The Spell That I've Been Under

I'm having a day off today... and yet, still writing.

This, even, with a dead laptop. I've hijacked mom's computer for this brief musing, though I'll use this to assure you my entries will come, as the Voidoids once said of love, -in spurts.

I dug out a mix I'd made about a month ago to spur myself into a summer mood. Track 18 came on and it took me 25-seconds or so to remember what it was--delighted, eventually, was I, to realize it was a Detroit band: Computer Perfection.



Computer Perfection - All I Know and All I Really Need to Know by DC/Milo

While I drove around seeking fresh fruit and iced-coffee, the song drew it's smooth dreamy grooves throughout my grey-bland ovoid Chevy, inciting a strange and tranquil energy in me. Somehow, albeit likely aided by the delicate pouring of a summer sunrise, made the setting of my sublime cruise, (downtown Royal Oak), seem agreeable.

Simple sequenced beats set a steady shimmy, a bass merely shuffles along with you as synthesizers occasionally gurgle and trill between a reverberant coo like a relaxed, meditative heartbeat. The guitar, lightly fuzzed, cycles through three descending notes under the intertwining male/female vocals that swirl like a lullaby.

Can you forgive the spell that I've been under? (...that I'm under?)
~

My morning drive continues... Track 19 is "Summer Moon" by the Raveonettes, from their latest, Raven in the Grave and, if I can pat myself on the back in terms of track list arrangement, it's the perfect chaser to Computer Perfection's entry. It sustains the dreamy/haunting rounding waltz, similarly fuzzed and similarly mesmeric, and achieving a nostalgic 60's pop flavor beautifully twisted by flares of surrealist space rock.

Plus, it gets me misty when it sings about "this perfect thing is dying..."

I haven't meant to be maudlin - but I'm not about to let myself go cold in this age of the Internet. I'm not about to not let my feelings out, especially when they get roused by the splendor of a song, or a piece of music.

I'm enveloped, almost in a vice, of incorrigible wonder... to where music goes, where music writing goes, in an age of complete connection, persistent plugged-in-ness.

'Tis time I evolve, I presume. Even the Pope is using an iPad these days. But it seems as though we need to be in a state of preparedness not to adapt to the current thing, (doesn't Twitter seem quaint now?), but whatever the next mode, manner, medium of telecommunoCraziness might be... Jesus, I've just merely forgotten the mild transcendence you can find in going on extended drives-- -with music. I just wanna preserve that...
~

Already in a state of dangerous pondering, Track 20 comes on: The Fleet Foxes' "Helplessness Blues"

I'm not any died in the wool fan of this band. I wasn't on the bus when their first album came out and I suppose I always peered at them with a bit of trepidation. But this song may have sluiced the kool-aid down my throat.

Even so, the rest of the album hasn't really sufficiently stirred me yet, at least not to the extent of this song



Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues by subpop
-the title track of the much ballyhooed 2nd LP from the Seattle Americana art rockers.

It just felt good to remember the evocative power of music. To feel like you're drifting away on a melody, or to have that "own personal soundtrack" feeling transmogrify the live scenery around you as you travel, as you sit, as you think, as you breath... as you groove.

Anyway-- with a broken laptop that leaves me potentially updating only sporadically, this is a fine enough sign off for now...

"...after some thinking I'd say I'd rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.... but I don't, I don't, know what that will be...
I'll get back to you some day.... soon, you will see...."
~

Other things catching my eye:
One of my favorite online music magazines (if that counts for anything), The Quietus, ranks it's 50 favorite albums of 2011, so far. You can find out about Death Grips - Alexander Tucker and hopefully visit and revisit PJ Harvey's Let England Shake (their # 1 choice). ---Though I definitely wouldn't put some of their choices (Wild Beasts? Cold Cave?) necessarily as high...not to get bloggy on you.

While you're here, how about some kind of digital fist pump for this quote:
"The great truth facing the U.S. is not that we lack solutions to our problems but that our political system seems unable to do anything..."

**Coming from author Fareed Zakaria's Time column - "It's all Greek to U.S."

**Pitchfork, meanwhile, posted a column regarding how the internet can stunt listener growth... ...interesting: Learn as a Listener, via The Out Door
~
~~

KING CLAUDIUS: And can you, by no drift of circumstance get from him why he puts on this confusion, grating so harshly all his days of quiet, with turbulent and dangerous lunacy?

ROSENCRANTZ: He does confess he feels himself distracted; but from what cause he will by no means speak.

GUILDENSTERN: Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, but, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, when we would bring him on to some confession of his true state.

~

"I wish thoughts would come in music"
-Beachwood Sparks

A single note, hanging there, unwavering

In the time elapsed since my last viewing of this film, what is it now--five years?, I've written hundreds of album reviews.

And that part of me, the romantic listener, the deluded dreamer, was startlingly galvanized from this brief monologue.

Goosebumps.

Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, make sure you give yourself a sonic sojourn; stop and lose yourself in a piece of music.

Packed Daze

|

This Month's ~Current~ (Bad Indians + ARBCO)

From this month's Ann Arbor Current

Sounds From Big (and Small) Rooms~ Having Fun with Bad Indians’ new music and the ARBCO Co-Op

I’m always apprehensive about such phrases as: “new favorite (band),” but damn it all if I hadn’t said the same thing about Ypsi’s Bad Indians.

The thing is, I said that sensationally dubious phrase almost six months ago and, still, I return to the serrated shimmy and reverb-roiled tumbles and drives of their Don’t Hang That (On Me) cassette album on a regular basis. Which is heartening, firstly because it seems so many “new favorites” fail to stick-to-the-wall in the impermanence of the internet-music-world; secondly because I’ve gotten a chance to establish a reference point for their sonic sensibilities in time to dive into their next vision-quest, Sounds from the Big Room (currently available online, and at Café Ollie’s Ypsi Music Shelf

“We really aren’t a punk band,” said singer/guitarist Jules Nehring, “but I guess we’ve got some punk songs.” If anyone asks? Bad Indians are rock n’ roll. (myspace.com/badindians)

The thing is, each member, Autumn Wetli—drums/vocals, Erin Davis—bass/vocals and Ian Lannen—guitar/vocals, Morgan Morel--keys,) contributes to the songwriting process, each bringing their own approach and their own influences. Thus, their coalescing sound arches from swirling, scorched psychedelia, to spookily fuzzed-out blues, to deluges of reverb and hazy vox serenades mutating garage rock with bubble-gum pop.

One constant, thus far, has been their preferred means of recording, via their humble 4-track, often self-produced at their cramped recording space. “I’d really like to record on a reel-to-reel 4-or-8-track,” Nehring said. “It doesn’t always sound that great, but it works best for us because it isn’t any different from how we practice or play a show.”

Nehring shrugged off the gloss of big budgeted/premier productions, opting to listen to “a 4-track bedroom recording any day. I think recordings can be treated as almost-an-effect-onto-itself, to bring something new to a song. Reverb is a big part. I really like it and if we could practice or record in a cave, I would.”

The band formed, loosely, in early 2008, born from a trio of young players of whom Nehring is the only surviving-founding member. “It didn’t seem like a whole lot was going on in Ypsi or Ann Arbor at that point,” Nehring recalled, during which time the band rarely practiced and wound up eventually adding Lannen (who played in punk duo the Mahonies over in Detroit) and releasing Live from the Burial Mound. Nehring and Wetli moved to New York in 2009, where Nehring taught her drums while the band continued to write and perform. After a dizzying fluctuation of members, songs and potential trajectories, Wetli and Nehring wound up recording as a duo (the first proper cassette) and moved back to Ypsi in Halloween, 2010, having added Davis that summer.

The band have a 7” single forthcoming on Ypsi-based Ginkgo Records, as well as yet-another-cassette album on Ann Arbor-based Life Like Records.

~~ More and more, dedicated/DIY enterprises like ARBCO Records are demonstrating the feasible future of local music. ARBCO Presents is a joint-venture spurred by A2-based ARBCO Records wherein it aligns with dozens of bands under the banner of collaboratively cultivating the future of independent music through vinyl preservation.

Participating bands perform monthly (or bi-monthly) showcases raising funds (from door covers) into a collective pool to thus facilitate each other’s future pressings of respective LPs. Plus, fans benefit with an ARBCO punchcard that, after 12 punches, entitles them to a 12” vinyl record from their ARBCO Records. Arbcorecords.com/#artists. The bludgeoning metal/punk dragon-slaying quartet Blue Snaggletooth releases Dimension Thule this summer – seek it all at the next ARBCO showcase (Arbcorecords.com)

Not the "cutz" we'd like to see...

An addendum to John Dunivant's interview (below). Concerning Mr. Dunivant (current recipient of the 2011 Kresge Arts Fellowship), response concerning much of the friction wrought upon venues like Theatre Bizarre (or the Trumbullplex, or the Detroit Hostel) being due to City Officials "not talking to each other..."

Read today's Free Press ~ The Front Page bears a quote from Mayor Dave Bing reacting to the City Council's rejection of a budgetary compromise to restore $30 million to the '11-'12 spending plan, after having cut $50 million a month prior:
"The Time For Talk Is Over"

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing cuts off budget talks after City Council rejects compromise

Read Stephen Henderson's take from the op-ed section.

Bizarre Doc Preview ~ June 30 ~ ~ Dunivant Awarded Kresge (Interview)

Meet John Dunivant. He just won the 2011 Kresge Arts Fellowship! John specializes in architecture, illustrating, graphic design and painting. He's also in to sculpture and loves to work with his hands (he built his own ferris wheel last year).

In 1999, John Dunivant built a cabin inside of his studio space, thickly blanketing the floor with crinkled dirt-kissed leaves and transplanting hundreds of trees that shadily framed winding trails through the cavernous room, thus impressively dressing the setting of a fateful Halloween Party.

And he didn't get one photograph of it. "And that killed me." If any footage exists, he hasn't had found it yet.

This build-your-own-haunted-forest soiree of his would, beside risk getting him banned from the Russell Industrial Center, clarify to him the sublimely macabre visions for "his largest artistic accomplishment" to date, a backyard carnival known as Theatre Bizarre, which, over the last decade would become one of the area's (and the nation's) most renowned (and most interactive) underground venues, bolstered by an equally visionary collective of enthusiastic avant-gardists, as comfortable in this more guerrilla-styled setting as they would be in a conventional CCS curated show.

Learning from his mistakes of forgetting his camera for that first "party," Dunivant and longtime partner Ken Porier, made sure they diligent about documenting the development of Theatre Bizarre.

Now, Directors Gary Bredow and Per Franchell, are piecing together a documentary film - featuring footage from 2009's characteristically freaky/fiery/ambitious -all-night-concert/celebration - as well as the more on-the-fly videos and candid photography culled by Dunivant and Poirer.

"I was telling (Bredow & Franchell) that I didn't want to sign off on it just yet," Dunivant said. "I wanted to get a couple more years out of it..." Theatre Bizarre went on from 00-05, but took a break, (much-needed, at that point, for the pair of organizers who had led the assemblage of this twisted theme park meant to emulate the physical representation of a psychotic mass-murderer's abnormal mind).

They returned in 2007 with a tacit "five year plan...at that point, houses behind ours (on State Fair Drive) kept blowing up or burning down, and land kept opening up for us so we kept getting bigger. The plan was to go as big as possible, in five years, but afterwards we'd have to figure something out -to either go legit or, something, because it was getting too big to hide..." There was a roller coaster, in 09, on top of the ferris wheel + the considerable stage, numerous carnival games and splayed trails, all of it set alight intermittently with spirit-spurring pyrotechnics and echoing with the howls of inebriated ghouls.

"When we stopped in 05 it was still just a Halloween party," Dunivant said. "Then, after the break, it kinda hit me that it incorporates everything that I've wanted to do with art: graphic design, architecture, illustrating, painting, sculpture..." not to mention some woodwork and metallurgy. "Theatre Bizarre was fulfilling all of those needs for me. We wound up quadrupling in size with the land opening up, it got really intense and there was this whole new energy. I just felt, I guess, unleashed!"

Bredow and Franchell had the film in pre-production as 2010's Halloween approached, but Dunivant had still planned to have his gorgeous, gruesome gathering on the grounds for at least two more years, thus he didn't want to sign off just then, since the exposure would accelerate any hammer stroke from City Officials who were already leering at it from the corners of wary, watchful eyes, suspicious of any "unconventional" venues.

Alas, "things all came to a screeching halt," after all, in 2010, when the powers that be finally reined it in with citations over code violations threatening a razing of the site without their compliance.

Theatre Bizarre - Detroit - The Grounds from Zombo TheClown on Vimeo.

"It's frustrating," Dunivant said. Venues like Scrummage University (whose floated three, if not four times, by now), or the Trumbullplex, or the CAID are run and supported by "people who are trying to do positive, creative things in Detroit. But, then, you've got certain aspects of the city, because I can't say all (aspects) since Ken and I have been dealing with the City steadily since last November, through monthly meetings, and once some of them got past the point of thinking we were some fly-by-night rave party, they realized what a positive thing it was..."

"There's a lot of people (working for the City), who support it," Dunivant said. "But nobody's talking to each other." There's an older guard who are more obstinate, giving and taking with "a lot of positive people working for the city, for change. But, you've got decades of crap that they've gotta shake out to get to a better point."

The bureaucratic gridlock of progressive-vs-resistive elements in the city, Dunivant said, was evident as recent as the false-start for Detroit's Hostel. City Officials were on hand for the ribbon cutting, yet merely a few days later, the fledgling shelter received a cease and desist order.

Anyhow...

Theatre Bizarre Documentary Preview - June 30 - @ The Crofoot - presented by Big Bang Films - a Launch Party for Indiegogo.com fundraising support for the forthcoming film currently in-production. (Attendees get "Associate Producer" credits and a viewing of the film's teaser trailer).

"This isn't necessarily a Theatre Bizarre event," Dunivant said. "The filmmakers are raising money because they'd like to take an extra year dedicated to cataloging footage and editing it together. It's tremendous, a huge undertaking."

To the community that sprouted around (and supported) Theatre Bizarre: "Thank you," Dunivant said. "For supporting and believing in it without even knowing what it was going to be, going through some backyard party and hopefully finding something unlike anything they've ever seen before...The amount of volunteers that have come out, doing everything from moving woodchips to being apart of builds, to whatever, that's been tremendous. It was overwhelming, last year, at Dally, when we sold out our tickets so fast. That's definitely part of what drives me too, is the reaction and the support. I don't wanna stop. I'm bummed, I wanted all those people (in '10) to go to the grounds and see what we did."

"I still want them too. So, as much as I can, I'm gonna try to get everyone there, back to the grounds, so we can celebrate proper."

"If I can pull it off..." he says, noting that he's conferring with a lawyer to make sure he can stay i bounds, as much as possible.

Meanwhile, the film is tentatively scheduled for a 2012 release, with this June 30th fundraiser being a key building block:

Performing live: The Ruiners / Los Minstrels Del Diablo / Death Lab / Flec Mindscape / The Shitesmen / The Weird Sisters Circus / Satori Circus / Hayley Jane / Sky Fire / Courtney Morningstar / ~the film trailer~ / + Roxi D-Lite

~Costumes encouraged ~Come get interviewed by the on-site film crew

Tix: $25

more info
Theatre Bizarre

The Documentary

John Dunivant

The Crofoot

This Was Happening

Blue Moon + DC's New Center Nite (procession: Glossies, CaveMan, Fur, Oscillating Fan Club, DevilFish, Macrame Tiger~~Child Bite, Mister, Pupils, you)

Not In The Face

Everything was everywhere last night.
Hopefully everyone was able to sufficiently (and satisfyingly) lose themselves at whatever song-pact-ceremony whereupon they settled...

It's uselessly maddening to worry about what you show you could have been at - when you can just as easily permit thyself to dive into proactively maddening experiences at the edge of the stage of the shack whereupon you wound up.

It's Detroit. There's noise and noisemakers everywhere. Don't look at the clock and wonder if you can make it to somewhere else in time for someone else's set, cuz inevitably you'll take yourself out of the moment(s) that's spasming live, right in front of you... (Like a CaveMan getting into a street fight).

I'm done proselytizing --

If you're just logging on - you'll need to know about a surprise show, just added to the Lager House - that features Not In The Face - a fiery, sweatin & spittin duo churning out clattering, yowling blues punk and pummeling/swaggering rockabilly bluster.

They played Ferndale's Hybrid Moments last night... packing their prettily paroxysmal balladry into that modest music boutique, along with the comparably vigorous High Strung. But it's understanding if you missed it - considering that there were two, count 'em, two other music festivals happenin at that same time. (and maybe another that I'm forgetting? ...oh, yeah, RiverDays...)
In any case, they just added a show tonight-- at the Lager House.

Back to those other festivals: One was the Blue Moon in June (pictures to follow). The other was the Woodbridge Pub hosted Merrick'N'Trumbull fest - which featured a particularly piquant new performer 'round these parts, called Phantom Cats. A singer with plenty of range, lofting up to playful falsettos here but digging down deep for throaty groans there, marries elegance to the guttural; with an uncanny knack for fusing the manic and lively shred of punk to the cerebral percolations of jazz. It's zinging with flavors - and sturdily outfitted with tight rhythms, scorching guitar splays and dazzling vocal displays.
They sound like this:


Summer Spirit by PHANTOM CATS

And...
If you weren't at the Blue Moon, or at Woodbridge, or at Hybrid Moments - it's likely you were at Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr's release party...

Here's documentation of my favorite Prussia song (at least off the latest/still-technically-unreleased-album), compliments of photographer Trever Long

Tape Heads

SPIN finally gets around to treating the "tape" revolution in this month's issue... (though they're about eight months-or-more late since that bell started tolling).

In it, Spin remarks upon the ostensible big boys, like SubPop, licensing cassette singles from their roster of bands, out to the little guys of basement-set magnetic tape spooled scruffy bohemians (...like, say, Fullerton CA's Burger Records). They also give shout outs to NNA Tapes, Captured Tracks, Gnome Life and Not Not Fun).


"When you devalue the physical aspect of music so much, you shouldn't be surprised when the most inexpensiev format comes back into style" - Mike Sniper, Blank Dogs, operator of Captured Tracks.

At first, it's a crazy idea...then it's a phenomenon... Then, when major labels and considerably regarded/renowned/(er, "hip") indie bands start dabbling in "it" as well..., then it's a revolution. (Oh, media sensationalism).

I don't mean to over-think this...but recorded music was seen as a novelty when it first came about a hundred-and-a-quarter-years ago - people were used to concerts. (Okay, set aside that it was the well-to-do, stuffy wig-wearing affluent's who were the ones shelling out dough for Opera halls).

But, it's funny when one puts oneself back into that mindset: What? Listen to my Mozart or my Handel at home? Through the crude crackle of this distended cylinder? Poppycock.

But, thought of another way - the recording, on some small, deluded level, could just be a substitute for the live performance... the live energy, the presence, the sweat and strain and swagger of the performer....the pulsing amplifiers reverberating your viscera...

I don't intend to go too far down that road. I'm just intrigued by what the advance of generations wroughts upon debates of sound quality. When the kids are coming up from behind, yet also bringing with them the same old busted equipment and dusty technology that the Gen-X-er's thrived upon, it stirs things up in a weird and refreshing way.

As the music world shifts economically-speaking, it also shifts one's potential prospects. (Basement garage rockers have hit the hills and mined their own nuggets! Now a bunch of fledgling DIY labels have propped up as veritable olde-timey General Stores hocking their wares).

Indeed, the music world shifts and more democratic, or at least made more wild and woolly by new generations' transmogrifying outdated purist ideals (these kids don't need to worship Phil Spector, or remastered Pet Sounds, that's well and good, but they also have room for the scuzzed-out/blown-out bluster of a Ty Segall or Times New Vikings).

All I'm saying is: It's interest. And it makes me wonder if we've gotten back to that late-Edwardian-era of thinking where we revere the live performance over the recording... Or, perhaps, more so, that the recording, now, is considered supplemental, or a means for listeners to further acquiant themselves with an artist's signature and perhaps their personality - so that they have a grasp of it on their way to the concert.

I've already overthought this more than I wanted to...
I really just wanted to give shout out's to Detroit-area purveyors of cassettes...

For instance - Ann Arbor based Zen Tapes is throwing a shin-dig on July 8th - >

Ypsilanti-based Bad Indians just released a new album, Not Having Any Fun, the 36th release off of Fred Thomas' Ypsi-based LifeLike Records. (If you're over in Ypsi/Arbor, also check out Ginkgo).

In Detroit, we have Gold Tapes (run by Zac from Kommie Kilpatrick), who just put out another KK chapter, Sex Party.
There's also Aglae Tapes & Records, as well as Leroy St. Records.

Songs From The Moon went and put out their own, a split cassette with Matilda: The Lucky Suite

And then, there's CA-based Burger, who has shown plenty of Detroit love, via their push for Conspiracy of Owls' fine debut. They also have stuff by the Pizazz and Magic Jake & the Power Crystals.

How many revolutions per minute do cassette tapes roll at?

Why don't we do it in the road?

This is what living in ridiculously robust and flourishing music scene should be -all about: a shambolic Shangri-La-scenario of a summer party. A spilled-about, music-packed block party -where all you have to do is ask those who would otherwise be in attendance to simply load their amps and travel about transport them for a six-or-seven minute drive (or even just a six or seven minute walk).

Merrick'N Summer-Fest, hosted ostensibly by the Woodbridge Pub (the outlet that will be supplying the suds to thereby silly-fy all those for the 12-hour-long event) will be thrown (Saturday - merrick & trumbull) to celebrate the "essence and beauty" of "living in Woodbridge."

Here's a loose schedule -

12:15 - STEVER MCFEVER
12:45 - AUDRA KUBAT & IAN LINK
1:30 - WOODMAN
2:15 - ALEX WEBB & ANDREW BEER
3:00 - JESSE AND THE GNOME
3:45 - BRAIN ROTTAR
4:30 - PATRICK DAVY AND THE GHOSTS
5:15 - LOOSEFOOT TIGHTFOOT
5:45 - DETROIT PARTY MARCHING BAND
6:15 - OUR MIGHTY HEART
7;00 - GOLDEN
7:45 - PHANTOM CATS
8:30 - POP PISTOL
9:15 - THE ANONYMOUS
10:00 - PINK LIGHTNING
10:45 - JUST BOYZ
11:30 - WILL SESSIONS

~

'course... there's also this (tonight, down at 1217 Griswold)







Where you can see this:

...s'all for now, comrades - more soon

Changing Landscapes - First Belmont, now Bart - (+House Phone / Blue Moon Scavenger Hunt)

The Belmont, of Hamtramck, location of many memorable Detroit rock n roll concerts, has changed owners and now its amplifiers are quiet.
"Cheers and tears..."

Club Bart closes on Sunday. Ferndale's humble hub for rock, jazz, blues and stand-up, was just beginning, it seems, to get on a roll (so to speak), with hosting special events (like tribute nights with crammed line ups of enthusiastic local performers for John Lennon and Hank Williams...and the special Duensedays-- Wednesday night specials hosted by Duende-as-veritable-'house-band' with a revolving cast of opening performers).

Ferndale's Patch has a story with readers sharing memories for this bluecollar bistro as renowned for its breakfast fare as it was for its ardent support of local music. Details of Club Bart's recent changing of owners were not fully available as of this morning, so just stay tuned to the Patch.
~

While I have your attention...
This...

...is happening, tonight @ the Loving Touch in Ferndale. Up for grabs: a 7" single from the lounge-conjuring, jazz-rock dashing, soul-popsters House Phone - (my personal fav cut from their first few songs)~Listen:

~

And in the meantime gear-up for a scavenger hunt - Saturday at 5pm (leading into the 5th Blue Moon in June).

There's some sort of secret concert occurring

(this is Scotty, -he plays in Crappy Future)