The Post-Rockist

***This is an automated response.***

Thanks for clicking onto the site. We’re currently out of the office (read: aren’t at work blogging at our jobs when we could be doing the actual work we get paid for) (j/k if my boss is reading this. LOL). The Post-Rockist is at Pitchfork Music Festival.

Sadly, we’ll be commuting Friday night, so we’ll miss Mission of Burma, Sebadoh, and Public Enemy, but we’ll have our usual half-assed coverage for Saturday and Sunday, with pics and stories about whatever trouble we got into and updates on the bands and the fans. (Continued)

Last night, the thunder rolled, lightning crashed, the rain came and we ran and hid, and the answer to the question “Will tonight’s Cityfest be cancelled?” was blowing in the heavy winds. Around 7:50pm, with last night’s big storm brewing and very close by, the organizers of the Comerica Cityfest called it a night.

My guess is that the night’s headliner, De La Soul, will not be rescheduled.

But here’s the good news, and one of the reason why it’s great to live in Detroit. A few phone calls were made, a few favors called in, and a flurry of text messages were sent to souring, disappointed Detroiters to get their asses over to the Garden Bowl. Four of the acts slated to play that night at Cityfest–The Hentchmen, Magic Shop, The Dead Bodies, and The Silent Years–gathered their gear and headed over to the Majestic complex to reclaim the night for us all.
(Continued)

Hello my babys,

This is Scotter, signing in for a bit of updatage on the site, a preview of things to come from your favorite Post-Rockists.

1. We’re going to Pitchfork Music Festivale! We’ll have our full preview and stuff up soon and will try to make it funny and light and then we’ll head for Chi-town and try our best to not party too hard so that we can remember enough to write about it upon our return. Wanna meet up? It’ll be easy to recognize us. We’ll be the ones with tight blue jeans and hipster sun glasses, taking photos with our point-and-click cameras and drinking beer.

B. With 2008 now half over, we’re going to look back at our favorite albums of the year that we didn’t cover. We love lists, and haven’t made any in awhile and are feeling feverish for a healthy dose of numbering and bullet points. (Speaking of lists, you must check out Coke Machine Glow’s 2008 Listravaganza. I wish we’d have thought of this stuff.)

D. The Comerica Cityfest starts today. Yes! Food, beer, sun, and lots of free music. One of my favorite events of the year for reals. I’m not going to cover the Cityfest this year like I did for Rock City Fest, because I’d like to enjoy my evenings and afternoons without dedicating myself to typing away at the computer for 20 hours to get everything down. But I will be posting pictures and short updates–perhaps a recap, of sorts–so I’ll see you there, Les Detroitiers.

Tonight, I get to see these guys:

III. The feeling of future infamy swelled within my breast when asked to compete in a Local Blogger Duel of Wits and Awesomeness, facing a formidable opponent in fellow blogger and beloved Detroit paper-bagged icon Jasper. Yet victory was not in the cards for me nor Jasper, but it was an Elle of a lot of fun. Well played indeed, my good man.

Any suggestions for stuff on this site (besides posting more often!)? Leave a comment.

God’s Choicest Blessings,

Scotter

Bo Diddley - “Hey Bo Diddley”

Bo Diddley - “The Story of Bo Diddley”
(from His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection)

The Diddley Daddy is dead, and it’s a sad scene over here at Post-Rockist HQ. I’m alone, disheveled in a dark room blasting Bo Diddley’s greatest hits, half choking back tears, half laughing my ass off at his brilliantly witty ditties (”I look like a farmer, but I’m a lover/You can’t judge a book by lookin’ at the cover.”). I’m a mess. More than any other early rock’n'roller, Bo Diddley was a true pioneer through and through. He not only regularly created his own guitars out of salvaged junkyard materials, some as small as a cigar box and some too big for one man to carry, he was also one of the first popular musicians to create his own home recording studios, and, to top it all off, this poor boy from Mississippi created his own damn rhythm — the “Bo Diddley beat,” a tense, wound-up, one-chord wonder that manages to build up excitement with each successive scratch. Just listen to “Hey Bo Diddley” — that crude, busking rumba beat with Diddley’s electric Gretsch skittering about while he mythologizes himself to the tune of “Old Macdonald.” It’s beyond incredible. His singles may not have met with as much chart success as his contemporaries Little Richard and Chuck Berry, but his impact on the world of rock’n'roll culture is too great to overstate. Look at it this way: Keith Richards stole his chops and Andre 3000 stole his style. Quite simply, the man is a legend. But he doesn’t need me to tell you that, Bo’s been toasting and boasting himself since before anyone put a microphone in front of his mouth. I’ll let him tell it:

I was born one night about 12 o’clock, ha ha ha
I come into this world playing a gold guitar
My poppa walk around stickin’ out his chest, hee hee
Aw Momma this boy, he gonna be a mess, ha ha ha ha ha
Yeah, uh huh
Oh, uh huh
Now, people came from miles around
Just to hear my little guitar sound
Now some of ‘em said I had what it takes
If I keep on practicin’ I’ll be famous one day, ha haa
Whoo, I’m a mess, I’m a killah dillah
Early in the middle of the night
A car drove up with four headlights, ha ha ha ha
Now a man stepped out with a loooong cigar
He said, ‘Sign this line I’m gonna make you a star’
I said, ‘Now what is it man? What’s in it for me?’
He said, ‘Just play your guitar, and wait and see’
Here I am, Wheeee!
The girls like me
They say I’m crazy
Say I’m nice
My first engagement was in Chicago
I played for some people I never seen before
It was good too
They liked it
Ha ha ha ha ha
Wheeee! Yeah!
Killah dillah

Bo Diddley, you will be missed. R.I.P.

This Saturday is Record Store Day all over America! Actual record stores at physical locations all over the country will be holding events and hosting bands playing live music within the physical spaces of these actual record stores. Some of these record stores may be offering sales on their wares, which include plastic discs surrounded by a plastic cases that may or may not include pictures and lyrics on a coated sheet of paper.

Honestly, it’s great that someone has organized a day to celebrate our extant record stores–they really are my favorite places in the world and, as every girlfriend I’ve ever had can tell you, they are also a virtual black hole that sucks time from your very existence and soul, turning day to night and summer to winter.

And there are probably more record stores around than you might think. I went through the Record Store Day list of participating stores to find that there are several record stores within 45-50 miles of where I live that I never even knew existed.

So go out there on Saturday and blow $14 on a CD that you could have burned from a friend or downloaded from a Torrent site. But don’t just buy any CD. Ask the clerk for his or her recommendation. Give the clerk a challenge, such as “Do you have anything that sounds like Fugazi, but with Robyn Hitchcock’s singing style, covering Jeff Buckley songs using a ukulele?” Not sure if that’s a good example. But maybe ask a legitimate question, like “Do you have anything that sounds like the new Why? album?” or “Is there a one-hit wonder from the 60s whose album was actually really underrated that you can suggest?” or “I don’t like country music. Suggest a country album I won’t hate and I’ll buy it.” Go ahead. Try it out, and enjoy record store day before all the stores are gone forever and someone feels the need to organize iTunes store day.

–Posted by Scotter

Nick Lowe - “Music for Money”
(from Jesus of Cool)

Surely I’m not the only one who’s noticed popular “indie” blogs busking advertisements for ringtones and NBC’s Lipstick Jungle. Blogs are big business. Or, they can be. (Not this one, obviously, because we average fewer hits per day than your typical Geocities-hosted Mad About You tribute site that hasn’t been updated since 1995.) Build up a loyal readership, inflate your Technorati ranking, boost your hit count with some “exclusive” digg-able content, and before you know it advertisers are chomping at the bit to pay you fractions of pennies for every pair of eyes that alights on your page (or so the story goes).

And what’s wrong with making a little extra scratch on the side? After the costs of cassettes, CDs, downloads, concerts, and band T-shirts, being a music fan is an expensive hobby, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to get a little financial kickback for a lifetime of devotion. But as Eric Harvey of Marathonpacks pointed out in a recent column for Pitchfork, the line between enthusiastic fan and (un)paid promoter is becoming increasingly blurred. “The focus group becomes indistinguishable from the public sphere,” Harvey writes, “and labors of love are increasingly being repurposed as free labor channeled into promotion and distribution networks under the rubric of artistic patronage.” (Continued)

“Hold on to your seats,” announced the enthusiastic 50-some-year-old sound guy at Detroit’s Corktown Tavern, “’cause High Anxiety is up next!”

The High Strung - “Rimbaud/Rambo”

from Get the Guests

Detroit’s The High Strung has been around for awhile, and around the country quite a few times. Singer/Lyricist/Guitarist Josh Malerman, Bassist Chad Stocker, and Drummer Derek Berk have recorded three albums–including a Post-Rockist favorite of 2007, Get the Guests–traveled thousands of miles, and played hundreds of shows at bars, clubs, and libraries. They’re working on a new album now in Canada with David Newfeld, who has produced the likes of Broken Social Scene and the Los Campesinos. It was a pretty packed crowd for the Corktown Tav and the fans were jumping and singing along with the mix of old songs and new, as The High Strung kept it up tempo for most of the show, keeping all ballads but the excellent “Arrow” off of the setlist (a bit of a shame, since “Watch Me Sustain the Early Days,” “Childhood,” and “The Meddler” are my faves). (Continued)