^{The parking structure just off the main stage for George Clinton}

Friday

Millions of Brazilians

(Continued)

The Comerica Cityfest 2008 has come and gone and I’m absolutely exhausted. I do win the 5-day attendance award, but not without losing some much-needed rest and 4th o’ July relaxation. But another great festival it was, and thanks to everyone at The New Center Council for making it happen–and for making the shows free–for the twentieth straight year. If you didn’t get a chance to pay for any of the food or drink that pays for the acts that you got to see for free, you can always put in your time by signing up to volunteer for something.

Well, I told you about Wednesday night already and tried to contribute some thoughtful ideas about The Zombies’ performance on Thursday (ideas which, I fear, may be misconstrued as negative), so here’s a recap of everything else I remember. Let me know if I forgot to remember something.
(Continued)

^{Mason Proper’s Jonathan Visger}

We’ve been bad bloggers this week.

The Rock City Festival night about which we have just posted took place over seven days ago. It was awesome, an entire day of music beginning at 1:00pm at the Contemporary Arts Institute of Detroit (the now somewhat infamous CAID, as of late) and ending at the Majestic complex at 2am after the last act had taken the stage. Subtract roughly an hour break between the last act at the CAID (interrupted, ahem, by the cops) and the first at the Majestic, and you have approximately 12 hours of live music in one day! Detour, I salute you.

But of course, the opportunity for 12 hours of music on Saturday meant little time for blogging about the approximately 6 hours of music from Friday night, and so began a chain of events over the week that prevented the punctual posting of this blog. One of these events was the marriage of one Whalebomb, who was still gracious enough to contribute to this blog even with the partaking of that most sacred bond at hand. Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Whalebomb on yer marriage.

But now, without the further mention of news most of you don’t care about, is our review of Saturday of Rock City.
(Continued)

^Pas/Cal

So finally, nearly a week after the fact, we give you day 2 of Rock City Fest, as experienced by Whalebomb and myself. Here’s what happened: On Monday I saw Al Gore endorse Barack Obama at Joe Louis Arena. Pretty cool. Tuesday, I was lazy. Sorry. So this post was all ready to go this morning when I found that Photobucket had been hacked (we really need to move beyond the novice stage of blogdom). And now with Photobucket back online, I found that some of the review has mysteriously disappeared. Damn it, Fortuna! Don’t you want me to laud Detroit’s best and brightest?!

Anyway, here’s the low-down on Rock City Fest, Day 2.
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^Javelins

What a great night! The first eve of three eves of the Rock City Fest in Detroit City, and I, Scotter, and the Whalebomb, who joined me to cover Blowout, will be reporting on stuff that people report on when they go to a music fest. Whalebomb is getting married soon, so the Rock City Festival is his last major music fest as a bachelor. Things will never be the same for him at future music fests. For example, he’ll probably have trouble getting from venue to venue once that big diamond ring is placed upon his petite finger–it’ll weigh him down just enough to miss a few seconds of an act, whereas before he might have seen and enjoyed those three extra seconds of the show. Actually, that’s probably the only thing that will actually change. Still, it’ll never be the same again!

Whalebomb: There’s just something about looking at the menu of a festival and thinking to yourself, “Crap, it’s the same stuff I’ve been seeing for the past couple festivals,” but then getting there and going, “Oh, no, there’s tons of new stuff I thought I saw, but never have.” The problem with festivals is that you look at the names of the bands and think you’ve seen them, but you’ve really only seen the names. So yeah, the menu is the same, just order something different.
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From our infancy, The Post-Rockist has loved music festivals (see post numero uno) and the Rock City Festival in Detroit, June 12-14, shall also be loved by us, particularly in proportion to the amount with which it rocks (or pops, or sizzles, or jives).

If you’re from Detroit, you already know the information that follows–you can skip ahead to the next paragraph now. If you’re from the outlying areas of the Motor City, or if this is your first time ever on the internet, read on. Rock City is a summer music festival put on by the good folks at Detour Magazine, an e-rag based in Detroit but reaching for a national audience. A combination of national and local acts make up the bill–3 nights of non-stop music at the Majestic Theatre complex in Detroit and even a Saturday Bar-b-q at the Contemporary Arts Institute of Detroit. You should probably come.
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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). (Continued)