Culture

Let's see. Urbations, Watusis, Stomprockets, Navarones, the Shanks, and a half dozen other Marshall-amp-charged garage bands I've forgotten the names of, none with a snowball's chance in hell of ever becoming...

I was sitting in a downtown coffee shop, coasting merrily along as Drew Nelson sang "Lovely Day" — his paean to the simple joys of spring, love, friendship, and impending fishing — when it struck me: this...

While listening to Paul Klinger's Easy Street Swingtet at the Firefly recently, I overheard someone say, "You'd pay big money to hear music like this in New York . . . but the band would be better dressed."...

Does anyone remember the New Orleans flood — remember not just the death and destruction, the pain and loss, but the directives given at the time by federal, state, and local government leaders? Does anyone remember that...

The last time I heard John Cowan live was in 1988, at the last Ann Arbor concert of the New Grass Revival, of which he was the lead singer. It was just before the band broke up, and its supremely talented individual performers...

Players and admirers of jazz guitar tend to be a cliquish lot. Even more than saxophonists, they love the instrument as much as the music it produces. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that, contrary to popular opinion, the...

Preservation Hall’s iron gates open to a hallway that leads to a single room. Built in 1750, the building has been left to age, plaster cracks unrepaired, windows unwashed. There’s no air-conditioning and almost no...

Do kids still dream about running away to join the circus? Is that still an option, at least in imagination? Forty years ago it still seemed to be one of my choices. The circus was going to be a real one, too, with clowns and...

A Life in the Theater, an early (1977) play by David Mamet, is a funny, gentle, and too-quickly-passing ninety-minute tribute to the craft of acting and the bond between actors. In twenty-six short scenes, David Wolber and Loren...