Why? Try, and the Best Birthday Party I Wasn’t Actually Invited To, or My weekend report from Detroit

To those of you reading outside of the confines of the southeast side of the fine state of Michigan, I must preface this sad tale of traveling travail with an explanation about the Detroit “metropolitan” area.

The difference between the Detroit music fan versus the Chicago/New York/San Francisco/Seattle fan is that we are one of the only major musical centers in the US that gets skipped regularly by many touring bands. Worse, the area is so spread out that often bands hit up surrounding cities like Ann Arbor, Lansing, and (gasp) Mt. Pleasant, skipping Detroit even though it makes natural sense to play the Motor City, particularly if the band is heading Toronto-ward from Chicago. I’m not saying that Ann Arbor, Lansing, and Mt. Pleasant don’t deserve shows. I am saying that the area is too spread out and spread thin for any one show to get the audience it deserves and, in the meantime, we dedicated followers of music find ourselves spouting far too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from our hour-long drives (of course, no decent public transpo around here either).

It is my fatigue from this ring-around-the-rosying of Michigan venues and cities weekend after weekend that I gave up on seeing Why?. Why?’s Alopecia may end up one of the top albums of 2008, a year that I think is already an extremely strong year for albums. I was told by the clerk who sold me the CD (yeah, I bought it) that it was a concert not to be missed. I’ve never even heard of Pierpont Commons in Ann Arbor, the venue for the show on the northern part of the University of Michigan campus. Bloggers with more mettle than I made and enjoyed a great show. I did venture out, drove the 45 minutes, but nearly ran out of gas (my fault) as I arrived. I decided to look for a gas station, didn’t find one until I was too far away to ever find the venue again, and gave up. Apparently, Why? played a Quiznos. Ridiculous.

Here’s a track. They’re good.

Why? – “The Hollows”

And here’s something like what I missed, from their show at SXSW. While watching, I just tried really hard to image that the “Terrorbird” banner is really a Quiznos sign.

It’s a good thing Detroit’s local music scene is a-thriving.

On Saturday I caught a couple of bands I fell in love with earlier this month at the Metro Times Blowout, the annual Detroit music festival: Lightning Love and The Champions of Breakfast.

The show wasn’t publicized at all, and I found out why when I got there–it was a surprise birthday party! The party took place at the Garden Bowl in Detroit, a pub/bowling alley below the Magic Stick. The bands played on an elevated stage constructed on top of the lanes. This was cool until a few people actually started bowling on the lanes surrounding the stage, which was kind of distracting for the bands and those of us trying to enjoy the show. Guess that’s just the kind of thing you have to deal with when you’re playing a rad b-day bash.

A nice treat was Wally Dogger. The lead singer/bassist of the group put the b-day party together for his brother, who later joined them for a rendition of Kelly Clarkston’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” at the set’s end, at which point the front of the stage filled with about 15 long-haired ladies in low-cut shirts and heels, jumping up and down on the lanes and pumping their fists in the hair. You know, the way everybody does when this song comes on anywhere at anytime? You know you’ve done it too.

Wally Dogger is based in Chicago and sounds like the kind of pop rock band very popular in Canada right about now. I guess you’d call them “Nerd Rock” because they write songs about “nerdy” things, like being an IT guy, but really, what band doesn’t refer to binary code in their songs these days–it’s very en vogue (the phrase, not the she-group) and metrosexualesque. Overall, their show was a very feel-good affair and I’ll see them again when they’re next in Detroit. If you’re hanging out around Chicago or Wisconsin over the next couple of weeks, you should czech ‘em out:

April 5 – Beat Kitchen – Chicago, IL
April 10 – Club Tavern – Middletown, WI
April 11 – Warehouse – La Crosse, WI
April 12 – The Crystal Corner – Madison, WI

Check out “Rock n’ Roll is Back” and download other songs from their website.

Rock n’ Roll is Back

And in Champions of Breakfast news, the LP is finished and copies are floating about. The official release will be available soon. I’m guessing that the album will recreate somewhat accurately how they sound live. It will blow minds.

After these shows and a considerable amount of booze (it was a birthday party, after all!), I headed out to Northern Lights to catch Zoos of Berlin, arguably one of the most talked-about bands in Detroit. Almost everything you’d like to know about this band can be found here.

Zoos finally went on at 1am, after about an hour of setting up. In one sentence, here’s the best I can do to describe their music: Their “top friend” on MySpace is Brian Eno. And like Brian Eno, there’s a lot going on in these songs, a lot of different sounds and rhythms to take in, and I’m going to need to listen to these songs a few times before I can really get them. I’m looking forward to doing so.

Here’s a video of the Zoos of Berlin.