Special Delivery
THE LOCAL MUSIC SCENE got a bump last month when we were introduced to a group not many of us had even heard of. Surprisingly it took an article in Rolling Stone magazine, the bible of the music industry, to familiarize us with the work of Liquid Mike, seen above at a recent performance.
The band, led by Marquette postal employee Mike Maple, has been together for just three years, but apparently that’s long enough to catch the ear of reviewers at Rolling Stone. A piece about the band, which appeared in the magazine’s February 7th issue, calls Liquid Mike the “Best Midwestern Indie-Rock Band Fronted by a Mailman You’ll Hear All Year.”
The article, true to form for Rolling Stone, is primarily a critique of Liquid Mike’s most recent and fourth album, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot. But good music can always be helped along by a good story, and the everyman angle didn’t hurt in gaining their attention.
Yes, like most other local musicians, Maple has a daily gig too. He’s a mailman. In fact… he’s my mailman! But he’s also very committed to the music. “We’re very fortunate that we’ve been able to find and connect with an audience beyond our friends and family. There are so many deserving bands in Marquette that put out really great music.”
As far as the Rolling Stone notoriety goes, Maple explains, “I didn’t know it was going to happen until the day before it was published, so it was a really nice surprise.” I’d say so.
(Side note: The band is mostly locals, including guitarist David Daignault. I mention this because, like many musicians, he’s been in a number of bands, including one called Go Run Sprint. Devout fans, or fan, of the erstwhile Doug Garrison Show might be interested to know Daignault appeared with that band on our stage. So there’s that.)
Anyway, Liquid Mike has had a few low key local appearances, but most recently they’ve played Kalamazoo, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. Their music, original tunes written mostly by Maple, would be classified just as Rolling Stone said… indie-rock. Brooklyn Vegan called it “crunchy, fuzzy, hookie.” I’d throw in, not Taylor Swift. If you’d like to preview their sound, you can find a lot of their music on YouTube. Hopefully they join our other local bands and make the circuit around town. According to Maple, they’re playing an album release show on March 28th at the Ore Dock.
Not The Only Ones
Of course, they’re not the only artists with local ties to gain attention south of the bridge. Others include Joshua Davis, who had a good run on The Voice, of course Da Yoopers, plus Marquette natives like George Friend, Andy Burri, Michael Shirtz, Tret Fure, and recently Alyssa Palmer, better known around here as Alyssa Erspamer. And I’m sure there are more. Travelers have told me Marquette’s music community is as good as any, and I believe it.
Miss Information
With apologies to Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed King Of All Media, there’s new royalty in the Fifth Estate… Miss Information. Sorry to sexualize it, because in practice the new Queen is genderless. Also factless, pointless, and often gutless.
To study how social media has changed the way we get our information would require us to go down the deepest rabbit hole the internet has to offer. But one feature of the new age that’s turning out to be one of the worst, is the spread of misinformation.
The world wide web offers any number of internet based platforms, but the most dominant, by far, is Facebook. Chances are you’re reading this on Facebook right now. Facebook has more than 3 billion users… almost half the population of the planet.
When you give that many people almost zero responsibility for accuracy and fairness, you’re asking for trouble. People have always been un and mis informed, but before social media we kept it to ourselves. Now we “like” and “share” it. And then they “like” and “share” it. And so on. And before you know it, it’s “common knowledge.”
What To Do?
Wednesday night the League of Women Voters sponsored a panel discussion called, What You Need to Know About Misinformation & Disinformation. The panel of experts were news directors from three different local media outlets… Andrew LaCombe of TV6, Nicole Walton from Public Radio 90, and Walt Lindala of mediaBrew Communications. Ironically, the panelists shared a lot of good information about bad information, like how to detect it, and how to avoid it.
We’ve all been there. We see something posted and immediately think… “that ain’t right.” But unless we fact-check it ourselves, we might not know for sure, and by then the seed has been planted.
And frankly, it’s not just social media that requires skepticism. Even our most trusted sources have biases and subjective viewpoints. While recognizing that, the panel experts assured the audience that most responsible journalists are committed to the accurate reporting of facts, and they’re not just someone sitting at their computer, listening to Pandora, building up the word count with the occasional “side note,” and then throwing in a pointless “so there’s that.” Uh… where was I? Oh yeah, in summary, Lindala boiled it down to, “True bona fide journalists follow ethics.”
Which reminds me…one of the tips from the panel for how to detect misinformation is to look for words that seem to be trying to convince you of something. Watch for adjectives that color a story, rather than just report it. My personal least favorite is when I hear a newsperson call something a “bombshell.” Nope. Just give me the facts and I’ll decide if it’s a bombshell or not. Unless it was an actual bombshell. Then it’s okay to call it a bombshell.
They also stressed the importance of checking and confirming the source of a story, which is what each of them has to do with everything they report. Unless you see something first-hand, you’re always going to be relying on somebody else. And probably so were they.
It’s On You
We can all have different opinions of things, but as we’ve been told… we can’t have different facts. The challenge is to confirm the facts and dismiss the fiction. It’s not often easy, but if we want to make informed decisions, it’s always important.
Walton pointed out, “Ever since humans have been alive, there’s been miscommunication.” That was bad enough when it was just two cavemen. Now? 7 billion people and the internet haven’t made it any better. The best advice for how to navigate the current landscape of 24-7 news came from Lindala… “Caveat Emptor.”