Well, friends, the winter of our discontent has violently birthed the summer of our collective heat-glazed maddening. As this wretched season looms oppressively, thoughts turn to the extinguishing of purity, goodness, life and innocence with the calloused hands of chaos hardened in the void, and…wait, I believe I lost my train of thought. What I meant to say, dear readers, is that another fun and action-packed weekend awaits us! Hope you’ve got your sunscreen ready, because here’s your guide to nonstop excitement in metro Detroit!

FRIDAY
Motor City Comic Con descends on Novi this weekend and will feature appearances by Marvel’s Stan Lee and stars of the “Boondock Saints,” plus more than a typical person’s share of costumed horseplay. If you’re the sort of person who enjoys the serenity of walking through a crowded convention center wearing blood-drenched coveralls and carrying a chainsaw still warm from recent use and not attract undue attention, this is your kind of event! (http://www.motorcitycomiccon.com/)

SATURDAY
When you spend a good deal of your time sitting alone in dark rooms, staring unblinkingly forward, chances are at least some of those hours are whiled away in a mainstream movie-torium. In one of those situations, the documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” may have flickered before your lifeless eyes. If you retained any of its content, you may want to catch its star, Detroit musician Sixto Rodriguez, giving his biggest hometown performance to date at the Masonic Temple. (http://www.themasonic.com)

SUNDAY
My experience with symphonic music is limited to late-night sessions in which I try on my newest wigs and cavort across my veranda while Mozart provides the backdrop. However, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, in an apparent effort to reached the unwashed proletarian masses, is presenting a weekend-long tribute to the music of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, whose “Helter Skelter” in particular was of formative importance to me. (http://dso.org)

Chicago and Detroit are in love. So much so that they have a foreign exchange program for their short films. Christy LeMaster, director of The Nightingale (a microcinema in Chicago) is curating about an hour of Chicago’s finest influential and experimental films.

Cinema should only be taken in a dark room with rows of people facing the same direction. Without the interference of youtube ads, fast forwarding, and email notifications. Complete immersion between you and the electric shadows. Lose yourself and give your senses over to Chicago’s artists. It’s love.

WREST (2012) from Kent Lambert on Vimeo.

PROGRAM DETAILS: (58 minutes total)
Jodie Mack
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT (2011, 16mm transferred to video, 3m)

Alexander Stewart & Lilli Carré
CRUX FILM (2013, video, 5m)

Fern Silva
PERIL OF THE ANTILLES
(2011, 16mm transferred to video, 6m)

Jennifer Reeder
TEARS CANNOT RESTORE HER: THEREFORE I WEEP (2011, video, 10m)

Theodore Darst
STYROFOAM (2010, video, 3m)

Jessica Bardsley
LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT: A FILM ABOUT JOANN ELAM
(2012, 8mm & 16mm transferred to video, 8m)

Latham Zearfoss
HOME MOVIE (2012, video, 6m)

Monica Panzarino
MONICA PANZARINO SINGS THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER (2011, video, 4m)

Thorne Brandt
AGOD (2013, video, 5m)

Kent Lambert
WREST (2012, Super-8mm & 16mm transferred to video, 5m)

Jon Satrom
VELOCANIM_RBW_X-DEMO (2010, video, 3m)

Well it seems that after a solid month of erratic weather, spring has finally arrived in Michigan. Which of course means vastly improved “scenery” in every direction you look, if you know what I mean — right, fellas? (What I mean is ladies not wearing terribly much in the way of clothing.) However, if you’re anything like me, and you have some familiarity with the sexually prohibitive effects of, for instance, state-ordered chemical castration, you may seek indoor activities to distract you from the thought of what can never be.

So here’s my regular metro Detroit weekend roundup!

FRIDAY
If you’d like to step back from the void and give the demons something to momentarily distract themselves with, I highly recommend an evening of improv comedy. Throughout May, the Go Comedy! theater in Ferndale hosts sketch, stand-up and improvisational comedy performances several times a week. Start your weekend by seeing presumably well-adjusted individuals perform as if their very lives are at stake, which, who knows, maybe they are. (http://www.gocomedy.net/)

The Library seemed to be the epicenter of the evening. Phantom Cats opened up—fucking amazing as always. The mic couldn’t do Liz’s Fifth Element wails justice, but the magic was still there. For my money, the Phantom Cats are laying down the most dynamic, beautiful songs in town. Then—proving that at least some amount of thought was put into arranging the acts—Pewter Cub and the Pupils performed, respectively. Both bands have locked into what I believe Kenny Loggins fondly called “The Danger Zone”. I was really just glad to see that Dave had gotten out of that Ecuadoran prison in time to play with both groups.

However, the best two bands of the evening were found at opposing ends of the Woodward strip. The Fencemen, from Lansing, rocked out to a packed WAB. With no shortage of power, the band ripped it up. Want a string of adjectives to describe their performance, you say? How about this: their foreboding energy rattled the desperate air. My favorite part was their drummer. He has this great drummer face—it sort of switches between this look of intense concentration and a smirk that suggests he just considered the most diabolical act imaginable.

Then, over at Go Comedy, My Pal Val performed. It was one of those shows where you consider that perhaps a 3-day festival should be held where just My Pal Val plays. Where the Fencemen were intense, My Pal Val was fun—plaintive and cool. If Jimi Hendrix and the Pixies had a baby, it would listen to My Pal Val.

And what of this final night? Why—Odd Hours are playing. They hit the Library’s non-stage at 9:20. Anything after that is just a bonus.

You guys/ladies/other love Black Moth Super Rainbow so much we thought you’d like to see them for free! March 5/10 Magic Stick, all you gotta do is tell us your favorite bug (comment below or tweet @motorcityrocks). Winner (of ticket +1) will be chosen at random on 5/5 (at whatever time I wake up). Void where prohibited by law, yadda yadda.

Steven Lane Dwyer, 48, works as a third-shift factory custodian in the metro Detroit area and is the FBI’s primary suspect in the garrotting deaths of thirteen nursing students throughout the Midwest between 2003 and 2007. Dubbed the “Nurse Neck Killer” by the national media, Dwyer also is suspected during the same period in the disappearances of a further half-dozen presumed-dead young women whose remains have never been recovered. Currently free on a technicality pending retrial, he writes a nightlife column, “Have a Killer Weekend,” that appears on MotorCityRocks.com every Thursday.

I don’t know any of you people, or what you want from me specifically, but if I were looking to fill my social calendar with opportunities to be seen in all the right places, here’s where I’d start for the weekend of May 2-5.

THURSDAY, MAY 2
On Thursday, the Magic Stick welcomes the Beach Fossils, who I don’t know the first thing about. The young people I surreptitiously follow on social media, however, seem fairly excited by the prospect of seeing this performance. One of the opening acts is called Twin Peaks, which strikes me as an uncreative band name, since it’s simply the title of a popular early-90s television program. Then again, I do remember that particular program featuring its fair share of young women being murdered, so consider the benefit of the doubt enthusiastically granted! (http://majesticdetroit.com/magic-stick-detroit/)

I’m too big of a nerd to have ever experimented with psychedelics but if I ever do I hope my experience is something like a Black Moth Super Rainbow show. Having just released their latest record, Cobra Juicy, last fall, BMSR are hitting Detroit on May 10th as they return to the Magic Stick. I saw them there a few years ago and the experience was INTENSE. I have no idea how many smoke machines they had going and how long it took but they got the entire Magic Stick cloudier than any goth night I’ve ever been to. All the better for the insane shit BMSR were projecting onto a screen during their performance. It was something to be seen in a day and age when most bands just show up in their skinny jeans and limp through their set with little passion or energy and expect adulation. BMSR want to fuck with your head and your ears and they succeed even if you’re more sober than Ian MacKaye. If you’ve been enjoying the last few darker Flaming Lips records you can’t afford to miss Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Opening for Black Moth Super Rainbow are Hood Internet. If you’re into Girl Talk but want to hear something about 1,000,000 times less pandering and obvious then Hood Internet are for you. Not so much mashup artists as just really talented producers/mixers, Hood Internet just released “The Mixtape Volume Seven” on their Soundcloud (http://soundcloud.com/hoodinternet/the-hood-internet-mixtape-volume-seven). I ‘m sitting here at work listening to the mix right now, it’s 11am and I still want to start busting moves. Seeing them pull this off live should be super fantastic. Get to the Stick early because Hood Internet will make you shake your ass and then Black Moth Super Rainbow will rattle your brain.

Watch this and know that Wednesday, May 15th at The Shelter you can see Lovelife, Capital Cities and Gold Fields are also on the bill. Doors at 7pm. Show at 8pm. $15.

Post-punk R&B meets T-Pain or dark chillwave delights? YOU BE THE JUDGE!

let us know what you think in the comments!

What if there was only one Spice Girl, and she was a witch? Charli XCX “True Romance” 8 out of 10. THIS IS MY FULL REVIEW.

04 Charli XCX – Stay Away

Order the debut album TRUE ROMANCE from iTunes or somewhere else.

Here’s what I do implore you to do: Call up some people you know who don’t go to live shows and bring them along. Let them know $20 is not a lot of money, and that the radio only plays shit. TV is can be downloaded and watched later, and it won’t kill them to walk between bars. Tell them all about your favorite acts your favorite tracks and all the times you saw them before. Introduce them to the musicians and talk to some people you don’t know. Actively build the community. We can do that, right guys? oh and make them buy a cd or mp3 or something. And tell them this is your favorite website.

Full Schedule
Little photos and audio samples of all performers