CAID funk night raided by SWAT team

The CAID's funk night was busted by a SWAT team last night. Judging from reports online, the raid was frightening and abusive. Check out Web Vomit and Five Three Dial Tone for the gruesome details. Hopefully CAID and its patrons have access to qualified attorneys.

Tastefest (Cityfest) 2008!

The lineup has been announced. The official website has it in Word format; head to Web Vomit for the copy-and-pasted list. Headliners include George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Broken Social Scene, and Calexico. I'll be there.

Update: The 2009 lineup can be found here. The festival runs from July 1 to July 5 this year.

People's Records is back

According to the Detroit Yes! forums, Brad Hales has signed a lease on a new Woodward storefront across from Zacarro's Market, the new high-end grocer in Brush Park. The original People's Records store burned down in the Forest Arms fire in February.

“Slooooooooooan! Slooooooooooan!”

I have to hand it to Detour: Rock City sounds sweet. I'm so ready for Sloan (and TAN! and SSM and the Terrible Twos and Deastro and Mason Proper and the Great Lakes Myth Society and on and on).

June 12-14. Majestic Theatre & CAID. $30 for weekend passes, $20 for one-day only.

Hamtramck Blowout footage

In case you missed it or want to relive it, MyFoxDetroit has 33 videos of Hamtramck Blowout performances.

The state of the music scene

The Free Press invited a few notables to discuss Detroit's music scene ahead of this weekend's Blowout. This is so true:

Becki: ... You can't go to a (rock) show in Detroit and see anyone dancing. ... People here, they want to look cool, stand up there with a beer.

Rachel: People from the outside, the statewide media, when people talk about Detroit, they always say it's a really critical crowd. You notice that when you go to a show: People will stand in the back and watch. You won't think that anybody's liking it, then afterwards they're like, "Oh, man, you were so great!"

Guide to the Blowout

Detour has a useful guide to the Hamtramck Blowout complete with streaming audio and Myspace links. Metrotimes has the final schedule. Also worth seeing: the Black Lips on Thursday at the Magic Stick. A good week for music in Detroit.

Update: Motor City Rocks and Five Three Dial Tone also posted guides to the Blowout. Good luck deciding who to see.

Scrummage moving to the East Side

Scrummage University, the bizarre young-hipster hangout, is moving from its current space in Eastern Market to an abandoned toy factory at Van Dyke and Davison on the city's east side. (Hat tip: Web Vomit and Metroblogging Detroit.)

The new location has a few obvious advantages, like 10,000 square feet of space and a parking lot, but it's still a very odd choice. I worked with the community development corporation that operates in that area this summer, and I just don't see Scrummage meshing well with the neighborhood. For one, the new location's across from Mt. Olivet Cemetery (where my grandparents are buried). The cemetery won't appreciate its new neighbors. It's also totally on its own. That strip of Van Dyke is almost totally dead, and there are no other music or arts venues anywhere near. A sudden influx of white, suburban teenage hipsters will surely be noticed. It may have flown under the radar in Eastern Market, but Scrummage will stick out glaringly in its new digs.

But I give them credit for their daring. I've only been to Scrummage once (the intense Dan Deacon show in July), but I'll have to visit the new venue to see what they make of it.

More Dirtbombs

The Free Press reviews The Dirtbombs' new album, "We Have You Surrounded", and talks to drummer and Cass Records-owner Ben Blackwell.

Some of the album tracks are streaming now at the Dirtbombs' official website. The album release show is Saturday at the Magic Stick.

Update: Ryan Allen of TAN! chimes in with praise at Detour Magazine.

Michigan gets its own would-be Bonnaroo

According to the Free Press, a huge new music festival is planned for July 3-6 in Rothbury, MI (Google map), a little town on the western coast of the state. The Rothbury Festival (official website) will include everyone from John Mayer to Snoop Dogg to Of Montreal with lots of other odd juxtapositions yet to be announced. They're hoping for a crowd of 50,000 people.

I promise I won't be among them. $100-475$? Yeah, right. I'll be at Tastefest/Cityfest in Detroit for free.

Update: There's one bad catch to this all:

"Many of Rothbury's acts have signed exclusive contracts that bar them from playing other Michigan dates."

So if you wanted to see an artist playing Rothbury but didn't want to pay $100, you might be out of luck.

The Blowout is back

The schedule for this year's Hamtramck Blowout has been posted. Friday night looks especially good. I'm weighing my options:

10 pm - Child Bite or The Frustrations
11 pm - The Satin Peaches or Terrible Twos
12 am - Friendly Foes, The Hentchmen, or Deastro
1 am - Carjack, The Detroit Cobras, Zoos of Berlin, or Lee Marvin Computer Arm

Dirtbombs release new album

This week the Metrotimes pays tribute to Mick Collins, the ex-Gories and current Dirtbombs extraordinaire and king of the Detroit music scene. For a taste, take a listen to "Wreck My Flow" from the Dirtbombs' new album, "We Have You Surrounded," which will be released next week.

Oh, tell me your thoughts

By the way, I can't stop listening to "The Start of Something" by Voxtrot. It's not on their MySpace, but "Raised by Wolves" is also worth a listen.

Update: I found a knock-off Voxtrot page that has both "The Start of Something" and "Raised by Wolves."

Update II: I fixed the link to the other Voxtrot page.

A creative company

Metrotimes profiles Ann Arbor's Quack! Multimedia, which is not only a local record label (representing the likes of the Hard Lessons & Great Lakes Myth Society) but also much more, putting out a magazine, coffee table books, and TV shorts. This month they're putting on shows every Thursday at the Bling Pig which, in addition to the aforementioned bands, feature the Pop Project, Javelins, and Child Bite.