Ain't Their First Rodeo - "...still unclear what it is..."

Honestly...
Some people deal with statistics. Their weekdays drain by... Some people have to worry about stocking their office supplies, their paper clips, their ink jets. Some people live for coffee breaks and smoke breaks and sit in awkward break rooms in uncomfortable dress wear from Target... eating cheetos...

I get to write about this...
Pink Lightning - Why I Drink Fancy (2011)

...at least I choose, to, anyhow... And I'm feeling pretty zazz'ed about it...

I caught up with Chris Butterfield, shook-up, suspender-strapped frontman for local rouse-rock quintet Pink Lightning ...concerning their current line up shift and their forthcoming full length album...

"Our sound is all over the place," he says.
"I'm still unclear what it is," he adds.
Finally, surmising, "...or, even, what I'm doing."

"I think it's a good thing..."

You think their facebook-profile's listing of Supino Pizzeria as their record label is some tongue-and-cheek, absurdo/esoteric Internet quip?
No, indeed... That's the chosen moniker for their self-releasing efforts. Will it be sustained as their own personal flagship label? We'll see... Since, Butterfield, there's a whole "EP's worth of new material, in-utero," waiting to come out after this album...Maybe there'll be another Supino slice? Perhaps some fateful label will start to tune in to their fierce, rickety flares of fuzzed-funk and sweat-sopped indie/soul... Maybe anything! Oh, Internet, and your numerous options and avenues...

"We're currently adding some finishing touches to what will be our first full length," said Butterfield.

Namely, "a brass section (Thomas Gilchrist - tuba, Stephen Bublitz - trombone, Evan Winter - trumpet)."






The song streaming above came out at the start of 2011, via their debut EP, First Rodeo, a valiant, if somewhat rough tumbler of songs, surging with inspiration and girded by the camaraderie of five fatefully-brought-together-dudes upon the stoops of Eastern Market's borders. They've been working on the follow up through the late summer and early fall but were tripped up by a couple of things, first being guitarist Matt Paw's departure, and second being the time spent learning an entire set of Michael Jackson cover songs for a Halloween set.

"One downfall of the Michael Jackson set," Butterfield begins, and I love that his phrasing suggests that there's more involved in that particular sort of tricky business, "is that it postponed development on the record...but there's a revived focus now!"

Revived focus! And a new band member. The Ashley's singer/guitarist Tom Bahorski has stepped in, bringing his bluesier, classic-rock/punk mutations in where Paw had once wrought a more funked-up space rock sensibility. We'll see...

"About Mr. Tom Bahorski," Butterfield says, "...the guy is a whiz! We like his energy..."

Energy is key with this band...The band's very much run like a baseball team, if you're not hustling, if you're not swinging...not throwing the heat... then you're benched.

"Plus, (Tom)'s got a Kroger Plus Card."

Again, key.

"We like to entertain," Butterfield continues, speaking to the live show. He, himself, is inspired by a curious mix of stand-up comedians and post/punk new-wave freak-out trailblazers like David Thomas (of Pere Ubu) - "Enhancing that live experience is key...There's also a hope that you'll be seeing us with horns, quite a bit."

Aside from helping to organize the Urgh! A Detroit Music War concert film, last June at the Lager House, Butterfield also arranged to have David Thomas perform a special in-house concert for a limited number of guests. "...that Living Room Concert tops my own list for the year," he says. "Organizing an event that brought a music hero to the Pink Lightning loft (in Eastern Market) for an intimate performance was a real thrill..."

"I'm happy with the run we had in 2011...We" (and by We, he means Neal Parks - percussion, Everette Rinehart - bass, backing screams, Bahorski, and Leo McWilliams - accordion)... "...performed alongside a lot of nice folks/good bands, which was deeply inspiring to us."

It's almost 2012... What would this post be without an end-of-the-year list? How about your "Top 2 Favorite Local songs?"

Hmm...
Butterfiield:
"My top two local songs of the year - and, as two favorite local groups, also:

Where Do You Live - Johnny Ill Band


Sunset City - Passalacqua





PINK LIGHTNING -@ Hybrid Moments Dec. 16th -in Ferndale - with OSCILLATING FAN CLUB + ELECTRIC LION SOUNDWAVE EXPERIMENT + CRAPPY FUTURE.....

These Things Happen Sometimes (pt. 1)

I'm cursing that I haven't yet found myself an effectively heroic winter coat.
My hands are purple and my car is running out of gas and Michigan's imposing winter is rumbling off down the horizon, snickering with excitement for its impending arrival.

And I'm reading more Moby Dick, getting way too pensive about what lies beyond... And I start rambling with a friend - to the point where I declare:
that...
Profundity seems to have diminished into near nothingness.

I was considering seeking out where and when -profundity died... Likely somewhere, back, up the sloped digi-road, millions of hyperlinks, refreshes and status updates ago...

Everything is an event. In case you didn't know this was happening, it is, right now, ...or, it did already...? Well, in case you still wanted to know...

The use of this knowledge is still being determined. You're expected reaction is to like it.

What will you do with this knowledge, now that you're aware that this happened, that this human said or did this...Whatever it is... Will you retain it? Do you need to?

Does it effect what you do next?

Everything exploding everywhere at once. When all you should probably be concerned with is what you're going to do in the preceding moments.Likely, the most useful thing would be to not worry about where you could be - no sense in putting your own foot down on the accelerator pedal if the car's already rolling, in neutral, down the road to digi-madness.

Perhaps jump out of that metaphorical car. Stop at some idyllic coffee shop at the curb, halfway down this sloping Internet road where we tune out some of the new-norm-static.

Photographer Trever Long and I made the motivational mistake of performing such a stop-and-sigh, last night, at the art-decked Cass Cafe, wherein we asked ourselves, just why the hell we do what we do... (which, in some form or another...is a documentary of just what the hell is going on around here...)

What is the essence of inspiration? What is it that would motivate Trever to spend 20 hours on a photo shoot and me blowing whole afternoons over essays -just to, (however crazy it sounds), wind up reaping no financial gain, other than the love's labor-reward of being assured that we've framed something and shown it out, to the world?

We, like you and so many others, feel as though we fly in a nuanced holding pattern. I'm not quite referring to the overall stagnation we feel, that disenfranchisement that the Occupiers have marched-against; yes, here we are, as Millenials, trudging/dragging all Sisyphean through day jobs that start to feel like cross-country skiing while our parents talk of the good old pre-inflation days. That's unnerving enough.

But, our holding pattern concerns crumbling industries. Documenting the arts is like... I dunno, man, but sometimes the devil on my shoulder tells me I shoulda went into sports journalism. Eek...

The internet, blogs, zines, what have you, has shaken up our games. How does a photography scholar, someone trying to construct a canon of work, bolster a portfolio and one day, hopefully, steadily fill the walls of galleries for exhibitions, compete aginst the tyrannical attention-span-tearing tumblr's and a culture that's gotten dependent upon youtube's quicker, diriter, spoon-feeding's...

How do I compete in the days of an-already-long-dead print media... Long-dead blogs, even. We still feel ourselves cut, somewhat, apart from those who would write about music or take photos of bands for the reward of weekly paychecks. The hope is to do, or try, something more, something different.

We want to know you. Hear you out. Frame you proper... Something crazy like that... Beyond a phoning-in...


What inspires you? Anyhow...? (...and just then, there it was, luckily, that I got an Olivia Tremor Control song stuck in my head -
"...there is no growing / in knowing where you're going...")



To shorten this rant - if I wasn't writing this blog, I'd be trying to write a song. I'd be trying to paint a picture. I'd be trying to take a photograph. I keep writing because noise keeps churning from basements and living rooms in this city - thus, I'm heartened by so many other subtle-esoterics and charming-weirdos who have decided to dedicate their time to something, anything, beyond the bland and defeated who resign to watch primetimeTV and go to megamalls and the giant movieplex...

What it was... I wanted to make Facebook the culprit, the beast that put the bite marks of hinted jadedness into me, that dystopic doo-hickey that made me sound all curmudgeony about all these blurring updates and hey-did-you-see-what-Thom-Yorke-just-tweeted...and all such nonesense. (There are much more substantial and necessarily scary things going on in the world, dear reader, from rising sea levels to Detroit facing the potetial of being run by an Emergency Manager)...

The point is, I haven't left here yet because I'm bewitched by all of your potential... And, Trever and I being documentarians (of some kind), it leads us to ask all these questions, sometimes way too early, earlier than when the answer is fully formed.

Trever and I are all too ready to form epic memories - like Will Hermes' latest: Love Goes to Buildings On Fire - Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever... Trever and I,...we're just inspired, is all...wanna shout all this out to the world, now, is all!

Like this...

Rising glam-revivalist Duane the Teenage Weirdo pairing up with explosive, slime-splattered punk avant-gardist Timmy Vulgar (via Human Eye) -as part of Saturday's show -with a welcomed appearance by the Terrible Twos ...along with Keep on Trash DJ's: Dave Buick and Johnny Hentch -  - 3rd Street Detroit (4626 3rd)

It's line ups like that, -rookies and veterans- -glam and punk- that further fosters the verdant variety of this scene.

There's no need for bands to "make sense together" when they play a show - no need for 3 all/only punk bands, or all rock bands, etc...

Healthy variety
Augmented inspiration.

Question: What happens when Duane the Teenage Weirdo turns 20?
Answer: Yes, eyeballs do barf out toxic pastel nightmares^

Since I won't have time to write about it tomorrow... I'll write about it now...
One of my favorite albums of the year comes from Chicago's tumble-pop/indie-rockers Hospital Garden that being their Haunter LP (the title track from which can be streamed below...)

Hospital Garden, along with Columbus' Psychic Wheels, are coming to town, Friday night, at the Lager House, to synch up with their friends, Detroit-set shred-pop duo Secret Twins, who, it turns out, recorded a split 7" vinyl with the fuzzed-out-sunsplattered punk/pop trio DeadBeat Beat...

So that's something...

Hospital Garden - "Haunter" by DC/Milo

P.S. - Do you really wanna know what's going on? And actually have time to pore over it, take a breath, review, and take notes? Just check out Shelley's Michigan Happenings - for those in the-ever-running-know, that's the only blog you'll need to check...

P.P.S. - I'm not sure if I resolved how uneasy I can get at how much there is to consume, to take in, to review, out there, on the internet...

I'm still worried that profundity is dead. ---The Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Guns N' Roses are in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame...now (--or, at least, they will be...soon enough). What does that even mean anymore? The culture heroes of the past still retain the pedastols... Whether it's Axl Rose or the CBGB's troupe written about in Hermes' new book, or even the Steve F'in Miller Band on any ol bland, repetitive classic rock radio.

While bands around here are writing just as inspired (and often profound) songs as they, or anyone else, every other weekend...

Trever and I are just trying to tell people about it, I guess...

For now, I'm turning in...reading a bit of Moby Dick, then off to sleep...
"...This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound..." (H. Melville, Moby Dick)

Gift Catalog / Ill Band

Local energies - percolating across the Internet channels...

House Phone is here... Man...sounding good so far.
There's new, heretofore unfounded fire to their recordings on the Gift Catalog EP - not yet fully realized on the initial demos and last summer's EP. Something just seems up, more lively, across all their elements, keys, guitars, bass, drum, high crooning vocals...
I think it's that scorched synth punch affecting some clawed-up space rock plow - joining in with the guitars on "1000 Years..." I can just hear/see that jam affecting a certain augmented poignancy at the next Blowout - In fact, its ever since last year's Blowout performance where this jazz-inclined soul-pop quintet backed up hip/hop MC collective Cold Men Young that this group has begun to noticeably hone their chemistry and electrify their on-stage presence/energy and delivery.With this EP...it's coming through.




And then there's these guys...
.
...punk-charmers/noise-poppers/befuddle-rockers... For a band with a comparatively minimalist sound/approach, they manage quite an effect. More soon on them... For now, mark thine calendars-- for Dec 16th (at Jumbo's in Detroit) - as that's when the Ill Band releases their new LP Ask All T/he Doctors (Urinal Cake) along with Sros Lords -who'll be releasing a 7"...

West of Here - Wet Hair - Ways to Come Together - - Chrome Sparks and WCBN

I have no perception of who reads (checks, scans, spits-upon) this blog...

If I'm guessing it's mostly those set into the SE pocket of the mitten, Detroit and what have you. So, then, please consider this westward-heavy post - where I look over to Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti...

I scribbled out a music column for an A2-based culture zine, recently, and thought I'd share some of those thoughts:

Chris Taylor said there needs to be more unity in “music community.” To raise and sustain a thriving music community, it “really comes down to supporting each other,” said the journeyman guitarist, who currently plays a blend of sci-fi-surf and psychedelic hard rock with Ann Arbor’s Blue Snaggletooth).

I spent much of my late autumn picking the brains of various local musicians, ruminating on the potency and potential of what it is, exactly, that we have here, together, as a “music scene,” or, “community.” It’s a tough, tricky conversational query…Not only is it hard to answer the: what-makes-a-scene-work-question; it’s often tacitly considered such a troublesome subject, that most refrain from even asking it.

And the answer can vary, depending on niche...

...The elusive element, however pie-in-the-sky-ish, would be “an across the board community of support” said Taylor, that binds the fractured “sets” of different styled musicians (scenes within a scene), to attain a bedrock of support. Indeed, what we have is commendable in itself, especially the local labels (ARBCO, Ginkgo,) or local independent businesses (record shops like Underground Sounds or local-centric venues like Woodruffs). The reason for any frustration (and thus our questioning of “scenes”) is that the push and pull of all these more distinct and sometimes erratic components have heretofore, seemed to help some bands (propped up to national tours) while leading others to fall through the cracks to, as Taylor put it, “languish on the local circuit…”

Shelley Salant (of Ypsi band Swimsuit and Ginkgo Records) noted that inevitably, we’d need more local venues; the hope being that more outlets lead to more local showcases, wider local fan base, clearer translation to other “gate keepers” (as Taylor said, “booking agents, local bizz’ owners, event organizers”) realizing the value (potential revenue) in live, local music. But then, that tips into branding one’s self, one’s scene… And who wants, really, to be “tagged” – folk rock, punk rock, etc…

The hope is, always, that everyone gets on board, supporting all local music. But still, there’s no clear answer. Presumably, no one listener will be up for attending the shows of every genre and you’ll probably never see noise rock bands at more folky art fairs.

Or will you? Conventional barriers and cliquey behaviors break down slowly – genres blend together and it leads me to wonder how much longer we stay separated. Rock bands like Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program synched up, recently, with hip hop MCs from Detroit, Mister, Blaksmith and Benjamin Miles, for a remix single produced by Ypsi-based raunch-rapper BUFFAY.

So why not blend other genres into this rock column? Ann Arbors’ Chrome Sparks (Jeremy Malvin) is an up and coming ambient electronica composer who’s released a steady stream of singles, EPs and albums. It’s likely you’ll see him mixed in with a handful of indie-rock bands on a bill

.........

~Piggy-backing off of that rambled spill - You can read more about Chrome Sparkes HERE.
You can also see Chrome Sparks performing this Wednesday (Dec 7), out in Ann Arbor at the Work Gallery (306 State Street) along with Iowa City-tied synth-swirled lo-fi psychedelia group Wet Hair, part of U-M's student run radio station WCBN's spotlighting of the School's first dedicated gallery space on central campus...This performance was funded in part by Arts at Michigan.

If you want to catch up on the history of Wet Hair, subsequently, there's an ample anecdotal digi-dossier to review here. - It was born out of Shawn Reed's Night People Records label...and you can only imagine if Young Marble Giants were roomates with Spaceman 3...with the dreamy-droon/croon articulations of an Ian Curtis...

oh, blogspeak

Stone Calendar / Is It Snowing Where You Are?

Still sifting my way through the SubSprawl Holiday comp...

Favorites and curiosities, so far, include:
"Jesus Was A Gangster" - by MC Rallz
"Holiday Road" by Deadbeat Beat... nice touch
Paincakes...a perennial contributor to this list...
And with Child Bite mutating their own version of King Wenceslas ...crisp and even
and then there's this one, sounding like a college thesis paper -
"Facts Regarding the Great Halifax Explosion of 1917 and it's Effects on the Official Christmas Tree of the City of Boston" by Greatest American Beekeeper[
...dig in...

Make a stop at that site - (...and, inevitably...consider the fact that Quack Media slashed their prices in half - in case you wanted to take care of some shopping for the MusicHeads in your family... or, just, yourself...)

~

As the year winds down and I start looking back--as much as I start looking forward, ...there's one song that keeps ringing out in my mind...
Hi-Speed Dubbing's "Stone Calendar..."

"...2012...just might be the end"


Hi-Speed Dubbing - "Stone Calendar (2012)" by DC/Milo
~
^This is a forthcoming 7" vinyl single... from a subsequent forthcoming album, by this Detroit quartet of blues-punk amalgam rockers - This was one of their first songs, penned by Justin (Audio) Walker, (who also records as Brilliant Violence)... reflecting a hard-hooking, rip/roar/tumbler phase of his writing, back in 2008, as the band was just coming together.
That riff, wobbling upward, jerking side to side, sweetens up an otherwise fiery jam that, underneath the roar of the guitar, is haunted by earnest uncertainty... If this is it, after all...better make it worth your while... and better you shout your lungs out...
--more sounds here
~

Another song that always gets stuck in my head around this time of year is one that's a bit harder to find, out there on the Internet, in its original form...
But there's at least this charming (softly cacaphonous) video...

Saturday Looks Good To Me - Peg

PSL | Myspace Video

"It's almost winter time..."
Makes you nostalgic for the modern classics... like Saturday Looks Good To Me's Fill Up The Room...

I'll embrace stream of conscience: SLGTM ->Fred Thomas -> Ypsilanti.... -->and I arrive at: Mittenfest 6 - (happening in Ypsi's Woodruff's) ...and it's line up - and it's dates - 12/28/11--through--1/1/12

twenty-twelve.......

Decent Burr

I'm growing more self-conscious...month to month, as we wind down, that tUnE-yArDs...might or might not be growing a bit polarizing? Only because it just seems like numerous, from Pitchfork -to- NPR^ have sanctified their 2011 release Whokil....

Whatever. It'll be on my year-end list. Judge away, Internet...

In the meantime, please visit Suburban Sprawl's web site...They have a musical care package of holiday/winter-themed songs from dozens of local bands. This is always an exciting collection... dorky and dynamic, nostalgic and heartwarming and noisy and...well, lots of things. 'Tis the season... Year 10! I'll write about it more, after some Nog...

Live, Eat, Sleep, Breath - Music: Melville, Bowie, Illingsworth and HurryCulture

I'm here.
I might as well write...

The world moves too fast. I feel like I havne't gotten a chance to really sit with any records, properly. Not enough coffee to keep me keyed up... keying in... Breathing now... listening...Back to the Kinks first record, back to Bowie's Station to Station... Digging back into myriad pièces de résistance from handfuls of praised auteurs whose pedastols only get higher, year in and year out...

Like, Moby Dick... I'd never read any Melville before - and it's been rewarding stumbling onto such passages:"The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less... is here essayed"

When else am I going to find the time to read Melville, when Blog-World just wants me to keep lunging for what's next...

The new HurryCulture has created a strange filter - The well established legends, regardless of their level of legitimized profundity, whether they're Bowie, or Melville, or Big Bird, or Radiohead, Jay Z or Gary Numan, Michael Stipe or Michael Jackson... made it through before the Internet screen went up... And ever since, we've had ostensibly indie-acts coming up being pigeonholed as "buzz-bands..." The tacit suggestion being that said-buzz offers precious time...before you're sluiced back out through the filter.

And Ziggy Stardust and Captain Ahab's shadows grow taller and darker, on the other side.

BUT....but...but...

That's just one way of looking at it... (I shouldn't type straight out of the day job, on only half-doses of coffee...)

Another way to see it, meanwhile, would be to ask: when and how else would I have been able to come across a band like Thee Oh Sees...or Still Corners? Without my sloshing around the hyper-percolating, song-screaming/mp3-streaming echo chambers of the Internet...

Dig the London dream-pop-deconstructionists, bringing in warm organs and surfy-guitars onto an autmnal, hazy stovetop, where it simmers into near noise-pop crescendos of dizzy catharsis... (Their new album, which probably makes my '11-list is Creatures of an Hour on SubPop).


Or, Texas-punk-blues boys, of the Strange variety, are probably having a tough time from the music press since their album title Live Music ...is likely pronounced differently than any reader's initial inclination (...rhyme-it with "give..." ) Sound advice: LIVE music.
They stopped by Noisevox, whilst in New York, over Thanksgiving - and got interviewed... Watch that here, if you please.


Their latest (which, again, now that I think about it with a listen, is an '11-candidate) is available through Rough Trade.

But let's bring it back to Detroit.......
It's Wednesday (as I write this) and that means, that, like always (or, like such a notable amount of weeks-steady) local multifaceted/multi-quirked MC Doc Illingsworth, in all his shimmering, glistening glory, has posted another thoughtful, charming video... Wherein, along with Rufio Jones and Sean Uppercut, they come to terms with bread acting as legal tender for up and coming independent music artists... what a world.


Where was I going with this post, to being with, anyhow?

I'm going back to my Melville...
AVAST!

of All Time...

I'm through with the major music press, folks...

It's fluff has caused me to hack...

I was pushed over, today, by my father's vehement disagreement with Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of all time...the feature list of their current issue. Dad doesn't really think that Jimi Hendrix is technically, judged by all measurements and beyond all doubts - the greatest guitar player of all time. Set aside my accentuated eye-rolling upon scanning the current issue of Rolling Stone (in which they have this all-time list of guitarists, which includes Sex Pistols' Steve Jones and not one Venutre? ...includes Mick Ronson, and yet not Robert Fripp? Paul Simon is also on the list...And why, dad asks, is Chet Atkins and Les Paul ranked so low?)

But it's more of the same; predictable and homogeneous - like Stone running a mirror-image feature spread on what they call "Rap's New Wave" to what SPIN Magazine profiled as: "The Changing Face of Hip/Hop" - you can find Yelawolf, Big K.R.I.T., A$AP Rocky and Detroit's Danny Brown spotlighted in both magazine's respective/repetitive features. And oh, look, the new Drake album got 4 out of 5... big surprise...

But back to that all time greatest guitar player list...

I love that part: "all time..." (A two-word phrase that updates itself with the same exasperatingly microscopic distinctions atop contrived rehashes as your typical college kid's Algebra II textbooks).  

Lists, in/of themselves are inane, subjective and thus dubious. Best to take mild entertainment in that they still manage to stir up fracases between fans, why this guitarist over that one, etc...

It's because we all have our own lists, constantly posted on the push-pin-stabbed cork bulletin boards of our brains - we know our own hierarchy - subjected to the whims of our most closely clung-to inspirational figures. We all, not to stretch it too far, have our own Mt Olympus, packed with a rose-colored-lens-viewed Board of Guitar God Trustees (or, whatever cultural creator, author, actor, director, whatever...) We elected our own heroes, we have our own lists...

It's easy to get upset. Especially when you love the Ventures and Mark Knopfler as much as my dad... only to see Hendrix and Clapton get the spotlight once again...

~~But even then, maybe I am a bit wistful that I missed the deadline to contribute to this year's Favorite Albums of 2011 Year End List for TinyMixTapes (an online music zine that I contribute to, on occasion). But then, many of you will probably scoff at my short list... (Let's see, what was on it... tUnE-yArDs...Tom Waits...War On Drugs...Atlas Sound...Kings Go Forth...John Maus...Glossies...) What does it matter?

I woke up today assured that I'd attempt to make a list, myself...

The Most Important Moments in Rock/Pop-Music History...of "ALL TIME"

1. When the Beatles took drugs
2. When Iggy Pop rolled around in broken glass and the Ramones took their leather jackets on tour to England
3. When Bob Moog marketed his synthesizer
4. ...Kook Herc...Bambaataa...and Grandmaster Flash in the Bronx, early 70's,...the breakbeats, etc
5. When blues music gets mutated into rock n roll by white people who figure out how to sell it (with Elvis, et. al.) to poodle-skirted, lettermen blessed with disposable income (allowance).
6. Disco gets bastardized into Bee Gee/Saturday Night Fever glam, only to die, quickly, followed by a dance reformation of -House and -Techno

7. There's no way this list can be definitive

8. The day YOU realize that you shouldn't put any stock in any magazine, major music press or even a blog (this one included)... And that lists are just for fun.

Just listen.

Black Saturday

Black Friday is ending as I type this...
...Hermited away, inside my bungalow, staring out at this eerily pleasant weather...
...Knowing, unsettled, that the masses are out their, bumping into-and-off-of each other, like ants in a glass-smushed-farm, unknowingly acquiescent to some cruel science experiment, poured from the blended beakers of Macy's and Roebucks, from car dealerships and Best Buys...
...coaxing your aunt and your other klatch of non-music-obsessed friends who may be less cynical than you... coaxing them out, out, into the gaping maw of the mega-mall, swallowed to shop, to churn through its innards and collect discounted debris from its bleached viscera... to store away the plastics and the diamonds and the woolen sweaters and the shoes, the toys and the kindles and the always-too-easily-broken bits...into closets for the next 30 days...

Some of us are shopping small. Like my mom, tomorrow, in Ferndale... or as part of a co-opted Occupy-Wall-Street thing

Some of us are just too damn busy today (like me...)

Some of us, though, just ain't got the money right now...


And that's the subject of Passalacqua's latest joint, a contribution to the Annual Suburban Sprawl X-Mas Compilation... (A free streaming gift, packed with dozens of season/holiday-themed tunes from a range of Michigan musicians - be they rock, rap, punk or random-one-off collaborations of weirdness...)

Doc Illingsworth (of Detroit CYDI) spits some bars on this track, along with Mister and Blaksmith. Passalacqua plays on December 9th, at the Magic Stick, with ambio/electro/space-pop wonderkids Phantasmagoria, and Ann Arbor-based digi-noise-scramble composers Chrome Sparks and fthrsn -

Head to Sub Sprawl's label site on December 1st for the new comp!

New sounds? Here's new sounds... (well...two-month-old-sounds, but still):




New videos? Watch Doc Illingsworth - discovering the Internet...

People Who Live In Paper Houses...

Somewhat of an Interview - with the Ferdy Mayne:

...A new place to go for live music, The Paper House, will open its doors tonight, helmed by a handful of dudes who know what they're doing when it comes to lively, off-the-beaten-path-parties culling quirky, cool, iconoclastic performers.

Its places and nights like these that fuel the hyperbole of ad-campaign-esque sonnets singing the potential of this city, based upon its vigorous underground arts scene.

Just like ScrummageVision before it, (and various other Scrummage incarnations long before that, as well), Paper House could be the new music mill for those seeking out a refreshing revue of unconventional and avant garde artists who might be slipping under the radar of the bigger clubs. With ScrummageVision closing down two days ago, the Paper House, ostensibly inherits that torch, or at least is flecked with its embers. Much like the city's other alternative venues, past/present that have either thrived or blipped from within re- store-fronts, lofts or warehouses, the Paper House has its fire's lit by a batch of 20-somethings with -energy, -vision and -camaraderie. And, oh yes, potential.

But before I re-type that same old hyperbolic rave for our general edgey-ness, I stated typing out this blog post because of the new venue's first line up -

--which, included with up-and-coming post-space-rock/post-acid-jazz quartet Rough House, (who manage to impress even inside cramped living rooms), is headlined by the once dance-pop-pigeonholed/and-now-ever-evolving music project of Randy Chabot, i.e. Deastro, along with Scrummage-born electro/noise/rock-experimenters Lord Scrummage and Slufter. There's also The Kodaks, Butter Wolf, Palaver ...and a DJ duo...

A late entry to this bill was The Ferrdy Mayne, a name not as frequently plastered across ad-nauseum Facebook invites as other local bands, mostly due to the band, (spearheaded by vagabond-ish singer/songwriter Shane Firek) having spent the last year steadily re-potting his(/its) roots back into the Detroit music scene after spending a year or so down south in Nashville. For a minute there, they(/Firek) were a prominent element of the Ypsilanti music scene (coming up in 07 alongside comrades like Lightning Love), only to then fade in and out upon Firek's frequent returns. And now, again...

In a way, Firek's Ferdy-flares mirrored the all too fleeting (but often necessary/unavoidable) transience of these above-hallowed^ alternative venues. Which, having been swooned by the gristly, gargled swoon and gloom of his dark, twangy music, a whiskey-shot Americana, gaunt and profound but fractured upon its landing in the clotted cradle of urban gutters, made it that much harder to accept the band's somewhat start-and-stop status, heretofore.

But the band was never put on hold - as long as Firek wrote, it lived. And it was that writing, the lyrics, not just their throaty, quavering delivery, but the words, that can be the most striking about their songs. "It is an entity onto itself," he said, "(its) solidifying and we'll write more soon. It is fun. We enjoy fun."




Colin Birkett, Matthew Allen-John Mathis and Derek Scobie join Firek in this current incarnation. "The Nashville situation," as he calls it, "gave everyone that was involved in the project a time to grow and learn. I'm back because it didn't work out."

"(Paper House) is going to be big..." said Firek, "I'm proud of everyone and they work hard so they deserve a prideful high five..."

"Detroit is amazing," Firek surmises, happy to be back. "Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor are my home. Some play punk, such as Slaves to the Pavement and SNAFU. Others do what they please, such as The Real Spicolis, The Wolfs and Metemphycosis. Others are on their way soon, such as The Juliets and Lightning Love."

"...I love them all. They are all my best friends and I want to play as many shows as possible with them, you know?

Black Friday at the Paper House - 1314 Broadway, Detroit, MI....
Deastro
Lord Scrummage
Slufter
Rough House
Butter Wolf
Ferdy Mayne
The Kodaks
Palaver
DJs-- Jerry P. Vs. R. Childs

Reaching Through to the Other Side - Real Efforts (Real People)

Could this be the foretold, fanciful something... or just another of the numbing nothings. Fleeting grins and mouse-clicked morphine shots guzzled quickly and forgotten just as fast -these quips, these videos, these digital bathroom stall one-liner philosophic-puns...

We have a forum here. What do we really want to start talking about... How about the fact that you all have a guitar, drum-kit, or at least one shoddy amp in your bedroom; ...that you're apart of some alternate-community, a bizarro block where you wear your true faces, true wardrobes, (and hopefully speak your true minds...) A potential cooperative...

I am ruminating on the wondrous and eerie workings of this great Influencing Machine... (...read more from On The Media's recently published comic-book hero / award winning reporter/media analyst Brook Gladstone)... The media and it's various evolutions, inevitably, leading me to hone in on the snippy snack-vending conveyor belt of every-little-thing's...known as Facebook...

In this new book, we are encouraged to play an active role in our media consumption; to become, as it were, netizens... "assemble(d) in networks of peers" drawing "attention to unreported information..."

This has worked, and continues to work, week to week, year to year, from effecting reforms of election ballot returns to spreading evidential indictments of tyrannical governments or brutalities committed by authorities that can thus spur the kinds of movements akin to the Arab Spring or the Occupy Wall Street's American Autumn...

Real Efforts... one might say... by Real People...


Fate would have it that, as I write this, I'm listening to the latest single by local singer/songwriter Ben West, who, under the moniker Real Efforts by Real People, has written a couple of EP's with fellow Great Fiction mates' Danny Zott and Kris Pooley; a delicate, organ-thrummed indie-pop sound, warmed with syrupy crooned vocals and decorated with a quieter, chill-er chamber-pop vibe, jangled with shuffling rhythms and a few surfy guitar flares; it glistens like the multitudinous sunrise-reflecting dew drops upon blades of mid-Spring grass.....kinda nice to hear it in the early winter time.

Anyway....

I'm not naive about my readership here... I'm assuming anyone picking this blog up is made up, mostly, by those already lassoed into a Facebook "group" recently put up called Club Cool. It comprises quite a considerable round-up of those persistently playing in / contributing to / collaborating within and continually galvanizing -the Detroit music scene... If, albeit, maybe more so heavier on the rock sound side of things...

But that's still a start. I mean, what are we doing here? You're on your computer right now because you don't want to be thinking about your day job - you're likely even at you're day job, killing time, and reading about your own respective local music scene, (Detroit, or elsewhere) -and daydreaming about the creative-arts-Xanadu it could one day resemble, further soothing yourself with the high you get from writing a new song or performing in front of your friends and that feeling, however deluded or substantial, you get... (is it true inspiration, is it mad narcissism, is it genuine and effective local pride),
...that feeling... that these weekly gatherings of local bands upon wooden stages under blue lights with loud music and people shouting into each other's ears per conversation while gripping plastic cups slippery with condensation...
...that these things are building something...building toward something.

Too much coffee...

Anyway - Facebook was integral in coordinating the recent demonstrations for Occupy Detroit. That's one thing.
Meanwhile, as you can read in December's Ann Arbor Current - in the Rock Column, I've been ruminating on the potential of music scenes. It's a painfully old and run-out question. But, seriously, not to get all jittery and bittery - not to get all real world pessimist like the sweater-vested dad who turns the stabbing white fluorescents back on to dash the dim dremay ambiance of your teenage basement dance party...

But ...what else are we doing, here? - save the heartbreakingly beautiful and by all means acceptable/commendable act of pure expression out into the void - When someone starts wondering what more we can do, beyond posting the next album on bandcamp... What, then, is the answer? (Cuz I don't have it, yet).

But, can't we find it together - and can Club Cool, as an ostensible "spontaneous network" of social interaction with which we can draw attention to... shit, man, anything... not just our music scene, not just the fine work of our many non-profits, or the multitude of issues facing our community, from education, to infrastructure... But to stir up echoes, amplify our sounds... One gigantic squeaky wheel for some kind of oil.
I don't know...

"Hindrances, distresses of substance / I turn them over / Is this something?"



I am also listening to Shara Worden's latest work, as My Brightest Diamond - All Things Will Unwind - an album of imposing baroque-pop elegance, wispy, operatic, autumnal dreamscapes - cleansing my palette of, by-comparison, overly-esoteric or experimental offerings and grand presentations from other songstresses such as a St. Vincent or a Bjork or a Florence... This, this is what I want to be listening to, in my hermetic living room scenes, to warm to, by an already crackling fire, as the skies become a carousel...
I'll probably write more about it later... as I know I'll be listening to it, more, later, as well... So why not?
 
"One foot follows the other / This stone, this finite place / Is it limitless? / / To touch the boundless / I hear a measureless rise" (My Brightest Diamond - "Reaching Through to the Other Side").  


Read on: Yochai Benkler's "Wealth of Networks"
Brooke Gladstone / John Neufeld's "The Influencing Machine"