It's Memorial Day Weekend! Whoo! Memorial Day is the perfect example of America's greatness. It's a national day of turning a blind eye to our war dead in favor of drunken backyard BBQs and amazing storewide sales! War? What war? I just picked up some choice cuts of grillin' meat and got these cute scoopneck tops two for one at Macy's! I know! USA! USA! USA!
But really Memorial Day as whole is kind of lame. Compare it to, for instance, the yearly Easter celebration in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. It is a week long celebration of unparalleled drunkenness and debauchery that features both the burning of a Judas effigy complete with giant wooden erection, and grandmothers running around pretending to hump their grandsons. Makes your red white and blue disposable plates and plastic table cloth seem pretty weak, right?
But Detroit's Memorial Day live music offerings are almost as cool as a burning Judas erection. So you should go check out a show or two. There are several in the sidebar, but many, many more (choices = freedom worth fighting for!). I'll probably be too busy in OCD breakdown mode scrubbing down every inch of wallspace in my house in ("if I can get it clean enough, they can't break in again!") but YOU should probably go to this:
I mean, there's a CHANCE somebody might be able to convince me to leave my house to check it out. And as long as those efforts don't involve your grandmother trying to hump me, I won't stop you from trying.
A pretty solid local line up featuring Mich Bassett & the Marthas, Augie & Koko, and Troy Gregory among others. I'm most excited about Noman. I bought their record on a whim a long time ago - mostly because I wanted to be supportive of a local band I'd heard good things about but also because it was on sweet, sweet white vinyl. I then put it on my "need to listen to" shelf, and kind of forgot about it for many months. I finally put it on recently and it is so, so good. So obviously seeing them live is the next logical step.
Also piquing my interest about tonight's show is the listing of "Black Lodge vs. Marco Polio." To me, this means one of two things: either a cage match, or a full blown law suit. I think both would be really fun to watch and worth the price of admission. Hell, I'd even volunteer for jury duty.
Though the Heidelberg Project is best known as a land of soggy teddy bears and polka dots, they also do a lot of cool education and community enrichment stuff. For instance, all proceeds from tonight's show go to the Heidelberg Project’s ACE2 (a pilot program teaching third graders about the arts and community involvement over a 12-week span on-site at the Heidelberg) and Cultural Village (an indoor/outdoor artist space at the Heidelberg that includes children’s programs, a café, an amphitheater, etc.) programs.
I read once they the Heidelberg folks were once planning to cover an entire house with pennies. Did this ever happen? On second thought, maybe do not tell me. I think it would give me an anxiety attack of epic proportions.
So tonight a bunch of hunky, Detroit indie rockers are gonna splash some patchouli on their dream catchers and play lesbian folk covers at the Burton Theatre - Detroit's premiere indie-theatre-that-used-to-be-an-elementary-school.* A very reliable source has informed me that they are "100% positive" that the music starts promptly at 9pm (doors at 8pm) and that "it's going to be really awesome." But even if it wasn't going to be really awesome, you had me with the unambiguous door time.
*The only thing that is accurate about this sentence is the location. The rest is just my interpretation of the facts. Which I don't have.
So this gentleman is bringing the hip hop beats (with a live band, mind you) to Alvin's tonight:
You should come out and see if he manages to rhyme "disestablishmentarianism" like a pro. Also on the bill are Free Moral Agents. I know very little, but it sounds like they will be sweet. One of the Free Moral Agent guys is also in the Mars Volta. The Mars Volta are a King Crimson cover band.
That line has been going through my head a lot these days. With the world going to hell and the Gulf Coast being swallowed by the most massive oil spill ever and stuff, things are pretty fucking real. The line is from "Feeling Oblivion," which is one of my favorite songs. It is by Turin Brakes. They're from London. They're playing the Pike Room on Wednesday. I just talked to one of 'em briefly for the Metro Times Music Blahg. Read that here. The show will be a good distraction from the world at large. I am very much looking forward to it.
Here's the song in question, set to footage some guy took from a plane? Enjoy:
New Wonder Twins in yesterday's Metro Times. If you had any interest in reading it, you probably already did that... you know... yesterday. But to "sweeten the pot" as grandmas like to say (or is it rappers?) here are a couple photos of Modernlull from that night, taken by Jazzy Hornsby:
On Saturday, May 1st I was on the Ticketmaster web site at 10am waiting for Concrete Blonde tickets to go on sale. My girlfriend loves Concrete Blonde. And I wanted to get these tickets as a birthday gift for her. So I put myself through the hell of an online Ticketmaster purchase for this reason. They say love makes you do foolish things, right?
I won't go into all the details of buying tickets right as they go on sale from the Ticketmaster web site. If you've done it recently you don't want to be reminded. But if you have not, suffice to say it's stressful, annoying, confusing and insulting all at the same time. By the time I was done entering captchas, checking my e mail to get my new password, filling in some sort of MasterCard verification bullshit, I wished I was deaf. That way, I'd never feel the need to buy tickets to any live music event ever again.
I am now more dedicated than ever to not giving Ticketmaster any of my money again. To buy two Concrete Blonde tickets, which are listed on the Majestic website as being $25 each, Ticketmaster charged me $65. I am not great at math. But by my calculations, this means that Ticketmaster made me pay $15 dollars in additional charges. I look at it this way: for me to buy two tickets to this show, I was forced to pay $12.50 for 1/2 an invisible person to also attend, plus $2.50 just for fun!
In addition they offered me, for a price of I believe another $2.50, the option to print my tickets myself. Using my own resources. I could also have them mailed to me. For free. This alone made me wonder if I was in backwards land. That is insane.
My point is, it is worth the extra time it might take to purchase tickets direct from venues or special designated points of sale to circumvent Ticketmaster. And by extension LiveNation. Fuck those guys.
So in case you didn't know - you CAN buy tickets for all Majestic Theatre complex shows at the Garden Bowl. Ticket sales are from 11am to 6pm 7 days a week. There is a $1 additional charge per ticket if you are paying with cash and a $2 additional charge if you are paying with credit/debit.
You can also buy tickets for all upcoming Crofoot shows while you're at the venue. Just ask the bartender. I believe there is no extra charge for cash and a $1 charge for credit/debit. But regardless it's significantly less than Rapemaster.
For shows at St. Andrews, you can buy tickets at the Fillmore box office... I don't think there is an additional charge, but don't quote me on that.
So please do this. For me. For yourself. For Detroit. For Pontiac. For America.
Holy smoke-free smokes! Is it May already? So many good shows this weekend (see side bar for proof)... and I could conceivably wear the exact same clothes two nights in a row! I mean, I usually do this anyway, but this time I could skip the pesky step of washing everything first!
My vote for Friday is Baby Dee at MOCAD. This is for several reasons not the least of which is she's from out of town, and it's totally not the sort of things you're gonna see again soon. Prussia is opening I think - so that's a built in bonus! Maybe the weird, Dolly Parton art installation (is that what they call them? Installations?) will still be there and you can be as confused by it as I was! Tickets are insanely cheap too - I think $6. Go to that.
On Saturday I'll be at the Berkley Front. Which, the last time I was there, almost killed me because of the lack of ventilation. That place ranked among the worst as far as smoke-filled cancer chambers that masquerade as music venues... So seeing Modernlull and a couple out of town bands I've never heard of (musical adventures are fun!) on Saturday should be amazing. Unless L. Brooks Patterson is there. If he is, he should be thankful I'm not a violent person lest I put a cigarette out on his hand.
I am a freelance writer and stand up comedian in the Detroit area. I primarily write about dogs, politics, comedy, music and Detroit/Hamtramck. Sometimes all of these things at once. Also sometimes other things. Like Bollywood.
I mean, there's a CHANCE somebody might be able to convince me to leave my house to check it out. And as long as those efforts don't involve your grandmother trying to hump me, I won't stop you from trying.
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