MY NAME IS … MUD?
Well, you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time. Rave promoters BTM Productions have been catching after throwing the Eminem-featuring "True Masters" party a few weeks back — the online backlash has been pretty vehement in calling the party out as nothing more than an Eminem concert in a carjack-happy neighborhood. And indeed, Motor booking agent Linda G. and Brooklyn techno stalwart Frankie Bones narrowly avoided a carjacking themselves (seems one of the potential jackers recognized Linda from Motor) and several cars were broken into or stolen. One online review of "True Masters" by a raver in attendance could only remark that it the party felt so much like a concert — instead of a rave — that the person walked around "Like I’d forgotten how to dance" (to which one response might be, when you’ve got a Rolling Stone cover boy whose record is selling 117,000 copies a week and whose sales pushed past Platinum just last week, well, hech-no techno, it was a goddamn Eminem concert). (Thought, to their credit, Frankie Bones, Rectangle and Magic Mike did their respective DJ things nobly, rap superstar in their midst or not.)
But promoter Ty Manica has already begun work on his next party, an all-Detroit/for-the-scene effort, scheduled for July 17. In addition to reuniting Detroit techno founders Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, Manica is also trying to secure the usually Detroit-fickle Jeff Mills. Mills is the hard techno superstar known to most Detroiters as the kid who used to be the on-air mix jock "the Wizard" back in the late ’80s and who has avoided playing Detroit (he came as close as Kalamazoo last summer) ever since moving to Chicago. Manica traveled to the Windy City to meet with Mills last weekend; no word on his reply to the offer just yet.
As for disgruntled ravers, well, they could have saved a bunch of dough and time in line by attending the Hotbox party over in Eastern Market’s Atlas Building. The old-school beatdown-house underground saw its ranks joined by a "more diverse crowd" than its usual black, gay following. Longtime D-town house legend and Music Institute founder Alton Miller let fly with the deep filtered house that has landed him on Carl Craig’s Planet E label, proving that even though the Detroit rave scene can host Rolling Stone cover boys, the house nation is still in effect. On a related note, the usually reclusive Detroit house icon Kenny Dixon Jr., aka Moodymann, will be touring the United States this summer. Expect an appearance at Ann Arbor’s Solar come June.
BOOB TUBE
What’s with the Detroit rap scene getting all Hollywood with (small) screen efforts? ICP finished filming their straight-to-video full-length effort Big Money Hustlas last month, and, as an exclusive peek at the 10-minute trailer reveals, it’s a Technicolor tour de force of inside jokes, questionable ’70s fashion and shoot-em-up thrills featuring Fred "Rerun" Berry as the hood-wear bootlegger/ bad guy, that actor who played the psycho hitchhiker in There’s Something About Mary as Detective Harry Cox (hey, this is ICP remember), and one of the Jerky Boys as the police chief. Expect to see it disappearing from shelves in the pudgy little arms of ICP fans by midsummer.
Meanwhile, Detroit rapper Champtown ("Champtown gets around like the People Mover/ Wanna see sex? 7 and Hoover") is bringing Footage For Days, his sort of Inside Edition for the national rap scene, to Comcast Cable at midnight on Channel 73 beginning this June. Described by one insider as "pretty ghetto," the Champ-man has still managed to hunt down interviews with the likes of Chuck D, the Beastie Boys, Outkast and other hip-hop icons for his weekly show. Footage, indeed.
And Kid Rock, though in the middle of his headline tour and hot on the addition of his second video — the Master P-set-in-a-trailer-park clip for "Bawittaba" — to MTV rotation, still manages to make a stop by this week’s Fox Line, talking about the relationship between the sex and the music industry as a member of a panel. He should know, he’s "dating" Midori, Jody Watley’s sister and a bona fide porn queen. Fox Line airs Thursday at 9 p.m. on Channel 2. Tune in, turn on, hope it doesn’t drop off.
