In a short time, Ann Arbor’s Quite Scientific established itself as the go-to label for Michigan’s blossoming orchestral, indie-folk scene. With releases from Canada and Chris Bathgate and upcoming salvos from Frontier Ruckus, Maryland’s Cotton Jones Basket Ride and Philadelphia’s Hezekiah Jones, Qui Sci continues to spread the gospel while broadening its reach. Run by affable brothers Brian and Jeremy Peters and Justin Spindler, the Qui Sci boys not only (more…)

Talk about class. Cut Copy, who you may or may not have read us trying to make out with after they blew our minds at South by Southwest, was late to their Sunday evening time slot at the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival. Travel issues involving Australia and O’Hare Airport. Sudden darling King Kahn tried to rally the disappointed crowd with an impromptu set of covers , but Bradford Cox didn’t seem into it, and Jay Reatard appeared on stage only to moon the crowd. We made our way toward the exits as the strains of Spoon’s sophisti-pop oomph’d and ahh’d from across the field. (It was “I Turn My Camera On.”) A line of porta-johns blocked our view of where Copy was to have played, so we didn’t see them when they first replaced their replacements on stage. But we heard half of “Future” and all of “Hearts on Fire,” and then those dudes thanked us for listening, as if we were the ones who’d (more…)

via best of craigslist:

I’d like to start this off by saying one thing: IF YOU DON’T LIKE GUITAR, IF YOU HAVE A FAMILY HISTORY OF CARDIAC INFIRMITY, OR IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY OF A WEAK DISPOSITION, HIT THE BACK BUTTON RIGHT AWAY.

But who doesn’t like guitar, right? I don’t think you understand. Jimi Hendrix played guitar. Groucho Marx played guitar. I think Winston Churchill might have played guitar. What I play is something different.

Picture a Verdi opera: 3 hours of music, some of beautiful and ennobling, at times piquant and subtle, other times dramatic and inspiring. Take those three hours of music, those thousands of musical notes, and compress them into 4 measures of incomprehensible speed, delivered with earth-shaking finesse and a raucous disregard for any physiological limit to human auditory perception. I cannot stress this enough: I will play guitar so fast your face will melt.
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All Known Metal Bands (Dan Nelson, McSweeny’s, 2008)

Dan Nelson’s new book All Known Metal Bands — collecting the seemingly endless myriad of heavy metal band names — is a compendium of linguistic intention — after all, metal bands mean business, and more so than any other genre of music, a metal band’s name stands for something. Metal is not a category that embraces overt irony or thinks self-effacing names are cute. And even in the rare cases in which a band’s name is ironic or self-effacing, the message conveyed must still employ the basic metal naming principle: the name must, in one word or short phrase say, “We will slay you. We are not fucking around. Prepare to be eviscerated by the power of song.”

Removed from any other context, this book allows the reader to experience this intention in its rawest form. Sure, a picture of four shirtless, long-haired, men in leather pants, wearing pentagrams, standing in a front of a church whilst the wild eyed lead singer, captured by the camera in mid-scream, waves an upside-down cross is pretty badass. But if the name “Church Of Misanthropy” alone doesn’t automatically invoke this (more…)

In case you spent most of the weekend not reading, and instead stuffing your face and rocking out at this this year’s CityFest, you may have missed the Jack White-penned poem about and for Detroit, published in the Detroit Free Press (read it here). Below, our newest scribe Paul Serilla weighs in on “Courageous Dream’s Concern” — the words written by Detroit’s most famous defected star.

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Somehow over the last few years, we’ve become very confused about Jack White’s opinions of his home town. Clearly, the mistake was ours — like most problems or issues with Monseigneur Jack, it’s ridiculous to just assume he was ever in the wrong. But thanks to the literary PR wizards at the Detroit Free Press (it’s a bundle of paper you obtain by putting a bunch of quarters into a box with a glass window that’s chained to a diner or conversely pay a pre-teen boy to throw at your house before dawn — ask your grandpa) we now have a clarification of Jack’s feelings about “the D.”

These feelings it turns out, could only be fully and truly expressed in prose — of course with a nice introductory note by Rothbury apologist Brian McCollum (we’re really pissed we didn’t drive five hours to see Dave Mathews in the woods — that dude never tours). You see, it wasn’t that Jack (more…)

We’ve got to admit: We’ve been on a pretty ridiculous Stiff Records kick as of late — the London label started up in 1976 by Dave Robinson and Jake Riviera, and responsible for launching the careers of dudes like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. Characterized by a roster of bands that sported angry, rebellious lyrics, crunchy, melodic guitars, and cheap production techniques (and, at times, some ska, and even Motorhead and Stryper, if you can believe it), Stiff is right up there, along with Factory and Creation, as being one of the most solid and influential the rock world has ever seen. So while we could merely service you with a clip of Wreckless Eric bashing out “Whole Wide World” on some weird TV show (or Will Ferrel singing it to Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger Than Fiction, for that matter), we thought it’d be cool to throw up a bunch of takes from the Stiff Records crew, including Lowe, Costello, and lesser knowns like the Adverts and the Feelies. There’s no rhyme or reason to why we picked what we did; these are just some monster jams. So get familiar (there’s a lot more out there than you’ve got time for), and while you’re at it, check out the late, great, Exploding Hearts — 3/4ths of which tragically died in a van accident in 2003 — and their album Guitar Romantic for an essential update on an essential sound. — Ryan Allen (more…)

Jeff Howitt — founder of Loco Gnosis Records, and lead singer of Detroit rock weirdos Duende! — is crazy. Or maybe crazy isn’t the right word. Perhaps “passionate” is a better fit. Either way, the sporadic, stream-of-consciousness style answers he gave to our questions about him, his label, and his involvement (more…)

Pic By: Trever Long

Rock City Recap: Day 3

On a day that featured 25 acts, and the largest Rock City crowds yet, Day 3 will go down in infamy as one of the most glorious closing nights we could have ever asked for. Keep reading as we try and remember it all, (more…)

Pic By: Trever Long

Rock City Recap: Day 2

Yo. Day 2 came; Day 2 ruled. Missed it? We didn’t. Let’s get into it… (more…)