Ben Masel Day

Last May, Madison’s city council along with mayor Paul Soglin passed a resolution (legislative file #22458)  “honoring the life of Bennett “Ben” Masel, his contributions to our community and declaring April 20th as “Ben Masel Day” in the City of Madison”. Ben Masel, the iconic Madison civil rights defender, passed away last April after a battle with cancer.

Here is the full text of the resolution from the city’s website, CityOfMadison.com:

“WHEREAS,  Bennett “Ben” Masel was a fierce defender of personal and civil liberty, a champion of the Constitution, the rule of law and the founding faith that the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights were not just ideals, they were practical tools to be used on a daily basis to challenge power; and

WHEREAS, Ben Masel peacefully fought for his rights with courage, cleverness, and joy; and

JJO Band Camp

Willow Island at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison becomes JJO Band Camp on Saturday, August 14th. The outdoor music festival has been growing since it’s inception in 2003, attracts some of the world’s biggest names in modern metal, and is put on by Madison’s solid rock.. er ahhh.. metal radio station… 94.1 WJJO and promoters Frank Productions.

Randy Hawke is program director for WJJO, a station that went from classic rock to “solid rock” around 13 years ago. He has been in radio for 19 years and has also been PD of WAPL in Appleton as well as WLUM in Milwaukee.

MAXIMUM INK: How did Band Camp get started?
RANDY HAWKE: The name came about when Blake Patton and I were brainstorming what we wanted to call our show and we made a deal that the title could not end in Fest, Stock or Palooza. The location was Fred Frank.  He starts a lot of sentences with “Hey Randy what do you think about ….” One of those sentences were completed with “having a huge festival on willow Island next to the Alliant.” Band Camp was born.  Crazy thing was for the first year we had to spend more time telling people where Willow Island was than who was playing. No event of Band Camps magnitude had ever been held out there. Band Camp put Willow Island on the map.  LITERALLY!

Last Crack - Sinister Funkhouse Reunion

It started as a dream… to make it to the top. The formula is easy. Start a band, write some songs, get a singer, record a demo, get signed by a major label, put out an album, tour the world. Success.

And that’s exactly the way it started. Last Crack’s rise out of the local music scene in Madison is the thing of legend. Almost every band starts with the same credo in mind, but not many break through. For Last Crack, it was a given.

Many bands make their start from a garage or basement, but for Last Crack it would be a storage facility in Madison on Stoughton Road just off the beltline, and answering a classified ad from the Good n Loud billboard for a singer named Buddo in 1987.

Luna Mortis

Halloween is coming, metal is in the air and Madison will make another mark on the heavy metal map.

Last December you may remember Maximum Ink ran a band called The Ottomon Empire, a Madison metal band featuring the operatic and sometimes brutallic vocals of Mary Zimmer, guitarists Brian Keonig and Cory Scheider, drummer Erik Madsen and bassist Jake Bare, on the front cover.

I had to go back to the Max Ink website to check out the story one more time, seeing how so much had changed in less than a year… but oddly, it was the same.

In July, it was announced that band had signed to Century Media records and that explained to me why they had changed their name to Luna Mortis.

The Dirty Three

I had no idea what to expect when I got to the door of the East End, the short-lived club on Madison’s east side in the mid-nineties. I was there for the Man… or Astro-Man show as they were on the cover that month. What I didn’t know was that the opening act, The Dirty Three, would be a band I would love for years to come. That was October of 1996.

Prior to the show, I hadn’t heard much about this Australian band, except that they traveled around the country, in an old, black Cadillac, going show to show without breaking. I’d heard stories about the band’s leader and violinist Warren Ellis, and his love for whiskey.

When I ran into him at the show, bottle in hand and wearing black, he was just as mysterious and foreboding a figure as I’d heard about. In fact, they were all very quiet.

Last Crack: On the Road in Amsterdam

I awoke that morning of April the third to stories of snoring, dragons, taxi rides, red lights, girls behind glass doors, Finlanders, The Grand Rokk, Kalli and Jon, the Blue Lagoon, lava, sheep’s head, shark, Black Death and many more than I can list. That sleep allowed us to process that insanity called “48 Hours in Iceland.”

The group is hungry and everyone wants to eat down by the canals and walk around a bit. The Damrak, Amsterdam’s main street, is busy with people of all nationalities buzzing every which way. Cars, taxicabs, trains, bikes, horses, and motorcycles are all out to get me, it seems, as I weave my way through the web once again… only this time, the spiders are asleep.

We end up at a Turkish restaurant in the Red Light District called Grillroom Donny. It’s a small place with a great waiter and everyone gets kabobs and shaorma. The food sets our mood with combinations of spice and relish.

I can’t miss an opportunity for a quick space cake for desert, so it’s back to the Bulldog to check the Internet before heading back to the hotel.

We take the train back to the Hotel Etap and stop at the Heineken machine on the way in to call Freek Kroesbergen, the promoter of the Headway festival (www.headwayfestival.com). He was relieved to hear from us, as bands have gotten lost in Amsterdam before (too many space cakes I guess). He told us to stay put and sent a bus and driver to pick us up.

As we pull up to the site of the festival, Club P60 (www.p60.nl), we can see the bustle of people around the entrance and feel the buzz as music pours out the backstage door to the venue.