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Music Notes

Music Notes image
Parent Issue
Day
11
Month
April
Year
1975
OCR Text

Bob Seger and the Silver Ballet Band played a kick-ass set of tight Motor City rock and roll to a greatly overstuffed Chances Are last week. Seger's 90 minutes of classic and new tunes was refreshingly intense in these days of almost no danceable rock and roll in Ann Arbor. Versions of the new song "Katmandu" and older "Heavy Music" were high-points.

Also in town last week were two successive nights of music at the Michigan Union Ballroom. On Sunday night, six local aggregations donated their music at a "Get Out to Vote" dance sponsored by the Friends of the People's Ballroom. The seven hours of music was an invigorating shot in the arm to the local band scene, as was the live broadcast of the proceedings on WCBN-FM. Thanks to the Rabbits, Mojo Boogie Band, Diamond Rio, the Silvertones, Iris Bell, and Big Daddy G and the Night Train for helping to turn out the electorate.

Monday night April 7, the dynamic ensemble known as on Scot-Heron and the Midnight Band filled the Union with the sound of jazz fused with politics, presented by the Friends of the SUN. The band's sax, guitar, piano and percussion masters were impressive, even inspirational, as was Gil's poetic monologues on the pardoning of Nixon and "the alphabet people" -the FBI, CIA. etc. The Midnight Band was a perfect complement to the election eve, which it appears resulted in victory for Ann Arbor's progressive majority.

RADIO NEWS: John Sinclair will be the guest on the WCBN Saturday night Party Show on April 12, starting at 11pm. The show, hosted by SUN staffer David Fenton, will feature tapes from the 1973 Blues and Jazz Festival . . . Speaking of WCBN, if you're into rhythm and blues, the campus station features some fine R and B programming each night from 7 to 11pm . . . WAAM's Mojo hosts a good R & B show, too, from 6-10 nightly. Good music, though a bit too much hype ... In a recent issue the SUN reported that two former WNRZ-FM disc jockeys had turned down job offers at the new "W103 Quadrock" station because they felt that 103's crassly commercial approach could not succeed in this community. Our apologies--actually only one of the former NRZ  people was officially offered the job and turned it down on that basis.

Ann Arbor Music Mart recently donated Shakey Jake's first electric guitar and amplifier.  Look for some incredible street jams this summer...The Otherside has disbanded, which is too bad.  But even worse is that the fire in the Old German destroyed the new home of A2 School of Creative Music...Johnny Bedanjek and Jim McCarty of ex-Rockets fame have formed an new band with lead singer Rusty Day, formerly with Detroit ... The UAC concert series is about to draw to a close for this year with shows from John Denver, Phoebe Snow, and Jackson Browne. It was a largely disappointing year from UAC which chose to emphasize a narrow genre of music this season. Hopefully some of the more exciting kinds of concert bookings that marked the series' past will be allowed to return next year.

Alice Cooper has been banned in Australia. Look for a review of his Detroit show in the next SUN... Paul Anka is preparing an anti-abortion sequel to the syrup song "You're Having My Baby".  This one is called "You're Killing My Baby"...One of the more exciting tours coming in May combines John McLaughlin and Jeff Beck, a recent jazz-rock convert.  Beck's drummer will be Pretty Purdie, versatile, hard-driving jazz and R&B skin master.