Check out YouTube for the latest from Madison musicians, including some collaborations -- not always intentional.
The recent single "All Up In Your Girlfriend" by local MC Tefman features vocal hooks from Bizzy Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Tef has been tweeting enthusiastically about a forthcoming album called Feel Good Music, even hinting that he'll be in XXL magazine's April issue.
He recently posted a video for "I Don't Care What They Say" from his previous solo effort, F%#K Tefman. It's all about goofing off high, high above East Washington Avenue ("Cheesehead on the mic / My rhymes always bring the cheddar back)." Guest MC E Sweez directed the video, in which Tef and friends take to a pedestrian bridge, as mere earthlings go about their business at Taco Bell and the gas station. The highlight would have to be the SB, who develops a case of T. Rex arms as he delivers his guest verse. Tefman is slated to open for Devin the Dude at the High Noon Saloon on Sunday, April 22.
If you can't wait that long to inhale with Devin, the new album by Madison duo The Hussy, Weed Seizure, coming out March 20, has its share of hallucinations. On "Dog Said Yeah," an obscure cover of a song by the 1970s Wisconsin band The Ones, guitarist Bobby Hussy and drummer Hussy Sawyer trade verses about a dog ordering people to commit murder and mayhem.
The opening track, "Undefined," makes a noticeable effort to fatten up the duo's sound with noisy psychedelic guitar overdubs. This video from Milwaukee's High Frequency Media plays off that quality. When The Hussy started playing out a few years ago, who'd have thought candles would have anything to do with it? The band celebrates the new record with a show at the Frequency on April 7 show.
During their recent tour, the members of Icarus Himself discovered that a Pittsburgh rapper named Tony and a producer called Swollen Drumz had turned the Madison band's song "Digging Holes" into a beat for a tune called "Holes."
Guitarist Karl Christenson says the band hasn't contacted this Tony (or asked him for money) and generally seems ambivalent about the whole thing. "I have no idea where he heard us," Christenson says. "I think it would be weird to contact him. What would we say?"
It's not a bad track, though you can't accuse the producer of being all that resourceful in cribbing this liberally from the song. Icarus Himself plays a St. Patrick's Day party at The Project Lodge on Saturday, March 17.
The Wisconsin garage-pop teamwork continues with Kyle Motor and Milwaukee's Sugar Stems. Motor's best known as the guitarist for The Motorz and drummer for Brown Derby, but he has also lent his analog engineering prowess to local bands like The Midwest Beat. He recently recorded a few songs for the Sugar Stems, to follow up on the band's delightful 2010 LP Sweet Sounds Of The Sugar Stems.
Two of the tracks, "Greatest Pretender" and "Did You Ever," came out as a 7-inch on Certified PR Records, a small label based in St. Petersburg, Florida. As usual, Betsy Borst sings with equal parts lovesickness and power-pop cheer, and Drew Fredrichsen proves the band's secret weapon, providing both vocal harmonies and punchy guitar leads that hint the band can rock harder when it wants to.