Long battered by business closings and abandonment, Detroit has also become a laboratory for artistic entrepreneurship. Some local musicians are hoping to take advantage of huge new tax breaks for recording artists and restore some of the city’s faded Motown glory. Meanwhile, urban planners are hoping to replicate the “Bilboa Effect” – the idea that an investment in the arts can transform the fortunes of a city.
Today, a look at Detroit’s cultural fortunes with Mark Stryker, the arts reporter and music critic of the Detroit Free Press; Andras Szanto, a cultural consultant with AEA Consulting; and Katherine Yung, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press.
TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS will be here @ the Crofoot on 3/12/10 with TITLE TRACKS.
Check out this interview with Ted from Pitchfork….
“Welcome to 5-10-15-20, where we talk to artists about the music they loved at five-year interval points in their lives. Maybe we’ll get a detailed roadmap of how their tastes and passions helped make them who they are. Maybe we’ll just learn that they really liked hearing the “Kids Incorporated” theme song over and over when they were kids. Either way, it’ll be fun.” says Pitchfork.
“To breed or not to breed? That is the question Owen Ashworth appears to be asking with his fifth full-length outing as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the wryly titled Vs. Children. But this is a Casiotone record, which means Ashworth won’t provide direct access to his thoughts, relying instead on proxies, personae, and other distancing mechanisms. That is, until the record’s third act, when a new Casiotone seems to emerge. Before that, however, Ashworth takes us on a joyride with a succession of mostly doomed outlaws and derelicts, with a couple of side excursions into familiar disaffected-slacker-ballad territory. It all adds up to easily the most mature and thematically ambitious Casiotone release to date, a further testament to the talents of a man more in tune with the lives of his generation than many of the folks actually living them,” says Pitchfork on their album Vs. Children.
“Dropping an earth shattering set of modern, relevant, radio ready rock & roll . Robots In The Garden put on a performance that had the sweat packed room jumping for 30 minutes with what can only be described as one helluva a set! Check these guys out while you still have a chance to catch them in the small venues! ” – Detroit Rock Review.
Robots In The Garden featuring Avienne, Auto Artillery, Contents May Very, Artigo and Shotgun Theory in the Pike Room Sunday February 21. Doors at 5pm. Tickets are on sale for $10 in advance and $12 day of show.
“In a day where Hot Topic peddles guyliner to millions of male teenage mallrats, it’s hard to imagine a time when glam-rock was truly shocking. But there remains one gender-bending device whose provocative, polarizing power remains undiminished: the falsetto– a sound that tends to elicit both laughter and skepticism, if not outright hostility. Still, it remains a highly effective weapon in the endless war against safe, overly earnest indie– and few bands brandish it so wantonly as UK art-pop quartet Wild Beasts.” Read more on their album Two Dancers at Pitchfork.
Follow Wild Beasts on Twitter and check out their MySpace!
They will be playing with Still Life Still in the Pike Room on Saturday February 20 at 8pm. Tickets are on sale for $10.
Read Never Shout Never news, see photos and videos – official website!
Rockstar Energy Drink presents The AP Tour featuring Never Shout Never with special guests Hey Monday, The Cab, Every Avenue and The Summer Set in the Crofoot Ballroom on Thursday May 6 at 6pm. Tickets are on sale now for $15 in advance and $17 day of show. They are selling fast- make sure to get yours soon!
“There is, indeed, a story in Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s two– yes, two– new releases, or more specifically, a backstory. “Intense panic attacks had made it difficult for me to leave the house,” claims songwriter Richard Edwards. He also claims the material that came out of that isolation (admittedly, an isolation he shared with his bandmates, who all supposedly live in the same Indianapolis house) was originally intended for a concept album about the Heaven’s Gate cult. Remember them? UFOs? Magic sneakers? Castration? Group suicide? Yeah, that one. The backstory continues…” Read more at Pitchfork.
Margot and the Nuclear So And So’s will be playing in the Pike Room Wednesday March 3 at 8pm. Tickets are on sale for $12.
“If vampires are as cool as I’m told they are right now, Cold Cave would’ve cleaned up at the Teen Choice Awards this year. Consider: Dark, synth-splashed pop songs with enough of an industrial bent to validate any flashbacks you might be having of watching Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie stalk the club for fresh meat in The Hunger. And though pack leader Wesley Eisold (also known for his work in the hardcore outfit Give Up the Ghost) does have the spooky Peter Murphy vocal thing down pat, Cold Cave sound more realized than the one-off pleasure project they look like on paper. By enlisting noise goblin Ian Dominick Fernow (Prurient) and Xiu Xiu-graduate Caralee McElroy to pitch in, their full-length debut, Love Comes Close, manages to stand out as a successful collaborative effort with a clear sense of purpose.”, says Pitchfork.
Cold Cave is playing with Hair Police, City Center, Deastro, and Jon Strucel & The Conspirators Of Pleasure in the Pike Room on Wednesday February 24, 2010 at 8pm. Tickets are only $7.
