Kicksville

The Presidential candidates have shared a motto during this election season: change. On Saturday, Nov. 15, America will have selected its leader, and a new era will be underway. Depending on your belief in what kind of change is needed, you may be looking to celebrate and/or protest. A perfect opportunity to do both awaits you at the Overture Center where a band called Kicksville is scheduled to perform. 

Kicksville can’t be constrained by the general conception of what is commonly referred to as a “band.” Kicksville is an entity. Their “Director of Propaganda” describes Kicksville as a political movement, a virtual community, and a musical collective. Madisonians and anyone else hell-bent on a free-thinking mind ought to be licking their chops.

Conrad St. Clair, the “Commissioner” of Kicksville, resists shackling attempts at categorization. “Politically we’re not Marxists, liberals, democrats or any of that.” Kicksville’s music also thwarts categorization. Constantly taking on new forms, collaborating with new artists (who gain “citizen” status), and utilizing new technology, Kicksville is an ever evolving creation that incorporates more than just sound. It assimilates ideas. St. Clair elaborates: “We’re teaming up with Amnesty International’s Small Places Tour 2008 to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It’s an honor. It’s something we feel strongly about.”

Read More...

Kid Rock

If there’s a single artist that best signifies America as we bum-rush the millennium, it’s Kid Rock. He oozes white trash and he’s proud of it, blazing across the country and winning audiences over with a devilish charm and coy irreverence to anything that gets in the way of his pimpin’ ain’t easy persona. He’s as smooth as a frosty cold one, but kicks back with the sting of a warm malt liquor. He’s rock, he’s rap, he’s country, and he’s blues. He probably smokes bluegrass, and his stage show rolls with the rocking and rolling curves of female dancers and big-bottomed bootieful backdrops. He’s impishly sexy, yet slyly chauvinistic, something his female hordes of fans are ready to lap up with a tease me, please me grin and an enthusiastic baring of their chests to get backstage. Call it all what you will, but it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s something mainstream music has been without for too damn long-Kid Rock’s a superstar, the likes of which American audiences haven’t had since ‘80s hair bands left women wanting to be sexy, and made it fashionable for men to be sexist. It’s all about living in the U.S. of A., and Kid Rock is here to make it fun again. “I just call it true, red-boned, American music. That’s exactly what it is,” says Rock of the rock ‘n’ roll hybrid that has pushed his Atlantic Records debut, Devil Without A Cause, beyond quadruple platinum status. That’s more than four million records sold, and counting. “It’s just American music to the fullest, right here. People like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash did it in their day. My hang up was always with The Stones and The Who, and a lot of the bands like that who just mimic blues music and stuff, and are probably some of the greatest rock bands in the world-They are nothing compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd or Marshall Tucker. Those were the only bands that could get onstage and blow them off. So what I’m doing is just a hybrid of true American music, everything from blues to rock ‘n’ roll to metal to hip-hop to jazz. Anything that sounds good-rockabilly, country, anything-I put it in there.”

The results-while they can be confusing to fans of traditional, straight-forward styles that don’t span competing genres-are infectious in their musical energy and primal enthusiasm. 

Read More...

Know Boundaries

Know Boundaries, speaking simply, is indefinable. Calling them rap-rock is misleading because they’re, you know, good. Allowing for a more complicated definition, they describe their intention “[to] mix hip hop and rock and not make them two separate styles of music but just one music using the power in both.”

The six-piece, six-year Madison veterans have opened for groups as disparate as Cypress Hill and the Gin Blossoms. They’ve been sponsored by Budweiser’s True Music program, won multiple Madison Area Music Awards and have been showcased at numerous industry conferences.

The band is exceptional in that it follows through on its intention. The music of Know Boundaries has the energy and power of all exciting and powerful music, tastefully brought together in one sound. The rhythm is heavy - a deceivingly simple drum beat paired with an ambitious and audible, but not overpowering bass. This leaves the guitar to flit around on the high end mostly, ducking back into the general groove for the lush hooks and choruses. Out front the band flaunts a cooperative rap-rock ying yang. An easy symbol of the band’s musical ambition, the rapper and singer twist around with each other, always in support - never detracting from one another’s parts. Through all this the keys (a decked out and supplemented-with-gizmos Rhodes) steer this would-be chaotic ship through melodies that don’t get old when they repeat-they get stronger.

Read More...

Kodo Drummers

In Japanese the word “Kodo” conveys two meanings: “heartbeat” the primal source of all rhythm and, “children of the drum,” a reflection of Kodo’s desire to play their drums simply, with the heart of a child. Bringing their One Earth tour to Madison’s Overture Center on February 21st Japan’s premiere taiko drumming ensemble continue their quest to unite the world through sound, transcending cultural barriers to remind us of our membership in that larger community-- the world.  Taiko is not simply percussion,” long-time Kodo member Akimoto explains. “It’s a part of life, and part of communities. It unites people with people, and also people with nature and even with gods.” Community is a central theme in Kodo’s philosophy. More than a musical group, it is a village that harvests rice, runs a two-year apprentice program, and even crafts eco-friendly Earth Furniture. In concert, the thundering drums startle and mesmerize, racing in arresting rhythms that rumble in war-like marches and ripple in whimsical jigs, seismic salutations whose relentless beats collapse consciousness, altering moods and elevating the spirit in collective thought. A venerable tradition nearly thirty years old, Kodo is a sight to behold, a forceful reminder of individuals working together, united in a common goal. 

Read More...

Kodo Drummers

The first drum beat each of us experience is our mother’s heartbeat. This drumming continues as our own heartbeat propels us through each day of our existence. On Sado Island near Japan, the group known as KODO express their own heartbeats through drums. Taiko drums to be exact.“

Historically, every culture has had their own kind of drum. It can be considered as “a tool shared by all mankind,” explained Jun Akimoto, KODO’s tour manager. “It definitely has the “power” and “possibility” to appeal to and connect the people all over the world.”

During their performances, the KODO performers are clad in sweatbands and loincloths and meticulously beat their drums to create rhythms and patterns as old as our collective human heartbeat, yet as new as the ears that hear them. Drums with names like “Hirado-daiko” (flat-barrel drum), “Chu-daiko” (middle-sized drum) and the giant 800 pound “O-daiko,” (a double headed drum made from the trunk of an African Bubinga tree and the hide of a large cow) all have been chosen and woven into tightly composed and choreographed rhythmic and musical tapestries. KODO have given over 2600 performances in 42 countries on all five continents since their debut at the Berlin Festival in 1981. When asked about a favorite among their live performances, Akimoto replied, “All the performances we’ve done are memorable in their own way but to name one, the outdoor concert that we did at Red Rocks, Colorado in 2002 as part of a music festival made a lasting impression as the venue was unique. Also our concert at The Acropolis (in Greece) was amazing.”

Read More...

Korn - 2006

In an era where nameless, faceless and meaningless have become standards, Korn have transcended hard rock and heavy metal banality with a sound and vision that defies categorization. They bubbled from the Bakersfield, CA, heavy metal underground more than a decade ago, emerged as a hard rock phenomenon with the breakthrough success of Follow The Leader in 1997, and have exceeded any and every conceivable expectation since then. It may seem premature to consider Korn legends in only their second decade as a band, but not when you acknowledge the facts.

Impressed by numbers? Korn have released seven albums, surpassed the 25 million mark in worldwide sales (more than 15 million of those in America alone), and have had every album since their self-titled debut enter the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart in the Top 10, with all seven of their studio albums achieving Platinum sales (their 2004 Greatest Hits release is certified Gold). The numbers don’t lie, but they don’t even begin to tell the story of Korn, who not only redefined heavy metal with the diabolic, cutting-edge histrionics of their 1994 debut, but turned the industry on end in the years that followed, having a profound influence on today’s heavy music scene and making a marked impact on the way metal has reemerged as a sonic force on the pop-driven musical mainstream.

In one fleeting decade, Korn have single-handedly changed the way America views heavy music. Now, with the release of See You On The Other Side, they’ve opened the doors to even more disarray, taking their trademarked sound to the next level. It’s what they’ve always done, but to even more astonishing depths.

Read More...

Kraftwerk

The history of Kraftwerk begins in 1970 when Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hütter, the founding members of the band, formed a group called Organisation. The Oranisation’s only album, Tone Float, was a mixture of tape loops, electronic feedback, and clanking rhythms. It was decidedly experimental compared to what the rest of the musical world was doing, and while a German record contract was landed, the LP did very little in the way of sales. By the end of that same year, however, the group had morphed into Kraftwerk.

Read More...