Published: 10/6/2010
Taking the stage at PJ's Lager House for his band's sound check, Bad Party frontman Nate Savino fixes the small, alcohol-warmed crowd a sly sneer. "Anyone got some cocaine?" His bandmate and bassist Mike Kearns smirks. The crowd begins to get playfully antagonistic, some yelling silly requ...[MORE]
By Brian Smith
Published: 9/29/2010
MC5: Sonically Speaking author Brett Callwood is a frequent contributor to Metro Times. He's a soft, gentle and pierced gent who looks like anyone you'd likely find in the pages of Kerrang!, and might well be the sweetest guy you'd ever meet. Here's a drive-by history on Callwood: Born in Manchest...[MORE]
Published: 9/29/2010
It wouldn't be inaccurate, nor unkind, to call Mayaeni (pronounced mah-YAY-knee) a journeywoman. The 24-year-old singer-songwriter, born and raised in Detroit to a West African mother and a Jewish father (the latter formerly a guitar player with Jimmy Ruffin and others), found herself dancing to hip...[MORE]
Published: 9/22/2010
Each year in March, the Metro Times Blowout Festival is the perfect opportunity to check out bands who've been on the "buzz radar" for a while and to see old faves, but it's also often the case that some of the best sets seen will be happy accidents — bands that you've never heard of...[MORE]
By Pietro Truba
Published: 9/15/2010
We recently chatted with of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes, who talked at length about his time growing up in the greater Detroit area. He also talked about working with godhead producer Jon Brion, race relations and getting beyond genre categorizations. You'll note that of Montreal's star has been...[MORE]
Published: 9/8/2010
The great Detroit music, the stuff that has put this city atop of the rubble, has always found the perfect balance between grit and hope, the broken glass and the banana pudding, the melody and the noise. Look at Jehovah's Witness Protection Program. This Ypsilanti-based two-piece absolutely adores...[MORE]
Published: 9/8/2010
There she is, Dina Bankole, a petite, black woman vocalist with her seemingly oversized Gibson Flying V ("Sweet Louise" if you must know the guitar's name), with her "twin" brother, Tim Thomas, on the drums, creating music steeped in everything from '90s alternative radio to the ...[MORE]
Published: 9/1/2010
Seeing Queen maestro Brian May return to infrared astronomy and complete his Ph.D. thesis on interplanetary dust after 35 years of the music business has bolstered me to return to my abandoned heliostatic theories on pop music and its shrinking impact on our solar system. For years, I've been loath ...[MORE]
Published: 8/25/2010
Sometimes in the wild and hairy world of rock 'n' roll, following rules pays off. Case in point: Ann Arbor-based quintet Drunken Barn Dance. The group was conceived initially as a solo vehicle by songwriter-by-night/attorney-by-day Scott Sellwood (who many will remember as the former keyboardist for...[MORE]
Published: 8/18/2010
It's a sweaty, summer night in Ferndale — the kind that makes beer taste better in green bottles and superfluous straining from the least physical of movements. But down in the AC-chilled confines of the No Bummer Zone, smartly dressed, mostly skinny music fans push, bop and shake to the breez...[MORE]
Published: 8/11/2010
As the sun sets over the Summit Place Mall, the noticeably tired Matthew Milia turns his car sharply, perking up as he drives toward the abandoned movie theater, the same one that graces the cover of Frontier Ruckus' latest album, Deadmalls & Nightfalls. If the fading Summit Place Mall would eve...[MORE]
Published: 8/11/2010
The trendy obsession with subgenre may be achingly lame, but the music inspiring the excess labeling often isn't. Case in point: chillwave, which to me sounds like some neon elixir you'd order on a cruise — or a sadistic amusement park ride or some new sex-prank slang: "Bro, a chillwave i...[MORE]
Published: 7/28/2010
Why Be Something That You're Not: Detroit Hardcore 1979-1985 by Tony Rettman Revelation Records Publishing Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79-'83 by Tesco Vee & Dave Stimson edited by Steve Miller Bazillion Points Books Ah, sweet validation. In the last ...[MORE]
Published: 7/28/2010
Your home movies: Mostly relatives looking stiff as if having trouble making the transition from still photos, waving weakly, waiting for a cue to walk into the shot as unnaturally as possible. Ivan Kral's home movies: Debbie Harry of Blondie on a roof posing for her first publicity shots, the Ramo...[MORE]
Published: 7/14/2010
This rock 'n' roll thing isn't easy, and it certainly ain't glamorous. Take Sylvain Sylvain and Cheetah Chrome. Both have had their time with two bands, the New York Dolls and the Dead Boys, respectively, and both have made their mark, to varying degrees, on rock 'n' roll and punk rock. They've both...[MORE]
Published: 7/7/2010
One day, a 4-year-old Dave Menzo tripped over an old Beatles tape lying on the carpet of his brother's bedroom. "That's where it all started for me," he says. "I was one of eight kids, most of whom were older than me, so, at 4 years old, I had seen my brothers put a tape in a tape p...[MORE]
By Brian Smith
Published: 6/9/2010
One unfortunate hangover from the 1980s, that decade of overproduced bands, Reagan, MTV gloat, silly trousers and Haircut 100, was how the Psychedelic Furs got lumped into that ghastly pop nostalgia train of ’80s packages, flanking, say, the Bangles, or worse, Missing Persons in (pre-) boomer consci...[MORE]
Published: 6/9/2010
It's Dec. 10, 2006, in the secluded English coastal resort town of Minehead. Normally, the Butlins vacation complex would be closed down for winter; but on this particular weekend, fans of punk and alternative rock have invaded Minehead, because this week the town plays host to the All Tomorrow's Pa...[MORE]
By Don Waller
Published: 6/2/2010
The Royaltones Detroit Rock 'N' Roll Began Here! Ace (U.K. import) Distinguished by the twin tenor sax work of leader George Katsakis and Ken Anderson, the Royaltones specialized in tight, hard-driving instrumentals a la Johnny & the Hurricanes that were designed to wear the shine off...[MORE]
Published: 6/2/2010
For most young and budding musicians, starting a band means getting away from the parents and indulging in sordid and unhealthy activities while exercising a personal artistic vision. Not so for Derek and Hillary Woodman. For that bro-and-sis team, being in a band means spending more time with their...[MORE]
Published: 5/26/2010
Oy! What a last couple years it's been for Brian Burton and James Mercer. Mercer, one of current pop music's better lyricists, is the founder of the Shins. Darlings of the Sub Pop imprint for nearly a decade, in 2008, Mercer took the fate of his band in his hands (as if it hadn't always been) and ...[MORE]
Published: 5/26/2010
Paul Revere & the Raiders featuring Mark Lindsay The Complete Columbia Singles Collectors' Choice It has to be those silly Revolutionary War outfits. That's the only conceivable reason why, especially in retrospect, Paul Revere & the Raiders haven't been accorded the respect they deserve ...[MORE]
By Brian Smith
Published: 5/19/2010
The band's name was the greatest uni-word translation of pubescent sexuality ever, its singer was an out-of-the-closet (long before it was trendy) U.K. punk rock "star" whose songs rose from a grim Manchester basement to American TV ads pimping Toyota ("What Do I Get") and &mdash...[MORE]
By Amy Elliott
Published: 5/5/2010
Derrick Mallory owns three station wagons in three different colors. He lives in Willis, not far from Ypsilanti, where the other three members of his band live. "One of them is burnt orange, inside and out," he says. "The speakers are two alarm clocks that I hooked up. It's so ugly.&...[MORE]
Published: 4/28/2010
On Friday night, April 23, the Wonder Twins went to celebrate the glory of arena rock at the Public Pool, although they were surprised to discover that they were neither in an arena nor a public pool. They were at an art space in Hamtramck! D'Anne: First of all, I'm really glad you talked me out ...[MORE]
Published: 4/21/2010
The annals of stories surrounding records made by or about father and son relationships are full of the bittersweet, the coulda-been and after-the-fact recriminations and reconciliations. Rock 'n' roll musicians thrive on a culture where a rift between generations creates tension that results in art...[MORE]
Published: 4/14/2010
The saga of Bob Mulrooney — aka Bootsey X, aka the Pusherman of Love and Genius from the Waist Down — might bring to mind the words of two renowned writers: the first, an unlikely rabbi; the other, a rock critic. For the past decade, the title of Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's When Bad Things...[MORE]
Published: 4/14/2010
Can I get a Witness Bootsey X through the eyes of others The first time I saw Bootsey X & the Lovemasters play was in the summer of '85 at Paycheck's. I was completely blown away, to say the least. I remember trying to describe them to my friends at the time: "They're kind of like...[MORE]
By Cyndi Lieske
Published: 4/14/2010
Kathy Leisen is browsing through a box of cassette tapes that sits on a small table in her sparse art studio. Less artistic types might've used this space as a living room if they lived in the Corktown house that Leisen shares with her boyfriend. The many cassettes here chronicle the Glass Rock si...[MORE]
By Brian Smith
Published: 4/14/2010
Bill Withers +'Justments (Reel Music/Columbia) It's hard to underestimate the grace and power of Bill Withers, a guy whose head-spinner confessionals are so rich in empathy ("Better Off Dead," "Grandma's Hands," etc.) that they can get you easily at the knees. His melancholic ...[MORE]
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