Mad Happy |
Feel Good Music For The Broke Middle Class |
1. Magdeline 2. Not Jealous Of The Angels 3. Rock And Roll, The 4. Bite Size Pieces 5. Mechanical Monkey 6. Born To Dive 7. Heartbreaking World 8. Static Cling 9.Veronica, Veronica 10. Lengthy Night 11. Leaky Eyes 12. Parking Lot Song |
13. Life On Earth |
Mad Happy is an act that pushes the envelope beyond the dark into almost ethereal realms. Putting a hip-hop twist on rock a la early Beck and Guerillaz, Mike iLL and Rivka combine industrial-influenced drum machine beats with bluesey guitar and melodic, new wave unison vocals, interchanged with beatnik-style rapping. Touring the country, their vaudevillian approach translates into a free-spirit that starts a party any time, any where. Mike iLL and Rivka both come from devout religious families. Mike's parents, an ex-nun and seminarian were involved in the civil rights movement. They gave birth to Mike in Montgomery Alabama where they were organizing an integrated county government. |
Looking to move to New York City, the young family settled across the Hudson River where Mike, the oldest of five children was raised amongst the working class artists of Hoboken, New Jersey. Rivka's parents, both born Jewish, joined the Hasidic movement during their college years in Boston and followed their Rabbi to New York where Rivka was raised the seventh of nine children in an enclosed Hasidic community in Brooklyn's Borough Park. Rivka and Mike met in 1997 in a sweat lodge at Nature's Friends Farm in New Jersey. They got together for a musical project and ended up hopelessly romantically entangled in '98. It wasn't until New Years of 2002 that they formed Mad Happy. They recorded "The Rock and Roll" and "Not Jealous of the Angels" completing an eleven song album "Feel Good Music... for the Broke Middle Class" Mike iLL's teenage band, Sweet Lizard Illtet; a combination of rock, industrial and hard rap released a self-titled CD on Warner Brothers and toured with Lollapalooza. In 1999 Mike self-released "The Seduction of Sarah Sahonie", a bare-bones 19-song saga about the downward spiral into drugs and love on New York's Lower East Side. In 2001 came his "Antifolk Road Manual" (Soft Skull Press); a 64 page book/CD containing sheet music, lyrics, essays and diary entries. "[Mike iLL] Continues in the troubadour spirit of Woody Guthrie, the down 'n' out junkie guitar slinger persona of Johnny Thunders and the urban white boy street smarts of the Beastie Boys." -Broadside Magazine Rivka, at seventeen, co-wrote the song, "How the Road Unwinds" with Alt.Country artist Greg Garring, released on Revolution Records in 1997. In 1999 she self-published a book of poems entitled "These are my Tears", performing regularly at various NYC open mics and hosting her own poetry circle at Surf Reality Theatre on the Lower East Side. In 2001 she released a solo CD; "A Eulogy to Sadness"; seventeen poems and a capella songs representing the passage from life in the Hasidic Jewish community to the life of an artist. Rivka then began touring and performing around the country opening for Mike's solo act. Mad Happy's live show is a fast-paced string of songs that are neither pop nor punk, just unapologetic, street-savvy rock with a generous twist of hip-hop. Combining Mike iLL's green hair and manic gesticulating with Rivka's slinky dancing and atomic-pink due, the spaced out, self-confident pair and their trusty beat machine are a unique site. Often joined by turntablist Kid Ginseng, Mad Happy pioneers in a new genre of music, dubbed by some as "electro-clash". |
Desperate Living (DVD) |
1. Intro by Mike latch/ Icicle man 2. Serial wigga 3. Renegade Geeks 4. Root Lock 5. Lengthy Night 6. Desperate living 7. Magdeline 8. Beats and rhymes 9. Shoulda dissed you 10. Blues for breakfast/ loaded up 11. Credits |
