“Blast!” opened Tuesday night in the Wharton Center’s Great Hall to an enthusiastic and packed audience. The performance began with a somber instrumental of “America, the Beautiful,” but sorrows were quickly forgotten when the company began its show. “Blast!” is difficult to explain.
This weekend, everyone in the Lansing area has a chance to see worldwide award-winner and genuinely good movie “Me You Them,” a great story detailing the story about a woman and her three husbands.
espite the rain last Sunday afternoon, farmer Dan Beck diligently sprayed crates full of apples with a garden hose.
Add Gary Gildner to your list of accomplished people to visit your campus during your college careers. Sure, this accomplished writer and MSU alumnus doesn’t draw attention like Bill Clinton or Elie Wiesel, but his work speaks of itself. The MSU grad, who’s work includes “The Second Bridge,” “The Warsaw Sparks” and the 1996 Iowa Poetry Prize-winning “The Bunker in the Parsley Fields,” will make a stop Friday.
Often there is no place for independent and foreign film fans to see their favorite type of picture on the big screen.
The MSU production of “SubUrbia,” scheduled to begin today and continue through next weekend, has been reduced to only one performance.Put on by the MSU Department of Theatre, “SubUrbia” is a drama about a rock star who returns to his home in small-town America and put his burnout friends’ lives into perspective.The lone performance will take place at 7:30 p.m.
Without question, politics and music go hand-in-hand. But that’s not why I listen to bands like the Dead Kennedys or the MC5. I never even knew what the Dead Kennedys sang about until a couple years after I was introduced to it many years ago, and it didn’t matter. Even now when “Moon Over Marin” or “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” booms out of my box, I don’t hear political messages, but great music by a group that really loved what it was doing.
Politics and music. During the uprising of anarchy and the evolution of counter-culture in America during the 1930s and 1960s, music played an important role in expressing feelings - both positive and negative - of where America was going. Woody Guthrie was the main musician in a great American tradition in the 1930s - the man who figured out how to merge culture with politics. Then, in the 1960s, Bob Dylan took over.
What’s better than a five-piece band? A two-piece band who sounds like a five-piece - meet Quasi. The Portland-based outfit, comprised of Sam Coomes (who has contributed bass duties with Elliott Smith) and Janet Weiss (drummer of Sleater-Kinney), will perform their branded method of independent rock Thursday night at the Magic Stick in Detroit. Coomes said the band’s ability to marry somewhat upbeat rhythms with somewhat depressing lyrics comes naturally. “I like music that is rhythmically propulsive,” he said.
Chicago-based record company Touch and Go Records may have become one of the luckiest labels recently when it obtained Quasi. The band, a two-piece outfit consisting of Sam Coomes (Elliott Smith) and Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney) has put the finishing touches on its brilliant sound with its latest. Their voices match perfectly with one another, and although Coomes provides his voice more than Weiss, they both rise to occasion when necessary. “A Case of No Way Out” is a loud, droning number which, if you listen carefully, contains an eerie and beautiful string pattern beneath the fuzz. “The Curse of Having it All” lets Weiss drip out some low-key vocals with some decent range while “Seal The Deal” is a catchy song that marries a distorted bass line with an effective tickling of the ivories on an organ and features some solid percussion work.
Denison Witmer is the kind of musician who has a relaxed following. “When kids show up for his shows they’ll get a nice quiet evening,” said Dan Falconer, owner of Lower Level Records, 611 E.
The Verve Pipe has stepped out of the melodramatic ’90s rock scene and into uncharted pop waters. The Grand Rapids-based quartet hasn’t been much more than an afterthought since its self-titled sophomore record failed to live up to the hype produced by its platinum debut “Villains.” Admittedly, “The Verve Pipe” wasn’t a great album, but it appears to have served as more of a rebound record between “Villains” and “Underneath.” It was just something to keep the band in the game without having to get too serious about it. But “Underneath” definitely has a serious side to it, only this time it’s concealed in a predominantly pop format. The writing duo of Brian Vander Ark and Donny Brown has written a great collection of pop, blues and rock songs that, when combined with an old-school rock sound, gives the album the honesty missing in its self-titled effort.
“Beyond Therapy” may be the funniest play I have ever seen. At the least, it’s in competition with the production of Neil Simon’s “The Dinner Party” I saw this summer on Broadway with Jon Lovitz. “Beyond Therapy,” written by Christopher Durang and directed by Addiann Hinds, started last weekend at The Riverwalk Theatre, 228 Museum Drive in downtown Lansing and continues Thursday through Sunday. The play starts with a blind date at The Restaurant in response to a personal ad in a newspaper.
Turnout for “Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)” was small at Saturday night’s performance.
Courtroom dramas tend to be boring, but “Inherit the Wind” is among the most riveting.
When 20-year-old Caleb Dillon, an East Lansing resident, wrote and recorded songs three or four years ago, he never thought he would be performing them in front of an audience.. Dillon’s project, Starling Electric, will perform for the first time at Lower Level Records, 611 E.
You know the entertainment industry is getting bad when actors get so frustrated with the lack of good movies being made that they start writing and directing their own.
Local and national bands rocked Lansing on Friday night when The Dollar Nightclub, 3411 E. Michigan Ave., hosted WWDX (92.1 FM) The Edge’s eighth birthday party.Exit to Windsor began playing outside of the night club at about 5:45 p.m.
Student filmmakers had a chance to show their work at Harper’s Downtown, 131 Albert Ave., Thursday night during a program called Lawn Shorts.With a big turnout, despite the change of venue from the rock on Farm Lane, Harper’s downstairs club was pounding with noise and excitement but no alcohol.
Detroit - Weezer may have dropped off the rock radar for the better part of five years, but one would never know it based on its performance or the size of Saturday’s crowd at Cobo Arena in Detroit. The listed capacity for Cobo Arena is 12,191, and there were some noticeably empty seats in the upper tiers.