JANUARY 2004

Something To Do was born from the ashes of two other local bands, Vitamin King and the Straight Edge Crack Whores. They haven't looked back since and haven't been getting lucky, but have been taking matters into their own hands. It's worked out for them too as you will see. This is a band that makes things happen. They don't sit back and wait for luck to find them, they go out and grab ahold of opportunity and shake it until all of the pennies fall out of it's pockets.

The five-piece horn-driven band consists of Todd on drums, Mike on trumpet, Marc on trombone, Kenny on guitar and vocals, and the big glasses-wearing freak Nate on vocals and bass. They describe themselves as being everywhere from rock to emo to ska to punk, and recently, I heard someone describe them as pop. Now, I thought the pop reference came way the hell out of right field, but who knows jack about classifying bands in this day and age anyhow?

Something To Do has been winning awards and accolades since I first met them. In 2002, I helped put together a battle of the bands at my university. It was a yearly thing and 2002 was particularly awesome because Summerfest, the world's largest music festival, donated a paid slot at the festival to the winner of the competition. Most of the bands had current students at the school in them, while others had alumni. There was this one band, which I now know as Something To Do, that only knew the hall director of the residence hall sponsoring the event. That was their in and they ran with it, winning the entire damn competition!

Fast forward to November 2003, almost a year to the date of the band winning the battle of the bands, they find out that they won a national competition they entered. The good folks at Henkel Consumer Adhesives, the makers of Duck Tape® brand duct tape, sponsored a songwriting competition called Rock About the Roll. They were looking for the best song about Duck Tape®. There were 154 entries from 36 states and Canada and Something To Do came out on top with their song "When I'm Stuck, I Turn To Duct Tape."

"We admit to thinking that the idea of writing a song about duct tape was both the coolest and craziest thing any member of our band had done, but we're glad we did it, and we had fun doing it," said vocalist and guitar player, Kenny Maciejewski.

The song took about twenty minutes to write and thanks to winning the competition, the band made the Associated Press wire which goes out to newspapers and online news sources across the globe. The band has been featured on CNN Headline News, National Public Radio, CNN.com, tons of newspapers and other major web sites, as well as numerous local television stations near their Southeast Wisconsin headquarters of Waukesha. Not bad for a twenty minute idea, hey? Oh, I forgot to mention, they also won $2,500 for winning the contest! Bass player Nate Tredinnick told the AP that the band wanted to spend the $2,500 on beer and ice cream, but will invest it instead in making CDs and promotional shirts.

While the Duck Tape® competition is the straw that broke the camels back as far as making Something To Do our January 2004 XROXX Band of the Month, the band had an amazing 2003 overall. They played a gig at the world's largest music festival, Summerfest, held in Milwaukee, WI every year. They played right outside the Marcus Amphitheater, the largest stage of all of the stages. They played shows in eight states and Canada in support of their album, Naked Pigeons Inside, which they released on Trapdoor Records in 2003. The album sold the entire first pressing in under six months, and songs from the CD placed as high as #4 on CMJ Top 30 charts throughout Wisconsin. Something To Do was also featured on a DVD music video compilation, Camp Ska, put out by California's OC Ska Productions. Their video for "Wannabe" was featured on the DVD as well as videos by several national ska groups.

The band picked up sponsors along the way. Two local businesses in the Southeast Wisconsin are, Cascio Interstate Music and Wreckless Skateshop, are now proud sponsors of Something To Do. Cascio Interstate Music actually had the band play an in-store show and placed them on a local music compilation CD the store produces.

There's all this, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. We haven't even talked about the individual members and their commitment to the local music scene and ska music in general. The band are members of the Wisconsin Area Music Industry (WAMI) and at least one of them can be seen at almost any meeting. Kenny and Mike started Trapdoor Records to help ska bands looking to get their music out, mostly through the use of compilation CD's like the wiSKAnsin compilations.

Something To Do is much more than just something for these people to do. They love music, particularly ska music, and they love promoting themselves and making things happen. All too often, you find bands that want to make great music and do, but they don't have a clue about marketing or promotion and they just ignore that end of the business hoping to be discovered. The members of Something To Do pound the pavement, and the stage, looking to get their name and music out there. They're great musicians, great people, and great promoters. They'll give anything a try once, and why not? Very few things in the music industry can hurt, including being on the Jenny Jones Show. If it's there and it makes sense, Something To Do is all about it.