Blowout 16

Kick-off Party - Thursday Night at the Magic Stick (and Garden Bowl) - 4120 Woodward Ave - 25 bands in one night! -- Pictured: CAVEMAN LINE UP

SCHEDULE VENUES TICKETS Welcome to Blowout...

  I woke up today wanting to write about it feeling as though there was substantially more excitement being generated by-and-throughout the music community then any time I can remember. (Well, more than five years, let's say?) Excitement like a renaissance, a rev-up, a roller-coaster or maybe even yet, still, a wreck... Inspired and enthusiastic and tense and we just don't know what's gonna happen... All of those types of excitement. I'm trying to characterize this somewhat crazed moment I experienced last weekend, inside Found Sound Records in Ferndale, when I started recapping real time events.

• The Detroit X Detroit show was going on that night (featuring more than a dozen local bands covering other local bands...or, maybe, legendary "local" bands of decade's-past), but I was in the middle of watching a live set by the psyche-splattered art pop quartet Lord Scrummage. They packed up their scuffed suitcases, cables and keyboards and shuffled off stage because they had to go down to the Old Miami to help open things up for this big Breezee One show.
• Hey, that sounded like an exciting show... Wild, dark, post-techno rap-toying dance parties, let's go...
• But Passalacqua were about to go on, there, at Found Sound. So...maybe I should stick around?
• But then, if I wanted, I could see "Passalacqua" down at the Detroit X Detroit show if I hurried, because Chris Jarvis (of Phantasmagoria) and James Linck were mimicking their raps as part of that show's tribute-centric theme.
• There was another rap show, the Head Nod Suite, over at Rodin and Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr were doing their big E.P. release show with Tunde Olaniran at the Majestic Theatre. And, there were still, yet, more hip-hop/electro acts performing up in the suburbs at the Berkley Front. And this is one week after there was three stupendous album-release-show/parties happening on the same night!

And everything was everywhere and every line-up felt enticing. It all seemed to be potentially, palpably event-ful and it was finally just too much to keep up with, too much to take in and, really, that wasn't a bad thing. I just couldn't qualify it - if it was that we were all that turned on or just all that turned on to each other... We're all acutely aware, and actually, it seems, genuinely impressed (or inspired) with (by) what each other outfit's up to, in their live act, or in their experimentation with genre, style or presentation. Healthy-friendly creative competition. At least, that's the ideal, right? In any case - it's time for the Blowout again. And it feels exciting. Exciting because those who've attended five Blowouts or eight Blowouts or all 15 Blowouts before this one, are very interested, in varying degrees of optimism, over how its going to go, considering that this is the first year it will be spread out, in time (two weekends) and in locale (Detroit, Hamtramck, Ferndale).  But if you're coming to this blog post with no inkling as to any of the band names I casually referenced above, without any comprehension over why it would be irksome to miss a show by some band named Passalacqua, whoever that is, if you laughed when you read a name like Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, if you're altogether new to this music scene... ...then the point of this post, really, is to assure you that this is a fine time for your first dip into the waters of the local music scene. The waves are cresting, schools of freaky-creative fish swarming... and the tide is coming in... All energies suggest a kind of squall. So many of these bands / artists have been steadily honing their respective crafts for the last two years or more and when Blowout starts - audiences both new and regular can see some fairly-well if not-fully- realized representations of their sound and style. And they're all taking notes on each other, watching each other, trying to one-up each other. Healthy creative competition. Ideally.

Welcome to Blowout.

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