Class acts: UW-Madison bands are back in a big way Rich Albertoni on Friday 03/05/2010, (2) Recommendations UW-Madison students Quincy Harrison and Cliff Grefe were profiled in USA Today last December for a song they wrote in the basement of their Langdon Street fraternity house. Harrison, 20, and Grefe, 19, didn't get national press for breaking musical ground. They'd barely begun performing together as Zooniversity months earlier. The raps and beats were simple on their debut single, "Coastie Song (What's a Coastie?)." >MoreFortune and Glory plays fast, friendly pop-punk Not overthinking it Rich Albertoni on Friday 03/05/2010, (3) Recommendations It's noon on Saturday, and four of the five members of the Madison rock band Fortune and Glory are sitting around a table at a local pub, having drinks. When they're not chiding each other, they're busy telling me why they've found a haven in the punk-pop music they make. >More
Via Audio gives away a Brooklyn vacation Indie sweepstakes Jessica Steinhoff on Friday 03/05/2010 Composed of four Berklee College of Music graduates, Via Audio aren't short on talent. In fact, they've become fast favorites of Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla and Spoon drummer Jim Eno. Eno produced both 2007's Say Something and Animalore, the disc they're releasing March 9 during a cross-country tour. >More
MadTracks: 'Ascension' by Ridley Jessica Steinhoff on Wednesday 02/10/2010 2:34 pm, (3) Recommendations When Jon Schoepke and Billy Morehouse, bandmates from a small-town metal group, reunited in Madison in the fall of 2008, they weren't just looking to hang out and worship Black Sabbath. They had a vision. "We wanted to make some non-traditional sounding albums with looping, rock guitars and driving synths," Schoepke says. And thus, Ridley was born. >MoreMadTracks: 'Tantz Tantz Allemin' by The Shtetlblasters Jessica Steinhoff on Wednesday 02/03/2010 1:00 pm, (3) Recommendations At first glance, electro jams and klezmer songs don't seem to have much in common. Electro sprang from funk musicians' fascination with programmable drum machines in the 1980s. Klezmer, on the other hand, sprang from the synagogues of southeastern Europe in the 1380s or thereabouts. Now the two have come together in Madison, of all places, thanks to The Shtetlblasters, a five-piece ensemble that got acquainted at Middleton High School a few years ago. >More
Guest conductor Anu Tali, pianist Stephen Hough grace Madison Symphony Orchestra John W. Barker on Saturday 02/27/2010 10:54 am, (1) Recommendation Conductor Anu Tali brought to the Madison Symphony Orchestra a work by a fellow countryman revered back in Estonia: Heino Eller, whose atmospheric symphonic picture "Dawn" was most attractive. As for pianist Stephen Hough, he played the socks off Tchaikovsky's Second Concerto. >MoreBroadway's Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley get back to the Midwest at Union Theater Jennifer A. Smith on Saturday 02/20/2010 10:00 am Depending on your musical proclivities, the biggest thing to come out of Rockford, Ill. is either Cheap Trick or Marin Mazzie. Mazzie and her husband, Jason Danieley, have been dubbed "Broadway's golden couple" and have performed at the likes of Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and London's West End. Yet for one night, Madisonians had them all to ourselves at the Wisconsin Union Theater. >More
Local Natives: Gorilla Manor (Frenchkiss Records) Rich Albertoni on Friday 03/05/2010, (1) Recommendation Indie rock is no longer the unpredictable genre it once was. It is increasingly performed as down-tempo, folk-based music. It emphasizes sonic space and extended instrumental repetition in its seemingly singular determination to make music feel thoughtful, gently impressionistic and dreamy. >MoreBen Sidran: Dylan Different (Nardis Music) Jessica Steinhoff on Friday 02/26/2010 Ben Sidran, the local legend who wrote "Space Cowboy" in his time with the Steve Miller Band, won a Peabody for his NPR series Talking Jazz and produced albums for everyone from Van Morrison to Diana Ross, heads back to his roots on his newest CD, a collection of Bob Dylan covers. >More
MadTracks: 'A Kiss in Wisconsin' by The August Teens Jessica Steinhoff on Wednesday 03/10/2010 1:30 pm, (2) Recommendations Few things compare to holy trinity of big guitars, pretty harmonies and pop hooks aplenty. The August Teens know it well and worship it often. Heck, they've been doing it for 10 years now. >MoreTierney Sutton to headline the 2010 Isthmus Jazz Festival Dean Robbins on Monday 03/08/2010 4:03 pm The Tierney Sutton Band will headline the 2010 Isthmus Jazz Festival on Saturday, June 5, at the Wisconsin Union Theater, featuring Sutton's unique approach to jazz singing. The festival also features free performances by regional jazz bands the weekend of June 5 and 6 at the UW Memorial Union Terrace. >MoreZola Jesus is in colossal voice at intimate Project Lodge show Sally Franson on Sunday 03/07/2010 11:38 am, (1) Comment, (1) Recommendation Zola Jesus celebrated the release of her new EP, Stridulum, last night at theProject Lodge. The show marked the UW-Madison’s student’s return to playing in her hometown after a year’s absence, and based on the raucous admiration from the audience, she was sorely missed. >MoreVinyl Cave: A Lovely Sight by Pisces Bob Koch on Saturday 03/06/2010 8:00 am, (1) Recommendation For as long as record collectors of all genres have been digging for forgotten material, those few who go the next step and begin reissuing material commercially have maintained a sort of cottage industry mining the many, many ignored side roads of music history. >MoreMadison Music Scene & Heard: Simon and Garfunkel at the Kohl Center Bob Koch on Friday 03/05/2010 1:58 pm They've been performing music together for more than five decades, but the duo of Simon and Garfunkel has never made a stop in Madison. That situation will be rectified this spring, as the legendary folk rockers have announced a concert stop at the Kohl Center on Sunday, May 9. >MoreMadTracks: 'I-94 Blues' by the Cash Box Kings Jessica Steinhoff on Thursday 03/04/2010 2:30 pm, (5) Recommendations There are numerous reasons I-94 might give you the blues, whether it's 5:00 gridlock or the recently announced resurfacing project that's bound to create headaches this summer. For Joe Nosek and the rest of the Cash Box Kings, I-94 is the highway to love gone wrong. >More
Anna Wang finds a calling in guitar pop Saying no to med school Rich Albertoni on Friday 02/19/2010, (1) Recommendation Anna Wang spends a lot of time shrugging off the silly things that concern other people. "I can remember being in high school," she says, "and all my girlfriends were crying because their boobs weren't as big as other girls', and I would always be like, 'Can you stop talking now so I can go back to writing songs?'" >MoreMadison musicians are passionate about their favorite love songs Kenneth Burns on Friday 02/12/2010 1:20 pm, (2) Comments, (6) Recommendations In the pop canon there are songs about death, surfing and job-stealing Japanese robots, but music's most enduring theme is love. >More
Vinyl Cave: Wringing Applause by Brian Alexander Robertson Bob Koch on Sunday 02/28/2010 8:00 am, (1) Recommendation The five albums released by the revived label component of Ardent Studios in the early 1970s were almost exclusively acts that called Memphis home at the time, including Big Star, The Hot Dogs and Oklahoma natives Cargoe. The one outlier is a very atypical sort of album for either Ardent and its distributor Stax/Volt: Wringing Applause by Brian Alexander Robertson. >More
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