On the evening of Friday, October 17, 2003, more than five hundred concertgoers packed into the Todd Wehr Auditorium, a performance space on the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). They had come to see a series of alternative music acts, including Minneapolis-based Motion City Soundtrack and an up-and-coming band hailing from Chicago, Fall Out Boy. Fall Out Boy’s debut album, Take This to Your Grave, had been released in May 2003 and was in the process of finding its way into the hands of underground music fans.
For many in attendance that fall night, it seemed Fall Out Boy was coming into its own. To show promoter Marc Solheim, the band was “starting to get some national attention, but they were not the Fall Out Boy they became.” In the early 2000s, the group was cultivating an accessible sound rooted in alternative rock, a genre that presented a more polished version of the punk scene from which they emerged. Their electric guitar–driven songs were still abrasive enough to relegate the band to the noncommercial underground of American music. Yet Fall Out Boy was quickly maturing, and there was a palpable sense that the Milwaukee show was a turning point, leading Solheim to ask, “Wow, what’s happening here?” As the band took command of the stage, according to Solheim, “you could definitely see the paradigm shift that day. You could feel it.” Take This to Your Grave would eventually go gold, selling more than 500,000 copies. The band’s second album, 2005’s From Under the Cork Tree, would ultimately reach double platinum status, selling more than 2.5 million copies. Fewer than five years after their performance on the MSOE campus, Fall Out Boy was headlining Milwaukee’s Bradley Center, an arena with a capacity of 20,000.1
By the early twenty-first century, MSOE’s Todd Wehr Auditorium provided the space—both physical and cultural—for rising alternative music acts to connect with audiences in Milwaukee. As was the case with Fall Out Boy, the venue was a significant step towards greater acclaim for many bands. This was not coincidental. Throughout the late twentieth century, developments on the MSOE campus and within the Milwaukee music community created both a need and an opportunity for shows at the Todd Wehr. At the same time, fans were taking an active role in shaping the scene through the circulation of music zines: self-published booklets that drew attention to new acts and actively promoted concerts, contributing to an atmosphere in which underground bands could flourish.
Connecting all of these developments was WMSE, MSOE’s college radio station. As a media outlet, WMSE broadcasted news of performances happening across the city. Such a vantage point allowed those who worked at the station to see the need for additional
