Old Article about Madison
I was going through my books and magazines and found an issue of CMJ Music Monthly in the stacks. In addition to the Chris Isaak cover feature this June 1995 edition featured a couple pages on Madison, Wisconsin, my city. I really enjoyed this feature: every month CMJ would have some local musicians write up a review of the town they lived in to kind of document the "scene." This was about the time I really started going on roadtrips and so I found it quite helpful as well as entertaining to read.
Killdozer was our city's reviewer. Great band: makes me think of all the shows I used to attend at the late O'Kayz Corral.
posted by J.P. @ 2:00 PM
5 Comments:
The Plaza Bar sounds promising!
Um...actually the Plaza is only good for a quick cheap pitcher than on to better places! The bar itself ain't bad, during the day they serve some of the best burgers in town and they have (or had...I haven't been there in awhile) a great old vintage pinball game about miners I call "Gold-Balls." It's at night that the bar is overrun by the average college crowd and suddenly the place is only mediocre.
No more old pinball at The Plaza. :( But, they did have The Simpsons for a while.
Jeffrey--
Thanks for scanning and posting this. I remember you showing it to me back in the day when it was the current CMJ issue. I recall at the time being somewhat disappointed, like it didn't quite do Madison justtice; however, reading it now, it seems like it wasn't such a bad writeup.
That dude who wrote it was in Killdozer but he was NOT an original, founding member. Not that non-rock-geeks give a shit...
I think you kind of have to read between the lines about the "Plaza" reference. I mean, they were suggesting you go there in search of a "kegger."
Having said that, I have lots of fond memories, thanks to Carol, Sue and Matt (admit it- we probably would have never frequenting the joint back in 1994 if it weren't for them) of the Plaza, despite the abundance of "greek" brothers and sisters. Is it still there? They had tasty burgers and fries.
Also-- remember the P circuit? We'd start off at the Plaza, then go to the Pinckney St. Hideaway, and then finish off at the Paradise. Ahh... those were the days. Good times.
Speaking of the Paradise-- obviously that ended up being THE place to go for "cool people." I think it's funny the author of this piece remarked that it was not packed with students. I recall that it did have always a fairly sizeable student contingent. Of course, they tended to be "cool" and not "greek." Also, those students who graduated or dropped out but stayed in town (thereby technically morphing into "townies") would continue to hang out at the "dice." (You'd think you'd spell it " 'dise " but that looks so wrong and would tend to induce incorrect pronunciation...)
anyway Jeff--
good call on this scan/post.
( I should comment that I realize that the Paradise was by no means the only place to go for us cool folks. But for a long time, it ended up being just about the only non-lame, non-ironic place to downtown that wasn't a rock club...)
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