Jon Zott

I started listening to Panda Bear's Tomboy yesterday

...and then about 13 minutes later, Phantasmagoria's Christopher Jarvis sent me a link to this...

Jon Zott - "Rise & Shine"

...And I haven't returned to just one Tomboy song in the last 26 hours...

If I need some steady sway, some keenly grooved electronic transcendence...off into some simultaneously pillowy-and-punchy alternate sphere of vibrant sonic textures and hazy-yet-evocative soaring semblances... then I'd be just as satisfied with Zott's new 2 Song - Slow Shine... off of Brooklyn's Intuition label.

"Rise and Shine" calms the racing mind... how unnerving it can be when one's synapses are all firing off stressful clouds at the start of a day... a clattering of computer fuzz that sounds like the bubble-popping dice-roller from the Trouble board game mimics an easy going hand-clap to the steady stepping beat, while a meshed whir of chimey synths continuously hum with a lilting refrain between dreamy drones...

It's a fine couple of songs to muse to, on a misty Spring morning, with its gossamer synth thrums and bustling beats (tactfully glitched and fizzled with just the right amount of provacative noise furls)... And pleasant singing pipes runs in the family, for Jon (as Detroiter's known well the mellifluous wispy croon of his brother Daniel from either Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr or the Great Fiction). Listen to "Slow Time" -

...and there's this sublte bit of beguiling humanity at the edges of his mostly wordless melodic exerts... just wavily wafting out whooas and ooohs... there's this slight crack in his voice that seems to convey an oomph of emotion that contrasts nicely with the albeit chilly ambience of his electronic envelopment...

Maybe I'll go back to Tomboy at some point... but for me, for today, for this weekend... and for the record... Zott won. Listen to "Fever" here.

So--

Follow Zott here...

...and, to refer back to Mr. Jarvis^ above... his band, Phantasmagoria, perform tonight, at Woodruff's in Ypsilanti, along with Lightning Love, the Kodaks and the Drags.

Stay tuned to see if Lightning Love won their Billboard Battle of the Bands thing...

The Go Rounds - New Ablum - 4/13 @ Woodruff's - 4/15 @ Strutt

"God..." he exhales...

"what IS...the 'story'?"

I give Graham Parsons a second…

"... 'been flyin under the radar a little bit..."

Parsons fronts the eclectic and adroit Go Rounds, a quartet girded by years of experience -both through countless blurred nights upon stages (particularly throughout mid/west Michigan) and through honing the richer semblances of country rock (with guitarists Andy Caitlin and Gitis Baggs reaching those bewitching twangs, punches, warbles and croons through Toro & the National Guard) and with rhythm section Tod Kloosterman and Adam Danis' propulsive and dazzlingly clattered conjuring's via the smorgasbord prog/fusion oscillations of Max Dandy Slax.

Parsons, himself, had humble beginnings of scavenging for substantial musical nutrients as a teenager up nearby Copper City in the shark-fin of the Upper Peninsula... "Creedance...The Who...Zeppelin...that's all that was really on the radio in the UP..."

Parsons said, giving much credit to his "hippie generation" parents for exposing him to the Beatles and Motown. "I was effected positively by bands like Foreigner," he said of times when he'd compare his parents' record collection to that of UP radio playlists, "...in the way that, I knew not to go there.'

Still, we all go through growing pains... just as Parsons shrugs off his pre-driver's-license days of playing in a classic rock covers band.

Parsons wound up maturing into a penchant for country, and Americana through the Ann Arbor folk community, particularly with Seth Bernard and Daisy May Erlewine "taking me under their wing, early on and letting me open for their shows. Everything that branches out from the Earthwork Muisc crew, I was just obsessed with and then just got really into the Michigan scene. That was all I listened to for the longest time..."

“Now, it’s almost strictly Kalamazoo music!”

Indeed; Caitlin, who also works as booking manager/sound engineer for the Kzoo's influential culture hub, The Strutt, said in a recent interview: The Go-Rounds' existence is "totally tied" to the Kzoo area, particularly the energy orbiting around the percolating and industrious venue/recording studio/cafe...and, now, coffee company.

More on the Strutt - here.

The Go Rounds recorded their latest album at Strutt Studios, "in the basement of this big old blue house..." On April 13th, they play an album release show at Woodruff's in Ypsilanti, with Abigail Stauffer - then a more western-leaning show, April 15th at the Strutt with Benjamin Riley Band and Old Lights.

This is the 2nd proper LP for the group...They released a batch of live recordings (from a Strutt performance) in the summer of '10, born mostly from the alt/folk ballads of Parsons' 09 recording Farmhand.

"I've never really had a band, until this one, that I felt...got it... and that really wanted to put the effort into doing it right" Parsons said. Before Farmhand, he had cut his teeth in the soulful-folk tract via the Squeaky Clean Cretins. He recalls one of his first shows with the Go Rounds, opening for Frontier Ruckus in Kalamazoo. Parsons felt that, even though he'd been performing live through the area for three years up to that point, that it was his official Kalazmazoo-coming-out party... "Because I'd felt like I never really expressed myself...until these guys. They're just the players for this music."

Parsons would later descrbie his four collaborators as "a raw mix of people who are super musically inclined..." The music goes from a shuffling, stomping blues belt, bolstered with wheezing keys and an acoustic guitars shimmering strums warming up mellow, musing folk ballads like a tawny autumnal flannel; but they can flare into keyed-up rock shimmies as fiery and forthrightly as they can into slightly haunting and deliciously twanged country sways... And, as Caitlin said and Parsons reiterated... the inspirational assortment of talent ringed 'round the Strutt's musical water hole was the galvanizing force for forming what would become the Go Rounds' vibrant energy and soulful sound.

"Kalamazoo is incredible right now," Parsons said. "There's just sooo many bands...of every genre, working hard, and just doing it! They're in their basement during the day and hitting the road at night. It's impressive. I've been listening to music strictly from Kalamazoo for the past six months and have been completely satisfied."

"The people I've connected with through The Strutt are all very like minded people and we're all trying to collaborate musically as much as possible." With their debut album having been recorded live, Parsons admitted, "Yeah...we like to freak out," on stage...

"We like to give the energy. We knew we had to do a live album and show people: this is what we're doing, with no bells and whistles; this is just what we can bring and everything in our sound has evolved from the live setting. We put my songs into the Go Rounds Machine and it just got spit out in a different color."

"All the songs (on the new album) have a similar vibe; it definitely has this very cohesive-Go-Rounds-sound to it. It's kind of dark and it's kind of heavy and it's kind of psychedelic...there's a little bit of folk influence but for the most part it's just weird...just a weird brand of rock n roll."

~ Parsons was recently recruited by Ann Arbor folk troubador Chris Bathgate to join his touring band for a jaunt supporting the forthcoming Salt Year LP. "I couldn't be more grateful," Parsons said. "I've been listening to his music for seven years, since high school! And, I just always had a deep connection to it. (Bathgate)'s just always been one of my favorites in Michigan and one of my favorite songwriters in general..."

Bathgate reflects the same high regard for the young Yooper songwriter, marveling at his refined songwriting sensibility, multifaceted talents (guitar and pedal-steel) and disarming singing voice.

Whirl through some Go Rounds' sounds here - and see them live - 4/13 @ Woodruff's + 4/15 @ the Strutt. More info

How we run this way - living for today...

~ There are days where there's just too much going on... so much to post...

Inaugeral Art X Detroit Festival

Art X Detroit, a veritable Blowout for the visual/creative arts scene radiating throughout the area (and out into the world), demonstrates "the depth and diversity of artists, musicians and writers working in metro Detroit..." This inaugeral festival features works by 38 Kresge Foundation fellows like Ed Fraga, Susan Goethel Campbell and Gilda Snowden, along with eminent artists like CAID-founder Charles McGee - at 40 separate events (all free) throughout a dozen locations in the Midtown neighborhood. April 6 - 10

As Free Press writer Mark Stryker eloquently put it in his recent feature, Art X Detroit is "another marker of how culture has reshaped the city's economy and infrastructure and elevated the quality of life in the region. The festival also underscores what local and national arts leaders see as Detroit's untapped potential." A fine feature, click above, that also starts the conversation about galvanizing Detroit's arts economy...

More info @ Art X Detroit - see the schedule

~

Deadbeat Beat's busy weekend Photo: Christopher Ryan Michael

So this felicitously-fuzzed-out surf pop trio has been busy... Not only having fit themselves into Jesse Shepherd-Bates' exhilerating and hectic 11-band-birthday-show-bill (last night)...but now, they're performing tonight, Thursday, out in Ypsilanti with Nat Baldwin and the Secret Twins - -the latter of whom, DBB recently shared a split 7" single with, via bassist Josh Gillis' new Sneaky Eurekas label.

Deadbeat Beat - "Last Week"

DBB also performs Friday night - at the Painted Lady, along with Chicago's clattery garage rock aces White Mystery and one of DC's newer favorites, the delicately-deliciously-balanced bash of psychedelic and surf rock via Ypsilanti quartet Bad Indians...

Mirrortwin's "Kelly & Fabrizio"

photo: Sarah Aldridge

I would have gotten to this sooner...but it was a busy week. Thankfully, Rachel May, over at the Free Press, had the 7" single release of dreamy/shadowy-shimmying pop/rock quartet Mirrortwin - Saturday night at one of their usual haunts, The Atlas Bar, in Hamtramck.

The Sisters Lucas' new procjest was summed up by sister-Loretta as something close to new-wave dash of Detroit's distinct rock vibe.

Expect a staggering auditory experience...as "Kelly and Fabrizio" was recorded at Chris Koltay's High Bias Studios, with help from the renowned ears of Warren Defever and Collin Dupuis... That's a lot of imposingly talented cooks in your kitchen... and it comes out on Italy Records.

Mirrortwin - "A Shot"

Benefit for Drew Podgorski The Suicide Machines, Bars of Gold (pictured, left), the Hi-Fi Hand Grenades and ForDireLifeSake are hosting a heartening benefit show for a dear friend who has suffered through an extremely rare case of stroke (to his cervical spinal chord) and has, upon returning from a 2-month stint in the hospital, been unable to return to work and thus considerably hindered by continuous hospital bills atop the already rising cost of living. "On April 9th (at the Majestic Theatre), we are all coming together in an attempt to raise money to help him get through this..." The doors are at 5pm and bands start right around 6 - $10 - all ages... ....................................... As I'm posting this, Phantasmagoria's Christopher Jarvis just tipped me over to Jon Zott's latest recordings - so let this dreamy ditty help warm you into a more Spring-ish mood wihle you read this rant... - Jon Zott - "Rise and Shine"

Pink Lightning: Washtub bass, projecting anxiety, and 'the Raising of the Hands' - 4/17 @ Lager House

“…just, try to play high energy music,” Everette shrugs.

Talk about that, talk about getting up there, and that energy.

Everette: “Oh!...je-zus.”

What’s it like up there?

Mike: “…sweaty.”

Guitarist Matt Paw speaks for bassist Everette Rinehart, accordionist Mike McWilliams, and drummer Neal Parks: “We’re glad we don’t have to sing back up vocals” (behind lanky spark plug balladeer Chris Butterfield) “…because we’re fucking tuckered out by the last song.”

“I love the anxiety I feel,” Butterfield said, “before performing. I like to project that anxiety onto an audience

These five, as musically attuned as brothers and personally affably rowdy and anecdotal as lightly grizzled beer league socialites, form the rickety rocking post-punk groove of Pink Lightning, a band born on a volleyball field, ameliorated upon a baseball field, and consistently galvanized inside a cluttered fifth-floor loft in Eastern Market.

Parks and Rinehart started busking on corners at the Market with their friend’s Americana folk project , Parks on a snare and Rinehart playing a re-purposed garbage can and 2x4 (as makeshift “washtub” bass). McWilliams added his accordion to the mix, and the trio would then jam up in Parks’ loft. Parks would also jam with his fellow Wayne State student, Paw. “Neal and I are just jamming, getting stuff together, ‘till he says: Hey, I know this bass player and this accordion player. And I’m like…accordion player? Fuck! So…we all jammed a couple months and (Steve Gamburd) hooked us up with our first show at the Phoenix Café.” This was winter, early 09.

“Matt comes to us,” remembers Everette, “and says, Hey, we got a show… We’re like: Oh, shit…well, we need some songs!”

Mcwilliams chimes in, “I would never have joined that band if I thought we were ever gonna play a show.”

~all photos by Lo-Fi Bri~

Pink Lightning shows tend to emit that classic, rattled up spirit of rock n roll, where the stage is more a flimsy cage steadily more undermined by the vigorous (still yet exacting and graceful) jitter and juke of the wild sway and trounce of the players keenly moving and grooving to their own melodic fire as much as any crowd would be arrested by their danceable rhythms and keyed-up sonic aesthetic.

But, a certain bombast atop the characteristic wheeze of an accordion shouldn't’t suggest any passé reach to label them “gypsy punk” – whatever it is, its exerting, as rock n roll should be, and edgy and gnarled ,as punk should be…

Say what you will, it keeps its cohesion, because a.) each player’s been noodling and honing his craft for years and b.) this quintet utilizes every free minute to practice in that cavernous loft. Swerves into chaos are managed with sureness when the team knows where (and how) to land (together).

And they really are a team, let’s be frank.

“I met you guys playing baseball,” Butterfield recalls a summer afternoon at the Wayne State diamond. Pink Lightning was switched on by a volleyball match at Z’s Villa, where Parks suddenly threw off his shirt and exclaimed, “Fuck this, who wants to be in a band with me, raise your hands!”

Rinehart speaks of: “The ‘Raising of the Hands…,’” whereupon, of those gathered volleyball players, he and McWilliams were the ones to respond with the appropriate gesture. That gave you your rhythm core. Add Paw’s guitar and the quartet started piecing together songs as an instrumental band.

Their musical compatibility and familiarity knotted up tightly through that, which meant that by the time Butterfield officially joined the band in summer of 09 (after experimentally belting and scatting over their practice sessions), that the sometimes suited up cut-up could throw his throaty lyrical paint all over the room…the walls were secure, the Pink Lightning shack was sturdy. “We’re just going nuts the whole time, live,” said Paw, “and Chris has this awesome ability to just roll with that.”

“Because,” said Paw, “we don’t break, man. You can’t stop for a second.”

Parks: “The set’s at 100 miles per hour.”

Rinehart: “Live, the songs are about 1 ½ -times as fast, but, it works cuz we practice a lot.”

Lyric writing is a process Butterfield “doesn’t care to rush. If lyrics aren’t ready by the time we perform live, I scat through most of the song. I grew up listening to a lot of punk, so themes of disillusionment are fairly prevalent, though I would hardly consider myself a cynic. You sprout from your environment, look around and ask questions…..I like to ask loudly, sometimes incoherently.”

“I’m not even thinking straight when I perform,” said Butterfield. “I have no control over my thoughts. I’m not good at hiding my feelings. So, if I’m not having a good time, I might use that. It’s theatre, you’re on a stage. I like that dynamic with the audience not knowing, like, Who am I gonna get tonight? What’s it gonna be? It is what it is…”

“One day I might be in drag,” Rinehart shrugs again.

And now, after almost two solid years playing and a recently released EP (recorded at Tap Water Studio), the band is realizing more, and appreciating more, the community they’ve been settling into, particularly the indie rock shoegaze trio Pewter Cub (whom they toured with recently and plan to, again), or other comrades like Phantom Cats, DevilFish, Macrame Tiger or Marco Polio and the New Vaccines.

They're even settling in with their neighbors throughout the loft, who often open their windows in the summer time to take in the Pink Lightning rehearsal echoing down. “Hey, we heard you’re stuff, it sounds good,” Rinehart mimics comments the band receives upon heading out for shows.

“Weird…but good,” McWilliams quips.

“It’s the electricity of us being in one room that makes Pink Lightning,” Butterfield said. “We’re a ragtag bunch; different backgrounds, different music. It’s nonsense that works.”

4-17 - Lager House - with Parts & Labor + Child Bite + Golden Torso

~~~

Playing TONIGHT - at Squared Circle Revue - "Attack of the Clowns" - 9pm at Hastings Street Ballroom -

Squared Circle Revue continues... Friday night - more info here - with "The Match of 1,000 Pies" and performances by Black Jake & the Carnies and Haley Jane and much more.

Happy B Day to the HL's... - Down Off The Ceiling (Gold Tapes -> Record Store Day)

pic by Janet Reid Boltz

~

The Hard Lessons were integral in getting me excited about local music...

I started going out the same time they started playing out...

For me, they were that thing, that force, that energy, that made me want to keep returning to the front rows of dank, cluttered, cavernous venues... to keep returning to the Lager House as a 21-year-and-13-day-old wide-eyed music listener, shuffling through smoke clouds and over Pabst-soaked carpet spots...

That's nothing profound. It's almost like a coming-of-age cliche... the Lager's been there...and bands have been here for years and years and we all have those same types of loud, distinctively-rock-n-roll-tinged, epiphanies...

But mine... (along with, yes, the Witches)...were these energetic kids...that I apparently went to college with...

And it happened eight years ago...as of yesterday... back to when I was a sophomore at Michigan State University, serendipitously attending a campus Battle of the Bands at the International Center... Read your HL history lesson here. I'm sure everyone has a fateful band... but, I have to imagine that they were that band for many more than just me...

And... for my own nostalgic trip... here's what was likely my 'first favorite' track from their debut LP, Gasoline (download here)...

So then... As HL's heart and soul respectively... Augie and Ko... continue down their latest adventure of intimate acoustic performances, they'll be offering up a cassette tape collection of b-sides and live cuts, on Zac Frieling's Gold Tapes label. Check it out from GT... or download it from the HL's Bandcamp. Down Off The Ceiling collects unreleased songs, alternate versions, covers and live recordings from 04-09... (including a live performance covering the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"... which was at Sterling Silver's birthday party at the Northern Lights Lounge circa...07? or 08? I can't remember, but I also can't resist gushing more nostalgia at being there for that particularly inspiring and raucous tear...) Ceiling will be available on Record Store day (4/16) ...at various locations throughout the U.S., but, in Metro Detroit--strictly at UHF in Royal Oak. Beyond that... you can get the tapes at Augie and Ko's live acoustic performances, either at The Strutt in Kalamazoo (4/17) or their Ferndale performance on the 23rd... (more info here) Here's an aural example... a "Sabbath" version of one of their characteristic cuts, from 05's Bamboo EP...

Small Houses - Before the North (...and after)

Performing 4/6 Tom Waits Tribute @ Woodruff's EP release - 4/30 more info

In Jeremy's dream...he is transient... ...going back home, from the east coast, home to Flint MI... And he says this, a story wrought from the gossamer flakes of a clutched dream, that that is where he wants to stay...

Considering the rigourous touring schedule of the chivalrous troubadour, guitar-slung-round-the-back, ever rovering and rambling on, he's likely already, at all times, nestled into the strangely warm midst of that frosted, fog-swathed, wind-burned dream

- His music exudes the quiet ardor of the outdoors with golden toned babble of his warm resonating acoustic guitar and the fey waft and frolic of his hazy hymns, elucidating the ever whirling-by-mural outside dirt-caked passenger windows showing passing splases of greens, browns and ambers between decorous gravel roads to nowhere and fading corn fields...

His pure and plaintive voice atop the tiny chime of that ebullient guitar's lullabye mimics the elemental aspects of any gale - it'll feel new and sound a wide-eyed innocence to the new ears that it wooshes by, ...but, at the same time, its flanked with the old soul wisdom its picked up from every other town it has heretofore sailed through and winded round...

Just Before The North is something of a preface to a forthcoming full length album (to be titled, simply and fittingly, just - North). North will be singer/songwriter Jeremy Quentin's 2nd full length - but Just Before's three songs (including three experimental noise instrumentals from producer Seth Bernard) are already veering away from last year's Dusking Sound's more rousing baroque-pop clasps and rich and autumnal indie-pop. Bass and piano are soft, meditative hums to accompany what is an acoustic-guitar dominated affair, letting the aural spotlight glow upon the silvery cascades of the guitar and the hushing melodies of Quentin's voice.

So then...

Just Before is out on Apr 30th

with a performance at Woodruff's, in Ypsilanti, to properly celebrate it - also featuring Timothy Monger State Park & Gifts or Creatures...

In the mean time - as in, Tuesday night, you can see Quentin perform as part of the Tom Waits' Tribute, also at Woodruff's

Take more listening's to Small Houses:

Small Houses - "Country Flowers"

Swimmingly....

...a somewhat extended version of the published column in Ann Arbor's Current Magazine. More Swimsuit info + more Current info

Swimsuit's various musical pursuits + new album

~

Amber Fellows talks about “the magic of Swimsuit.” Somehow, the Ypsi quartet always seems to come up with the workings for a good song “as soon as we get together.” This is marvelous, but it’s also beneficial, considering the extent of each member’s busyness with other musical projects.

Guitarist/singer Dina Bankole balances two other bands: a newer experimental pop amalgam called Everybody’s In (who recently wrapped their debut album), as well as continuing to shred and sweetly serenade atop the rough/tumble pop duo Secret Twins. Drummer Shelley Salant recently toured with Detroit-based punk squad Tyvek and has since been developing her own label, Ginkgo Records, as well as hosting the Local Music Show on WCBN (89.3). Bassist Amber Fellows played with Dos Hermanos in the past, recently collaborating with fellow Swimsuit mate Fred Thomas for cassette tape featuring their side project duo, Damned Dogs for release on her new Kuma Tapes label and now helms a music consignment space in Ypsi’s Café Ollie, a source for physical releases of Ypsi artists’ works.

Those familiar with Ypsi’s audio knight Thomas (also City Center, Mighty Clouds and shepherding the Life Like label), knows he’s assuredly occupied. Busyness, though, is no match for the Swimsuit magic; When they align, the songs happen – springing exuberantly from tight, yet tumbling lo-fi jams, fostering fuzzily sunburst rock n roll dashers. It surfs, it slides, it sways and it’s made sublime by their subtle knack for harmonization. “This is by far the most collaborative band I’ve been in,” said Salant, “really, in all aspects. Everyone brings something unique to the table and it absolutely wouldn’t be the same band without any of the people involved.”

They finished recording their proper debut album last month (enhancing some older cuts from the Peace Gull cassette), aided by the adept audio engineering of Ryan Howard (also of City Center). The band formed out of Salant and Thomas’ positing a potential project, not knowing “who would play what or anything,” back in summer 09. A fateful Tyvek/City Center show in Ferndale that season crystallized their motivation. They eventually recruited Fellows and Bankole and “suddenly everything fit together,” in time to debut that winter. In their first year, they’ve played a slew of local shows, released two cassettes and a 7” single and two East Coast tours.

“Our sound wasn’t planned at all,” said Fellows, who, typically a guitarist, had never played bass before Swimsuit. Though, she said, nodding to those who’ve picked out the “surf-rock” sensibility of their tunes, “once we found our name, Swimsuit, it definitely informed the sounds or at least the interpretation of the music to come.”

Thomas expands, though, pointing to a range of influences, from shoegaze to new wave to New Zealand pop. “It’s just easier to hear reverb…and say: ‘surf.’” Thomas commented on the magic: “Everyone has such a big, bright thing to offer, and these things flow easily, seamlessly, and joyously when we get together.”

Meanwhile, Fellows/Thomas’ Damned Dogs played their first shows last month, along with their Kuma Tapes release. Damned Dogs will also release something on Salant’s Ginkgo label later this season. Ginkgo started releasing Turn to Crime tapes and a 7” by Man The Hunter, with a forthcoming release by A2 punk duo Jobys. Everybody’s In, (with Bankole, Secret Twin drummer Timmy Thomas, Awesome Color’s Derek Stanton and T-Bone & the Drones’ Thelonius Bone,) recently wrapped their debut album (recorded with indie-guitar-god J. Mascis), keep your ears/eyes peeled this Spring.

Swimsuit launches their west coast tour, May 6^th at Woodruff’s in Ypsilanti. Myspace.com/swimsuitsounds.

Kuma Tapes

Ginkgo

Life Like

Until next time, then?

Maybe you had to be there... Or, maybe it doesn't sound as astounding now, here, in the overcast-Meh-lucidity of an early April's chilled morn'... But when Jen David... already known for her engaging and affable stage presence, marched on stage as "Eminem..." baggy sweat-pants and navy-blue cotton hoodie -in-all... we thought, Well, splendid...that's charming and quite in keeping with the freewheeling masquerade and local-celebratory spirit of Detroit by Detroit -

But when she flings the hoodie off and reveals that, oh, wait, actually she also buzzed off all of her characteristic shoulder-lenght, thick, billowy black curls and then bleached her new crew cut, complete with a D-12 tattoo down her left arm...

Well... the overall impression was not only instant ingratiation, beyond that it was inspiration... in fact, for as fleeting as the sublte explosion was of her merely flinging off that coat and displaying what, was to the eyes of those gathered (the eyes that now have gotten to know her so well over the last full year) it had the oomph of what felt like a true transformation...

Sure, lots of Detroit bands went to lengths to embody... visually and aurally... other Detroit bands for last night's charity event (for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief for Japan)

Gordon Smith donned a stringy black wig for Andrew W.K. as did the Kickstand Band deck out in all white with fake blood... and Mick Bassett made a fine Randy-Deastro complete with rainbow-fuzz-ball splashes and dayglo make-up... Citizen Smile, with impressive musicality, ripped through a fine Macrame Tiger set (complete with Pedro Tiger's characteristic colored sunglasses) and even Woodman went so far as to replicate their "favorite era" of Duende line-up, visually at least, with former bassist Jason Worden's trenchoat and current guitarist Joel McCune's 2009-lasting tendency to wear a distinctive fur hat...

Maybe it was the onset of midnight... the first sip of the third high life... or the fact that Illy Mack's Steve Kendzorski so effectively mimiced the beats and bass lines of classic Eminem tracks ("Forgot About Dre" - "My Name Is" - "Lose Yourself")... It also helped that the duo, already known for pullnig out a new cover almost every-other-show...from Stevie Wonder to Cee-Lo to the Beatles, really held it down, vocally, matching even the motor-mouthed cadence required for the chorus of "Dre..." but also the necessary physical delivery - anthemic for "Lose Yourself," and sardonic for "My Name..."

but... 'tell you the truth, some of us were just a bit flabbergasted... not knowing what to say after the buzz-cut came out... it was just...essentially, pardon my low brow diction... 'bad-ass'

But that was the kind of thing anyone would hope for... to come out of an event like this...

Even before Woodman finished their third song as Duende... I leaned over to Bryan (Mister) Lackner... and said: "I can already smell this happening again sometime... better pick out who you wanna be..."

And why not do it again? And most certainly... do it again for charity! The energy is here... Our hearts would be in it... Last night was like Halloween wrapped into April Fool's Day wrapped into Opposite Day...wrapped into Guitar Hero Karaokee trips...and radiating with the vibe of some stumbling basement party game.

No more ice to break. Clearly we all know each other... and there's more bands to cover.

Do it again. Find out more on how to help.

Records are better...

Record Store Day - 4/16/11... a subtle but sweet video provided by Boston-area space-pop band, Yellowbirds - find out more here.

Detroit by Detroit - tonight at Magic Stick.

Proceeds from tonight's round robin musical masquerade at the Magic Stick (8pm) will go to the Red Cross' Disaster Relief Efforts in Japan.

Which is an integral note for any bemusing smirked, skunk-eyed hater who might shrug this off as an ostentatious tooting the town's own horn type of thing...

Indeed, this feels like something of which I'd already subconsciously speculated the possibilities... and the fact that now it's a reality, ...that yes, another, in fact, many-others, were already thinking, were already motivated, by the likelihood of its feasibility (and, above all, quite certain of it, if nothing else, being a fun, possibly absurd, escapade)... speaks volumes to the current excitement shared between the city's current cluster of resident musicians...

The talent and motivation goes without saying... but I stress excitement... because isn't that what this is about? Beyond the good cause... (read more on Japan Disaster Relief)... similar to the infamous "Brunch Rock" article (only much less heady or ponderous)... a celebration of each other.

Repeat the last four words of that preceding paragraph.... doesn't it feel like that's what the scene should be doing? I mean, even I myself had mixed feelings about "the wave crashing back on itself..." with all these bands "covering each other..." But maybe I'll put it more as a wine bottle...with Detroit just mixing back into itself as it hits the confounding bottle-neck of the Internet, with it's cork of redefined musical success... Regardless... we continue to mix together in our smoke-swathed urban bottle, continuing to meet, bond and fire off various collaborative chemical reactions between each other...thus, aging our collective wine, causing a mature musical bouquet, if you will...

I'm going off on too far a' tangent... and this is without any actual wine (or any spirit) in my system to delude my mind's transmissions to the fingers at the keys... I'm just saying... we mix together, we mature together... I'd like to see any other music scene where there's such allegiance... to one another's bands... Where bands around here seem to truly regard other bands like neighbors, or neighborhoods onto themselves... The folk bands are like Metro Parks or smaller towns with mom-and-pop diners... The indie-pop bands are the urban destination points that still have decent used book shops but also have modern craft stores that you always buy something from... the more straight rock n roll bands are the more blue-collar pockets that have a network of admirable hole in the wall bars giving an edge and character to an otherwise blase milieu....

Go tonight and ask one band about another band... And you'll feel like they're giving you directions on how to get to their neighborhood and what joint to check out first once you get to their corner of town...

But above all that flowery rambling...

It is, we stress... for an important cause.

SATIN PEACHES -as- Lightning Love

BETTY COOPER -as- The Detroit Cobras

THE HANDGRENADES -as- Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.

ILLY MACK -as- Eminem

THE KICKSTAND BAND -as- Andrew W.K.

THE DRAGS -as- The Satin Peaches

CITIZEN SMILE -as- Macrame Tiger

MICK BASSETT -as- Deastro

SKELETON BIRDS -as- The Boys Themselves

PATRICK DAVY & THE GHOSTS -as- Citizen Smile

THE ASHLEYS -as- The Muggs

WOODMAN -as- Duende

.....

And oh...the music is so loud...

and then I fade into the.....crowds of people standing everywhere

and if you think it's obsolete...

Then you go back across the street...