Just Announced Shellac at Club Garibaldi

Decider was surprised to learn that Shellac is playing June 26 at Club Garibaldi. The Bay View bar’s back room is gaining a reputation for having top-notch sound and a great atmosphere, but booking the venerable Chicago power trio is still a great catch for a music venue a lot of Milwaukeeans still don’t know about.

We know the Shellac show coincides with Summerfest’s opening weekend, but if you want to hear gloriously loud rock ‘n’ roll music in an intimate club setting, you won’t want to miss this. A live Shellac show is always fun for the uninitiated—as dark and humorless as songs like “Prayer To God” and “The End Of Radio” (from the band’s most recent full-length, 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound) seem on the surface, a playful sense of humor is simmering just under the surface, which morphs into downright silliness in concert. The band’s gut-busting question-and-answer sessions between songs are usually worth the admission price alone. We’re still laughing about what happened at Shellac’s 2006 show at Todd Wehr Conference Center when acerbic frontman Steve Albini asked a 7-year-old kid how much his mom charges for “around the world.” We’re not sure what that means, but we’re guessing it was inappropriate.

Here is Shellac playing “My Black Ass” and responding to a heckler with a mom joke, which appears to be Albini's stock move. A word of advice to jackasses: Have better material than “Why do you suck so much?”