CD Review

The Dark Underbelly: Sons of Bert

The latest album from this Duluth band can be best approached using Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief.

Stage 1: Denial. Oh no they didn’t!

Okay, I expected it would be dark. They’re called “The Dark Underbelly.” But I didn’t know it’d be this dark.

Over the past five years they’ve produced what may be described (emphasis on may) as black-n-blues oldschool metal prog rock. We’ve compared them in these pages to Primus, Bauhaus, Dead Kennedys, GWAR, Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Now CD it seems obvious their closest kin is REVIEW early Black ” Sabbath, that is, if RICHARD Ozzy were replaced by THOMAS Svengoolie. The musicians play pounding subbasement rock while frontman and lyricist Robert Petoletti hollers like a street lunatic, sometimes in tune, usually not. They created ghoulish songs like “Happy Blues for Jeffrey Dahmer,” “Judy Garland is Dead” and “Master of Skulls.” But it’s been an oldhorror-movie kind of dark, both fun and cathartic. (By the way, the band has broken up. Drummer and music composer Nick Petoletti, Robert’s son, said, “It ran its course. It was time to wrap it up.” But they still have a backlog of material to release.)

This album pushes the envelope.

Act One: Back to the Roots

Bert, a fiercely independent woman with a fiery spirit, joined the carnival, upon age of majority, as a means of escape from the farm where she grew up. She naïvely yearned for the city. Once there, she met a merchant marine who swept her of her feet, and Bert produced two sons in rapid succession. The sailor soon lost interest in domestic life and sailed off never to return. Despondently, Bert was left to raise two sons with no father figure. Son #1 grew to be a belligerent alcoholic. Son #2 grew passive aggressive and turned to drink as well. Son #1 drank himself to Most of the songs are about death, some about suicide. (Lyrics: “Some people think suicide’s bad and I don’t know why.”) Metal bands sing about suicide all the time, so that alone is not too shocking.

Then there’s “Kill the President,” the title of which seems intended to get the band investigated by the Secret Service. The lyrics clarify that the target could be any president, like the president of a college. Well, that’s not so bad, is it? But it’s about a guy with a burning itch to put on his wife’s wedding dress, go out and kill someone. Then, “I’ll put a bullet through my head and I’ll make it gory. Before the final trigger springs, I want to say, I’m sorry!” This is followed by Robert’s evil laugh, which he’s honed to perfection over five years.

It gets worse. This is a concept album. The band provided me with a plot outline (see below), though it’s unavailable with the CD. It’s hard to a gruesome death at a rather early age. Son #2 became manic depressive and ran away, abandoning Bert. She had to reconstruct her life.

Act Two: The Suicide Suite

Bert became involved with a rich entrepreneur and gambler named Rupert Ross who traveled the county on various “business” affairs. He fancied himself a very generous and charitable man. Bert quickly saw through his scam. He set her up in a house where his central office was stationed, and she had regular dealings with his midget henchman “Old Carl.” She discovered follow the story just by listening, but you get the gist.

Basically it’s about a mother and her two screwed-up sons. She also gets involved with a racketeer named Rupert Ross who ends up killing himself. One son drinks himself to death and the other, the would-be assassin, jumps off a building and goes splat. Bert (short for Bertha) spends her final miserable days in a nursing home before sailing away on “the black ship of time.” The end.

Bert is the actual name of Robert’s late mother. The cover photo is of Robert and his brother (who’s not involved with the band) when they were kids. There’s an unflattering picture of her on the CD. Her voice can be heard twice in between songs: “You’re worse than your brother ever was” and “What are you going to do, take me out and shoot me?” These were recorded on her deathbed.

Stage 2: Anger. The f--k did they think they were doing? that Old Carl was running a sex trafficking operation for Rupert Ross. Old Carl was even pimping out his wife. One night, the wife’s best friend, “Scary Sherry,” confronted Old Carl as he came out of a back alley, and she stabbed him to death. With the sex trafficking ring exposed and prison looming over his head, Rupert Ross committed suicide.

When the dust settled on the Rupert Ross debacle, Bert’s son #2 resurfaced. He was completely insane. Apparently, he had been in a dysfunctional, codependent relationship which ended tragically, and now he ran home to mother. He disgusted Bert. He was obsessed with killing a president – any

Is the album a posthumous act of payback? Couldn’t they keep that in the family? Why are they showing us their dirty laundry? Who the hell makes a horrible depressing bummer rock opera starring their mother/grandmother?

Stage 3: Bargaining. The album is available as a “name your price” download on Bandcamp (where you can also find all the lyrics) and you can get the CD for $6 on Amazon. But why would you want to??

Stage 4: Depression. This is the most appalling, upsetting, disturbing album I’ve heard since David Bowie’s deathbed opus Blackstar.

Stage 5: Acceptance. Got to admit, any album that gets this kind of reaction must be good. Ultimately, I don’t think the Petolettis are so cavalier in the way they deal with pain, loss and grief. They seem to be confronting it head-on. Which is painful, but after listening to it I feel more prepared to face the day, the future and whatever happens when I sail that ship.

In a text message Robert told me, “Sons of Bert is dedicated to my mother, but it is in no way factual. I was glad to incorporate my mother while she lived with us in some meaningful (albeit bizarre) artistic endeavor. She was used to my shenanigans, and I only wish she could have lived long enough to see the end result.”

So, five out of five stars for this bad boy of an album. But if there is an afterlife, let’s hope Bert has a sense of humor. Otherwise she might be waiting for her progeny with a red hot

The concept behind the concept album Sons of Bert

pitchfork. kind of president. “You’re worse than your brother ever was,” she snidely remarked as she ran him off. Eventually, he attempted to kill a bank president and failed. When the police closed in on him, he jumped off the roof of the bank thinking that he could fly. He splattered on the pavement below – quite dead. With both of her sons dead, and her life in ruins, Bert retired to a nursing home and lived out her last years in futility knowing that one day she would be forgotten on the winds of time. Her last known spoken words were, “What are you going to do? Take me out and shoot me?”

White Gull Inn: A Door County delight

Northern Door County’s charming White Gull Inn is on Main Street in Fish Creek but not on the main drag – a key distinction.

Rather, it’s tucked away on a quiet road in an idyllic location bordered by parks that provide a restful space to view the inviting waters of Green Bay. TRAVEL

So when a guest and I shared BRIAN a recent weekend at CLARK the hotel, which dates to the late 1800s, we were well away from the traffic that flows through town on Highway 42, which also doubles as Main Street.

That meant we could sit on our veranda, sip coffee that was delivered to our door, and enjoy birdsong, butterflies and children’s laughter instead of vehicle noise.

Much more attracts visitors to the White Gull Inn, which dates to 1896, such as its location beside the Episcopal Church of Atonement’s lovely grounds and nearby Sunset Park.

The inn consists of several buildings for a total of 17 rooms. The main structure, a hotel built by German doctor Hermann Welker, was originally named after his wife, Henriette. He also owned a casino down the street, now a hostelry known as the Whistling Swan. The inn, crowned with a broad secondstory balcony, has a cozy feel and beautifully landscaped surroundings that give guests a feeling that they’ve stepped back into a slower time.

It has been updated in an understated way, though, so bathrooms are now en suite, no longer requiring a trek down the hall in the main building.

Many rooms have gas fireplaces. And the four-suite Welker building – which was erected 20 years ago but looks like it could also be from 1896 – even has two-person jet tubs for those seeking a bit of warm luxury.

The food here is excellent. The inn gained fame in 2010, when Good Morning America named its Cherry Stuffed French Toast the best breakfast in the country for that year. The inn’s fish boils are also popular, as are the candlelight dinners offered several nights a week.

I had the inn’s signature and delicious cherry-topped French toast with Door County maple syrup both The White Gull Inn provides a quiet place to stay when visiting Fish Creek in Wisconsin’s Door County. Photo courtesy of Brian Clark.

mornings, and the evening meal of baked salmon graced with string beans ended with a delightful finish of icecream-topped fruit crumble.

“That ‘Best Breakfast Challenge’ award really put us on the map nationally,” said Meredith CoulsonKanter, whose parents owned the inn from 1981 to 2018, when she and her husband, Chris, bought the property.

Meredith and her two sisters grew up at the inn helping their folks.

“I worked as a busser, my mom’s retail assistant and a prep cook,” Meredith said. But that fell off when she went to college and veterinary medicine school.

She toiled for seven years as an emergency room veterinarian, often working night shifts at a clinic in Madison. But the inn drew her back six years ago after a year’s sabbatical at the University of Wisconsin, during which she received a master’s degree in sustainable agriculture and food systems.

“Even though I became a vet, I always envisioned myself being here eventually,” she said. “However, I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out after going to school for 12 years for something else and having all my student loans.”

When her parents began talking about selling the inn, Meredith and her siblings were alarmed.

“We didn’t want that to happen, but we couldn’t just drop what we were doing,” she said. “As it turned out, my folks lost their long-time kitchen manager around the same time. I filled in, and after six months it became clear that this was where I wanted to be long term.”

Her husband, who was working on his Ph.D. thesis in dairy economics at UW-Madison when they moved north, signed on, too. In 2018, they bought the inn.

When we visited Fish Creek the inn was relatively busy, with travelers beginning to come out of their pandemic shells. All of the staff at the hotel and restaurant wore face masks, and tables in the restaurant were at least 6 feet apart.

One evening we ventured north a few miles to Sister Bay, where we boarded the Edith Becker, a 65-foot sailboat that’s a replica of a late 1800s merchant schooner, for a sunset outing. With Capt. Andy Hallett at the helm we sailed past forested hillsides and rocky shores. He told us that Herb and Doris Smith, authors of Sailing Three Oceans, built the ship in the early 1980s and named it Appledore III. In 1984 the couple and some paying crew members set off to circumnavigate the globe. They then sold the ship to Peder Nelson, a former Chicago school teacher and avid sailor who renamed it for his great grandmother, Edith Becker, who spent her entire life in Door County.

At sunset we headed back to the marina, with the deckhands firing a small cannon to announce our return.

“It’s fun to captain this boat,” said Hallett, a science teacher at Gibraltar High School when he’s not sailing. “She really does feel like a piece of history, even if she isn’t 130 years old.”

White Gull Inn: whitegullin.com