snare drum beats he plays at the beginning of "Blister in the Sun" "stutter flams." A flam, Brown explains, is played with two sticks hitting one note together. Those familiar flams are heard today as pump-up music samples in stadiums and arenas around the country.
- Penn Jillette, of the magic duo of Penn and Teller, gave Gano a specific and enthusiastic compliment about the timing of a line in "Kiss Off." But you'll have to read Brown's book to find out what it was.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
FBI is investigating Wisconsin's 2020 election, sources confirm
Mary Spicuzza
The FBI has started an investigation into Wisconsin’s 2020 election, sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The investigation is only in a preliminary phase and is focused on vetting previous complaints – and no ballots have been seized in Wisconsin, the sources said.
Confirmation of the probe came as the Journal Sentinel reported that an FBI agent had interviewed a state election official in recent days. The agent spoke with Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe and discussed how elections are handled in Wisconsin.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election. A recount in two Wisconsin counties that Trump's campaign paid for, court rulings, a state audit and a conservative review have confirmed that Trump lost. Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes.
Kehoe reportedly debunked false claims during his meeting with the FBI agent.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.
Emilee Miklas, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said, 'We are not aware of an active investigation."
Officials in Wisconsin – and especially Milwaukee – have been preparing for an investigation.
The Wisconsin probe comes after federal officials in January seized hundreds of boxes of ballots related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, and after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena in March for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin have all been central to Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 election. Trump has insisted, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden didn’t win in Wisconsin that year.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman previously led a fruitless review of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, which cost taxpayers more than $2 million and turned up little information that wasn't already known.
If federal officials investigate the 2020 election in Milwaukee, it’s possible that poll books and nearly 180,000 absentee ballots with attached ID numbers could be turned over to investigators. Since state law requires absentee ballots counted at a central counting facility to include poll list numbers, the data could be matched with poll book information to identify voters.
Election officials in Milwaukee have raised concerns about such a move, stressing that protecting voters' privacy and their right to vote is a priority.
Ballots from the 2020 election typically would have been destroyed by now. But Milwaukee’s 2020 ballots still exist, partly because of a lawsuit filed against the city by a New London man who has sued state and local election officials over the 2020 election and related issues.
"Based on everything already litigated, reviewed, recounted, and decided by the courts, this appears to be nothing more than a political fishing expedition," said Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee area election attorney. "There is no factual or legal basis to relitigate Wisconsin’s 2020 election."
The FBI is the investigative agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, which is suing Wisconsin officials over their refusal to provide the confidential information of voters that state election officials say is protected by Wisconsin law.
The federal lawsuit is one of nearly two dozen the Trump administration has filed across the country seeking voter lists without personal information redacted.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat, sharply criticized the FBI questioning a Wisconsin election official.
"Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, continues to whine and use intimidation tactics against election officials. Trump believes that any election he loses is illegitimate," she said in a statement. "Our elections are safe and fair and will remain that way."
(This story was updated to add new information.)president
Our coddled child president, King-Butt Hurt, still can't accept the fact that he lost an election. His ego won't let the truth in. What a mentally disturbed adolescent he is.
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Friday, May 8, 2026
Microsoft's Mount Pleasant data center employs 375 people
Ricardo Torres
More than 375 people are working at Microsoft's Mount Pleasant data center, a company executive says.
Bowen Wallace, corporate vice president for Microsoft, gave an update on the project to the Racine County Economic Development Corp. on May 7 at its "Impact 2026" event in Racine.
"We've hired over 375 full-time Microsoft employees," Wallace said. This includes workers who deploy network server devices, operate and maintain electrical and plumbing control systems.
Microsoft is nearing the full completion of its first data center in Mount Pleasant and the company plans to have roughly 500 workers at that facility when it's completed.
A second data center is currently under construction, which Wallace said, at its peak, will have roughly 3,000 construction jobs.
Microsoft is planning to add 15 more data centers to its property in Mount Pleasant during the next decade.
Wallace called the Racine County project the "absolutely flagship supercomputer in Microsoft's portfolio."
"When this project started back in 2023, it went from an idea to construction start faster than any project in our portfolio had ever done before and ever done since," Wallace said.
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Influencer Clavicular and 2 other men charged in alleged Everglades alligator shooting
US Homeland Security forces Google into identifying online Trump critic. He turns out to be Canadian
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Pennsylvania parents charged after teen riding dirt bike on road crashes into car
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Cops Gone Wild: Stressful and traumatic’ | After sober DUI charge, retired FBI executive calls for change in Tennessee
Microsoft CEO Nadella says Mt. Pleasant data center is online. Not so fast.
Ricardo Torres
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told investors and analysts that the company’s data center in Mount Pleasant went online in early April “six weeks ahead of schedule, allowing us to recognize revenue earlier.”
However, the company says that the data center, called Fairwater, isn’t online yet.
Nadella made the comments during the April 29 third quarter earnings call, in which the company announced a profit of $31.8 billion for the quarter.
When asked for comment, Microsoft referred the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to a post on X by Nadella on April 16, days before the earnings call, for the official comment:
There is equipment inside the data center conducting start-up activities, which the company anticipates will continue to happen for the next several weeks.
The GB200s Nadella mentioned are the high-performance superchips made by Nvidia.
Microsoft has been building in Mount Pleasant since it acquired land from Foxconn Technology Group in 2024.
So far, Microsoft has committed $7.3 billion to building its facilities in Mount Pleasant.
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