MI

• For the fourth year in a row, much of the metro-area's musicians will swarm into the crook of Troy Street nestled between the two towers of tipsy, Emory & W.A.B., for Ferndale's DIY Street Fair. Things are already under way, with reverlers huddling into the Loving Touch in school-night defiance being sufficiently charmed and rocked by the potent jazz/garage/blues hybrids of Jeecy & the Jungle, amongst others...- But more words will be spilled (just like the hundreds of chippable plastic cups made all sticky by the froth of Porters) on this subject later on...I'm sure

• If you're looking for something more poignant, more profound, please consider the 1st Annual Blair's Crowded House -Hastings Street / Tangent Gallery: 40 artists come together to remember the recently deceased poet/musician/performer and cultural sparkplug. This is "an homage to the Crowded House show Blair created and hosted yearly in an effort to expose the Detroit community to a variety of its homegrown artists." (dblair.org) 

In other news, reported this morning by both the Free Press and Detroit News, it seems much of the MI has been taken out of this weekend's MI Music Festival - including the Juliets (forthcoming album cover inset), Bear Lake and recent-Third Man Records-collaborators, the Thornbills. However disconcerting, it was however inevitable due to low ticket sales. Was this more of an extraneous festival? Would local rock heads have just as soon preferred to get their Raconteurs'-fix a bit closer to home, maybe at a Fillmore show? Whatever quibbles or debates flumed like white noise across comment boards will be irrelevant come Sunday morning...

UPDATE: from the Free Press - "Two local bands pull out of first-ever MI Fest" ... "...in respect to the canceled artists, who include such Michigan acts as the Howling Diablos, Alto Reed and Jill Jack." (The Thornbills are back on the bill).