MILWAUKEE — With their most effective starter on the mound and the wind at their sails from a 19-run, 25-hit outburst at Coors Field, the Giants jumped out to an early lead.

And, poof, like most of San Francisco’s hopes this season, it was gone.

About as soon as Matt Chapman’s two-run homer cleared the wall and the outstretched glove of Jackson Chourio in the top of the second, Landen Roupp began to give the lead right back.

The Brewers pounced on Roupp for seven runs in the bottom half of the inning and only added on from there while running away with the first game of their series, 16-2.

It was such a drubbing that it ended with a position player called up before the game, Buddy Kennedy, lobbing pitches while Daniel Susac, a catcher with no prior experience besides two minor-league games at first base, played third.

Roupp struck out Jake Bauers to bring a merciful end to the second inning, nine batters after the Brewers left fielder started with a leadoff walk. Sal Frelick and Chourio both jumped on first-pitch fastballs for explosive extra-base hits, Chapman wasn’t able to field a bunt from speedy No. 9 hitter David Hamilton, and Roupp issued another walk to Christian Yelich.

The biggest hit of the inning came off the bat of Bryce Turang and gave newly called up Jonah Cox his first opportunity to show off his defense that has been called the best in the organization. Cox gave chase but instead went crashing into the wall in left-center field as the ball careened away and Turang cruised into third for a bases-clearing triple.

Turang jogged home on a sacrifice fly from the next batter for the Brewers’ seventh run.

The Brewers added another run off Roupp the next inning and eight more against the Giants’ bullpen (plus Kennedy). But for all intents and purposes, they were already buried.

What it means

Whatever good feelings the Giants brought with them on the plane after their rout to end their series against the Rockies were gone by end of the second inning.

It has been hard enough for the Giants to pull ahead; staying in front has been just as much of a challenge.

The Giants have held a lead in only 48 of their 60 games, the fewest in the majors, and are one of only five teams to relinquish the advantage more often than not, falling to 23-25.

The culprit of late had been the bullpen, but in this one, there was nobody to blame but Roupp, who struggled to find the strike zone and was hit hard when he did.

Roupp exhausted 96 pitches to complete four innings, only half for strikes, and recorded season-highs in bases on balls (four) and earned runs (eight).

The outing raised his ERA almost a full run, to 4.22 from a rotation-leading 3.30.

Who’s hot

Jung Hoo Lee recorded the most hits by a Giant in a single series since 2017 by going 11-for-15 over their three games in Colorado and picked up right where he left off.

Lee’s second-inning single extended his hitting streak to nine games and set the table for Chapman’s two-run shot that gave the Giants the briefest of 2-0 leads.

Bryce Eldridge, getting a rare start in the field, made a nice play to start a 3-6 double play, going to the ground to snag a hard hopper from Frelick, tagging first and getting back to his feet to make an accurate throw to Willy Adames at second base.

Eldridge also laced a double — his sixth in four games on the road trip — that left the bat at 107.7 mph, the Giants’ hardest-hit ball of the game.

Who’s not

After posting a 5.21 ERA in May that ranked as the fourth-worst in the majors, the Giants’ starting rotation didn’t start the month of June on any better note.

As a staff, San Francisco has surrendered at least six runs in six of its past seven games and all four to begin the road trip, albeit with the caveat that the first three were played at Coors Field.

Up next

Salt in the wound: As the Giants try to get back on track, they will be opposed by their former top prospect, Kyle Harrison, who has blossomed into an NL Cy Young contender since being dealt to the Red Sox for Rafael Devers and again this offseason to Milwaukee.

The Giants will have another homegrown arm, Trevor McDonald, on the mound.

Before the Violent Femmes became a world-famous band with a multi-platinum record, they started the same way any other group would in Milwaukee: playing wherever they could.

Local clubs weren’t interested in their unique musical style, so they took to playing on sidewalks and street corners until they were first discovered while performing outside of a Pretenders concert at the Oriental Theater in 1981.

They self-funded their first album, which went on to sell more than 7 million copies.

The story of the Violent Femmes’ Milwaukee origins and improbable rise to fame is the subject of a new book in the long-running music book series called “33⅓.” 

Author Nic Brown joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to share the significance of the band’s self-titled debut album and what he learned from interviewing band members and producers.

The following was edited for clarity and brevity.

Rob Ferrett: For people who aren’t familiar with the Violent Femmes, how would you describe their music?

Nic Brown: They occupy this overlapping realm of folk, punk and jazz — which I’d call a Bermuda Triangle for anybody, but they pull it off because their songs are so great. Gordon Gano, the primary singer-songwriter, had this incredible collection of songs when the band formed, and they’re so well put together that they could have worked in any setting, really.

The Violent Femmes themselves had one of the most unique arrangements of instruments possible, and that’s the biggest surprise for people when they see them. A lot of what’s most unusual about them is often invisible on a recording, but they’re a one-of-a-kind band. Their debut record is a one-of-a-kind record. It didn’t sound like anything else then, and it still doesn’t sound like anything else today. 

RF: What were their early public performances like?

NB: They had a hard time getting gigs. They busked, and they had instrumentation that made it easy for them to do that, and that was by design, too. Victor DeLorenzo, the drummer, played standing up with brushes, with just a snare drum and then what he calls a tranceaphone, which is a metal bushel basket placed on top of another drum. Gordon (Gano) would play guitar on the street, usually an acoustic guitar. And then Brian Ritchie would play an acoustic bass guitar, which to most people sounds like stand-up bass, like what you’d see in a jazz trio. It looked more like a mariachi-style bass, and Brian’s point was, he couldn’t haul a stand-up bass around. He didn’t even have a driver’s license. 

They had instruments that were made to play on the street, and the fact that they spent so much time playing on the street is part of the reason the band works so well. There are few performance spaces less forgiving than a street corner in Milwaukee, or anywhere. They honed this act on the street corners so that they could make their songs work in that setting. And because of that, when they finally got into the studio to record their debut album, they were a really well-oiled machine, despite the fact they hadn’t spent much time on actual stages.

RF: What was it like for them to try to get a record deal and record their first album?

NB: It was failure after failure, really. They tried to get a record deal before they went into the studio. They had one very small label out of New York that was interested, but that fell through, so that’s why they eventually recorded it themselves. They had a lot of pressure from some people who did recognize a spark there to do that ’80s rock ‘n’ roll production with the more processed sound and synthesizers, and they had a surprising amount of confidence at the age that they were at to stick with their sound.

Eventually, there was a label called Slash Records, a small punk label in California, and they turned the band down. But two employees at Slash loved this recording so much that they kept playing the cassette in the offices until the owner finally said, “OK, I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to sign this band, not because I want to, but because I’m so sick of hearing my employees playing it every day.” So that’s how they ended up getting their record deal with Slash Records.

They say it’s the worst record deal any band could ever have signed. But they did what they had to, the record came out, and the rest is history, right?

RF: It took four years before the album went gold and then another four years to go platinum. How did it pick up popularity and go viral in the pre-internet era?

NB: I describe it as going viral over eight years via cassette. Young people connected with the songs and shared dubbed cassette tapes. They say this album has sold 7 million copies, and I say you need to ask Maxwell how many blank tapes they sold between 1983 and 1991 and add in about 30 percent of that.

A lot of people don’t know what the album cover looks like. I had a guy recently tell me that the album cover is whatever guy’s handwriting wrote “Violent Femmes” on the blank tape, so it was a real organic word-of-mouth build-up over eight years. 

RF: How unique was Brian Ritchie’s bass playing in what you described as a “lead bass” role in the band?

NB: This is probably the most bass-forward recording in popular music history. Brian Ritchie is an incredible musician, and so this thing happens on these songs where the melodic statements that aren’t happening with Gordon’s vocals are usually made on the bass guitar, and then Brian Ritchie takes long bass solos, unaccompanied by any other instrument.

They sound so natural and great that you actually don’t even think they’re bass solos. Often, if there’s a bass solo happening, that’s when we might skip the song. I’m sorry to say, but that doesn’t apply to Brian Ritchie’s work. He’s the lead.

RF: As a musician yourself, what drew you so enthusiastically into writing this book? 

NB: The book series that it’s part of, “33⅓,” is just a classic series, and guys like me were always dreaming about what record I would pitch to write about. This album had always been in my head as that record. I published a memoir about three years ago about my career as a musician, and in it I mentioned how important this album was. 

One of the members of the Femmes management read that memoir and actually reached out to me about maybe doing a project with them at some point. So this simmering dream of mine to pitch a “33⅓” book rose to the surface, and I thought, I’m gonna go for it. It was sort of a double-dream for me to have a book in the series and to be able to write it with the participation of all three members and the producer. It’s a fan’s dream come true.