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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Show Announcements »

Permalink The Madeira w/ The Exotics in Milwaukee 6/16/12

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I'm going!

And according to FB, SurfinJohnnyQ from North Dakota is coming out.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

have a great show guys

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Wow. What a blast last night was. Great crowd, hot and sweaty. Thanks to Johnny Kahuna, Raito, and Brian for making the trip. Also thanks to Ivan and the Madeira who put on a great show. I am really looking forward to August when we can all do it again.

The Exotics 1994-Current
The Chickenshack - www.wmse.org
www.thedoghouseflowers.com
www.uptownsavages.com

Previous night's show report from the far southern Chicago burbs here.

Thanks to JP and the Exotics for hosting a great show. It was great meeting Johnny Kahuna from South Dakota, raito, and seeing Kristen again (who I last saw at the Champaign Korn-Tiki show in 2009!).

I should also give a shout out to Exotic drummer Don's cool Foundation Tiki Bar. What an amazing place! And the drinks are strong!

I loved the venue and the duelling stages. Each band played 2 alternating sets from opposite ends of the room. It was a bit hot at first, but then a torrential downpour seemed to cool things off. There was a bigger and more enthusiastic crowd compared to the previous night.

The Exotics went on first. It was funny, the guitarists seemed to switch guitars. On Friday, Paul was playing a Mosrite-ish guitar and Brandt was playing a sunburst Jazzmaster. Saturday Brandt was playing a black Mosrite-ish guitar and Paul had a white Jazzmaster with blocks & binding. They both had small amps, pointed to the ceiling, and the volume was just right. They played two super charged sets of highly danceable music, and the home crowd loved them! I really enjoyed these guys, and it was great to get up close compared to the previous night. Again, very choice and tasty covers, plus I love their great originals. They have a very unique sound. You should definitely go check them out if you have a chance. I spun their CD's all weekend to help keep the stress down while travelling through Chicago's crowded, construction-ridden, and expensive toll road system.

The Madeira played their entire Tribal Fires album for the first set. This allowed them to play some of their slower and more nuanced songs, which went over very well. Their second set they let loose with some killer covers of The Treble Spankers, Dick Dale, The Surf Coasters. It was great seeing some girls dance to Dick Dale and Los Relampago's Macarena. The sound was a bit fuzzy, probably the room and not being able to turn up the big amps. Ear plugs actually helped attenuate the band better. I always dig seeing this band play, it is such a kick in the ass. The guys are such masterful players and Ivan has such a huge guitar sound. The band was well received and chatted it up with the crowd well after the show was over. I was fading fast and decided to leave right when another downpour started. I was sad my high-speed weekend was over.

All in all it was a great weekend of camaraderie and awesome music. I'm glad I was able to take some vacation time off work and make this weekend trip, it was exactly what I needed. Surf music is so hard to come by in the Midwest. Thanks to all the awesome people at the shows, it was great sharing this cool music together.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Crappy camera phone photos (sorry):

Looking towards the front stage from almost the back:

View

Exotics at the front stage:

Exotics

Exotics

Madeira at the rear stage:

Madeira

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Great reports Brian,
thanks

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Yes, it was a great show. Andy has a nice place to play. The movies were my fault -- Andy asked me to pick, and since it was a surf show, I chose Savage Beach as the surfiest title. Brian gave a good description of the rest.

Here's my couple pictures to add to the jealousy of anyone who missed it:

image

image

Last edited: Jun 17, 2012 20:49:38

Well, that was quite a high-speed weekend for us, too! I drove a total of 620 miles to play these two shows (coming from Michigan, I was by myself - the other three drove up together from Indy), and paid what seems like over $50 in tolls for the weekend! Chicago is just deadly when it comes to that....

It was a blast, though. The big bummer was the Cocktail Preachers not being able to play on Friday night. Phil's daughter was in a car accident (I believe she was just the passenger, not the driver), and had to go to the ER, so Phil understandably immediately took off to be with her. The last I heard was that she is fine, just badly shaken up. I know Steve, Bruce and Ben were disappointed to not be able to play but completely supportive of Phil. Well, it happens. Thank God that she was safe in the end.

The Exotics were just phenomenal both nights, I really enjoyed seeing them! I listened to their two CDs on the way to Chicago on Friday, and dug the hell out of them! I highly recommend them. There are photos in the other thread of the Pickups club where we played on Friday, and the outdoor area was huge. I offered Paul and Brandt my amps (my Gomez Surfer with 2 JBLs and '62 Fender Bandmaster w/ 2 EVs), and Brandt was a bit reluctant but Paul jumped at the offer, so Brandt joined in, as well. A good thing, cause those big amps really filled up the area great, and sounded amazing. The Exotics are really a world-class band. Highly influenced by the Ventures and the more melodic and R&B-leaning '60s surf, stuff like the Lively Ones, the Belairs, the Challengers, etc., the emphasis is completely on instrumental interplay and songs - Paul Johnson would heartily approve! I thought of them as the South Bay counterpart to our (the Madeira's) Orange County sound. Smile They are cleaner, dancier and more melodic, more subtle and much groovier. The groove is the result of their incredible rhythm section of Don on drums and Jon on bass. Don's playing seems simple, he doesn't even use one rack tom! But his timing and melodic sense are impeccable, he just seems to play the exact right thing for each song. And Jon's bass playing was mind-blowing - I was truly impressed. He's the king of walking bass lines! The best walking bass lines I've heard in surf, bar none. As a result, the music had a huge amount of movement at all times. (I asked him at the end of Saturday's show if he's influenced by Ron Griffiths of the Lively Ones, and he said that Ron's his main guy! That was not surprising at all, as Ron IMO was the best first-wave bass player, with a very deep groove to his playing. Jon's carrying that torch with great aplomb!) BTW, his tone was to die for, too, so big and warm it was almost overwhelming.

Brian covered a lot of ground relating to their sets both nights, so I'll keep it short and just say that they are an incredibly tight band, and truly understand traditional surf music. These guys get it completely. And they get people's feet moving! Especially obvious on their home turf at Kochanski's in Milwaukee, where the fairly large crowd was diggin' them greatly. In that crowd, believe it or not, were quite a few women! And more than a few of them seemed to be single, too! It's a miracle! Smile It really made me think that we need to start playing dancier stuff. Smile

The Exotics leaned heavily on covers both nights, and a GREAT selection it was, but did play a bunch of originals, too, which are just excellent: Sandoway, Lariat, Jetsetter, etc. - plus one brand new one: Surf Burglar, from the upcoming spy-themed 3-song EP that they'll be releasing in time for the Tiki Oasis in San Diego, where they'll be playing this year. REALLY liked the new song, and am very much looking forward to the whole EP.

As far as the Madeira, it was a good weekend. I think we played well both nights, and got a decent response, especially Saturday. We definitely had fun! It was certainly aided on Saturday night by a pre-show visit to the Foundation Tiki Bar, owned and operated by Don Nelson, the Exotics' drummer. We met him there and he treated us to some Trader-Vic's-authentic Mai Tai's, which had a kick like a freakin' mule! I think they must have been all booze! The bar is AMAZING, though! It's obvious Don put a lot of thought and care into this place. I highly recommend anybody that's in Milwaukee to visit it. It's absolutely worth it. Anyway, the Exotics had us set up on the main stage at Kochanski's, which was very nice of them (and certainly allowed us to actually stand on stage along with our gear, which we probably wouldn't have been able on the smaller stage), but it soon became clear to us that it was an extremely loud, live room - hard surfaces everywhere. Our amps were way too loud for that place. I actually ended up using the Bandmaster rather than the Gomez, hoping to be able to keep it down a bit more, but I think we were still much too loud. We were doing everything we could to keep it down, Dane said he was barely hitting the drums but to all three of us he sounded unbelievably loud. The Exotics had much more appropriate gear for that location. (Brandt was playing through a Super Reverb in a brown-tolex 1x12" cab, and Paul was playing through a small Ampeg of some sort, probably a Reverberocket. As Brian said, their volume was just right for that place.) The volume issue made me more than a bit self-conscious while playing, so I wasn't as relaxed as usual, but it seemed like we went down well, anyway.

BTW, the owner of Kochanski's, Andy Kochanski, turned out to be a really great guy, VERY supportive of both bands. I think he's got bigger plans for the club, and wants to turn it into one of the main venues in Milwaukee for live music. I wish him the best of luck, it's a great place! I hope we can return at some point.

It was GREAT to have Brian at both shows, and really enjoyed hanging out with him. It was also a true pleasure to meet Johnny Kahuna, who drove EIGHT HOURS from South Dakota to be at this show!!! OMG Really enjoyed getting to know him and chatting it up with him quite a bit. I was also glad to meet raito, but unfortunately did not get a chance to talk to him nearly as much - I'm sorry about that. Things are always a blur after the show, and I definitely did not mean to ignore you. Also there was David Lake Tiki - he carves tiki heads and all sorts of other exotica art (and apparently did most of the decoration in the Foundation Tiki Bar, which is really impressive!) for a living - check out some of this stuff here. Dave is an incredibly talented guy, and also a big surf music fan, and it was a lot of fun to see him again get to talk to him more. Space Cossack Catherine's good friend Kristen was there, too, and it was wonderful to see her again, as well.

Finally, as usual, a Madeira show summoned the elements, and though Friday's forecast had 10% chance of rain in Milwaukee this weekend, the skies opened up in a near-apocalyptic manner as soon as we started playing on Saturday night. (I got caught up in it, too, as at the end of the night I brought all my amps to the car, and as I started loading them in, a downpour started! I paniced, and just tried to get everything in whichever way I could, which wasn't good since it didn't all fit in. I got completely soaked, as did my Bandmaster head and cab, which didn't have covers, but I think it's gonna be OK. That wasn't fun.) Even Kristen told us that it seems every time we play there's a massive storm of some kind (happened in Champaign last August, it happened in North Carolina, it basically happens almost every time we play). If not a storm, then record high or low temperatures, or some other natural calamity. So, if your area is suffering from a drought, just hire us - we're apparently the modern-day witch doctors, capable of calling forth the rains!

Anyway, thanks again to Steve and the Preachers for lining up Friday's show, and to Jon and the Exotics for lining up the Saturday show and treating us SO WELL!! It really was a pleasure to play with you, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you again at the convention! (BTW, it's amazing that the greater Lake Michigan area is home to so many great, really world class, surf bands: the Exotics in Milwaukee, the Cocktail Preachers in Chicago, the Concussions in Grand Rapids, and going just a bit further, the Volcanos in Detroit. And of course, there are even more good bands than that, like Chicago's Roger & the Wraybands, or many bands out of Cincinnati, but they just haven't released much if anything yet, or traveled outside of their area much. It's a remarkably fertile area for surf music. May it continue to be so!)

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

Last edited: Jun 18, 2012 22:29:09

Fun reads, Brian & Ivan! REALLY looking forward to seeing both bands at SG101 this year.

Radio Free Bakersfield--60 Minutes of TWANG, CRUNCH, OOMPH.
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Radio-Free-Bakersfield/172410279636
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Ivan,

Don't worry about it.

I figured that since I already knew who I was coming to see, and because you're on here, it was much better for you guys to talk more to the locals who might not even have known who you were. But it was nice to meet all of you.

And to the Exotics, if you were selling CDs, you should have said so. It didn't look like it, so I bought all the Madeira stuff. Big Grin I'll be picking them up someday soon.

And yeah, that Don. For those of you who haven't seen him, imagine a kit halfway between Slim Jim Phantom and Charlie Watts. That's a whole lot of sound out of not a whole lot of skin.

Like Ivan said, definitely 2 separate and distinct styles of surf. But both surf.

Ivan, the difference in Db's between 40 watts and 80 watts is really quite small. The distortion is a different matter. So a bandmaster can still be quite loud especially with efficient speakers, and the added distortion might even make it more ear fatiguing. That said, I love love love my bandmaster.

Danny Snyder

Latest project - Now That's What I Call SURF
_
"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

I'm back playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

WhorehayRFB wrote:

Fun reads, Brian & Ivan! REALLY looking forward to seeing both bands at SG101 this year.

HELL YEAH,
what he said.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

DannySnyder wrote:

Ivan, the difference in Db's between 40 watts and 80 watts is really quite small. The distortion is a different matter. So a bandmaster can still be quite loud especially with efficient speakers,

Yeah, I remember talking about that with you. I have EVs in the Bandmaster cab, and it's one loud amp! It can definitely keep up with the 100W Gomez Surfer - though it DOES get a lot more distorted. When you turn up the Surfer all the way, it's just slightly overdriven, whereas the Bandmaster goes into hard-rock territory. At least that's the case with my two amps - but my Bandmaster has a newer OT and PT, etc., so I don't want to generalize. Anyway, I thought that if I used the Bandmaster I could still get a bit of hair but not blow out the eardrums of the audience. I'm not sure if it made all that much difference in the end.....

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

Hooray for show reports! Thanks!
http://surfguitar101.com/media/smiley/images/icon_sg101.gif

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Freshly posted on YouTube by Johnny Kahuna!! Thanks, John!

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

And one (actually, two, to be precise) by the Exotics.

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

I did not think that the Madeira were excessively loud at all. Kochanski's is all hard surfaces, concrete, tile, and a high tin ceiling. The sound bounces around a lot.

I had to work the door during most of the Madeira's sets, so I was on the other side of the room with about 85 people in between us. From where I was sitting the Madeira sounded great. Paul and Brandt from the Exotics got to use the Surfer and the Bandmaster the previous night and they sounded great through those amps too.

It was really the best surf show that Milwaukee has seen in years, much thanks to the Ivan and co. for making the trip. Club shows in Milwaukee are very tricky in the summer, and in January and February as well. We really do have to compete with the weather. This show was considered by all to be a great success.

The Exotics 1994-Current
The Chickenshack - www.wmse.org
www.thedoghouseflowers.com
www.uptownsavages.com

Thanks for posting the videos Johnny! They have me smiling ear to ear again!

Ivan, you used the gold strat for Tribal Fury only on both nights. Is it in drop D or something?

I have to second Ivan's comments about JP! I loved watching (and listening) to him play the bass! King of the walking bass lines indeed!

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

jp wrote:

I did not think that the Madeira were excessively loud at all.

I'm glad to hear that, Jon.

I had to work the door during most of the Madeira's sets, so I was on the other side of the room with about 85 people in between us. From where I was sitting the Madeira sounded great.

Thanks!

Paul and Brandt from the Exotics got to use the Surfer and the Bandmaster the previous night and they sounded great through those amps too.

I realized I failed to mention anything about those two in my review above - and that was most definitely NOT because I was not impressed by them! They're excellent guitarists, with truly authentic feel for surf guitar, and I greatly enjoyed both their playing and their interplay. Excellent rhythm guitar playing, too, which I always appreciate in surf music.

It was really the best surf show that Milwaukee has seen in years, much thanks to the Ivan and co. for making the trip. This show was considered by all to be a great success.

Again, I'm REALLY glad to hear that, Jon! It was our pleasure, and we hope we can do it again soon!

Brian wrote:

Ivan, you used the gold strat for Tribal Fury only on both nights. Is it in drop D or something?

That's exactly right, Brian. In California I'm gonna have to do some quick retuning between songs since I'm only bringing my red Strat.

I have to second Ivan's comments about JP! I loved watching (and listening) to him play the bass! King of the walking bass lines indeed!

Thumbs Up

GREAT to see you again and to hang out with you, Brian! Thanks so much for coming out. Hope to see you in California in August, too!

Ivan
Lords of Atlantis on Facebook
The Madeira Official Website
The Madeira on Facebook
The Blair-Pongracic Band on Facebook
The Space Cossacks on Facebook
The Madeira Channel on YouTube

Last edited: Jun 20, 2012 08:45:41

Thanks Ivan! Great to get a sneak peak for the show this year. I for one can't wait.

Jeremy

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