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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Let There be Metal!

Let There Be Metal!

Art thou bored? Snap into some metal! We dressed in our jeans and black and headed to the Killswitch Engage show at the Royal Oak Music Theatre on last Saturday night. The opening act Dark Tranquility brought their Swedish metal flavor to the show letting everyone know that other music besides Abba has come from Sweden, thank flippin hell! The Devil Wears Prada thrashed the house with screaming vocals and intense guitars as only metalcore band can do and then... Enter Killswitch Engage who has a new singer to finish the tour which seems to keep the fans still engaged. Phil Labonte from All That Remains has taken the reigns and keeps the fans coming back for more, hell yeah!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Outspoken, Political, and Musical?

The Shondes are a musical outfit that are advocating peace through justice for Palestine and Israel. I don't know that we'll ever see a peace between these nations and one can definitely hope for it. One of my friends is Palestinian and I'm half Jewish and we've always kind of kidded about the subject of us bringing peace between those nations through our friendship. I was impressed to see that the Shondes are actually out there trying to do this and that is definitely something that takes a lot of heart and determination. On top of that their music is intriguing and has the sound of a punk Natalie Merchant mixed with the almost Irish drinking music feel. I'm not quite sure how I came to this conclusion, but I did. They will be playing at the SXSW festival in March and you can check out their song "Make It Beautiful," in the player below.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Folking Around @ The 33rd Annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival

I went to the sold out 33rd annual Ann Arbor Folk Festival on Friday night at Hill Auditorium. The lineup was a great mix of talented musicians whose music expanded beyond the folk music genre and into other avenues and sound categories. The MC for the evening was the guitar sorceress Patty Larkin; who played her guitar in between sets, introduced the artists coming onstage and told stories as well. Friday night featured: Grant-Lee Phillips, Nervous But Excited, Jer Coons, Po’ Girl, Band of Heathens (they’ve been featured on Austin City Limits), Hoots and Hellmouth, Jay Farrar (Uncle Tupelo & Son Volt) & Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), and Iron and Wine. We’d like to point out that Sam Beam of Iron and Wine is awesome! Not only does he have a beautiful and haunting voice; he’s also pretty damn funny. When he walked out onto the stage a guy in the audience yelled out; “I love you Sam!” He responded with; “Dad you should of told me you were gonna come, we could have got dinner or something.” Then after a few more songs someone yelled; “You look like the guy from “The Hangover!” Sam laughed and said; “You know… I didn’t invent the beard. But we can talk about beards if you want to.”