"Getting the word out" seems simultaneously easier and harder than ever in 2013, with so many shareable outlets feeding an essentially amorphous audience. Which digital podium can provide a band, an artist, a creative collective, the loudest voice for their art? How to get the word out when there's just so many words and so many ways, so many bands and so many channels.  Ferndale-based Workspace PR (WSPR) approaches the monster of modern media fittingly, as broadly as possible, free of any illusions and boosted by a range of experience. WSPR (or, if you like: "Whisper") is a quartet of new-…

Blowout in Ferndale. Still sounds strange to me... Was it inevitable? "...Logical?"  It's still a bit early to arouse debates either applauding or condemning the recent announcement by the Metro Times that its annual local music festival, The Blowout, will be hosted in Ferndale for one of its (recently-expanded) two weekends.  It's somewhat of an elephant in our room, though, whether Ferndale is a, what shall we call it, ...a scene?... onto itself...? When typically the music monster of SE Michigan is often simply denoted as "the Detroit Scene."  In any case: The Metro Times Blowout will …

You're opening a Record Store? I say that's great news! Some will say you're crazy. Some will say it won't last. But still... you're doing it; here... in our town, shelving dust-frayed sheaths of grooved wax mystically inscribed with music, 3-minute snippets of history, melodic musings of trailblazing troubadours, be they disco balladeers or nightclub crooners, be they antagonistic folk strumming scribes or guitar-shredding arena rockers...  A Record Store. The idea of it seems ever quaint or futile in the midst of our losing The Record Collector, with owner/manager Warren Westfall closing …

Last week, I tried narrowing down all the music I’d listened to this year from talented locals. It being 2012, I aimed for a "Top 12." It was half-on-a-whim, you know, almost perfunctory or knee-jerk, really, indulging the typical trend of music critics parsing their picks this time of year. You see these kinds of things everywhere on blogs or zines or wherever you’re cultivating the culture-buzz. Part of me is so self-consciously-certain that I could never absolutely narrow the myriad output of music (even just from our percolated pocket of bands, here, in SE-Michigan to a limited listing …

It’s been a busy year and I’m finding it hard to whittle down favorite-anythings, be they albums, events or live shows. (You can probably find some of these titles in-stock / on the shelf at your local Record Store: Found Sound in downtown Ferndale).  Here, I’ll attempt a selection of my Top 12 favorite local albums of 2012... the first half, that is... 12.Child Bite – Monomania /  Jamaican Queens – Kids Get Away (single) It was on Monomania where this Ferndale/Berkley-based quartet sounded as though they'd struck their near-full potential for what they call "trash-vibratto;" -spooky-grooves…

What: Benefit Show for South Oakland Shelter with Will Sessions, Misty Lyn & the Big Beautiful and Matt Jones & the Reconstruction. Minimum donation $5. Where: The Loving Touch in Ferndale. When: Friday, December 14th – Doors @ 9 p.m. This Friday, Ferndalians can come listen to music and contribute to the South Oakland Shelter, a homeless prevention center dedicated to providing shelter and supportive programming to help individuals and families live independently. Friday night’s music splices some dusty strums of grainy Americana onto the glitzy grooves of funk-fired dancefloor fare. Yes, …

-------------- What: FUR's Image on the Reverse release show with FAWN and Pewter Cub. When: 9 p.m., Dec. 15 Where: The Loving Touch in Ferndale What else: Providing between-song soundtracks is DJ Pinknoise of Strangeways Radio. More info on the event here. -------------- When I say that local band FUR is in-tune, I don’t mean something tonal - I mean a kind of creative conscientiousness. The truth comes out rather quickly with this band.  [Listen here.] That they’re so aware of how they operate, what works best for them; that they’re keen to have kept sifting different sounds, textures and …

Most things as loud, fast and aggressive as local quintet 60 Second Crush don’t last this long. These mere 60 seconds have lasted almost 15 years. Defying that classic (/clichéd) narrative of the burning-out (/self-desctructive) rock band, these amped guitar-slung agitators of alt-metal melee substantially staked their claim in the Michigan music scene upon countless local stages for more than a decade. [Find 60 Second Crush on ReverbNation & Facebook] Fostering, honing and then unleashing their own blend of punk, heavy metal and rock across three full-length albums, garnering them two …

I like candor in a band... Like calling your album title just about what-it-is... "Songs About Girls." Even more candor comes with fully embracing the "big party vibe." So take Six and the Sevens: Jangled, jaunty shake-em-ups, man, just get right up and dance on the table if you're feeling it. Yes, grab a tambourine if it's near...or just clap along, because the beat won't stall and the piano keeps rolling, guitars are gushing and bluesy vocals are bleating and blaring. Just put the beer down and get up for three minutes and cut a beer-splashed rug to these unabashed garage-pop revivalist …

You have no idea what you're missing.  That's the idea behind Dead Letter Office - a local record label launched last summer, helmed by longtime musical collaborators and respective singer/songwriters Brandon Frye and Kyle McBee, both of Ferndale. Whether it was for the blue collar hero types whose devastatingly beautiful ballads never reached a deserving amount of ears or for the current crop of hipster-chic pop-rockers eager to uncover and flourish a few of their more esoteric or against-type tunes, Frye and McBee wanted their label to be unique by unsealing the lost or undeliverable "…

It's Election Day... A day plenty of pundits have been counting-down towards for more than 18 months. Ludicrous! There's been more build-up to this election than 12 Christmases and 3 Super Bowls combined... And if polls are to be believed: it's all come down to the wire...split evenly between entrenched partisans and left up to a sliver of undecided voters.  Check back to the Patch's main page for updates on the election -including links to voter guides in case you're in need of a quick refresh/update before heading out the door to the polls.  I'm not trying to go all rock the vote on you, …

The passion of soccer fans is the stuff of legend. And that enthusiasm is now being channeled into support for our troops overseas. "Hooligans For Heroes" is a benefit show, hosted this Friday in Hamtramck, featuring a handful of Ferndalian bands with big, humbled hearts.  Election Day is drawing near and soon after there's Veteran's Day. Couple that with last month's recording of U.S. troops' 2,000th Afghanistan War death - a conflict in which we are guaranteed current engagement levels through 2014 and an issue that's been barely treated in the competing campaigns of President Barak Obama …

Autumn is the most inherently-sensuous of seasons. A sharper vibrancy naturally abounds. Colorful sights, tantalizing outdoorsy aromas, brisk breezes and leaf-crinkled-loudness underfoot; it’s like a soft symphony out there. Thus, this is my favorite time of year to listen to music. It just feels like the most inherently musical time of year – a crescendo of evocations altogether nostalgic and embracing, poignant and soothing, melancholic and quaint. So, each season, I’m moved to make an Autumn Mix. In fact, this is the 10th proper year in a row where I’ve compiled such an anthology. *For The…

Michael Ross isn’t interested in the musical notes that are already there; he’s set off to root around in the more cacophonous corners of song-crafts workshop to find the notes that aren’t there. Too many set out to reinvent the Beatles, but this local sound-collagist (or, experimental songwriter, if you will) has always sought to reinvent something else, what other fixtures, vents or pipes could be installed to bring some fresher, weirder air into the dusty, tired, systematized workshop of music. It helped that Ross spent much of the last decade working at The Record Collector, flourishing …

Last year it was a “... grand experiment that may only happen once." But behold... Another full moon, another resurrecting-lightning-bolt, the unstoppable undead-themed Halloween party, Theatre Bizarre - an enveloping evening of incredible scale, nightmare-never-neverland vision and inter-dimensional proportions - is returning to the Masonic Temple on October 20. The legendary (yes legendary, go Google it, oh ye uninitiated...) “dusk till dawn” outdoor masquerade /freak/goth- rock-n-roll carnival was started a dozen years ago by multifaceted graphic artist (and exceptional on-the-fly …

The first music column I ever wrote was about Scotty Hagen so I’ve got a soft spot for the Ferndale-based musician and music store manager’s candy-themed record label.Not that I have to make this all about me or my five-year-old blurb, no - but I identify with Hagen. The same way I consider myself merely a humble fan with means to sound-off, Hagen considers himself a music fan...merely with means to put out records (ideally, ones that he would likely go buy, himself). That keen sensibility for crate diggers (or, if you will, frequenters of record stores), has aided his flourishing of Royal …

“We wanna be known for supporting local music…” Watch: The High Strung - "Big Game Hunter" Local director Aaron Smith says he's proud of the awards he's won for some of his films, but this music community has come to mean so much more to him. To be involved in it: Detroit’s ever-verdant crop of musical talent; to be supporting it, acknowledged by it and digging further into it, meeting new bands, hearing new songs, filming more music videos, more live shows. Smith and videographer Kyle Gleisner are sparked with stores of inspiration after a busy summer holed up in their humble production/…

Sublimely swirled tones and the dark, dreamy haze of reverb, that tickling disorientation of Doors-ian organs and the steady clap-jangle of a tambourine...psychedelic folk crackles upon the bonfire of broodish/meditative blues-rock, done up right by Detroit-based quartet The Rose Cult.. Have a listen: The Rose Cult - "Daisy Chain" (stream/MP3)  This track's featured on their forthcoming album (expect a release show around November). If you stream it now, though, then I think you'll find it affects an evocative late-summer sensation: the tawny-tinged ethereal glow of a fading sunset as cosmic …

As you amble through the alleyways outside Wayne State this weekend, scoping makeshift shoppes of wonderful wares from local crafters/designers, sipping motor city microbrews and waving through a sea of particularly provocative people-watchable fare, make sure to slide up to one of the four main performance stages at this annual culture fair to support some of your neighbors.  Excitingly (at least for this obsessive frequenter of local rock stages), Dally features the reignition of a few bands whom I've not seen, regularly at least, in a while: Alley Stage Allan James & The Cold Wave - A …

I hear it... then I can see it: A bubble-gum-crusted boot stomps down into a puddle of reverb, splashing radiant droplets of sweet melody and murky feedback all across the paved flooring of the garage, riled-up rock splayed out sonorously into the rafters; four musicians, the essential elements, (guitar-bass-drum-guitar-...and a yowling/crooning-voice), forming a song-summit cycling through sensibilities as varied as: pure/seminal pop hooks, tropicalia-tweaks, freaked-out-psychedelia, sunburst-surf, shambolic lo-fi rock and dance-minded post-punk. Listen: Oscillating Fan Club - "SubUrban …