The Last Candle

Most of the live concerts I catch require at minimum 40-minute trip into Detroit. The destination (and there are a few, all similar) is a dimly lit concrete and brick venue, enveloped in smoke, cheap beer on tap and staffed and stuffed by metalheads wearing clothes several shades darker than my own (most of my shirts are blue, not black). The evening is spent staring up at a band as another high-tempo, high-volume anthem blasts the audience backwards from the dual 10-feet amp stacks. Good times, really.

Want to see a metal show in the Detroit? Boy, you’ll get all that I described above, and possibly more — visit Harpo’s, for example, and you can order a hot dog at the Coney Island next door, speaking your order through a thin vent embedded in the bullet-resistant plastic that separates the customers from the cooks. (See also the web site for Harpo’s, which actually is an indicative measure of the venue: stupidly straight-forward, ugly, and black.) But while I gladly go through the grungy movements necessary to see my favorite rock and prog bands, after last night’s Chick Corea and John McLaughlin jazz show at the lovely Hill Auditorium — smokeless, seated, and fashions in a variety of hues and shades — I wonder why I just don’t buy a good pair of closed-ear headphones and get my high-volume rock-and-roll intake that way, leaving more money and time for the jazz and blues.

Besides a change of genre, an uptick in occurrences would also be welcome. The number of live concerts I see per year is fairly low, once every two months or so. A small blip appeared in May 2007, when I visited three different venues within 31 days for three great Porcupine Tree shows, but since then the frequency has been relatively linear — and the magnitude low.

This year has been better for live concerts, so far: The magnificent Kodo drummers cranked out an amazing set as I watched from the upper-far balcony on February 13th, and then last night was the Corea/McLaughlin show. And then this Wednesday, eccentric and vibrant singer-songwriter Andrew Bird will be jamming and whistling along at the Michigan Theater, and I’ll be there to see him. That’s two great shows in the space of a few days — if only the regular concert schedule around Ann Arbor was that great more often.

And there’s the thing: the schedule in this massively-cultural university city is probably quite good, but I haven’t pay enough attention to know, and according to an exchange last Friday I haven’t even been to the good venues in town. During that Friday conversation, a co-worker who spends significantly more time and effort investing herself in the pursuit of jazz, and who essentially opened me to the genre through artists like Béla Fleck, took me aback when she stated that the Hill Auditorium was not very good. I thought everybody liked the Hill’s acoustics. I do. But my co-worker prefers Rackham Auditorium, which is just around the corner from the Hill and is a smaller, more intimate venue, and the Power Center, also nearby on the campus.

After my colleague stated her preferences, the obvious and initial reaction was, How can you not like the Hill’s sound? Everybody likes the Hill!

But then I realized I’ve never been to either Rackham or the Power Center. What if those other joints do sound better than the lovely Hill? I’ve been missing out, no doubt about that. I haven’t even bothered to take the first step.

But Corea and McLaughlin played the Hill this last Saturday night, good sound or mediocre sound. Despite our differences about the Hill’s acoustic, the show itself was fantastic — over three hours of mind-blowin’ mastery, improv and contemporary jazz atmosphere was enjoyed by a near-full house. My friend and I had better seats for this concert than I had for the Kodo show, this time being on the lower mezzanine, house-left. We had a good view of the stage and the full Five Peace Band, watching rapt for the duration of the show while the fleet-fingered Corea and his perfect-poised cohort McLaughlin teamed up with alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett, virtuoso bassist Christian McBride (who played both electric and upright bass, the latter both fingerpicked and bowed), and the eight-armed Brian Blade on drums (“Sharp as a knife,” as McLaughlin introduced him in a classically cool demeanor that made the obvious simile more than welcome). The crew played a serious but lofty set, the highlight being the second half of the show, which featured a 30+ minute arrangement by Chick Corea (Hymn to Andromeda) that ran a gamut of colors and feelings. Absolutely brilliant, all of it.

But I’ll be damned if the show acoustics didn’t sound all that great.

The first part of the set was almost muddy, a descriptor of the Hill I wouldn’t have imagined using prior to Saturday’s show. The instruments were not homogenized early on; Chick Corea was most sensitive to the difference in instrument volumes, turning around on his piano bench to look at the sound booth, pointing and motioning to the floor, silently exclaiming to turn it down. When his order wasn’t carried out to his satisfaction, Chick stood up from his bench, walked over and visited the sound booth in person, undoubtably delivering a few exact words. Turn it down.

The sound was better after that.

But now that the Hill has suffered a minor (and easily reparable) blow to its otherwise stellar reputation, and now that I’ve walked into a minor streak of local and excellent concerts, I’m wondering else is playing in this fabulous city and whether I can keep the pace.

To do so, I’d need to delve more deeply into the local circuit. The University Musical Society’s Winter 2009 season is coming to a close, but the Michigan Theater will continue to host shows throughout the summer. And then there’s the various live clubs — Goodnite Gracie’s, or the Firefly Club, the latter especially looking like an excellent outlet for regular jazz and blues. My co-worker also mentioned that one of her friends hosts live jazz performances with internationally-known musicians in his own house, which would be a completely new and crazy experience altogether.

Or I could just walk down to the Blind Pig, Ann Arbor’s closet thing to a club dive for rock and roll. After all, why visit a city 40 minutes away for smoke and chains when I could walk down the street, take a left turn and a few steps to get the same experience?

A Kodo drummer faces off against the majestic ōdaiko. Some rights reserved, Wesley Oostvogels.

Nearly two hours into the Kodo concert, with me nestled in my too-small seat deep inside the University of Michigan’s acoustically-perfect (or so I’ve heard many times) Hill Auditorium, the giant ōdaiko drum (seen above) was carefully pulled out to center-stage, finally brought out to the forefront after many, many minutes of the evening’s demonstration of incredible skill and hypnotic rhythm. Everyone in the audience was expecting the king drum to make a stand eventually, of course — the drum was destined to go off in the third act — but the implicit guarantee had no affect on reducing the high anticipation preceding the drum’s appearance.

The ōdaiko used by Kodo is truly a magnificent drum, carved from a single tree, the sequoia of drums, and when the Bruce Lee-physiqued drummer struck the ōdaiko’s face, the reverberation that rolled, mumbled, growled, murmured and chortled throughout the auditorium was easily the richest, most complex and nuanced percussive note I’ve ever heard, a subtle and mixed combination of the best sounds proceeding a thunderstorm on the horizon, wind chimes and all.

So strong and immediate was the effect of that single, momentous beat that an elderly gentlemen, who sat a couple rows behind me and could be heard rudely chatting during various parts to the show, was compelled to blurt, “Oh, Jesus!” which sent a titter of amusement and agreement throughout the vicinity and me into thoughts of leaping over the chair backs and crashing a bongo set over his head.

That Friday the 13th show was a terrific concert, definitely a favorite out of all the years of live performances. Adding to the experience was the fact that I secured tickets only three or four days before the show, leaping on the train just as it was leaving the station, but the distance between the stage and our back balcony back seats didn’t diminish the performance an iota.

On the way out of the theater, jostling and trafficked by the singular direction of the droves of audience members leaving the auditorium, the substance and strength of one of the played pieces, Monochrome, somehow pried itself loose from the folds in my brain that contained the Kodo concert and sauntered over to cozy up with the memories of other favorite songs, songs that were similar to Monochrome in vague aspects. Or maybe they weren’t related at all, and I was just nuts.

But that wayward association between Monochrome and other contemporary favorites stuck around, and not one to avoid sharing good music when I have the chance, below I demonstrate my love for repetitive-but-malleable harmony and big dynamics, two composition techniques prevalent in the Kodo concert. I also think that repetition and dynamics created the subtle-but-significant association that brought Monochrome and the soon-to-be-revealed songs together.

First: repetition. Here we go.

Repetition of a theme or melody is nothing new in music: if one Mr. Bach or another Mr. Beethoven were around today, they’d fill your head with examples until you were begging for mercy. And repetition is not only limited to music, either: film can use separate but similar (or even alike) shots, cuts, spoken lines, sequences or any number of other designs to connect and lend gravitas to an otherwise unassociated collection of moments.

The mastery demonstrated in the Bach and Beethoven pieces is somewhat different compared to what I’m about to demonstrate here, i.e., prog rock — roll over, Beethoven, as it’s been sung.

To start off, here’s the first forty seconds from British prog-rock supergroup Frost*’s Black Light Machine:

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Among all the thing I like about this song, which runs for 10:07 and offers a lot to enjoy within its duration, that bright guitar-tapping harmony, the very first thing heard, is the stand-out. The sample runs throughout for most of the full song in a few different keys, and it is undoubtably tune’s flow and foundation. Black Light Machine contains one of my favorite guitar solos of all time, and the guitar-tap harmony forms the backbone to it as well, although it’s much less prominent than the beginning of the song.

Here’s a clip from part of the solo — listen closely to catch the tapping mixed into the background:

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There is something about that same sample, repeated over and over again with slight but significant changes that carries the story from one sequence to another, like the setting or characters in a book. Take away that sample from Black Light Machine, and it would be a very different song, and probably a lesser one.

The band Porcupine Tree, another prog-rock group from England, offers several more examples. The frontman and songwriter of Porcupine Tree, Steven Wilson, has musical roots in the deep underground of British experimental electronic pop and rock, so intricate soundscapes, loops and endless eddies of fluid samples and undulating harmonies are present in all of his works. The first and title track from the Deadwing album begins like this:

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While the tone of the song is a very somber and restrained portrait (Steven Wilson excels at creating melancholy timbres and soundscapes), in contrast to the brighter Black Light Machine, Deadwing features a repeated ostinato that is not unlike the Black Light Machine repeated harmony; they could almost be long-lost brothers of sorts, who began to be nearly the same but spun off in completely different directions during their life-cycle. This sample too carries throughout the entire song.

Might as well match a solo in Deadwing to Black Light Machine’s, so here’s the tail end of the fuzz-tone guitar solo in Deadwing — notice, again, the same sample that plays during the beginning of the song is providing the foundation:

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Much harder to hear with the heavy guitar, drums, bass and synth over the top, but the somber low-end guitar is still definitely there, providing crucial leverage to the rest of the ensemble. Just to top off the full tune, here’s the final several seconds of Deadwing, which provides another scuzzy guitar solo and full closure to the dominant motif:

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In both Black Light Machine and Deadwing, the repeated harmony provides necessary continuity to the different sections of the music — without the harmony both of these long compositions (Black Light Machine is over fourteen minutes, and Deadwing just over ten) would struggle and fall apart between the suddenly disjointed sections. (Actually, Black Light Machine does lose me a bit anyway towards the end when it segues from guitar-tap soaring groove into a synth-heavy jam session.) In these pieces the ostinato isn’t just a harmony, but the foundation: melodies, other harmonies, drums and percussion all draw from that same strong lineage and base their own voices on the laid groundwork. And it sounds so good.

(While I’m on the subject of this song, a personal gripe: Out of the four Porcupine Tree concerts I’ve attended, including one that supported the Deadwing album, they’ve yet to play the title track of Deadwing live. Not sure why — the band’s had no trouble playing the fourteen-minute Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here or the seventeen-plus-minute Anesthetize in a live venue, so would a little Deadwing be too much to ask? Maybe so — surely the brilliant Steven Wilson has his reasons. Maybe during the next show.)

Now, onto dynamics and volume and big noises.

Sudden changes in dynamics could not be more different compared to repetition of a theme: Where a repetition is typically based in a musical key, is elongated throughout a series of phrases or an entire song and is used to connect sequences together, dynamics are non-tonal, occur in a short range of time and create abrupt jumps. To use a film-editing metaphor, if the repeated melody or harmony is a series of dissolves between cuts, a dynamics shift is a single big shock cut.

Going back to Frost*, finding the shock in this clip from the song Experiments in Mass Appeal, the title track from the latest album, should be no problem:

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The Experiments in Mass Appeal album has several of these “shock cuts.” Here’s another from the song Welcome to Nowhere:

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And finally, this Dead Dead Days clips features not only two abrupt and sudden changes in volume and tone, but it also features a very distinct repetition (it’s no wonder that Dear Dead Days is one of my favorites on the album):

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Porcupine Tree’s Open Car has a similar dynamic jump — nothing so bold as the instantaneous rocketing of Experiments in Mass Appeal, but the change from a single, fuzzy palm-muted guitar riff into a full-on overdriven, off-tempo bass-guitar-drum crunch-fest still surprises me if I’m not paying attention:

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Great music, great.

Repetition connects phrases and sequences; sudden dynamics changes separates them. I admit that most music (including a lot of power metal and prog in my library) uses the sudden attack to say little more than, “Hey, here’s the chorus!” or that popular method where the overdriven guitar and drums joins in the string quartet at the end of yet another power ballad, which is just stupid and boring. But done well, a volume change signals, “Hey, pay attention.” Or, more closely: “Wake up!”

And now, back to Monochrome.

The performance of Monochrome was manned by six drummers who played on smaller drums that were hardly a foot high, but as we, the audience, were to find, the size of the drums didn’t hold back the strength of the sound.

Between performances the audience would chatter quietly until the group on stage proudly interrupted with a new drum, or a melancholy flute melody. Usually the introduction of a new piece was immediately apparent due to the sudden presence of a hammered-out beat or cymbal crash, but Monochrome began with all six drummers, sitting cross-legged in front of their small drums, rolling the drumsticks at what must have been the lightest touch possible without being silent. Being able to realize those quiet rolls up in the balcony took several seconds; the realization in the audience that another piece had begun was gradual, so subtle was the music coming up from the stage. The appearance of the drummers — kneeling, up-right in front of their drums, and hardly moving — didn’t help to signal the beginning of Monochrome.

Once the chatter died, the music that filled the auditorium’s space was almost difficult to comprehend: not only were those small, rolling drumbeats by six separate drummers perfectly timed to sound like a single drummer, but even up at our balcony seats the noise was completely audible. Hill Auditorium, again, was undoubtably responsible for allowing those tiny but significant rolls to reach our balcony seats with such clarity.

The nearly-silent, rain-like drumming continued for what must have been minutes.

And then the players crescendoed the strength of the drumming. Within the space of a few seconds the sound of rain became a violent, torrential thunder- and hailstorm, and rose to a rhythmic crash that was nearly deafening. The din was shocking and all-encompassing, a dramatic and colossal change that had almost unbelievably swelled from the original rain-like patter. And the tune was off to (another) stunning start.

So, there’s that. I don’t think I made the case for repetition and dynamics very well, but if I can hook anyone into the music of Frost* or Porcupine Tree, I’ve done a good deed.

[Edits and typos fixed on 2/26, along with significant pacing and wording changes. I'm progressive!]

The event described in this post occurred over two weeks ago, so this entry is a little late. Nonetheless, the sentiments described are no less potent than the day the event occurred.

I mentioned in a previous last post a short saying, attributed to the late Gene Siskel (but not researched for authenticity, lest someone wants to do the footwork for me), about theater audiences:

A film receives the reaction it deserves from a paid audience.

The paid bit is important, but after a recent dehabilitating affair at the Michigan Theater, the maxim requires a necessary augmentation:

A film receives the reaction it deserves from a paid audience, as long as the audience is not actively encouraged to provide their own reaction.

On October the 31st — Halloween for those who are obliged to forget the only macabre holiday of the year — the Michigan Theater indulged the region with seasonal spirit by showing Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera on the main screen. Catching the Opera screening was a perfect fit to my pledge to see a film at the theater once a week, and having a flick that featured the phenomenal theater organist Steven Bell as the soundtrack moved the show into must-see territory. I even bought pre-release reserved seating online to make sure I’d have a sure chance of being there in case the screening sold out.

Had a pretty good seat, too — middle section, center seat, marred only slightly by the head of the fellow who sat in front me, which took up an unimportant bottom part of a frame. The show-time eventually arrived, and shortly thereafter the master of ceremonies strolled out, a gentlemen I had seen several times introducing Summer Classic Film Series shows, and began to plug the film. Dr. Bell was introduced, who offered a few words about the film and the soundtrack (he wrote it, partially inspired by the original soundtrack — the guy is crazy good), and introduced another musician on the stage, a soprano who would offer her voice during certain film scenes that were staged in the Paris Opera House.

The audience was lively and spirited, large in turn-out, and some members had donned appropriate costumes, including one chap dressed up as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version of the Phantom. Another great night at the theater, or so I thought at the time.

After Dr. Bell finished his notes on the film, the MC took back the mic, related some historical facts about the films production and the personal agony of Lon Chaney’s makeup, and then finished up with this gem of a suggestion (paraphrased):

“Back in the 20’s, the audience laughed, talked, jeered with the on-screen actors and action. For our showing of the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, feel free to do the same — interact with the movie! Talk back and with the characters! Have fun!”

And my own personal hell was opened up before me.

Okay, I exaggerate. A little bit. But one of my cardinal rules of movie-watching (for new, yet-unseen films, at least) is that the audience shouldn’t react outside of the context of the film. Lately I’ve gone as far as refusing to watch films outside of the theater (i.e. with friends) because the compulsion to chatter is too great. Remember: a film receives the reaction it deserves, by and large.

The aforementioned maxim is generally applicable because a reaction aroused in one member of the audience can easily be extrapolated to most or all other members. If a scene is funny, people will laugh, and no one is brought out of the film; the laughter is an expected, unrestrained reaction. The same applies to scenes and sequences of romance, action, adventure or drama: the tools and ability of the skilled filmmaker guide the production to produce a tuned and directed emotional result and experience for anyone who watches the movie. (Aside: Interpretation of plot devices, narrative and in-depth character analysis is not within the scope of a audience reaction.)

On the other hand, imagine a gag playing itself out on screen, but instead of the crowd wholly breaking out into a peal of laughter, imagine if one guy loudly talked-back to the character on-screen, like he was witnessing the ordeal in person. “You idiot,” he’d say. “That was clearly an exploding cigar!” or something of the sort. Or imagine someone talking during the actor’s big joke, or a teen’s cell phone blaring out during the punchline. And so on. Or if someone laughed when a character’s throat was slashed open. Same deal — the audience would be distracted and pulled back out of the film-watching experience.

Which is pretty much what happened at the Michigan Theater last Friday night: once the MC unleashed the commentaries of any audience member who deemed themselves self-important enough to yell at a movie screen, a crowd of bad Marx Brothers-impersonators was given wings for the next hour and a half. As for the rest of the audience, the ones who just wanted to watch the film as presented, too bad. I couldn’t have turned around to the woman behind me who would say “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…” and make pigeon-coo noises every time a animal appeared on-screen and tell her to knock it off, not after the theater explicitly condoned her to do what she pleased.

All of that is disruptive behavior for a movie that was not promoted before-hand as featuring such. If the movie was advertised as “Live organ, with audience participation encouraged!” my reaction to this particular showing would be different: I wouldn’t be ranting about how the screening unexpectedly featured a relentless distraction by other audience members, but rather what the experience was like to be present at a showing that allowed audience chat-back (which I have essentially done here anyway, just with more heat). The difference is, I didn’t know any better prior to buying my ticket, no thanks to the theater itself.

Whether theaters allowed talking during movies back when this 1920’s flick was released is irrelevant — what was acceptable theater-going behavior is certainly and evidently not acceptable now. However, if the Michigan Theater’s screening was originally advertised as allowing audience participation…well, that’s something else entirely. Similarly, only the ignorant catch a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to see the actual movie.

Even through all of the other disruptions inside of the theater on Halloween night, I enjoyed Chaney’s Opera, especially when the rogue commentators forgot they were trying to be funny. Several moments in the movie were fraught with anxiety, and not surprisingly those sequences received little to no ribbing from the crowd. Good filmmaking has the power to dispossess its audience of other attentions and volition, and Lon Chaney’s grotesque appearance and performance easily pulled the audience into a setting that only demanded attention, not participation.

Actually, allowing the chatter did provoke one very funny instance. During a scene transition, a title appeared that described how one of the character’s “barouche” was waiting outside of the opera house for his arrival. The title was many words long, and Dr. Bell wasn’t jamming on his organ during the title, so the theater was generally pretty quiet while the title was up on the screen.

After several long seconds of the title being on-screen, a voice in the back of the theater piped up, in perfect sitting-room volume without a hint of drama or, “A what?” That received a big laugh from the rest of the crowd, because we were all wondering the same thing: what the heck is a barouche? (The answer: a barouche is a type of 19th-Century horse-drawn carriage.)

If only the rest of the chatterboxes during that evening’s showing of Phantom of the Opera had the same tact and deftness as that lone title-commenter, but alas, people just like to show off when given the chance, and we can’t all be Mike, Joel, Tom or Crow.

Total time to completely readjust my expectations for a good rock and roll concert? Four days, two concerts.

The first concert was on Friday, September 5th, a power-metal show headlined by Nightwish, the dark orchestral-themed darlings of Finland, supported by the not-so-darlings Sonata Arctica, also from Finland. I’ve preferred the straight-forward, bright-vocal, guitar-and-keyboard brand of power metal delivered by Sonata Arctica compared to Nightwish’s pretentious gothic-orchestrial trappings, but I definitely enjoy the music from both groups and had looked forward to the gig many months before the event: this concert would be my third time catching Sonata Arctica, having seen them once earlier this year in San Francisco, and my first live Nightwish show.

But another concert followed closely on the heels of that metal extravaganza: I had tickets to see the Newfoundland-based pop-folk act Great Big Sea at my beloved Michigan Theater on the following Wednesday. Like Nightwish’s platinum-selling power in their homeland, Great Big Sea is big in Canada, guaranteed to hit single digits in the chart ranks and sell out arenas, so both concerts featured big-league artists from their respective genres.

I’m not a great big fan of Great Big Sea, but a few albums are in my collection, so I obviously was familiar with the group and liked their bouncy, folksy pop presence. Also, Prior to booking tickets I had heard that the GBS boys put on a great show, which certainly helps to attract a crowd, and, hey, I always love visiting the Michigan Theater, especially now that I need excuses to visit now that the Summer Classic Film Series is over.

So, four days — I went, I saw, I rocked. Roughly a week has passed since the Sonata Arctica and Nightwish double-punch combo show and a few days have elapsed since the Great Big Sea show. Final thoughts: good concert featuring the power Finns, but holy smokes, those Newfoundlanders know how to play.

First, a breakdown of the Sonata Arctica/Nightwish concert. Our metal-seeking clan of four showed up at quarter to seven, nearly two hours after doors opened, expecting to miss the usual mediocre local music support and arrive during Sonata Arctica’s soundcheck and only a few minutes before they took the stage; at roughly 8:15 PM the guys took the stage and the metal onslaught began. As we later found out, our plan to arrive late-but-on-time worked out better than we could’ve guessed: One of my chums at the concert talked to a woman who had been at the show since the doors opened and learned than between doors-open at 6 and concert-start at 8:15 was…absolutely nothing. The punctual folks were rewarded by being stuck in a blank venue, full of foul smoke and cheap beer, for more than two hours without any on-stage entertainment.

Sonata Arctica beat out a good set of music, 45 tight minutes of music from the recent album as well as a handful of “oldies,” including a favorite that hadn’t been played on previous tours (but the song wasn’t Wolf and Raven, a big favorite I have yet to hear live). The amp volume had been turned to eleven, as all metal shows are, necessitating earplugs to fend off a week of tinnitus. (I still don’t understand how another of my metal-going chums has been going to shows for years and years earplug-less and can still understand people talking at normal volume. Either my ears are sensitive or his are armor-plated.)

After Sonata Arctica left the stage, and after a grueling half-hour equipment switch and sound check — out of all the bits of a metal show, my least favorite are the long spans of equipment-changing and sound-checking during a band switch — Nightwish took the stage for an hour-long set of mostly new material.

Strangely enough, Nightwish’s on-stage presence turned out to be a very different experience compared to Sonata Arctica’s live performance, even if the bands play a very similar type of music.

Sonata Arctica had the feel of an energetic, of-the-cuff, good-times garage band: members wore t-shirts, flannel and jeans, roamed and danced on stage where they pleased and generally appeared a bit uncoordinated, a bunch of guys who just enjoyed what they did, even if that didn’t have (or need) a strict setup.

Nightwish, on the other hand, did have a strict appearance: members stayed in one general area on stage, wore semi-formal dress in dark tones and addressed other members of the band during song breaks cleanly, almost as if from a script. I’ve never seen a metal show that looked so practiced or choreographed; Nightwish, whether because of general demeanor or a sensibility born out of their Finnish stardom, just felt more, well, professional compared to the more rock-and-roll Sonata Arctica.

But I enjoyed both groups and both song sets. What I didn’t like so much was the hour-and-a-half wait after the show to get a few signatures. Such a long wait is not uncommon, oddly enough, and many times for the me the urge to escape that part of Detroit is only overcome at the last second by the appearance of a band member. I can’t imagine what’s the hold-up after a gig for the band members: you get out of the show, throw back a few stiff drinks and then head out to where the fans had congregated to shake hands, sign some album covers and field hugs and compliments. Done, easy. Right? Maybe a quick shower’s in there somewhere. Or maybe I need to become a rock star and find out, which would at least require ripping apart the fabric of space-time, twisting the cloth and sewing the ends together in an irregular fashion. Until that red-letter day I’ll continue to wait in back of the venue, sitting around for the opportunity to augment my collection of signed album covers.

By the way, Harpo’s bathrooms are scarier than the venue’s web site. Surely any health official would only need to take a photograph of the facilities to the local health board to convince the government a quarantine and subsequent fire-bombing of the entire city block would be in the nation’s best interests. Then again, the metal acts wouldn’t have anywhere to go if Harpo’s was wiped off the map, so maybe a couple of stern warnings on the restroom doors would be an adequate solution for now.

Now let’s talk about the Great Big Sea show, which I can be summed up in two quick points.

One: These guys brought a stadium- or arena- class rig — choreographed lights, amps, props and the lot — into the Michigan Theater, which is probably 1/20th the size of a stadium. As a result of that technical fortitude, the concert was awesome, and loud, and awesomely loud. High production values, and so loud that the woman next to me left at the intermission, complaining that the volume cranked out was similar to — and I am not making this quote up, although it’s paraphrased — “the same kind of noise and power we use to torture people overseas.” While the false analogy flag flew high on that comment, she was right about the volume, but if that was torture, call me a masochist.

Two: Until this gig, I have never felt a theater balcony anywhere that bounced. The audience at the GBS concert was so thrilled, lively and energetic than any rousing rock, folk, or folk-rock tune was received with dancing, clapping, cheering in the seats, aisles, on chairs, fallen bodies, anything. The energy could’ve outlasted and out-jigged the fever at any rave, chem-induced or otherwise.

So, comparison time, and this was a big of a shocker for me: After the Great Big Sea concert settled in for a couple days (and after my ears stopped ringing — fortunately the temporary tinnitus stopped after the 20-minute-long walk home), I realized I had enjoyed the Great Big Sea show even more than the Sonata Arctica and Nightwish gig.

Part of that is because the Michigan Theater is literally down the street from my apartment, convenient and one of my favorite public spaces, and Harpo’s is a nasty, smoke-bloated hole located in an ugly part of Detroit accessed by a 40-minute car ride. But the big part of enjoying the Great Big Sea show was, besides the good music, was the strength and production of the performance coupled with the undying enthusiasm of the audience. Even if I had walked into that theater in the worst of moods, any small seed of enjoyment would have flourished in the fervent atmosphere in front of the stage; seeing as how was in a pretty good mood to start, I really enjoyed myself.

Sigh: now I love the Michigan Theater more, and like trips to Harpo’s even less. Too bad the big metal acts don’t visit little ol’ Ann Arbor, unlike the, erm, really big pop acts. Chalk up yet another reason why I need to uproot and move to a city, where all kinds acts come to town and are a public-transporation ride away. As for which city that’ll be, it goes without saying that Detroit is not a candidate.

Being a person who spends his time sweating at the office while my co-workers complain about at the chill while pulling on multiple sweaters, Michigan summers in all of their thick humidity and miserable heat are firmly and easily last as my favorite time of the year. Similarly, winter used to be favorable, but busy season, missed holidays and the unrelenting snow of the past couple of years have reduced my appreciation for winter from bronze to tied with summer for fourth place. (I am accepting applications for any and all seasons who deem themselves eligible for the now-vacant third-place rank.)

But then again, only summer brings the Michigan Theater’s Summer Classic Film Series, three months of great movies at a great (and air-conditioned) theater. The first film I caught as part of the Classic series was coincidentally the Kurosawa-great Yojimbo; that was two years ago, and out of the twenty-five or so films shown during that and subsequent summers I’ve only missed a few showings.

Last year’s series was particularly memorable: the kick-off showing was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which has become a personal favorite; other greats included The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup, which is the funniest movie ever made, Sidney Poitier’s A Raisin in the Sun, Astair’s dashing Top Hat, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Thin Man, The Little Fugitive in all of its gorgeous indy glory and a nearly-religious presentation of Harold Lloyd’s silent Safety Last! that was backed by a live organist who could’ve beaten any full-fledged John Williams soundtrack.

Now that this summer’s schedule has been revealed, let me take a look to find how the Michigan Theater will save summer once again.

Huzzah! It’s the List

• The Black Pirate, starring Douglas Fairbanks, a silent with live organ!
• Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean
• High Noon, starring the Coop
• Roman Holiday, starring Greg Peck and Audrey Hepburn
• The Muppets Take Manhattan, starring a bunch of awesome puppets
• Jailhouse Rock, starring a pair of sideburns and a couple tunes
• Fritz Lang’s M
• After the Thin Man
• Five Easy Pieces
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, starring international Once a Thief star Chow Yun-Fat
• Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (in 3-D!)
• Easy Rider
• Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, with Steve Martin
• Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin, the classic of classics, and again with live organ!
• Casablanca, which needs no additional detail for all the right reasons

Last year’s schedule (which is, oddly, still on the Michigan Theater’s site) was great, but this year’s lineup is absolutely fantastic.

Starting off the season, we get another undoubtably-fantastic silent with live organ, this time starring renown swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks. Subsequent weeks follow-up with a cavalcade of great actors: Dean, Cooper, Peck and A. Hepburn. One-third of the way through the season the Muppets appear to break up any tension; Elvis Presley jams and struts about after that, succeeded by Fritz Lang’s (auteur of Metropolis, another personal favorite) magnum opus M.

The line-up for the second half of the series is no less exciting. After all, what’s not to love and adore about having Powell and Loy on-screen again in the sequel to The Thin Man, Jack Nicholson, a gimmicked Hitchcock presented in Warnercolor 3D, and a Steve Martin show that’s wearing a dark suit and a clown wig?

And then there’s Sergei Eisenstein’s incredibly inspired, deft and influential movie about the uprising on a Russian battleship, which also includes live organ. This Eisenstein presentation alone piles on the greatness so heavily that I might pass out in the box office line, swooning over the prospect of the impending magnificent show. Finishing off the series is Casablanca, and then I’ll get to see one of my favorite actors — Bogart, of course — and one of the great classics out of ‘em all.

Personally, I would exchange Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and all of its fantasy pretension for a Kurosawa — all too obviously, my pick would have to be Kurosawa — but several years have passed since I caught Crouching Tiger in theater, and it is a pretty gorgeous piece of film in several ways. I’ll be there, crouching and hiding and all that, and I’ll probably come out of the theater liking it a lot more than I do now.

This summer’s series of classics is truly no filler, all killer, as the kids like to say. I’ve only seen three films out of the bunch, so this series will be a particularly strong and memorable parade. Thanks to the Michigan Theater, summer’s not only tolerable but the best season of ‘em all.