Chemical Reactions

It is altogether exciting, inspiring... and just unnerving...

Well, mostly those first two.

You have to ignore certain impulses when it comes to the Metro Times Blowout in Hamtramck - those being the, yes, unnerving voices in your head incessantly tapping your shoulder or tugging your coat tail to say: There's something awesome going on at the bar down the street and you're missing it...

Those impulses never fail to ignore the fact that you're actually witnessing something awesome at the very bar you're at at that very moment. Everybody take a breath, and don't bemoan that one cannot be at all places where the truly astounding display of human creativity and visceral (primal) expression is exploding into being...
just celebrate that this is happening... And, as I always do with my naive, probably romantic, and maybe still overly wide-eyed way...I like to appreciate that this simultaneous sprouting of inspirado-shouts! (like the one pictured above) swell and burst out from the shared heat of each band's respective activity... a cacophonous chemical reaction -through music.

Night 2:
Ferndale Library (First Stop Friday) - Sheefy McFly & the Delorean - funk, rap and punk rock sutured into an impressive blend; raw and undeniable

Paychecks - Phantasmagoria - not merely one of my top 6 favorite words ever, but also an engaging, inventive and captivating duo that pound the earthiness of bongos, bass drums and maracas down upon bewitching synthesizer grooves and winsome vocals; intricately layered synth effects from buzzing bass, plodding chymes, glitchy tap bursts and atmospheric fuzz roars - its melodies and hooks are potent enough, but they keep it subtle, showing already a keen sense for sonic structure.

Jean's - Bad Indian - just fell in love with that fiery fender's snaky tirades! Pure psyche pop done up right - tumbling drums keep it rolling and coarse guitars manage to coax with their subdued strumming hooks.

U-Haul (outside Smalls) - White Shag - funk-ified, slightly metal-grimed, and psyche-flumed rawk n roll.

G of C Hall - Matt Jones & the Reconstruction - I've somehow wound up at a Matt Jones set every Blowout... but last nite might've been the best set yet... The Reconstruction are formidably galvanizing the Ypsi/Arbor folk troubadors latest writings

Smalls - Bars of Gold - I never miss Bars of Gold. Need I say more?

Kelly's - Carjack - packed...which meant a lot of people got up close and personal with the electro-punk and his robots. A few new cuts -+ cameo freestyling duet with Steve Polio and some live drums from EFB's Miss N.

G of C Hall - Kickstand Band - This band's got it together. Surfy indie-pop that revives the toe-tapping, boisterous shimmy of early rock n roll.

...and then the camera's battery died.

Pink Lightning - Phantom Cats (+Polio Parade)

Interested in more of the other sides of Blowout... er, the Blowouts within Blowouts?

Exuberant Psychedelic Soul

and Angular Keyed-up Guitar Pop

Whiskey Bottle as Instrument

Choose your own adventure.

I'm not sure where you wound up...and how many "where's" that entails... let alone how many "who's" you heard... Suffice it to say it is likely a markedly different night than what I (and my brother's camera) experienced.

Prussia opened it up for me, at the New Dodge, with singer Ryan Spencer strained, extolling his strep throat upon the sizable crowd taking their first few sips of bottom shelf gin. A red feather swathed Mick Bassett nudged my shoulder and posited something..., that this is potentially one of the most appealingly inventive and subtly visionary bands in the area... I nodded, unable to speak over the amps. ...well, anyway, his word was "best."

Next, swung in to the Gates of Columbus for the end of Hi-Speed Dubbing's set of rhythmic, gutteral psyche-pop...in fact, I'll say, this is a band that's better experienced, more so than read about - since their set often soars the arc of fuzzed blues, angular indie-rock, blistering gutiars, arresting rhythms and vocals that yowl one song and croon on the next...

And after that it was Scarlet Oaks just in time for a stirring rendition of their first single (from 07), "Innocence Isn't Easy" (...they have a farewell show, next Saturday at the Lager House). Set aside your perceptions of slower waltzing alt-country, or bluegrass-shaded rock, this band has always been a welcomed charm in any setting, however grimy or dank, they always brought an elegance.

Stumbling into the somewhat swanky Mars Bar, we caught a bit of Robin Goodfellow's synth-surged prog and guitar-tornadoing noise pop, complete with a trio of pyramid-headed go-go-dancers and a welcomed cover of Barrett-era Pink Floyd's "Lucifer Sam."

Visually intriguing at first, sure - but drown in the feedback and your ears are equally swooned, just in a more discordant manner...

Part one of: potentially what people are going to remember includes my stop at the Belmont.

Charlie Slick was a welcomed site (and a swaggering display as always), but perhaps hampered by the narrow bottle-necked design of the stage... that's a "dance floor" that disappears rather quickly, filled by the shuffling feet of a brick of bodies. Still a professional...

…Then - the dyanmic MC collective Cold Men Young took the stage in declarative fashion, with the soul/funk/reggae brigade of House Phone providing the rappers live instrumentation to back them up. Nine bodies up on that stage, with 70-some-odd more bodies clogging up the confounding quasi-hallway design of the audience space meant one couldn't get close enough for pictures... Spectacular display though...synched up nicely...

Losing some steam (or at least the motivation to continually "hop"), we settled into the cacophonous Gates of Columbus, already -even at that point, attaining an air of the lulling echo of a house party's piquing...but maybe that's because I came out of the bathroom to find four half naked men lacing up dresses and having make-up applied while someone handed me a garbage bag of inflated balloons...

The High Strung - into the Sights and into the --part two of what I can only think people will talk about... the JSB Squad's 20-some-odd member display...

Members of Lightning Love, Hard Lessons, Millions of Brazilians, Satin Peaches and many more...

One assiduous member, who is also in a band called Liquor Store, was merely playing the Whiskey Bottle. Some just waved flags and sang... All of it to back the ballads of the ever productive Jesse Shepherd Bates.

I was offered a swig of Rich & Rare. I stepped on a baloon.

Then left...

Magic Jake & the Power Crystals - Friday - Gates of Columbus Lounge

Debut album on Burger Records


The Power Crystals charge forth, freshly lightning-struck into a new, gangly life, slid off from the slab in the garage, now, a strangely enchanting lo-fi-grooving, shredded-to-hell bubblegum pop Frankenstein.

Its bloodstream equally addled by caffeine and nicotine and coursing with a fuzzed and fibrous rock n roll flush, its gaunt, metallic body scrapes its way exuberantly through a skateboarding album of 2-minute ravenous pounders.

Roaring, squalling solos, steady trucking bass ripples and distortion-blustered vocals that balance a keyed-up cadence with a melodious belt; there's light flares of strutting glam-rock, blues wringing, cathartic punk huffing tromps and relentless...relentlessly shakeable rhythms.

There are no slow songs.

It definitely retains the harried, nigh-slapdash manner in which it was created - (pure in-the-basement spontaneity recorded within a week's time). So, yes, it's frayed at the edges with lo fi fog, but these rhythms and melodies are nevertheless instantaneous, blended with an air of reckless kartwheel exertion.
--This project brings together members of The Go, the Detroit Cobras, Magic Shop, the Readies, Electric Fire Babies, Isles of ESP, Conspiracy of Owls and Hi-Speed Dubbing. They've got an album out on California-based cassette mavens Burger! --

A run around the town after dark kind of album; where you align your crystals and conjure open the doorways to freakier flipsides, away from the sun with no sign of slowing down...

Basement-tinged ballyhoo, to be sure, but with its own profoundness and beauty subtly sutured throughout the frayed denim... Peer through the smoke, embrace the trouncing rhythm, scream along with the guitar...

...that kind of album.
11 pm friday -gates of columbus - part of Metro Times Blowout XIV
more info

Using a Hammer to Nail in a Screw

This is more a sermon of chaos than music... and, I mean, even beyond traditional music...

Forget stomps, twirls, barks and crows its way down a dark, smoky, cluttered hallway, past the musiacl classrooms of experimental mad scientist types like Captain Beefheart, or Cabaret Voltaire, past the beautifully stuffed ensemble surges of Fela Kuti, past the noise deconstructionist provocations of Throbbing Gristle and John Cage and out...

...structural detachment as well as, essentially, comprehendible detachment... and out...out into the atmosphere to cathartically collide (and then ride upon) their own new asteroid of acerbic, cacophonous expression...

But it is, also...very musical. Horns, dual drums, booming bass, wailing guitars, -indeed, a swelling of humanity translating their mad primal howls into the burr, wisp and clap of crafted instruments.

Forget, the flagship band of experimental-focused Forget Recordings, is a revolving cast (upwards to 50 or more people have performed) that releases its albums as statements of improv; two sides with one 25-minute song on each side, each "song" comprised of a recent live performance.

The highlight here is inevitably last year's Blowout set - with 9 players pounding away inside the smoky cave of Paychecks, back in March 2010 while singers Steve Puwalski (Marco Polio) and Jamie Easter (Druid Perfume) "....duet?"

What it sounds like: googly eyed instrumentalists maniacially grin as they exorcise their demons by wobbling and richocheting off each other and across the stage while the two singers engage in what must seem like the hybrid of a Wizard's lightning-scorched duel crossed with a sweat and beer-spat version of ring-around the rosie and an almost wild-dog-like showdown of verbose conjuring of hexes...........

............

that's just what it sounds like...

and it makes you wish you were there, in the room... what the hell happened? what the hell did this look like? (One of the singers guzzled beer as it was poured down to his waiting mouth from the make-shift "cup" of his own shoe...mid-song)...

Makes you wonder what Forget's got planned for their next set at the Berkley Front (Mar 15)... or wonder what could happen at any Forget set....

or wonder, just what, could happen, under the right (and somewhat mad, mystical circumstances) at any band's set... if the fire catches them.

more info--axis mundi

Opening Day

I realized this about a month ago... that-, around Detroit, those of us ricocheting round this music scene's gaping pinball machine of venues, practice spaces and shoddy stages, -we run on a calendar rhythm that mirrors a baseball season.

February, out at the shows, regardless of how are knocked out of the park, so to speak, it still just feels like spring training. We're still stretching, getting our timing back, loosening up.

Blowout...that's opening day.

"Play ball" echoes simultaneously across 15 venues, all at once. I mean, I personally can't stand the actual sport of baseball. But, if opening day's arcing activities feels anything like the keen exhilaration imbuing any music head like me on a night where there the city just feels totally alive with the noisy expression of my neighbors... then, yeah...

I get it. I get the thrill.

Now it feels like the season properly starts. Local albums start popping out. Rookies phenom's start showing their dynamism, savvy veterans display that they still have tricks up their sleeves.

And color commentators like me try to keep our rants fresh.

I don't have anything profound for you yet... It's only the first game.

Schedule of festivities for tonight-- can be found here.

Interview: Hounds Below

“My name’s Jason and I’m a crooner from Detroit.”

Jason Stollsteimer “wanted a full change.” The 32-year-old Plymouth-raised singer/songwriter may still be best known as leader of the “C’mon, C’mon”-cutting Von Bondies, but now, he’s got a new house, a new life, a new lady and a new band.

The Hounds Below just released the Ghosts of a Loaded Gun EP and Stollsteimer meets me a day after “cutting off all the Von Bondie hair,” the first time he’s had a short, kempt doo in twenty years.

He’s also proud, now…to represent Michigan. Ten years ago, he’d stringently avoided publicizing the Von Bondies’ connection to Detroit on tours, now, as he takes the Hounds down to SXSW he’s spurred on by, -first, his new project’s main musical distinction (“…these songs can stand on their own…” with a more staid, stylized, back-to-roots-and-rockabilly-styled pop, “whereas before” with the garage/blues bluster of the Von Bondies, “it was all about high-energy, having fun with the audience and jumping off amps,”) and, -second, “Detroit needs a resurgence.”

And with three new players added, at least the Hounds have gotten their own resurgence.

Interview:

Three years ago Stollsteimer was alone personally and musically; divorced, with his flagship band winding down.

“But I was happy in that strange way; I felt like shackles to do a certain style of music or act a certain way were off. I started playing acoustic guitar for the first time, to write. I actually got to sing not from an angry place. I could actually sit and pick my brain.”

Thus, he grew away from Stoogesy, surface-level howl’s and moved into a strange hybrid of crooning lounge pop with light shades of indie-rock and curious spills of country twang. Far from “garage,” this tract mined deeper, darkly swirled ballads, with thornier moods and offered a chance to indulge taking off on his most formative vocal influence, Roy Orbison.

Stollsteimer praised his latest line up, newer collaborators Gjon Gjavelini (bass) and Nick Adams (drums), with longtime Hound Ben Collins (guitar), for its open mindedness and work ethic.

He’s the first to admit he’s not the easiest to work with, but never before has he had as comparably ready-and-willing types as Gjavelini and Adams, (Collins will depart for personal reasons after SXSW). The band has and will continue to revolve member-wise, as Stollsteimer puts it, it’s staffed by the best suited, talent-wise and availability-wise, who “get it.”

“As of right now, Gjon and Nick get it. Gjon and Nick and Ben are there to make the songs deeper musically; my job is to paint the picture with words and melody.”

“(Hounds) was always supposed to be an outlet for me to deal with inner-issues with life, with no one else in mind.” The Von Bondies, he’d realized in 07, had long resorted to a quasi-solo-project. Hounds grows somewhat out of that same notion – and its members are those who best understand where Stollsteimer’s coming from…

Ask him, traveling on a plane, or while he’s touring through Austin, where-he’s-coming-from, and now, he’ll tell you… Detroit. And he’s excited to be crooning. But he’d be particularly excited if he could get a keyboardist and a 2^nd guitarist – as the original Hounds-vision was set up to keep Stollstiemer from ever having to play guitar again – traditionally, crooner’s just don’t shred.

Ghosts…EP was recorded at Jim Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders, with Diamond splitting mixing duties with guitarist Collins. When they get back from SXSW (late March) they’ll get cracking on their first proper full-length, with newer songs that “are their own entity and not so era-based; the vocals still sound 1950’s but the music doesn’t.”

Gjon and Nick, he said, have helped “modernize-it up.” Also, they’ve opened up his eyes, and maybe made him less hasty. “I’ll get like a hundred song ideas in a month and I’ll keep, like, one of them, it’s sad. But, Gjon and Nick give me the confidence to bring back a song.” Some songs from four years back or older, are being realized with the new rhythm section. The key distinction from Von Bondies, “the music’s not as bashing.”

Keyboardist Will Yates (Zoos of Berlin / Pop Project) will accompany the band down to Texas. “Cumberland's Crumbling” is out now, as the lead single. Look for more recordings in late Spring / early Summer.

INFO + Hounds Live - 3/5 - at Magic Stick with Telekinesis

Blowout Spectacles

As if it wasn't hard enough for the more worn, traveled or experienced to choose where to go and what to see - this forthcoming mad merry-go-round through Hamtramck - we have a slew of bands going for broke and making spectacles out of their sets.

I'm not sure what Illy Mack is planning...but rumor has it, singer Jen David (who also helms guitar, sax, keys...and sometimes a cymbal) won't even be playing instruments by the end of the set...Thursday at Small's

JSB Squad is assembling again - packed with members of the Satin Peaches and probably seven other local bands... the combined ages of the players crowding the stage for their Gates of Columbus stage set, Thursday, will probably be between 440 to 500!

And... MC hip/hop collective Cold Men Young will be joined by a live backing band - they combine with the soul/pop/reggae flares of House Phone's players - get a sampling of both - below:
picture this:

House Phone - Me And My Machine (Music Video) from throwback media on Vimeo.

set to this:

MORE INFO