The Hot Club of Detroit!! Wow. They should be The Hottie Club of Detroit. This was my kind of music, you should check out their myspace page or stream WEMU because my close personal friend Wendy Wright, who introduced them, (How many Wendy's in Ypsi like Jazz??--hmmm two of us!) plays this album all the time. Look out Deeetroit--Hot food coming through--
Saturday: It was a surprising feeling to be so proud of Detroit this weekend. Often I can see only the sad results of the crushing economy but in the still warm glow of being all cleaned up for Stoopidbowl XL, the top layer looked great. I was stunned that I had no concept of how posh the inside of the Ren Cen is. I grew up in Michigan and had never been inside the big beast. It was delightful. The Rivercafe is just so fab! What an amazing view. The peepee mover was all shiny with big ads. Everybody was smiling. Even in the rain; people were cheerful and upbeat. Chris found an Irish pub called Foran's--we will def head there after hockey games. We drank several beers there. We met Chris & Gretch's pals Robin and her man Joe. We had drank several beers at Taj. We ate like kings first at Tom's Oyster Bar and then--so much rich food at Carl's buffet in the morning. I am pretty sure I trashed my 1500 calories per day within the first five bites!
Sunday: was cloudy but the music was clear. After seeing Thornetta Davis and the Sun Messangers we got a break between sets and zipped home to grab the kids. They loved it! When Jaco Pastorius Word of Mouth first started to play Isabel was crying cuz it was too loud. But she soon figured out she wasn't gonna die and was way into it --by Monday morning Izzy was ready to roll...what time are we leaving? This cat named Will Lee played a smoking bass with the Jaco Pastorius group and he was great fun to watch. Jumping around like a maniac and so sincerely having a great moment.
Monday: With seven stages--There are so many artists playing simultaneously or so close together that you can only catch half a set. Pete didn't make the Jazz lecture on Zappa at all because we were all in love with the Hot Club boys. They were playing so hard they broke two strings. The accordian player was French...droool. They also kept us from seeing the start of Mose Allison but we eventually got over to his stage (after buying the signed CD you see at the top of this entry) to hear the old classics you expect to hear from Mose.
It is a good feeling to spend so much time downtown and have it just be so wonderfully fun. People worked hard for this and we appreciate it.
Peace.
