Spread over two consecutive weekends in mid-September, Madison’s global gathering touches every point on the compass across Madison in every creative fashion imaginable. Syrian singer GAIDA, Indian guitarist PRASANNA and the psychedelic dub of Turkey’s BABA ZULA perform, dance, lead workshops and colorfully flavor UW’s campus, the Annex and the Willy Street Fair.
Formed in the mid-80’s in New York City, White Zombie would become one of the most popular metal acts through the 90’s. Their sound was heavy but with a groove and songs inspired from horror authors like Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) to classic muscle cars and cult films like Blade Runner and Night of the Living Dead. Their most visible member, Rob Zombie (Robert Cummings, Jr.), was not only a musician, but a filmmaker as well, who over the course of the past two decades would go from directing the band’s videos to being a sought-after horror movie director in Hollywood. Even though the band has been broken up for over a decade, Rob went through the entirety of their old recordings and came up with a new boxed set called Let Sleeping Corpses Lie which is a five-disc collection of everything the band recorded.
You can tell Rob Zombie gets asked about a White Zombie reunion all the time because the first thing he says is how the set has a perfect title, “it’s pretty self-explanatory because I didn’t want everybody to think the box set was the beginning of something. I wanted everyone to realize it was the end of something… I am not big on revisiting the past. I like to move forward all the time. So whenever anything else would come up, this would go in the backburner. I had a little bit of window, and just knocked it out. And I also figured that, if not now, when? By waiting longer, CDs aren’t even going to exist, so there will be no box sets.”
Those who have encountered the band W.A.S.P. are not likely to forget the experience. Like them or hate them, their stage antics tend to be memorable. The group almost literally clawed their way out of the early eighties Los Angeles heavy metal scene the same fertile ground that produced the likes of Mötley Crüe, L.A. Guns, and Ratt. These groups paved the way for many more hair bands to come, but W.A.S.P. was a little bit different. While many of the other groups from that era focused on a cross-dressing, bad-boy image, W.A.S.P. was just plain twisted and scary; the group was more Alice Cooper than Rolling Stones. Band members had circular saws sewn into the crotch of their trousers. Raw meat was cut up and thrown into the audience. Blood was a common stage prop. All of this accompanied aggressively sexual lyrics, buzz saw guitar riffs, and pumping double-bass drums.
At the heart of the group, then and now, was Blackie Lawless. In fact, he is the only remaining original member, and for all intents and purposes, W.A.S.P. is his artistic vehicle. Lawless was born Steven Duren on Staten Island, New York. Famously, or perhaps infamously, he got his first break playing with the legendary New York Dolls. The group was in its final death throes, but it introduced Lawless to New York Doll’s guitarist Arthur Kane. After the New York Dolls finally split, Lawless followed Kane to Los Angeles.
Prepare for the next wave of dizzying rattle of drums and intoxicating hum of blues guitars.
A mystical hoodoo spell drifts among Midwest bars and clubs; one of funk, blues and rock and roll. AARON WILLIAMS AND THE HOODOO, born of the Madison blues scene, plan to keep it that way with shows around Wisconsin (including a stop at Maximum Ink’s 13th anniversary party March 20) and the rest of the Midwest.
“We like to say that we lack subtleness,” says Williams, of the band’s blues-rock music. “I think it’s the idea of just going balls to the wall. A lot of bands out there are a little more laid back, especially in our field of music, and we really go at it from start to end of our shows and we keep up that high energy.”
The Alex Wilson Band is a trio of musicians with deep raw vocals and a big-band blues sound and an increasing fan following in the Midwest. Wilson currently takes the stage with Marc Wilson on the drums, Eric Wills on the bass guitar, and Alex on lead guitar and vocals. Alex Wilson’s debut album “Tell Me Why” was released on his own label Rathskeller Records in October, 2008. I had a few chances to speak with Wilson in between his busy schedule of gigs and composing.
Maximum Ink: You started playing guitar when you were five years old and had a family full of musicians. Is guitar your only accomplished instrument?
Alex Wilson: I’ve fiddled with music my whole life. I’ve played shows on the drums before and I still have a fondness for percussion but I could never call myself a drummer. I play a little bass but my main focus is the guitar. I didn’t begin to consider music as a profession until I was about 17.
MI: You are a non-smoking blues musician with his own record label in Milwaukee. Do you have a significant other?
AW: I don’t. Chemistry and timing have not yet been on my side simultaneously.
Johnny Winter is best-known as a legendary blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter.He was rated 74 on the Rolling Stone list of “100 Greatest Guitarist of All Time.” His recording career began at the age of 15.He performed at Woodstock with is brother Edgar joining for two songs during the nine song set.He is also an inductee of the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.
Maximum Ink: Do you think it was helpful to your future career as a musician to have your parents nurture your interests at an early age?
Johnny Winter: Oh yeah. We sang together. Daddy would teach me songs from his younger days. Most of those songs were from the 1920s and 1930s.
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