The Ultrasounds
As I was skimming through the Ultrasounds' press release, a refreshingly frank quote caught my eye. "People don't want to hear songs about how bad things suck all the time," says lead guitarist Patrick Betzold....
Read MoreAug 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
As I was skimming through the Ultrasounds' press release, a refreshingly frank quote caught my eye. "People don't want to hear songs about how bad things suck all the time," says lead guitarist Patrick Betzold....
Read MoreAug 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Roger McGuinn and John Sebastian are playing back-to-back solo sets at the Michigan Theater on Friday, August 8. It’s the hottest double bill of the summer: this is Roger McGuinn of the Byrds — “Mr. Tambourine...
Read MoreAug 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Jeff Daniels, that restless playwriting mill, keeps shoving the raw grist of Americana into the hopper and spitting out scripts. His most sustained look at American life and myth is the Escanaba soon-to-be-trilogy of North Woods...
Read MoreAug 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
There's nothing so blatantly vaginal as Judy Chicago's work in the current exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center, although it obviously refers to her controversial feminist masterpiece, The Dinner Party. Sponsored by...
Read MoreAug 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Music is a young person's art, so I'm always fascinated by musicians who keep commanding attention with fresh material after several decades in the business. Singer-songwriter Dana Cooper, who'll be featured at the...
Read MoreJul 15, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Madcat & Kane have been performing together for eighteen years, but in any poll of blues fans, they long ago were candidates — and voted in and elected — as one of the finest duos working in that genre. That’s not...
Read MoreJul 15, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Bluegrass music is conservative in the best sense of the word, refining traditions into clearer, deeper forms. Players start out by learning the standards and continue to play them while adding slowly to that core repertory....
Read MoreJul 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Onstage, Natalie MacMaster is a one-woman Riverdance, constantly step-dancing, prancing, whirling, twirling, stamping, stomping, all the while playing horsehair-sizzling tunes that most fiddlers can't manage even while...
Read MoreJul 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
I can't remember when or where I first heard Jen Sygit sing. We were sharing a stage somewhere, I think. But I remember, quite clearly, my response the second she opened her mouth. It was one word — "whoa"...
Read MoreJul 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
The first time I interviewed a comedian after a show, I was surprised when he dropped his stage persona and morphed into a businessman. In time, I came to expect it. Still, I kept looking for what my naive idea of a comedian is...
Read MoreJul 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Confined animal feeding operations. Factory farms. For those of us who don't or no longer live in the country, these are the places we drive by on Sunday jaunts or pass on the freeway: acres and acres of buildings often...
Read MoreJul 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Starting in the mid-1990s, a new generation of burlesque performers and troupes emerged worldwide. These are “New Burlesque” artists, nostalgic for the glamorous display of striptease, expensive costumes, bawdy...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Several days after hearing the OffRamps play at the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti, I couldn't get the refrain of one of their songs out of my head: "You said you were sorry, but that really doesn't make it all...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
I first encountered the music of Xiao Dong Wei two years ago, on a beautiful June morning. I'd ridden my bike down to the end of Maple Road to find Huron River Drive all blocked off with traffic cones. I stopped. No cars, no...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
A few years ago Miles Harvey hit it big with his nonfiction book The Island of Lost Maps, which not only told a fascinating story about a thief who cut maps from rare old books housed in North America's best libraries, but...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Lizz Wright grew up singing gospel music in the church of her minister father in south Georgia's Lowndes County. She studied voice at Georgia State University in Atlanta, at the New School in New York, and in Vancouver,...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Who is Mandy Patinkin? The answer depends on whom you talk to. For those who watch television, he's Jeffrey Geiger in Chicago Hope and Jason Gideon in Criminal Minds. For those who go to the movies, he's Iñigo...
Read MoreJun 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Even though no one has ever come up with a precise definition of the word jazz, many of its most dedicated lovers jealously guard its borders, often to the exclusion of any other music. Paradoxically, whatever jazz is, it is...
Read MoreMay 15, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
As anyone who has heard the hundreds of literary introductions he has given around town over the last decade would suspect, Raymond McDaniel is a poet who revels in the textures of words. Many of his poems focus on the...
Read MoreMay 1, 2008 | Event Reviews, Uncategorized |
Although he sings a traditional kind of jazz, Jimmy Scott's singing is an extreme thing. Most immediately unusual is its range: Scott was born with Kallmann syndrome, which prevented his voice from changing. The voice is...
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