What A Blowout!

What A Blowout!

Still trying to clear the head after a 4 night binge of self induced debauchery? Then you must have been romping through the streets of Hamtramck for the 12^th edition of the MetroTimes Blowout along with Dr2 and our Crew, numbering upwards of a dozen of us jumping in & out of over 12 different venues, taking in over 23 acts during the course of this years Blowout! What A Blowout it was! All though the weather didn't wreak havoc on this year's event until Saturday night, it did appear that Blowout 12 was well attended, never ran into an empty venue as in some past years, and actually  Saturday's rain turned on & off at the most opportune times as we shuttled across Ham Town. Friday night had Dr2 checking out a slew of bands we've never had the chance to catch before, a definite bonus of attending the Blowout! Starting off at the Atlas Bar, which is actually a converted house that sits on a corner in the middle of a residential neighborhood, reason enough to just drop in, besides we wanted to catch Eddie Baranek's Battling Siki which we followed up with Four Hour Friends, before sliding down the street to the K of C Hall where we caught the end of the Terrible Two's set as well as Alan Schuerman in the Lounge, then caught some of the fanatical Lee Marvin Computer Arm. They really need to think about hanging something on the walls or from the ceiling of that god awful sounding room to at least try to improve the acoustics, if not, then drop it altogether and move the "big" shows over to the New Dodge. I don't care who plays there, NO ONE can tame that beast, it just out & out sucks they way it is. We eventually found our way out of the cave, and dropped into Small's for the Grande Nationals, who by far had the best set we saw Friday night before we took in Broadzilla over at the New Dodge. First time in this joint and Dr2 was impressed with everything about this venue including the awesome sight lines and fantastic sound, kind of reminds us of a miniature Crofoot in layout.

 

Saturday saw Dr2 load up not only the Dr2 Bus, but a convoy of sorts, as we headed into Hamtramck and the final night of Blowout 12, hydroplaning most of the way there! After great weather, for early March anyways, the heavens opened up tonight and tried to put out the Party that had been burning brightly for the past four days, but from what we saw it didn't dampen anyone's spirits the least bit as the streets of Hamtramck were just as busy as they had been all week! Kelly's Bar was the destination tonight where we were all set to catch Novada & then Lies Unknown. Surprised, to say the least, that Novada was a complete no show, even after nice write up last week over at mortorcityrocks.com, I mean how does a band pull off something like that? The biggest local music festival on the face of the Earth and you miss it? To make matters worst was that as a soaking wet Lies Unknown, who had a 10:20 set time, started to load in an

Los Vikings Del Muerto Satruday @ Kelly's Bar

hour early, word came down that the 3^rd band at 11:20 was also going to be a no show!? I guess the owner of the Atlas asked if they'd go on at 10:10 and "play as long as you want...", so play they did, giving everyone their entire self-titled debut album along with the "Kick Out The Jams" cover of the Mitch Ryder classic It's Alright. They even had the sound down tight in that room, I guess with the extra time to set-up, the sound guy made sure everything was right. It was cool to see a room stuffed full of music buffs jamming along with the band, even though they never heard or seen of them before. Best set we seen this year @ The Blowout! I guess everyone else liked them pretty well too as the lead singer agreed to play an additional ½ hour set of covers that

Friendly Foes Finishing Out The Blowout With a Bang @ The Blowout!

turned into a drunk fest, everyone singing along with him from Journey to Cash! This gave us a chance to hop over into Baker's Streetcar to catch the end of Doop & The Inside Outlaws set and some of those Spitting Nickels, another one of those Baranek projects. That place was packed as the Nickels rocked the "Car", making next to impossible to move through that room, but we did eventually find our way upfront for awhile before returning to Kelly's for the Los Vikings Del Muerto featuring Elliot Moses as the guitar king! Boy do these guys come at you hard and fast, great set from these guys too! With the Vikings of Death finishing up, it was off to the Belmont for a Blowout ending set from the Friendly Foes featuring the antics of Ryan Allen. True to form, Allen delivered the banter while annihilating that small room which was packed to the street, surprised we were even able to squeeze in! All & all an amazing week of Detroit Music! Remember to stop over at the Dr2 Photo Gallery for the Dr2 pics from the week. Now it'll take the rest of this week to recover....... DetroitRockReview.com - The Only Place For Local Music News & Reviews!