The View from Nowhere
A Final Word...
Ok, this is my last The View From Nowhere column for AGENDA and I'm really tempted to say things like "Alan Goldsmith has left the building" or thanks to my hard work at focusing my brilliant and clever words on the local music scene a thousand flowers of rock'n'roll are blooming or... whatever. I guess if I had worked on my novel instead of trying to draw attention to — and celebrate the greatness of — what's happening around Ann Arbor, the word counts would have matched by now and I would have downed a lot less draft beer and scotch on all the late night research trips... and seen a lot less amazingly moving music.
Anyway, the entire point of this column for AGENDA, and previous ones for Current and Metro Times, was to wake up unhip folks to the great music scene this town has played host to for years, in spite of only occasional national and local media attention. My thesis has been that the music around here is world class and that with enough attention the rest of the world would catch on to this universal truth. This is going to happen and in the near future idiot out of town writers will be phoning me up for my witty commentary on what it was REALLY like seeing Frank Allison and Lisa Hunter and Kari Newhouse and The Holy Cows and Morsel and whatever band Khalid Hanifi happens to be fronting in tiny dives like the Blind Pig and The Gypsy Cafe. I can't wait and I'll try not to be cynical.
That concept has been the entire idea for The View From Nowhere (the title was lifted from Jim Atkinson's brilliant bar-hopping work, TVFN, which said the point of doing serious drinking was to find a bar where nobody knew your name so you could actually escape and BE nowhere). Ann Arbor is wrongly considered to be a nowhere place when it comes to being compared with Seattle, Athens, New York, L.A. or wherever taste-setters want to claim worthy music or art is originating from. So these words are coming from this nowhere. But the joke was, and is, on all these so called trendsetters from the New York Times, L.A. Weekly, Billboard or fill-in-the-blank.
The clubs, bars, coffee houses and free outdoor gigs (West Park, the Art Fair, Top of the Park) are loaded with scores and scores of great performers and if I were you, I'd enjoy this wonderful secret while it lasts.
It may sound silly these days were pop music becomes more and more the output of billion-dollar multi-international corporations, but one of the main reasons I came to Ann Arbor in the first place was to walk the streets and breathe in the historic musical past this place has to offer. The MC5, Iggy and the Stooges and Bob Seger were almost saints (ok, I'm getting carried away perhaps...). Things were not what they seem, of course. Rob Tyner and Fred Smith died way too young, so did Stooges original bassist Dave Alexander and Bob Seger is a stupid-ass ballad-writing Republican now. But this sense, that Ann Arbor was and IS one of the most important places on the planet when it comes to rock and folk and pop and anything musical, has always been the inner light of my love of music.
I'm also tempted to settle a few scores, toss a couple of good-bye kisses or give you a few last tips about what you need to check out this month. Ok, The Ann Arbor News sucks and it's almost criminal when it comes to how out of touch they are with local music coverage. But CURRENT and the Michigan Daily and the Observer are doing just fine, thank you. Local rock commercial radio is a joke (WIQB-FM, you are such a waste of electricity...), but The Holy Cows are getting lots of airplay (thank you WIQB-FM) and WCBN and WEMU are taking up the slack.
The Blind Pig STILL has their silly "Water, One Dollar" and all the charm of a funeral home, but somehow manages to be one of the best rock'n'roll clubs in the nation. So far there hasn't been a COOL local record label vis-a-vis major sales, but Skillet Records and Thursday Records continue to pump out classic stuff.
The local music scene is like life. There is good and bad, things are not the way you like, some people hate you, some people love you, some people will never have a clue.
As for ME, just because I'm not writing a monthly column for this newspaper, my life is not going to change. I'm still going to be hanging out on the coolest barstool I know at the Tap Room (you know, the one at the ends of the bar, by the door...), drinking glasses of their great house red wine and catching sets by Lady Sunshine and the X Band or Steve Nardella. Or sweating like hell and drinking German beer upstairs at the Heidelberg while Mr. Largebeat or the Cult Heroes knock off legendary nights of killer rock'n'roll to a half-filled club. Maybe I'll be sitting at a quiet table at the Gypsy Cafe, sipping something strong and feeling my soul being carried into another place by the music of soon-to-be-famous Lisa. Hunter or Brian Lillie.
I'll be doing this like I always have because this music is GREAT. I just won't be carrying a notebook or trying to scan the cover charge. Or taking notes. But some of this just may end up in the novel...