Metro Times - Special Issues: Blow by blow

3/2/2005

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Blowout

Blow by blow
The stories and stats behind the H-town hoedown

SEE ALSO

More Blowout Stories

Get blown (3/7/2007)
Ten years on and our eclectic music fest just gets better

Blowout 2006 (3/1/2006)
Breaking down the bash we put together

Blowout 2004 (3/3/2004)
Four days, 225 acts, 20 venues. The largest local music festival in the U.S.

More from Metro Times music staff

The Music Issue (11/11/2009)
The New Class: Snapshots from the recession, or what's new and how to win in 2010

Sloppy seconds (7/1/2009)
This year's Cityfest features a day of "second chances."

Around the outside (5/13/2009)
Greg Tate and Ron Ållen go deliver the surreal goods

By Metro Times music staff

Think musical desegregation and songs filling frigid streets, the cold made warm by music culled from every conceivable (and damnable) corner of the Detroit area. Think puffy livers and snow-haired bartenders manning warm, old-man taverns turned superstar venues. If you’re still a Detroit suburb shut-in harboring misgivings about Blowout 2005 in Hamtramck, well, you should know that the fest is the ultimate in musical juxtaposition: a small immigrant city-in-a-city beset by hundreds of the area’s finest performers (many of whom have international careers) over a long weekend. There’s nothing crazier.

The overriding theme this year is the city’s quickly shifting rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop landscapes — new, young bands and songwriters, emcees and producers are redefining Detroit, from SOL and Tekneek to the Muggs and the Sights. And we could only choose roughly 220 acts out of 400 submissions.

Also, for this year’s event (the eighth) we asked some of the state’s finest poster artists and our design director Sean Bieri to do MT covers, each featuring a band we think you should know about. (From upper left, covers by Michael Segal, Bieri, Tom Deja and Mark Arminski.)

Blowout ’05 kicks off with the Blowout 2004 Movie, a Don Letts-y hoot that traces last year’s event in three-camera, handheld glory. The Room 773-helmed flick doubles as a look at the blue-collar aspects of gritty Motor City music with exclusive live footage of King Gordy, the Fags, Bulldog, Cashada, Man Inc., the Hentchmen, Midwest Product, Big Herk and many others. Screens at 9 p.m., Wednesday, March 2, at the Magic Stick.

Blowout Coverage:

Afro-beat repeat
By Eve Doster

Just you wait
By Johnny Loftus

Old-school, new-school
By Metro Times music staff

P-rock, dog
By Jonathan Cunningham

Trigger happy
By Brian Smith

The Blowout drive-thru
By Metro Times music staff

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