Closing Thoughts from Brunch Rock

So...

April 6th (11-band-bill at PJs Lager House) is Tom Bahorski's Birthday... (as well as Jesse Shepherd-Bates')...

Bahorski plays in riled-up rock duo The Ashleys...

who also perform April 9th, at the Belmont, with soul/funk quartet House Phone...

who, during this year's Blowout... performed as live backing band to hip/hop MC quartet Cold Men Young...

one member of CMY collaborates with another MC, Mister, for a side hip/hop-bizarro-pop project called Passalacqua...

that duo once opened up for heavy-metal party stompers Wilson...but, beyond that...

Mister has also cameo'ed for Carjack sets and Duende sets...

the latter of which has a guitarist who plays in poetic blues balladeers Dutch Pink...whose drummer plays with dimesionally-defiant electro-pop quartet Marco Polio & the New Vaccines....

and it just goes around and around and continues to spread off into different webs...

regardless of genre...

regardless of...almost anything... we wave together...

And I know the latest bit of census data news makes Detroit look just-that-much more of a bleak underdog... we can't let it feed fatalist sighs of futility.

So... here's the last bit of ruminations stirred loose by the Brunch / Roundtable / "new energy" discussion... ...transcribed from Fur bassist Michael O'Connor...speaking on the camaraderie between bands...as opposed to "years-back..." ~

"I sense," said O'Connor, going deeper than any simplified 'White Stripes effect,'... "that in a world of increasing economic and political turmoil, where the Haves and the Have Nots are being ever more separated and defined, there brings an unspoken and perhaps unconscious unifying effect. Just as Unions are now telling of empowerment like they haven't seen in tweny years due to the recent overt assult on them....the artistic community grows together due to a reaction to the corrput and less-shrouded malintent of our supposed leaders in policy and currency."

O'Connor said that the prevalent sensibility is: "...these are our brethren; it doesn't so much matter what sounds someone is trying to make or express so much as that they are doing it. Creating rather than manipulating, listening and supporting rather than talking-at or controlling... There is a relation, familial-like, in spirit and togetherness," said O'Connor, that exists between Detroit's bands.

"So...as not to over-romanticize, -as we know there is and will always be the standard hate/envy/and shit-talk, etc, -but the margins may have moved a bit as an equal opposite reaction takes place and a grander appreciation leads many to see themselves as being in the same foxhole as opposed to being on different sides of essentially the same battle."

"...everything feeds on itself, widens and produces great work..."