Music : In the News

Strike up the music! The NAMM Foundation has called out the school districts of Berkeley, Bloomfield Hills, Dearborn, Ferndale, and Troy, as being among the best in the nation for music education.

Read the full list here.

Troy, Berkley, Bloomfield Hills, Fraser, and Ann Arbor all made the list but Ferndale was selected as the bestest. (yes, we know that's not a word).

Excerpt:

"The district's music program includes a vocal music program that begins in kindergarten, instrumental music beginning in fourth grade, band, orchestra and choir programs for middle and high school, and a State Championship marching band.

What Ferndale offers for music education is especially significant considering the district's small size, Jamison said.

"We're still offering basically everything," he said. "We have most everything that schools two, three or four times our size have.""

Read the rest here.

Yeah, business is important but there must also be music. John Smith is president and CEO of Ross Controls Co. and trustee for Lawrence Tech and plays a mean banjo.

Excerpt:

"This is a club where a CEO takes cues from a crane operator. Brian Newsom directs the Ban-Joes of Michigan and is chairman of the North American International Banjo Convention. He spent 42 years as a crane operator, helping build Joe Louis Arena and General Motors Co.'s Poletown plant.

One of the clubs is Canadian. "Hence, we've got the international thing going on," Newsom said."

Read the rest here.

Okay, let's start off by mentioning my intense love of Lightning Love, Chris Bathgate, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jr. But that's just the tip of the local music worth owning iceberg. Paste spotlights a dozen Mitten-based bands that you should be spreading the gospel about.

Excerpt:

"Lightning Love is a trio that features siblings Aaron and Leah Diehl along with guitarist Ben Collins. Aaron’s simple, appropriate drums are a great backbone for Leah’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics that explore subjects that range from every day routines (“Everyone I Know”) to the more ridiculous (“Friends”). The band just released the excellent Girls Who Look Like Me EP on Quite Scientific Records."

Read the rest here.

Put another notch in Metro Detroit's music cred belt. The Grammy this time is for jazz. Which, as anyone will tell you, is what we has.

Excerpt:

"Mack Avenue Records bassist Christian McBride received his first GRAMMY Award as a leader at the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles. McBride won in the “Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album” category for his big band debut, "The Good Feeling."

Read the rest here. Watch the videos about McBride's work below.

It used to be a bait shop. Now, it's home to Yessian music, a firm that's created soundtracks for Budweiser and Hyundai commercials. At this year's Super Bowl their musical efforts could be heard in five different commercials.

Excerpt:

"Generally, Yessian will compete with several other companies to produce the best music for a particular commercial. For the Budweiser "Eternal Optimism" commercial, they wowed ad agency Anomaly with a mash-up of "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult and "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida that matches a visual movement through time, from the early 1940s to today. Rapper Flo Rida's 2011 hit doesn't readily evoke a 1950s aesthetic, but Emmy Award-winning composer Dan Zank, who works out of the New York office, was able to make the sound fit a different time period."


Read the full story here.

Listen. Watch. Wait for the goosebumps to subside.

Grosse Pointe's The Selected of God Choir does up Eminem's Lose Yourself.

Wow.

Proceeds from iTunes sales of the single will benefit local charities.


Watch the video below.

Okay, this Macomb musical prodigy is seven years old. Seven! Julian Pavone recorded his first CD at 20 months. He has appeared on about 150 television and news shows. And now he's in the Guinness Book of Records.

Feel inadequate yet?

Excerpt:

"Julian Pavone was certified as of March 21, 2010, when he was 5 years, 10 months and 3 days old, Guinness announced Tuesday.

The rules for London-based Guinness say a drummer must play on at least one commercial record and be paid for the work. The drummer also must have given at least 20 concerts of 45 minutes or longer within five years."

Read more here.

Watch the video here.

In the rush to create new economy jobs in metro Detroit the talk has mostly centered around incentives and support for engineering, life sciences, green energy, and computer technology. But building a creative class is more than hot on the job market front.

Enter Detroit's new Creative Ventures Acceleration Program, an incubator oriented toward design, film, music, and social media. And it's getting national attention.

Excerpt:

"The Creative Ventures Acceleration Program offers local entrepreneurs access to resources, services, strategic counseling, development support and other services that seek to "increase the density of creative-sector businesses in the downtown area," according to the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, a business accelerator that developed the program.

Backed by $500,000 in funding by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the U.S. Small Business Administration, among other groups, the program features a 12-month curriculum for "ventures-in-residence" to better identify development goals and best practices."

Get the rest of the story here.

Local boys Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott (aka Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.) are just the latest in a long line of great Detroit musicians. Their debut album has reached the ears of the L.A. Times Music Blog, and for the most part, they like what they hear.

Excerpt:

Give Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. this much: The young Detroit duo has only one full-length to its name, but it's one decorated with more than a few pop peculiarities. Putting aside the coy playfulness of the act's name, Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott actually specialize in tenderness, crafting a collection that places a premium on harmonies and a studious reliance on electronics.

Read the rest of the review here.

You know a city is digging your scene when they rename one of their streets: "Pure Michigan Ave"

Excerpt:

Tourism London general manager John Winston says "Michigan and Ontario have always been great neighbors." He says the week is "an opportunity to exhibit the meaning of true friendship by showcasing the City of Detroit’s history, traditions and people."

Read the rest of the story here.

HuffPost blogger, Oakland University professor and Grosse Pointe resident Jason Schmitt reads into the genetic code of Metro Detroit's ever inventive and endlessly innovative rock scene and see a template for how new technology firms and entrepreneurial endeavors can find similarly earth-shattering successes.

Excerpt:

"If you are interested in corporate creativity, my first finding of pocketed communities takes the form of a "no duh." Nearly every creative-inspired leadership book I have read mentions the importance of keeping the creatives away from the nitty gritty. The importance of not micro-managing is brought up to allow the big ideas a culture in which to flourish. The interesting notion is to think of these ideas on a larger scope than the brick and mortar office. To zoom out and look at this as a more city culture than corporate philosophy. And to look at the ramifications that working from home can have on this process. Metro Detroit has enough room to allow distinct lifestyles to play out in separate Petri dishes. In a Second Life, 2.0, global access world, the dictates of "neighborhood" are changeable, sculptable, and extremely important.

Family-owned radio in Detroit is an interesting second ingredient to the homogenization kryptonite this region seems to possess. Plain and simple, Detroit is not as quick to pick up on national music trends. By not basking in the newest ideas, this region has maintained a more focused creative demeanor. Media that reflects the region's view and not national dictates, is extremely important. This finding makes reassessing your RSS feed content, and choosing what streams of information you want to seep into you, or your workforces' brain, more important.

The third finding is Detroiters make great audience members."

Read the rest of the story here.

Raised in Ann Arbor, musician Andrew WK rose to fame with his 2001 hit "Party Hard." But, before he was the big rockstar in the dirty white jeans and the greasy long hair, he was a teenager in Ann Arbor. A teenager with a crush. A teenager with a restraining order against him because of a song. He talks about it in the Guardian.

Excerpt:

I was in high school in the 1990s, in a town called Ann Arbor in Michigan. I had a crush on a girl and was deeply and passionately fixated on her. She had a baby face, a 14-tooth smile, large eyes, a crowned forehead, an oversized brow and a tender style. She consumed me with both lust and hatred – lust, because I was truly drawn to her beauty and soft skin, and hatred because she rarely spoke to me, wouldn't look at me much and never gave me a chance to show her my deep affections. I used to call her house just to listen to her say, "Hello?" Then I'd hang up, terrified and shaking with nervous ecstasy.

In our senior year of high school, when I was 17, we were required to make a final project which was presented to the head of the school and graded as our final exam. This was when my crush was at its absolute height. I decided to write a song dedicated to her and submit it as my final project for graduation. The song was My Destiny. I've never recorded another song like it, and now – listening to it after all these years – I can see why.

Read the entire article here.

The film incentives seemed to work so well so why not apply them to the music industry, too? Well, that's the plan with these new tax credits for music makers.

Excerpt:

It makes for an enchanting vision: the revival of Detroit as a music-making capital, teeming with studios, session players, producers and smash hits.

With Michigan's newly revealed recording tax incentives, music lovers can only be intrigued by the prospect of restoring real enterprise -- and dollars -- to Detroit's legacy as one of the world's great music cities.

Amid thriving film production here, prompted by related tax credits, there's plenty of precedent for Michigan as a music hub. Indeed, from the historical point of view, a tax incentive for music is far more fitting than one for film.