2005 December

Do you have any idea how lucky we are that Bettye LaVette is playing the Ark on Wednesday, December 7? Do you? I didn't think so. All fall, this extraordinary, criminally unknown soul singer has been on tour in support of...

I have enough respect for the word genius not to toss it out casually when talking about local bands. Ray Charles was a genius, and so was John Lennon, and maybe Phil Spector was during the golden age of 1960s three-minute pop...

In 1986 “Rocky,” then manager of the Blind Pig, was going to ditch its Friday afternoon happy hour. “Pontiac” Pete Ferguson told him, “Give us fifty bucks and let us pass the pitcher a couple of...

I'll tell you right up front: a little poem of mine appears in this new anthology, In Drought Time: Scenes from Rural and Small Town Life, edited by Douglas Smith, Melody Vassoff, and Karen Woollams. My Observer editor tells...

The Waterloo Area Farm Museum's "Christmas on the Farm" offers a mesmerizing blend of historical hogwash, patinated beauty, and just enough ghosts under the eaves — like a wooden wheelchair in the attic that...

Some folks can't stand the sound of fingernails on blackboards. Others can't stand the sound of breaking glass. Me, I can't stand the sound of the music of Franz Liszt. Take away its superhuman difficulty and...

Tennessee Williams is one of the few real proofs we have that life has improved in the last fifty years. He viewed the world through a lens of high Freudianism where not too many people could expect to escape a good warping from...

Not many people in Ann Arbor know the history of the steel drums (or steel pans) that have sounded through half a dozen Jimmy Buffett records and countless tropical vacations. And still fewer know that Washtenaw County is home...