Blog Post
Mitch Ryder is around town this week!
by manz
Local author and reporter James A. Mitchell will be discussing his new (soon-to-be-released) book, It was All Right: Mitch Ryder’s Life in Music, on Wednesday, March 19 at 7:00pm at the Downtown Library. Mitchell will be discussing the life and times of the music legend as presented in the biography. Mitch Ryder has been in the music business most of his life and has had many hit songs, most notably the ones from the 1960s, such as “Devil With a Blue Dress On.”
The music doesn’t stop there! On Saturday, March 22 Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels will be performing live at the Michigan Theater at 8:00pm as part of the Legends of Rock & Roll Series. In lieu of an opening act Ryder will be interviewed by rock journalist Gary Graff. Visit the theater’s website for stats and ticket info. Mitchell's book will be available for purchase at the show.
Blog Post
Mongolia in words, music and pictures
by amy
Join us at 7:00 p.m. tonight at the Downtown library for an evening of Mongolian culture. Bodio and Monkhytuya of Mongol Khan Expeditions will be joined by Mongolian musician Ninjee and other local Mongolian musicians for an evening of culture, music and photos from their native country. Ninjee will perform traditional throat music and play the horsehead fiddle. Next Tuesday, March 18, same time and place, we'll be featuring the music and culture of Kazakhstan.
Blog Post
Steak For The Son
by John J. Madonna
Tea For The Tillerman seems like a folk record. The instrumentation contains only acoustic guitars, piano, bass, a few strings, and an occasional organ. The solos focus more on melody than fret board pyrotechnics. But something about the tone of Cat Stevens’s voice, especially when multi-tracked, gives this record an almost other-worldly feel and Cat’s gift for lyrics pushes this record into a class by itself, mixing songs about angst, lost love, and spirituality with wonderful imagery and provocative lyrics in the vein of Van Morrison or Bob Dylan. Everyone knows the big song off the record “Wild World,” its companion piece, “Sad Lisa,” a piano ballad featuring a wonderfully tragic violin solo is probably the highlight.
While the music does have a universal appeal to it, Cat is twenty-two on this record and sings like it, like an uncertain guy looking for answers, but also with a maturity to him, making him very popular among twenty-somethings. “Father And Son,” while seemingly about a father’s inability to understand the son’s desire to go off on his own, also has subtext of the son’s inability to understand his own father. In fact, this isn’t just a coming of age song about a stern father squelching his son, but a really heartfelt song about a failure of communication.
After a ten year purple period of records both selling well and receiving critical acclaim—mostly—Cat Stevens achieved something few other have. He stopped at the top of his game. Unlike, say, Seinfeld, who ended his eponymous show because he wanted to do it before it faltered (or was cancelled,) Cat Stevens retired for a radically different reason (converting to Islam and adopting rather conservative values,) but the net effect was the same. His career never tanked or floundered, he never released an album that met with questions of “This guy’s still recording?” And his mystique among younger listeners now might even be more powerful than before, as I’m sure no one under thirty really remembers that whole Salman Rushdie thing. Cat is gone and never coming back. Of course, recently, Yusuf Islam has been gradually moving back into popular music and released a full-fledged album An Other Cup in 2006. So we’ll see if he can reignite his career and continue to avoid what he’s been avoiding this whole time.
Blog Post
Vinx performance at The Ark
by manz
The powerful one-man band known as Vinx lands at The Ark on Thursday, March 13 for another masterful drum performance. Vinx is one interesting man. He was an Olympic track hopeful sidelined by a boycott and then a personal injury. He then became a personal trainer to a few celebrities before focusing on his music career, which began in the late 70s. He’s toured and played with world-class musicians around the world for the past thirty years. "Imagine a classic R&B voice like those of Sam Cooke or Al Jarreau singing a capella over a boisterous percussion troupe and you might get a hold on Vinx's magic...It's his yearning voice, alternately full of both anguish and joy, that makes you listen," says Modern Drummer magazine.
March 13, The Ark, 316 S. Main St. 8pm. Check the website for ticket information.
Blog Post
Take the Music Pulse: All Media Guide
by Bertha
All Media Guide puts out the definitive guides to music, rap, hip-hop, rock, soul, blues, and jazz. Music news and reviews fill the website. Search by artist, song, or album, and check out the music blog too. Marisa Brown, a Staff Writer at AMG will be at the Malletts Creek branch, Sunday, March 2 from 2:00-3:30 pm.
Blog Post
Klezmer music at the Neutral Zone
by Sarah T
Ann Arbor's TeenCenter, The Neutral Zone, is kicking off their concert series, Weapons of Musical Diversity, with klezmer group, Shtreiml. The all-ages show will be Thursday, March 7th, at 7 pm.
A new take on traditional Eastern-European Jewish and Turkish folk music, the group will be performing free of charge at the Neutral Zone. If you like Shtreiml, check out the Klezmatics and The Klezmer Conservatory Band.
Blog Post
They're not really small potatoes
by Maxine
The duo of acclaimed Chicago-based husband-and-wife duo of Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso who call themselves Small Potatoes will be performing as part of the Greenwood Coffee House Series this Friday night, February 29 at the First Methodist Church at 1001 Green Rd. at 8 p.m. Small Potatoes call themselves "electo-maniacs," i.e. not pigeon-holing themselves into one genre of folk music but embracing many. Singing cowboy songs as well as country, blues, swing and some originals, they love what they do and have gained a loyal following both in Chicago, their hometown and at festivals and clubs nationwide. They've been opening acts for Susan Werber, Bill Staines, Tom Paxton and many others. Mike Regenstreif of Sing Out Magazine says: “Small Potatoes might well be one of the leading mainstays of the folk scene for many years to come.”
Blog Post
Carrie On Country
by John J. Madonna
Last Friday, I read an old Entertainment Weekly interview, in which Carrie Underwood said, “You can say I’m ‘not country’ until you’re blue in the face, but I sing country.” The next day, I’m watching a back-from-strike Saturday Night Live (hosted by alumna and 30 Rock star Tina Fey) and who is the musical guest? Carrie Underwood. Oh, and I’m watching this particular SNL in the home of country music, Memphis (Tennessee.) So this all conspired to make me think, “Well, I’ve said Carrie Underwood is not country, but why?”
My idea of country does not include a solo singer backed up by bass, drums, guitar, a second guitar, fiddle, organ, and a backup singer. When I think country, I think rough and tumble, not slick. Look at the roots of country. Billboard used to have three charts, Pop, Race Records, and Hillbilly. After World War II, the latter two slightly offensive terms assumed their current identities: Rhythm & Blues and Country & Western. Unlike Pop, these two genres came from the same place, the poor south, giving R&B and country a lot of stylistic overlap; the only difference between the two, in the eyes of the Billboard charts (and to an extent the music listening public) was the performer’s skin color. The things that defined country weren’t their instrumentation or their drawls, rather that most of these country stars recorded for independent labels in a fringe genre. By the seventies, country had turned mainstream and its lyrics filled with melodrama. Looking beyond the surface of Carrie Underwood’s music, her songs are indistinguishable from Pop.
But at this very moment, right now, as I dub Carrie uncountry, I hold that Neil Young’s Prairie Wind from a few years ago (featured in Heart of Gold) is country. But, on Neil’s SNL performance, he might’ve played piano as he sang lead, but was backed up by drums, guitar, pedal steel, bass, organ, and three (three?) dedicated backing vocalists. Prairie Wind was even recorded in that country music black hole named Nashville. Why the double standard, Johnny?
First, Neil still played an instrument. Second, sure he used backing vocalists, but hey, he did just have an aneurysm. Third, he’s Neil freakin’ Young; the guy has what the kids call “cred.” On the other hand, aneurysmless Carrie Underwood doesn’t need a backing vocalist. She may use multi-tracking on her records, but she has the pipes to go solo live (newsflash: the studio and the stage are not the same thing. Performances shouldn’t sound exactly like the record so long as it sounds good.) Carrie has no “cred.” I don’t question her talent, but she got her big shot not by slogging through bars or, dare I say, honky-tonks, but by winning a contest.
The whole music spectrum is all just kind of a wash right now; very little differentiates the genres. Is Carrie Underwood country, is she pop, country-pop? I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t want to know.
Blog Post
Take the Music Pulse: All Media Guide
by Bertha
Kick off Teen Tech Week (March 2-8), with Marisa Brown, Staff Writer for All Media Guide. Play a game of "Name That Tune." How many notes of a song do you need to hear before you can guess what song is playing? Also, find out what it takes to review music as a career and scope out the best music sites.
Sunday, March 2nd | 2:00-3:30 pm at the Malletts Creek Branch
Blog Post
On John
by John J. Madonna
In John Lennon’s solo career, Mind Games has the high point of “Bring On The Lucie (Freda People)” but little else. I love John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, featuring that great line, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me. Yoko and me, that’s reality.” But insofar as the album that plays best as a rock album, it’d have to be Imagine. Featuring his most enduring song (“Crippled Inside,” naturally) as well as the title track, the bubbly “Oh, Yoko,” and “Gimme Some Truth.” A near perfect save for the wretched “How Do You Sleep?,” a mean-spirited attack on Paul McCartney. Lennon’s claims that he meant the song directed more at himself doesn’t hold much water, though, given the blatancy of his lyrics (unless he’s a completely clueless songwriter.) Upon hearing the song, you can’t help but feel stuck in the middle of a long-ended but once bitter conflict, and that’s a feeling I could do without, especially on a record with so much else to offer.
That being said, John Lennon had a very frustrating solo career, mired by substandard releases and Yoko Ono. His first two records stand as his most cohesive (and for that matter coherent) work. And though he had plenty of good songs in his tragically abrupt career, he produced no solid records after Imagine.