Detroit is awesome!
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What an amazing summer it has been. Maybe even my best summer yet. I got to meet Andrew W.K. twice, I met and partied with the Flaming Lips, and just recently I met and hung out with one of my favorite bands, Fu Manchu! Those guys are awesome! Weekend after weekend, I have had experienced nothing but good times, great friends and killer music. I love this town and I swear I will never leave. Not permanently, anyway.
August was amazing. The month started out with a daylong trip (13 hours) to Ozzfest where I got to meet my favorite musician/rockstar, Andrew W.K. — again! What an amazing person. I can’t believe a guy this nice and sweet is also such a kick ass musician. He said after Ozzfest he and his band (also very nice guys) will take off for the “I Get Wet” tour in October and November. I can’t wait! Other acts at Ozzfest worth mentioning are Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, System of A Down and, of course, Ozzy!! He played for well over an hour, yet it only seemed like 15 minutes. He did three or four Black Sabbath tunes too, which rocked. Ozzy’s guitar player Zakk Wylde has got to be one of the greatest metal guitarists ever. I don’t think he gets enough credit. The only problem I had with Ozzfest (a.k.a. sausage fest) is that out of all the many musicians in all the many bands on the bill there was only one woman, the singer/screamer of Otep. From what I saw Warped Tour was pretty low on estrogen too this year. How come if I want to see a woman rock out at a summer music festival I have to go to a “lady” festival designated just for women? C’mon.
Speaking of rocking out, I was fortunate enough to see one of Detroit’s greatest working guitarists kick ass recently. Danny Metric (Danny Muggs), who is also known for his work with Detroit band The Muggs, has been playing with hard-ass rock group The Kingsnakes. These guys look straight out of 1973 and they raaaaawk. And with Dan’s amazing guitar licks, huge chops and probably the best vintage t-shirt collection in town, he fits right in. The band played the annual Mussel Beach Fest held at one of the east side’s coolest drinking spots, the Cadieux Cafe. The Kingsnakes were scheduled to play between two of my favorite Detroit rock groups: Inside Five Minutes and the Sights. This show had so much buzz surrounding it that several handfuls of scenesters actually took one night off from the Magic Stick and/or Lager House to party hard on the east side. Awright.
Okay, back to August, I caught the now-legendary White Stripes/Strokes show at Detroit’s Chene Park. It was surreal. Last June I was up front rocking out to the White Stripes along with a few hundred people at one of their Magic Stick shows. But this year I was rocking out with thousands of people, and I could hardly get up front. But I’m happy for them. (And this is where I stop talking about the White Stripes and go off on a senseless tangent) They are a good band, and I’m really sick of the whole pre-fab pop game. And I can do without hip-hop 24-7. It kind of makes me nauseous how music journalists, MTV and the like group bands like the White Stripes, the Vines and the Hives together – like it’s something new. Hello? It’s rock, and it’s been here forever. But right now rock has the ability to make people money (mainly white males who own record companies), so it’s cool now and it’s on TV again. Well rock has always been cool, and it will always be cool. And when I say rock and I mean a band. A rock band. I don’t mean one teenage girl who doesn’t play an instrument fronting a put-together rock band of young studio musicians. Guitars. Songwriting. Drums. Fever. Unity. Blood. Sweat. Tears. I mean BANDS. Rock bands. Queens of the Stone Age. Fucking rock bands. The rock bands of the ‘70s were the first musicians to make insane amounts of money. And now rock seems to be the poorest genre. I’m going to have to change the subject, because this is just going to turn into an angry feminist rock and roll manifesto, and we don’t have time for that right now.
So, what else is going on in Detroit? Find out in the October issue of Spin magazine, which hits newsstands on September 10th. You’ll find Jack and Meg on the cover, and inside a fabulous article by Chuck Klosterman which gives a peek inside our dirty little scene here via interviews with Jack, Meg, Wendy Case of the Paybacks, Mary Restrepo of the Detroit Cobras, and more. I can’t tell you how weird it is to read about Detroit in Spin fucking magazine. Just when you think the ride is over…
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