Computers Make Good TVs, Too.

So pissed that I missed yet another Blowout weekend living in Denver … Anyways, good viewing for your computer screens: BBC Network aired a documentary on Detroit music called “Motor City’s Burning: Detroit from Motown to the Stooges” that was apparently some good stuff. Now, the BBC has an iplayer website set up that lets folks watch broadcast content online for up to a week after it’s aired – I’m pretty sure that the doc will only be up until sometime late Saturday, and it’ll take a bit of download time, but it certainly seems worth the effort to let your compy work through the night for some prime documentary viewing. The link has been removed, partly because the doc wouldn’t be downloadable any longer, but mostly because us U.S. folks apparently aren’t privy to have access to that content since we aren’t in the U.K. Bummer, dudes.

Also, The Pop Project’s new video for “Not the One” (featuring The Hard Lessons‘ Korin Cox on backing vocals and The Sights‘ Eddie Baranek on lead guitar) is up on YouTube. I’ll be nice and embed that bad boy right here. Goofy video – catchy fookin’ song, though.

On top of that, allow me to say that YES, it may feel like a blast from the mid-to-late 90’s, but the Big Block/Grayling show taking place this weekend is REALLY the place to be this weekend. Grayling is easily one of the best bands Detroit’s seen in the past decade (or about as long as I’ve been championing them to everyone with a set of functional ears), and the fact that some people are just now discovering them is criminal, though encouraging. Frontman Jarrod Wolny is like Detroit’s version of Kurt Cobain – and not in the screamy, crazy front man way, but more in the fact that every song the man’s written, from the band’s original Symtoms (SIC) cassette release to the three newer tunes currently booming from the band’s MySpace page, is tuneful and catchy (hauntingly so in some cases), regardless of genre or tempo. (“Sarsfield,” arguably Wolny’s perfect work of tunesmithing, is the fourth tune up for listening)

Big Block? That’s a love affair I’ve carried for quite some time. Front and center were guitarist/vocalist Nick Lucassian (Shipwreck Union, Gold Cash Gold, Detroit Cobras, Catfish Mafia) and guitarist Kenny Tudrick (The Numbers, Detroit Cobras, Bulldog, Kid Rock, etc) who blazed out some hard-rocking, vaguely ‘Americana meets the Replacements and the Black Crowes’ jams in the mid-90’s. The band was a pet project of 89X back in the day, and the album Guardrail was a fine example of how to make a damn fine barroom rock record. I was privy to information at one point that there was indeed second album completed and ready to go, but the usual obstacles led to the band members going separate ways before it ever saw the light of day to the general public (and yes, if anyone knows who I can talk to about getting a copy of that material, e-mail gary@motorcityrocks.com because I’ve been dying to hear it for about 10 years now). Big Block’s MySpace page features what I figure are a few of those songs – one, “Devil’s Den,” carries a distinctly late-era Beatles vibe through the roots-rock, while the second, “Ventura,” sounds a bit more like the Guardrail material. (That album’s represented on the site by firecrackers “Under Construction” and “Bullocks”, by the way)

Part of me wants to attribute the importance of this show to nostalgia, but a much larger part of me realizes that Small’s needs to be packed for this show because it could very well be the hottest fucking Detroit-based show of all of 2008. DON’T FUCK UP AND MISS THIS ONE, DETROIT!

Seriously, Detroit – DON’T MISS THIS FUCKING SHOW!