Posts Tagged ‘Detroit’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEt3RyuJn80

MC5: A True Testimonial, also written as MC5 * A True Testimonial, is a 2002 feature-length documentary film about the MC5, a Detroit-based rock band of the 1960s and early 1970s. The film was produced by Laurel Legler and directed by David C. Thomas; the couple spent more than seven years working on the project.

Although the MC5 are considered very influential today, they were relatively obscure in their time. To make the film, Thomas collected photographs and film clips of varying quality, including U.S. government surveillance footage of the MC5’s performance at the protests that took place outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He interviewed the surviving members of the band and people closely associated with it. In the editing room, Thomas matched the band’s recordings to the silent footage he had collected.

MC5: A True Testimonial made its premiere on August 22, 2002, at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Three weeks later it made its international premiere on September 11th at the Toronto International Film Festival. In November of that year, the film was awarded an “Honorable Mention” as a debut feature at the Raindance Film Festival.

During 2003 and early 2004, the film was shown at film festivals around the world. Critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. The New York Times described the film as “riveting”; The Boston Globe said it was “everything a rockumentary should be and usually isn’t”; and The Washington Post called it “one of the best movies of the summer”. Wayne Kramer, the MC5’s guitarist, said it was a “wonderful film” and John Sinclair, the band’s one-time manager, said Thomas had done “a fine job”.
In 2007, Time Out London ranked it #48 on a list of the “50 Greatest Music Films Ever”.

In April 2004, Kramer sued Legler and Thomas. In his suit, Kramer alleged that Legler and Thomas had promised he would be the film’s music producer, an assertion the film-makers denied. With the lawsuit, distribution of MC5: A True Testimonial ended and plans for a DVD release in May were canceled. In March 2007, the court ruled in favor of Legler and Thomas, and the Court of Appeals upheld the decision on appeal. Nevertheless, MC5: A True Testimonial has not been released on DVD, although in 2011 the film-makers began a fund-raising campaign to pay for rights to the band’s music.

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MAGIC JAKE & THE POWER CRYSTALS “STILL SO YOUNG” FROM THEIR DEBUT ALBUM BACK ON BURGER CASSETTE!!! All-star Detroit Garage Punk featuring Bobby Harlow on vocals, Magic Jake (from King Tuff) on bass and Justin Walker & Ben Luckett from John Krautner’s band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=44&v=PpNsB2p748o

If it takes any more than fifteen seconds to hear what “mean” means to the Michigan men who make up Heaters, pick up the needle and start again. “Mean Green” is the A-side track of the band’s new seven-inch single from Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records, presenting a surf-centric slab of sonic stomp that doubles as a definition of “mean.”

In the case of Heaters, “mean” is meant in the context that might be used to describe a 1970 GTO piloted by a jittery Warren Oates – not belligerent, but aggressive, blank-eyes staring at the horizon, fueled by dread and ready to accelerate into the nearest dangerous curve. What’s “green” about “Mean Green” then seems to be Heaters ability to glide into this path naturally, snaking absolutely without hesitation through the song’s tight turns in a way that’s insistent and invigorating.

Mean Green 7" cover art

The flipside of the single, “Levitate Thigh,” proves the band to be possessed by the power of rock and roll, initially bringing the tempo to a stuttering slow-roll, before Heaters are once again the willing captives of a Seeds-level web of sounds, guitar snarl, feedback and drums creating the trap in which the band has no chance – and no desire – to escape.
Out April 28th, 2015 on Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records

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The GO’s fourth LP “Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride”, the brash quartet’s signature raucous energy takes a backseat to lo-fi, off-kilter harmonies riding shotgun. “Caroline” is a song exemplifying the most endearing and elementary of pop classics as if the Zombies and the Kinks made up with Dr. Dog following a schoolyard fist fight. With sweeping riffage, dissonant piano plunks, and hidden saxophone bits, The GO gets a little soft rock. But frontman Bobby Harlow, the menacing Detroit rocker who brought us the sneering garage rock staple “Whatcha Doin'” in 1999, appears pretty comfortable with that. He may be “a boy with rosebud eyes,” however it’s his heart that’s colored with Motor City malaise, thus making “Caroline” the band’s finest heartbreaker since 2003’s “Summer’s Gonna Be My Girl.” ,

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Music doesn’t always fit into neat categories. Neither do the narratives we create. Detroit’s is one of a city on the rise. But to rise, you must first climb out of the wreckage. Former Awesome Color member Derek Stanton has done just that with Turn To Crime. What started as a solo ambient-noise project quickly evolved into an experimental pop band. Stanton began writing songs on drums and keyboard with Sonic Youth-flavored guitars woven in. Using his voice as an instrument, Stanton wrote and recorded almost all of Turn To Crime’s debut album, Can’t Love (out July 1st on Mugg & Bopp Records), by himself. Can’t Love is full of both off-kilter, ear candy pop jams and kraut-like guitar epics. The excellent lead track, “Sunday’s Cool,” features Stanton’s signature vocal and guitar one-two punch. In a city where rock ‘n roll reigns supreme, Turn To Crime carries the torch for explorative, forward-thinking, ambient, post-punk, post-everything, post-whatever music,perfect for fans of fuzzed out guitar and heavy drums

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Death are a  Garage rock and proto punk band formed in Detroit, Michigan in 1971 by brothers Bobby (bass, vocals), David (guitar), and Dannis (drums) Hackney. The trio started out as a funk band but switched to rock after seeing a concert by The Who and  Alice Cooper play who was also an inspiration.  David “pushed the group in a hard-rock direction that presaged punk,  The band broke up by 1977 but reformed in 2009 when the Drag City Records label released their 70s demos for the first time.

Jessica Hernandez has always been busy. She’s been singing since she was three, (her staggeringly beautiful singing voice deceives, as she’s had no formal training). She balanced her studies with singing in the choir and performing in every school musical. When she wasn’t in school, she helped her parents in the family bakery located in southwest Detroit.

A singer and multi-instrumentalist, Hernandez is self-taught on everything. She started getting serious about music after high school. She taught herself guitar, keys and, more recently, drums, while penning notebooks worth of experimental folk songs through her late teens and early 20s. With every recording I’ve learned more about what I want to do, but, then, also, what I should have done. By putting out so many weird E.P.’s by myself early on, it helped me learn what I should be doing .

Her voice is both smoky and scintillating, and her style is varied. Some songs harken to an old world cabaret only to be kicked up by a meaner, modern indie-rock, while other songs strike a candlelit lounge-pop aesthetic electrified by weird synth effects and danceable rhythms. Hernandez has been consistently expanding her sound, leading into an adventurous amalgam of blues, vocal jazz and neo-soul that ever-sharpens the chip on its shoulder with a ratcheting of rock.

But as tremendous and delicate her singing voice is, she was beginning to just consider music as merely a dream, something she would just do on the side between working at her parents’ bakery. But, when she got a call on her cell phone from the iconic jazz label Blue Note Records after they had heard her sing, that was the reassuring sign she was on to something, boosting her to take music from being a dream into more of a reality. Now that dream comes true.

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Protomartyr is an American post-punk band formed in in 2008 in Detroit, Michigan. It features Joe Casey on vocals, Greg Ahee on guitar, Alex Leonard on drums and Scott Davidson on bass guitar.

One band I’ve been enjoying recently is Protomartyr, from Detroit, whose second album “Under Color of Official Right”  Again, there are plenty of familiar references – hardcore, post-punk, and at times the chilly experimentalism of Wire – but again they’re used in a way that sounds fresh and bracing, like a cold wind on a sunny winter’s day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0LtfUvJs#t=185

the new album from Jack White

Jack White was the youngest of ten children raised in south west Detroit, has lived in Nashville since 2005 a formed the WHITE STRIPES and more recently The Dead Weather now on his second solo album

the new Jack White Vinyl has lots of interesting ideas and Jack describes all the Hidden features,