I don’t really know any details… but someone might come along and fill them all in. I’ll piece together Chat Room nonsense, incoherent texts, and voice mails that weren’t really left as much as someone just left the phone on and I could overhear some things.

• There was an event on Saturday at the Bohemian House called Jive Turkey.

• It was like Funk Night, I guess… but with Techno Music?

• People were of course doing nothing wrong…

• Police showed up.

• “we were operating under the assumption that this blah blah blah!” You know that one.

• Most kids were smart enough to toss their drugs before the cops searched them, so the floor of the bo house was filled with valuable little baggies and vials.

• This quote was allegedly forwarded me from someone’s Facebook who owns the Bohemian, or squats there, or sometimes goes there, or has driven by once or something: “did you know that the Detroit Police had to pay THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS as part of their Raid on Caid settlement? when will the DPD ever learn that what they do is illegal!? And what we do is legal (at least that’s the assumption I’m operating under).”

Someone reading this might know more details. Here is some more stuff RIGHT HERE!

How was your consumer weekend? Did you buy and eat things you didn’t really need? Congratulations and Happy America!

On Friday, before Electric Six played a set that ranged from the Wildbunch classic, “T.V.,” to a cover of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart,” I witnessed Millions of Brazilians stun the crowd at St. Andrews — and I think the people most stunned by their performance were those of us who had seen them before. Whose ever idea it was to pair a retarded group of guys who play catchy rock music without taking themselves seriously with a professional retarded group of guys who play catchy rock music without taking themselves seriously, well…maybe that’s not such an off-the-wall crazy idea but still, nicely done. I don’t want to give them too much praise because then everyone else in Detroit will hate them, but I wasn’t the only person who said something along the lines of “Holy shit. They’re, like, a real band now.” Congratulations, Millions of Brazillians. You’re all growd up. (photos)

Saturday, I saw Crystal Antlers for the second time this year. I really like that band. The Big Pink were good, too. I described them to someone as “something you could hear on the radio but it wouldn’t make you want to stab yourself in the ears, like most everything else on radio”. It’s nothing new or different. They remind me a lot of Kasabian’s lighter stuff. I can’t remember the last time I’d seen a full-on strobe and smoke stadium rock set at the Magic Stick, but I usually don’t pay that much attention, so it could have been last weekend. Anyway, it was a fun show and the crowd was very receptive of both bands. I missed Javelins because I didn’t think the show would actually start at 9pm. It did.

Eh. What else…

Brendan Benson posted some December tour dates. No, no Detroit gig.

Goober & The Peas is having a reunion show for anyone who was alive when Goober & The Peas was a band. They’re also on this year’s SXSW lineup.

Jonathan Visger (Mason Proper) has a new solo EP you can grab here.

Internet access has been unreliable for most of the week, and won’t be consistent again until Monday when I’m fully moved into my new shithole apartment, so pardon my absence from your world. In the meantime, you can still complain about my older posts or maybe even complain about my older comments on older posts or do whatever else helps you through your co-dependency issues. Just know I’ll always be here for you, but like, on-and off.

Did anyone go out on Wednesday? There were a few shows I wanted to make it out to but didn’t. Tell me about them.

Tonight is the big Electric Six / Millions of Brazilians homecoming gig. E6 is traditionally one of the most fun / drunk times I have at shows so look for me — I’ll be the one throwing up into my purse. It’ll also be interesting to see if, after a national tour, MoBZ can get through a full set without trashing their equipment or being asked to leave. I also have it on good authority that both bands have infused a bit of crabbing into their live set (keep your eyes on Johnny Na$hinal and Zozzy). The Gay Blades are also on the bill. This show always sells out, so get there early.

After that, we’ll race to Lager to catch Chapstik. Most of you will not be able to handle this. I suppose that’s forgivable, so we’ll meet again on Saturday…

I dig The Hard Lessons but, personally, Sloan makes me sick to my stomach. Every one of their songs sound like the goddamn Scooby Doo theme song — all sugary and BEETUS-y. Everyone seems to love them, but it’s not my thing. Instead, I’ll be at The Stick for London’s The Big Pink, Crystal Antlers from “The LBC” and Detroit’s Javelins. I know everyone in this city hates music from 2009 because Detroit is stuck in the Dark Ages, but this is a strong bill if you know anything about the rest of the modern world. Have a sample:

The Big Pink - “Dominos”

Crystal Antlers - “Andrew” (one of my favorite songs of the year)

Javelins - “Out On The Sand”

Saturday Sloan and Sam Roberts are coming from Canada, our neighbor to the north… er, south? If I’ve learned anything by living in Detroit it’s that Canada has a supply of real music fans, and money, and no outstanding warrants to make crossing the border impossible.

They usually show up in droves to support their own, and this time they’re going to get treated to Detroit’s Hard Lessons. The show will happen Saturday night at The Fillmore… I know you have your opinions, and I’m super-anxious to hear all about them. Really.

The Hard Lessons just put out the lp Arms Forest, and if you were lucky or early or something you got your copy on (now sold out?) fancy gold vinyl. Some local stores still have colored vinyl copies if you feel like taking a drive. Good luck.

Every Christmas for the past… lot of Christmases The Hard Lessons go out of their way to bring holiday cheer in the form of crazy postcards, limited singles, and creepo santa’s with available lap space. This year, they’re putting out a gatefold cd single called “Beards Scare Children (unless they’re attached to Santa)”. We have a copy to give to you, along with 2 tickets to the show on Saturday. Would you like them? Best beard photo in the comments will win them. Make sure you fill out your email address, too.

Someone just asked me where to get a couple recent releases and I didn’t have an answer for them. Figured I’d post them here because what the hell else am I going to do with this site? Anyone know of a web site or local shop that stocks either of the following?

• The Hentchmen - whatever the newest 7″ release on Italy Records is that they were selling at DIY Fest a few months ago. (I didn’t even know these existed, must be the 2nd part of the “Collage Cover” Series)

• Lord Scrummage - the Dead Dogs 7″ (The Spill Out Series Volume 3, Superior Belly. Red vinyl. These were released at the same show as Deastro’s “Mind Altar” cassettes in Eastern Market last month. I have one. I rule.)
UPDATE: contact dial81[at]superiorbelly dot com for this

On a related note, The Hentchmen released yet another 7″ on Bellyache this past weekend at the Smalls anniversary show. The first 100 come with an official Bellyache Candy Store “Hentch Crunch” Chocolate Bar. You can get that here.

This is the Pop Project video for the song, “Coerce”. Normally I’d follow that sentence with a humorous or uncomfortable comment but I’ll let the video take care of that for me.

For my time and money, Electric Six is one of best live shows going. They’re also one of the most consistent bands of the last decade — an opinion I’m sure some of you are going to argue with, despite the fact that I’m the expert here and nobody cares what you think.

The band is finally playing Detroit on their Kill tour, with Millions of Brazilians and The Gay Blades, this Friday at St Andrews Hall and we have a pair of tickets to give away. All you have to do is tell me your favorite part of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Keep in mind I have not seen this movie, nor do I know anything about Twilight. I’ll randomly pick one entry from someone who was smart enough to fill in the e-mail field before they submitted their comment. Good luck, assbags.

Eh…just to be clear Five Three Dial Tone Records has nothing to do with The Few Records. Neither does Eat This City.

I built an entire post around the fact that their logo looks similar to ours but I have since learned, from the amount of confused e-mails, that a lot of you had no idea this label even existed…or had a logo…that looked kind of like ours…if you hold it up to the mirror and take a black and white photo…and develop it in China. Hilarious, right? Apparently not.

Don’t let that stop you from going to the show tomorrow, but please stop e-mailing me about Silverghost records.

In these hard economic times, our record label, Five Three Dial Tone Records, has made the difficult decision to outsource most of our labor to China. Upon arriving there and presenting our business, we learned that, unfortunately, the Five Three Dial Tone name and logo translates to something obscene and offensive to the chinese people. We were forced to create a new name and logo to conduct our business overseas, so we ran our logo through Babel Fish, translated it to Chinese and this is what it spit out.

x Chinese Babel Fish =

Introducing The Few Records, a subsidiary of Five Three Dial Tone Records. 53DT will still be putting out the high-quality, collector-grade vinyl releases you have come to expect, but that shit’s expensive and we never break even. Running The Few out of China will hopefully get us out of the red, so to speak, and help subsidize the cost of our Five Three Dial Tone releases.

Because The Few is based in China, and time runs differently over there, we’re already celebrating our First Year Anniversary this Saturday at the Majestic Complex. We don’t actually have any releases at this point, because all of our time and effort has gone into pressing more copies of the 52 Week High 7″ on the Five Three Dial Tone label, but we’re going to celebrate the signing of Silverghost and Steven Robert.

Silverghost, you should be familiar with by now. Marcie and Deleano both played our first record release show as half of F’KE BLOOD, and they’ve become one of the most consistently outstanding live acts in the city. Steven Robert you’ll remember as one of the other two guys who DJed with us at The CAID on Art Fag night. He’s most affectionately known as “DJ Smurf”.

There’s some other stuff going on that night too, as we have both the Magic Stick and the Majestic Café reserved for our event. We even convinced Carl Craig and Zoos of Berlin to play. So come on out and take part in our global domination. Resistance is futile.

I don’t know anything about advertising but I buy a lot of dumb and useless shit. That must mean the ads are working, or something…

So when 4 (big?) Detroit Advertising Agencies were given the task of coming up with a print ad to make Detroit more desirable to young hip creative professionals… let me show you what they came up with:

http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/fortune_poll/index.html

Okay. You can just discuss amongst yourself how God awful these are. Also, I’ll assume any young hip creative awesome sweet professional has access to an internet search engine, and cnn, and all the other places that constantly point out Detroit as the anus of the Midwest. What do I know, though? Maybe the Kid Rock  poster that claims Detroit “worked for him” will change their minds

While you’re wondering how these professional advertising agencies did so poorly on their task, I’ll just be over here watching this Pure Michigan video. Hey! Isn’t that that one guy?