Four Years

This Blog's four years old now... and maybe that feels weird to think about, maybe it doesn't...

I've never really given this thing much thought beyond it being some fervent playground with lucid boundaries, upon-and-throughout-which I could bounce my over-thinking brain, with no tether... hopefully rolling towards some final, profound, destination of cracked insight.

The week I started this blog... I went to see a then-new-ish band called Prussia play inside the Crofoot's Vernors Room, February-something-or-other, two-thousand-and-eight.

Through 09 and 10, they were actually the top answer for me, whenever asked that yer-favorite-local-band question...

And now they're apparently breaking up.

What am I going to tell my mom...

It's weird feeling these passages... (so why linger?)

Still, this band's responsible for some of my favorite live-show/performance memories...

One still stands out - a stuffy, spilled-out show upstairs in the AC Rich loft, across from the Crofoot, with Prussia and The Silent Years. We escaped up there, sliding off of the smog-stricken main drag during the chrome-glistened mess of the Woodward Dream Cruise, back in August 2008...

And now one of those bands is broken up and the other...? Well... the lead singer (Josh Epstein) of the Silent Years was on national televsion yesterday and I'm sure most of us tuned in - watching his new band Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr (with Daniel Zott on guitar/vocals and Mike Higgins on drums) perform on Conan.

Cool feeling, right? Or...giddy/dorky feeling? Jealous feeling? Weird? Awesome? Proud?

It's all a swirl when you see the dudes who used to sit at your local watering hole up there on your tiny tube, glowing under expensive lighting and crooning through impressive sound systems... There they were... still singing through that same telephone receiver used in the very same AC Rich show... Only now glowing with the hysterical sanctity still provided by televised events! 

<--... And shaking hands with this guy...
...stream it here.

(pictured, the work of Glass Action)



I think at the end of the day... writing about local arts / local music during a time like that, you feel what Sports Journalists must feel when they're home team is winning, or heading towards some potential championship trophy...

By writing about what's being created here, being seen and heard here...on a weekly basis, by everyone who lives here... you start feeling like you're ...I dunno... rooting for something?

But certain ideals, values and strange emotions always come into it... Who's the best? Who should get spotlights? Which bands should stay together forever and get more attention? The most attention?

Why do I love all these songs by all these people...

Oh, hell...

Last Show(?) - Fri, Feb 3 - inside the Crofoot's Pike Room - "PRUSSIA was born at the AC Rich. They are influenced by Motown, psychedelic rock, and 60’s girl pop..." -with: Dinosaur Bones / Joe Hertler / Seven Birds One Stone... 

Anyways...


Had a recent chat with Josh Malerman of the High Strung...inside the Penguinarium at the Detroit Zoo...
(the meaty, mad words of which will be churned out in a forthcoming feature). We were talking about writing, the weighty non-stop-pedness of it all...and he wondered aloud: "haven't I written e-nough songs?"... to which I admitted that I often felt as though I could end this blog every day and any day and just walk away...

"But then..." he says. "Something happens again and you're back..."

And is it something as cliched as some perfect/memorable live show, or even just deep conversation shared on icy pavement beside an enclosure full of smelly alpacas and snooty flamingos... is it always going to be something as easy and cheesy as that?

Taking a break, here, for a week... to find out.

Perhaps I'll find it here...
in Ferndale, on Saturday night.

Or maybe I'll find it here...

***Or maybe I'll consider writing about the new Jack White material, a single is streaming here from his forthcoming solo LP, which he claims was some sort of accident, if not, some kind of blunder...

But that's already old-news by the time you've read this... Internet world spins much faster than it did back when I started this "blog..."

How about this? There's a new documentary about Detroit's reclusive psyche-folk singer/songwriter Rodriguez and it's won an award at Sundance...

We'll leave it there for now...