DETROIT ROCK CITY FESTIVAL :: motorcityrocks.com

Rock City Festival
Majestic Theatre Complex, Detroit
June 19-20, 2004

It’s a Sunday morning (awake before noon again, dammit), and my partners for this write-up are a bottle of aspirin and a quart of Gatorade. Those components of the morning are necessary partly due to the excesses of leering, jeering and cheering (and the alcoholic consumption that brought on all three) done during the Rock City Festival Saturday.

I was the first of the MCR crew to make it to the event, as I waltzed in just in time to catch a decent set from The Rants. For some reason, I was surprised that more folks weren’t already down at the event by then (4:00 p.m.) – I guess I was really expecting this to be a big ole’ loud and crazy Detroit party all day, rather than just at night. While The Rants straightforward garage rock sounds were solid enough, after about two songs, the band’s set was unfortunately lost amongst a quick waltz around the area to say hello to a few congregations of friends and family members.

The Rants finished up soon enough, and wound up getting a few laughs out of The Thread Counts set for reasons completely unrelated to the band’s actual performance. Brian Muldoon and Ben Blackwell make up this two-piece garage band, and immense amounts of

giggling came from watching Muldoon once again make absolutely no facial expressions at all while he was drumming. As for the band itself – well, all of the covers The Thread Counts did were actually recognizable, and Blackwell’s guitar playing honestly has gotten somewhat better (though the band is smart enough to stick to pretty rudimentary covers to help him out in that department).

The Grande Nationals followed with a set sprinkled with a few catchy rock nuggets, though the highlight was the crowd-induced set list adjustment that led to a hilarious closing performance of “Bring Me the Head of John the Baptist” (which the audience pretty much went batshit for). Regardless of any buzz going on about this band, it must be said that the Grande Nationals have apparently improved by leaps and bounds over the past year or so.

My first time checking out The Nice Device was impressive, to say the least. Alicia Gbur’s powerful vocals stole the set, though Matt Lannoo spiced things up with some solid guitar work. I think this band manages to describe itself far better than I could with the phrasing, “Too smart for the garage, too dirty for pop.” Catchy? Yeah, but with a gritty, cleansing sort of vibe that comes off not unlike The Paybacks in some ways.

Human Eye followed with a blast (and I do mean BLAST) of crazy, spaced-out punk. Now, when I say punk, I’m not talking about Hot Topic punk, and I’m not even talking about Sex Pistols or Dead Boys punk – I’m talking about, “What the fuck was that?!?!?!” punk. This was punk in the truest sense of the word – keyboard parts blipped and booped through each

song while the drummer went ballistic at the drop of a dime. The bass player was SOLID, holding down the rhythms while the frontman basically just created mayhem any way he could, screaming and yelling and scratching out nasty guitar parts while rolling around on stage. Human Eye may not have been the best band that played that day, but it was easily the most memorable. This is definitely a Detroit band that absolutely has to be experienced live.

That was a hard act to follow, indeed; as a matter of fact, when Easy Action played next, it almost seemed like a step DOWN in intensity. This, of course, is no small feat, considering the balls-out nature of Easy Action’s dead-on rock. This set was pretty typical for the band, with the grinding guitar sound pushing hard behind the incredibly loud vocals (which, if anything, actually seemed a bit too high in the mix, as they slaughtered the rest of the band at times).

After all that rock, it was time to kick back and have some fun with Detroit’s own ‘Boy Who Invented Rap,’ esQuire. Dashingly clad in a bright yellow ‘Daddy’ t-shirt and bright red 70’s style gym shorts (complete with matching headbands, sweatbands and Converse All-Stars), esQuire once again proved why he’s one of the most interesting characters in the Detroit music scene. This time around, his go-go dancers were clad in black bar pants and zip up jackets, prompting him to give them half the set off so they didn’t overheat (even making apologies for the fact that for once, he was wearing far less than the girls were). Even Queen Bee got into the act, hitting the stage in her full-blown old-school nurse’s uniform to drop a duet with esQuire. Still, the most entertaining moment came with esQuire subduing an enraged female ‘fan’ with a hilarious cover of “Boom (I Got Your Boyfriend).”

While esQuire’s set was all in good fun, Detroit’s revolving door of talented musicians, The Go, wasted no time in cranking out guitar solos and putting the “Rock” back in the festival name. The band’s experiment in adding Dion Fischer’s Moog skills to the set became a bit moot after the second song, by which point the guitars were completely obliterating the synth in the mix. Judging by the number of people furiously dancing and wagging about up by the stage, no one in the crowd seemed to mind, though. This turned out to be sort of an all-star ensemble, ‘Who’s Who of The Go’ set, as former members (and Young Soul Rebel proprieters) Fischer and Dave Buick joined in with Kenny Tudrick (another former member of the band), who put in an absolutely ballistic performance pounding the skins. Fischer got the day’s extra special wardrobe award as well for sporting a Sharpie-scrawled “I Hate the Capitalist System” t-shirt, heh. In spite of Human Eye’s jaw-dropping performance earlier in the afternoon, The Go’s set still induced

the biggest “What the fuck?” moment of the day when the band pulled out an unexpected, note-perfect cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

From there, I got my first taste of the ladies known as The Sirens, who did a nice job of keeping the crowd upbeat with a set of rock covers. The multi-part harmonies came across nicely, and the covers of Aerosmith’s “Mama Kin” and Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me” were surprisingly fun.

The Greenhornes were another act I didn’t know much about going into the festival. For the first half of the band’s set, I was REALLY into them, as I’m a fan of that minimalist, three-piece 60’s styled “Bluesbreakers meets The Animals” sorta thing. The guitarist was sweet, tossing off solid solos as effortlessly as most folks would

throw pennies into a wishing well. After the band’s James Gang cover, however, it just seemed like the set started to drag on for far too long.

The Sights put on a predictably good show, thought admittedly, this was the first time I’d seen the band without an actual bassist (which probably gives away how log it’s been since I’ve seen The Sights live). The keyboard player was talented as hell, though, playing bass parts with one hand and adding organ flourishes with the other, providing a surprisingly lush backing for Eddie Baranek’s wailing and guitar playing. The band’s set as a whole was entertaining enough, but still, The Sights best moments come when the band goes full-throttle into blues-rock territory. This set was no different, as Baranek’s few forays into extremely

bluesy material led to the most intense moments of the show.

At this point, the MCR posse took a brief foray away from the Festival, as we realized that our grumbling stomachs were aching for a Woodward Avenue party store pizza. Upon the posse’s return, I was informed that the MCR crew had picked the best possible time to venture out on the Ave, as apparently, the Detroit Cobras attitude didn’t exactly go over well with the crowd. According to MCR’s Big Matt, singer Rachel Nagy had called the crowd out on the fact that everyone was just standing around staring at the stage instead of dancing. Outside of that, though, Big Matt reported that the band put on its usual popular, sloppy, beer-driven set.

Regardless, everything seemed to have smoothed itself over by the time The Dirtbombs walked on stage and put on what very well could have been the band’s tightest set ever. In all seriousness, The D-Bombs put on a rock clinic – everything the band played sounded great. Perhaps it was the addition of Troy Gregory and Ko Shih that did it, but something about the band finally just clicked into place to create the ideal Dirtbombs experience. “Kung Fu” was silky smooth, while “Underdog” was brash and nasty. Former bassist Jim Diamond hit the stage to perform with the band one last

time, strapping on a guitar and adding some sweet lead licks to back Mick Collins before launching a rousing rendition of “I’m Through With White Girls.” By the time the set wound down, Collins and Diamond were trying desperately to out-solo each other while Gregory and Shih built a thick bass/fuzz racket over the band’s drummers, both of which were pounding away on their kits. Collins and Diamond eventually petered out while the rest of the performance slowly disintegrated into organized chaos, with Shih going so far as to start kicking apart Ben Blackwell’s drumset at one point. In defense of Rachel Nagy, the last ten or fifteen minutes of The Dirtbombs’ set was really the first time in the day that the audience as a collective was really moving around or doing anything.

Despite the fact that The Dirtbombs put on such a cathartic performance, the posse still

wrangled up to The Majestic to check out the Festival after party. At this point, the night started to get hazy (as the beers had become to flow a bit more freely by that point), but everyone was still in sound enough mind to have gotten some enjoyment out of MAN, Inc.’s set. The very intense MAN went over surprisingly well with the crowd, thanks to song introductions such as, “Here’s another song about punching a hippie,” and “This song’s about folks that think they can tell me when I can drink and not drink” (which led to a track with the crowd-pleasing chorus of, “God Damn the Christians”).

Bulldog took the stage a bit early at around midnight, and while most of the 50-minute set was laid back, the band’s strong musicianship was still very evident. In his third set of the evening, Kenny Tudrick finally came out from behind a drumset to front the band. He played an acoustic guitar for a majority of the set, keeping the tempo low while stepping back and letting the pedal steel and keyboards take center stage. Eventually, though, Tudrick pulled out the hollow-bodied electric guitar, which led to some fine guitar-keyboard interaction with Eddie Harsch (although, disappointingly, those two didn’t go off on any lengthy solo tangents as they during Bulldog’s spectacular set to close the Hamtramck Blow-Out pre-party a few months ago). Still, the band’s set was a fine way to close out the day.

This day featured a little bit of everything that Detroit has to offer – good bands, good people, booze and good times. MCR’s main man and Publisher, Ryan Sult, really nailed it while the two of us were eating our greasy pepperoni pizza out on Woodward Ave, using a newspaper box as a table of sorts. Looking across the street at the Majestic Complex, we stood with pizza in hand, hearing the echoes of The Detroit Cobras coming from behind the building, and all he could do is smile at how incredibly perfect that moment really was. Nothing that I could write could ever possibly express what that smile said about the night. Man, it’s fucking great to live near Detroit. -Mr. Gary

**If anyone knows what happened Sunday, let us know.