Justin A. Hinkley has written about Battle Creek area music for the Battle Creek Enquirer since late 2006. He is also a musician himself.« November 2008 | Main | January 2009 »
Just got off the phone with Gary Fields, owner of the downtown comedy club, who said there are a couple of new things happening at the club:
More on this later in WOW.
Kellogg Arena General Manager Kevin Scheibler and I had a good talk last spring about the troubles the arena has in attracting big names.
Essentially, Scheibler said this:
So, the arena went from in the 1980s being able to pull in major headliners on a regular basis to nowadays grabbing one or two big names a year and filling the rest with local community events, small-time rodeos and monster truck shows.
We've had some big names, cool stuff such as Sugarland and Dierks Bentley, but on Monday, the arena
announced the first big rock show since Disturbed was there in 2006:
Avenged Sevenfold, Buckcherry and Papa Roach will be at the arena on Feb. 21. Tickets are $39.75.
I'm not a big fan of Avenged, mainly because their first video ("Bat Country") was a terrible rip-off of a Hunter S. Thompson line in "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas." But I've been a big fan of Buckcherry since their late-90s debut. They disappeared from the scene for a long time, but came back heavy with their song "Crazy Bitch" and now with "Too Drunk ..." It's fun, classic rock 'n' roll sounds, and it'll be good for Battle Creek, if people show up.
I said in my Thursday column that a revamped Kellogg Arena, better suited to handle more big-label acts, would help Battle Creek reclaim its stature as the best midway stop between Detroit and Chicago for major music sounds. More people downtown enjoying concerts equals more people seeing the smaller venues that host local bands, which means more support for those well-deserving souls.
Some will curse me for being so optimistic, but, as the Keef said, "Whatever side I take, I know well that I will be blamed."
There's no danger in thinking brightly, especially since no one in any position to spend any of that money has any cause or likelihood to listen to me.
Blast, all I meant to say here was that it's cool to have some big rock bands coming to the arena, and that I plan to see them ...
Spoke Thursday evening with the Kalamazoo punk band Love Muffin, and had good talk on the meaning of punk.
The band, a three-piece punk outfit a lá The Stooges or The MC5, are not what one might consider the "typical punk." They own houses, have jobs, they don't wear the plaid-dirty-jeans-mohawk uniform, they have a Mercedes, and, well, they're nice.
To them — and to me — punk is not all of those things. You don't have to dress a certain way or necessarily act a certain way to be a punk. It's about, as Love Muffin frontman Gabe Zalenski said, "enjoying the art form" and about a spirit of individuality and freedom.
And of course, there is that fast, raw, distorted, snarling, fun-loving, boozing sound.
Wrapping yourself up in an image is conforming, as that old movie "SLC Punk" said, and that is forfeiting the spirit of punk.
I work in a world of egos, where most everybody must be a specialist in something, and they take it very seriously. In the rock journalism elitism, punk is something very specific, and those that don't fit the mold are posers, a sinful word in this biz.
But I have difficulty buying into all that. Putting laws on the lawless, rules on the unruly, regulations on the irregular is sacrilegious, in my book. That's getting away from the art form and concentrating on the form alone, and that's just lame.
Interview with Love Muffin:
Some local shows happening this weekend:
SOME LOCAL MUSIC NEWS:
This was posted on MySpace by King Of The Forest:
Tony Fields' "Elegant Lady":
Interview with Tony Fields:
My conversation last week with Tony Fields left me bittersweet and optimistic.
Fields, 50, remembers when the Battle Creek music scene was all-powerful in the Midwest, a much-needed, beloved cousin to the Chicago and Detroit music scenes. He was around when several venues hosted several groups, when regional success was a reality for many, when there was a wide variety of sounds sweet and soulful coming from the Cereal City.
Fields' music is even a hark back to the Motown-doo-wop that made our Hi-Lo Club famous. It's smooth,
groove-heavy, soulful and that old kind of simple music about a man loving a woman. It's a sound seldom heard anymore, and it made me wish I'd been born 30, 40 years earlier than I had.
But Fields also spoke heavy on optimism about the $85 million investment that the Kellogg Co. — where Fields works — and Battle Creek Unlimited are set to make downtown. Fields is hopeful the revamped Battle Creek will get foot traffic downtown, giving clubs reason to open, stay open and invest, making downtown the nightlife hub it once was.
That optimism is not shared by many; hope seems as old-school as the Hi-Lo and Fields' music. But I need to hold on to it in these weird times.
As I told a commenter on my other blog, I am not optimistic about most things — I consider myself a realist — but I must see a flickering light somewhere, or I'll go cold and frigid inside. And I'm too damn young to do that.
My conversation with fields, for a story in today's WOW, ultimately led to the subject of today's Rock Column. I was attempting to be a bit satirical in suggesting $5 million be spent on downtown music venues, but I was also half-serious, trying to show some optimism.
And I think it could really work. With people with soul like Fields, with young people holding on to a bit of hometown pride, and with the pure groove of the music still inside us, I think we can do it.
And then we will be an $85 million sunrise.
ALSO ...
Below, listen to my conversation from tonight with the band Love Muffin, who will be featured in next week's WOW.
Interview with Love Muffin:
In today's WOW, you will find:
Tony Fields' "Elegant Lady":
Interview with Tony Fields:
I have a deep feeling of guilt, festering like fire water deep in a corner of my stomach, somewhere near the spinal cord. It hurts.
Fifty people lost their jobs Tuesday here at the Enquirer, and I'd bet anything at least 25 of them were far more qualified than I, and yet, here I sit, typing this misguided missive to Webland. I feel awful about it, but this is no economy to make self-servicing sacrifices.
Jimi Hendrix keeps playing in my head, "Manic depression is touchin' my soul; I know what I want I just don't know how to go about gettin' it ... Manic depression is catchin' in my soul."
I miss you, Jimi. What would you have to say about all of this mess? What kind of song would you write?
I have a feeling it would be something like that old one. What wisdom you had 41 years ago.
But I keep thinking of our mission, like Robert Warner put it, and know that we newspapers will survive. What we offer — telling the stories that need to be told, holding the government and money-spenders accountable, keeping a historical record — is vital and needed, and we do it better than anyone else.
What other non-government job is mentioned in the U.S. Constitution? The news, like that old and battered document, will survive no matter how it is stretched, contorted, abused, reused, bought or sold or cut.
Even my little old Rock Column and WOW stories profiling local bands, I like to think they're important. It's telling a slice of our community, putting public voices to the stewards of our culture, making these noble artists part of history for good. And the Enquirer is the only place that does that, the only place that can do that.
In the meantime, we need the fast and weird guitar of Hendrix, to help us lick our wounds.
Here are some of my favorite newer videos:
First, we have Springsteen's newest showing:
Then, a cool cover of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" by Fall Out Boy. Very cool guitar solo and breakdown.
Lastly, click here for a very cool video from Black Kids. They won't let me embed it.
NOTE: Click here to join a discussion on the best albums of 2008.
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