Uncle Eddie

Madison in the late 90’s had a plethora of clubs and a ton of live alternative rock music. There were plenty of touring bands coming through town with their overdistorted guitars. Lyrics were ironic and most of the time you didn’t know what the fuck bands were talking about. But it was fun, pierced, and dyed weird colors. UNCLE EDDIE was one of the mainstays of the mid to late-90’s scene in town and you could find them all over the scene, not only playing with the band but seeing all the other bands they could and hosting basement parties. Drummer Chad Ovshak, bassist Nate Arnold, and guitarist Darwin Sampson have gone on to play in many other bands since UNCLE EDDIE’s breakup at the beginning of the now-departed Aughts. Sampson now is the proprietor of The Frequency next to the capital and he’s bringing in local and touring rock acts every night of the week. Ovshak has gone on to play in an awesome Guns n’ Roses tribute band, millennial pioneers Echo-Static, and is currently shaking the walls down with horror-rockers, Helliphant. They’ve gotten back together a handful of times and are coming back this February 20th at The Crystal Corner in Madison.

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Unearth

East coast hardcore bands are a quickly growing force, and one of the heaviest, UNEARTH, makes their way through Wisconsin. Coming off their previous tour with thrash titans, TESTAMENT, Trevor Phipps (vocals) feels the band is only getting started on their contribution to the heavy metal world. Still out promoting their latest album, “The March,” this quintet thrives on the stylings of their local scene in Massachusetts and the metal influences of the 90’s.

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Unity The Band

Bringing some of that tropical feeling to the Fox Valley, a region famously called “The Frozen Tundra”, UNITY THE BAND, plays their roots-rock reggae music for fans all over the state and they’re working on the world. Frontman Pita Kotobalavu (better known to fans by his nickname, Kai) formed UNITY in 2003 after moving to Oshkosh. But here’s the kicker, he moved from Hawaii, where he’d previously moved from his homeland of Fiji. What can make a man leave paradise?

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V-Squared Labs elevates concert experience with multimedia creations

A visual revolution has been brewing in the image rendering and video projection realms transforming musical events into an entirely new multi-level experience. On Oct. 19, I was fortunate enough to attend a sold out Amon Tobin show in Denver at the Ogden Theater during the highly acclaimed ISAM tour and witness one such multimedia experience.

Objects resembling giant, white Tetris blocks on the stage were suddenly transformed into living video art that throbbed and pulsed along with the music. Audience members visited outer space when we saw spaceships fly by and explode in amazing high definition imagery. We saw cyber machines chug and churn before morphing into green blocks of electric contemplation and much, much more.

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Steve Vai

Just as the guitarist in bands like Frank Zappa and David Lee Roth to his sideman work with bands like Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne, STEVE VAI has been the guitar hero’s guitar hero for three decades. He’s been leading his own band since the early 1990’s, creating one of that generation’s most influential instrumental guitar records, the epic Passion and Warfare. He’s releasing a new DVD in September called Where The Wild Things Are documenting a show on his last tour in Minneapolis. He’s just finished getting it ready and he took a few minutes to talk about the DVD with us.

MI: What compelled you to make the new DVD set?

SV: It’s what I do. Traveling musician, composer, and rock guitar player. It’s always nice to capture little moments in time. I put this band together, that’s sort of a unique band. My music is 80% instrumental, very compositional rock music. It’s a very different kind of a show. When I do a show together, I put together something I’d like to see when I go to a show. I want to see great musicianship, I wanna feel emotional dynamics, and see people that have an investment in what you’re doing.

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Vanishing Kids

Keeping alive the torch of post-punk and new-wave, VANISHING KIDS started making noise when guitarist Jason Hartman and vocalist Nikki Nads met in Madison in 2000 and decided to form a band the following year where they could indulge in their love of artists like The Cure and Siouxsie and The Banshees. That path has since taken them to Seattle, back to Madison, and finally back to the West Coast to Portland, Oregon. They’ve achieved a good deal of success along the way, signing a distribution deal with Rykodisc and having industrial pioneer Martin Atkins take the producing reins on one of their albums.  This summer, they’ve released a brand new single, “Mother Earth”, and are hitting the road on a tour that will take them through the Western and Midwestern states.

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Musical Tribute to the Songs of Shel Silverstein

He was an artist with no boundaries as to the audience he could reach. “Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute To The Songs Of Shel Silverstein is a folk album with an eclectic group of musicians singing songs featuring lyrics from Silverstein’s poems. In the 90’s, the poet became an icon in Madison, WI writing rhymes and prose, drawing fantastical illustrations, and composing folk lyrics that achieved great commercial success.  Sugar Hill Records released the album on June 8th, 2010 after three years in the making. The tracks on “Twistable Turnable Man” were recorded at multiple studios around the United States and produced by both Bobby Bare Sr. and Jr.

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