Retroview- Queensryche/ Kiss @ Cobo Arena in Detroit, MI on December 8, 1984

Retroview- Queensryche/ Kiss @ Cobo Arena in Detroit, MI on December 8, 1984

This is something that I have toyed with doing for a while now. Retro reviews of shows that I went to in the past...and what better place to start than the very beginning? My first concert, age 11. No, I have no idea why my Mom thought that letting me go to a concert with my older brother and his burnout friends was a good idea. Notice how the ticket says Cobo Theatre rather than Arena? That is because they used to do what were called “half set-ups” for bands that couldn't fill out 12,000 seats. By the time the show came around our seats, which were supposed to be the first section in lower bowl, were actually three sections back from the stage. That was because Cobo didn't allow the half set up to sell out, they just kept adding more seats as they sold, from the middle to the front. The place was pretty close to being sold out as a full size arena. Cobo Arena is gone, knocked down within the past few years in order to expand convention center space at Cobo Hall.

Little did I know at the time, but this show was taped for a MTV special and was later released as the Animalize Live Uncensored home video, which I have on VHS somewhere. It is pretty cool that my very first concert was documented so well for posterity. What was amazing to me as an 11 year old was Kiss hamming it up big time for the camera when I watched it years later as an adult.

Back in 1984 the smell of cigarette smoke, pot, and beer was like incense for the concertgoing set, a matter of fact of the experience. Going to concerts in today's politically correct world makes it feels like something is missing...namely the contact buzz that was free with every ticket purchase. This ticket cost a whopping $12.00, or $27.42 in today's dollars. Makes those arena concert ticket prices of today seem a bit inflated, eh?

I did buy a shirt at the show, which I think cost $14 at that time but can't remember for sure. This was a weird one, a sort of elbow length football sleeve cut. I haven't seen another one of these at the concerts that I went to over the years. Most of them were the ones with the same design but short white sleeves. I still own the shirt to this day. 

The opening band was some nobody named Queensryche. They of course went on to become a fairly popular band toward the end of the decade, but this was their first major tour. Then Kiss came on and blew my 11 year old mind. I don't remember much about the show other than that I loved it. The live Rock and Roll experience was my first step into a much larger world. I could not believe how loud it was. I had never heard music that loud in my entire life. I remember the lighting truss coming down to the stage and the band (minus Eric Carr) going up to the top of the building playing Black Diamond.

Setlist:

Detroit Rock City

Cold Gin

Creatures Of The Night

Fits Like A Glove

Heaven's On Fire

Thrills In The Night

Guitar solo

Under The Gun

War Machine

Drum solo

Young And Wasted

Bass solo

I Love It Loud

I Still Love You

Love Gun

Lick It Up

Black Diamond

encore

Rock And Roll All Nite

The beginning...

Review- Madhouse #95-97

Madhouse #95-97 (Red Circle Productions/ Fawcett/ Archie Comics, cover dates September, 1974- January, 1975)

Writers: Don Glut, Marv Channing, John Jacobson, Bruce Jones, Frank X Doyle, Stan Goldberg, and Ralph Alphonso

Artists: Vicente Alcazar, Doug Wildey, Carlos Pino, Jesse Santos, Sal Amendola, Bruce Jones, Frank Thorne, Gray Morrow, and Al McWilliams

A pox upon you, Facebook comic book groups! Folks post covers to issues, and last Hallowe'en a friend of mine posted the cover to #97 (the one on the bottom). I took to ComicBookDB and then to eBay, patiently bidding on copies within a predetermined price range. It took me 9 months but I obtained all three for under $20.00. I have also quit all of those groups to avoid further temptation. I saved these comics for my Hallowe'en sabbatical (I took the whole week off) and tore through them. I love the Bronze Age of comics, and these are about as good as what DC was doing at the time in House Of Mystery and their other assorted titles. The series starts out strong with #95 but each issues gets a little weaker, with the series morphing back into a humor title with #98.

This would make a pretty cool collected edition. All three issues total 74 pages of content including covers and text story pages, a bit thin for a trade paperback. Red Circle, which was Archie's Horror/ Sci-Fi/ superhero imprint, also published other Horror comics during this time period: Chilling Adventures In Sorcery #3-5, and Red Circle Sorcery #6-11. Given Archie's runaway success with Afterlife With Archie and now Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, maybe it is time for Archie to revisit this material with two trade paperbacks or one deluxe hardcover. You could compile these issues with Chilling Adventures In Sorcery #3-5 in one and then do Red Circle Sorcery #6-11 in the other for softcovers or all of them in one deluxe Archive-style hardcover. There are many notable creators who worked on these issues and it would go over pretty well, methinks.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5. 

Review- Free Comic Book Day Offerings, Episode V

Free Comic Book Day Offerings, Episode V

FCBD 2014 Valiant Universe Handbook #1 (Valiant, cover date May, 2014)

Imagine all the fun of reading The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe without the hassle of having any characters that you even remotely care about. Yeah, I didn't even get one paragraph in before I flipped through to make sure that I wasn't missing anything. ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz.

Junk Food For Thought rating: N/A out of 5.

Far From Wonder Volume One- Hatter M Free Comic Book Day (Ipso Facto, no cover date, 2014)

My God this sucks. I feel like starting a class action lawsuit just to get everyone who took the 10-15 minutes to read this dreck some form of recompense.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 0 out of 5.

Free Comic Book Day: Doctor Solar, Man Of The Atom/ Magnus, Robot Fighter (Dark Horse, cover date May, 2010)

This is okay, but I have no desire to read any more of it.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Jesse James Is A Dead Man Custom Comic (Marvel, cover date May, 2009)

The only thing worse than bad comic books are comic books which are thinly veiled or overt attempts at building “comic cred” into your “intellectual property” before launch.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 0 out of 5.

Free Comic Book Day 2014: Rocket Raccoon #1 (Marvel, cover date May, 2014)

My 7 year old son really enjoyed this, and I appreciate that this is appropriate for him. I found it all too cutesy and boring for my tastes, both the main tale and the Spider-Man back-up, but he loved it, so good for Marvel there.

I do find it staggering that the forthcoming Rocket Raccoon #1 is shipping 300,000 copies without any lame gimmick variants with seven different covers (Edited- Was corrected). I still would like to see the industry shift to a Soundscan method of tracking real world sales. I suspect that many “top” titles would sink like a stone on the sales charts since it's a dirty little secret that most retailers over order to get those 1:25, 1:50, 1:100, or 1:200 chase variants which sell for more on eBay than they would make if they sold every copy that they ordered. The remaining copies clog dollar boxes at conventions later. Luckily us collected editions buyers are immune to this crap.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 2 out of 5. 

Reviews- Free Comic Book Day offerings, Episode II

Free Comic Book Day offerings, Episode II

Free Comic Book Day 2014: Guardians Of The Galaxy #1 (Marvel, cover date May, 2014)

Bendis. Always Bendis. My 7 year old son was reading this but my wife confiscated it due to two swear words. I know, what am I doing letting my 7 year old read a comic book, right? These are sophisticated and for adults, man. And this is why the fanbase is shrinking and why endless reboots and gimmicks are the only thing propping this industry up on stilts. The fact that Bendis and Marvel slam anyone who speaks out about making their titles enjoyable to all ages further demonstrates why they don't get it. Childless adults join in the chorus of bashing anyone who speak out against this practice.

See, I am not pro-censorship; quite the opposite, but when you are aiming your property at children, and you are since you are slamming toys and tie-ins at them, then you have a certain responsibility to make that media accessible to and appropriate for them. If there are no new readers then they won't be old readers some day, Einstein. And what Brian Michael Bendis, Tom Brevoort, Joe Quesada and the rest of the clowns at Marvel don't get is that if parents won't let their kids read comics then those readers are lost. Lambast away, Brevoort, but the parents have the money, and if they decide that curse words in mainstream superhero comics are inappropriate then guess what? You lose, not them. There are plenty of other things vying for those dollars. I'm not going to be around forever...and when it comes to Bendis, I won't be around at all. My son enjoyed it, and that's the real shame, because I would have had no problem buying him this comic every month. Thanks to the reason listed above, my wife has seen to it that that ship has sailed.

I thought that the story was weak but did enjoy the artwork. There are two back-up features in this comic: The Thanos preview from the forthcoming graphic novel which might be interesting, and the Spider-Man preview for the Spider-Verse crossover, which looks craptastic.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1.5 out of 5.

Rise Of The Magi #0 (Top Cow/Image, cover date May, 2014)

ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZzzzzzzzZzzzz.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 0.5 out of 5.

All You Need Is Kill/ Terra Formars split book (Haika Soru/ Viz Media, cover date May, 2014)

Viz Media is a Manga company, and since I am not big on Manga this didn't do much for me. For what it's worth, I liked Terra Formars more than I did All You Need Is Kill.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1.75 out of 5.

Entropy FCBD (Epicenter Comics, cover date 2014)

This has a 22 page preview of the forthcoming Entropy series as well as two back up stories, Vegetable and Crosses. I found the back-up stories more entertaining than the main event.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.25 out of 5.

Bleeding Cool Magazine Free Comic Book Day 2014 (Avatar Press, cover date May, 2014)

I like magazines. I still subscribe to several even in this digital age, believe it or not. I spend too much time on gadgets and it is nice to break away from screens. Plus, I have an aversion to reading electronic gadgets on the toilet.

I do not rate magazines.

Free Comic Book Day: Project Black Sky (Dark Horse, cover date May, 2014)

Take one long defunct Golden Age hero (Captain Midnight), add one obscure yet fondly remembered by a handful of Silver Age fans character (Brain Boy) and you get Project Black Sky. It's a solid enough read, but there is no way on Earth that I am buying this. If someone wants to give me a copy I will review it, though.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Review- Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Marvel Studios, 2014)

Holy crow. This might just beat out The Avengers as the most satisfying comic book movie adaptation ever made. Normally my eye twitches with a sharp stabbing pain behind it as I watch these films, battling to retain control of myself. I almost always want to stand up and shout at the screen Wrong! Wrong! How can you idiots greenlight this crap! Does no one on staff actually read comic books? So on and so forth. My only gripes with this movie are the Chevrolet product placement and one or two edits. Seriously, that's all that I have! This movie fricking rocks.

I have been using this product. It has helped my writing tremendously. 

Seeing several scenes from the comics come to life on the screen was incredible. Scenes such as the Batroc boat hijacking from the Roger Stern and John Byrne run and countless scenes from the Ed Bruabker run. Things that once lived only in my imagination brought to life.

Everything is perfect. On the action scale this is an “amps to 11” affair. If you have not yet seen this film, then you may want to exit this review right now, because I am going to be fairly liberal with the SPOILERS from here on out. Cap fights Batroc The Leaper! Arnim Zola lives! Stephen Strange (a/k/a Doctor Strange) is mentioned! Sharon Carter, Agent 13 is revealed! Hydra! Fucking Hydra!!! Cut off one head and two more shall take its place! The Winter Soldier is done to perfection! The Falcon is awesome! Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are in the first of the two post-credits scenes! Christ, what more could anybody want out of one film? Dissing this movie because it has too much action is like not liking a song because it rocks too much or not linking an orgasm because it lasts too long. There is something really, really wrong with you if this movie doesn't rock your socks off.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

Review- John Carpenter's Asylum #5

John Carpenter's Asylum #5 (Storm King, 2014)

Writers: Bruce Jones with Sandy King and Trent Olsen

Artist: Leonardo Manco

Colorist: Kinsun Loh

A mere seven weeks since issue four was released comes the latest installment of John Carpenter's Asylum. Jackson's demon is playing a game of demonic possession leapfrog with Daniel Beckett, Father Leone, and Detective Duran. This being a Horror comic, it should come as no surprise that someone in the cast could meet an untimely end, and yet there you have it. Someone does die...only I won't tell you who. I was kind of shocked by it, and there is a great sequence where it happens. I can't provide any images this time out because most of them would tip the hand that this issue holds. Sorry to be so vague, but this is one that you will have to read for yourself.

The flashback sequence is incredibly effective, with the coloring (or lack thereof) giving it a grainy old film stock quality. Leonardo Manco and Kinsun Loh have once again outdone themselves. Their “camera angles” are more effective than most films these days. The edits that snap in your mind are more visceral than they would be in any movie. I have to admit that I would love to see this brought to life on a screen at some point, but for now I am thrilled that it is the exclusively in comic book medium. The quality hasn't budged an inch in five issues. I can't wait for the next issue!

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

Review- John Carpenter's Asylum #4

John Carpenter's Asylum #4 (Storm King, no cover date. Copyright 2013 even though issue wasn't released until February 12, 2014.)

Writers: Bruce Jones with Sandy King and Trent Olsen

Artist: Leonardo Manco

Colorist: Kinsun Loh

Evil is real and it is everywhere. Ancient evils, forgotten evils. Why, even the fate of this very issue was halted by evil. This issue was scheduled for release the day before Thanksgiving, but was derailed by Hurricane Haiyan and the resulting health problems with colorist Kinsun Loh. Then the holidays, which caused the printer and Diamond Comics Distributors to dally. Then the flipping Polar Vortex, which snarled many things in America. Finally, finally, I got the issue in my hands this week. To use an old Alan Moore-ism, no one in five years' time will care that issue 4 was three months late, they will only care if issue 4 was good. And it is.

The battle between good and evil continues to heat up, with Father Leone seemingly the only one even remotely prepared to do battle with it. As glimpses of Hell creep into the mind of Father Beckett you can almost feel the heat, as his possession grows more complete. This series remains a great read, and I only hope that I won't have to wait three months until the next issue. 

 

There is an almost cinematic quality to the framing in many of the scenes in this issue, courtesy of artist Leonardo Manco. You can almost feel the whiplash edits and imagine a nanosecond camera angle change, something all the more impressive when you consider that these are static images on a page. I really do feel that comic books are the ultimate storytelling medium. You have the visuals of a movie combined with the depth of a book. I might be what you would call biased. Your mileage may vary.

Why can tiny Storm King sell a comic for $3.99 with heavy duty paper and an even heavier cover with no advertisements while Marvel and DC sell comics with cheaper paper (and...shudder...self covers) and the comic being one third ads for the same price? I know that I'd rather drop four bucks on this than anything either one are doing these days.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

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Review- The Black Crowes w/The Blind Boys of Alabama @ Terminal 5 in New York City, NY, on October 26, 2013

The Black Crowes w/The Blind Boys of Alabama @ Terminal 5 in New York City, NY, on October 26, 2013.

My wife and I celebrated 10 years of marriage with a weekend trip to New York, with the main event being The Black Crowes. Terminal 5 is a nondescript building without so much as a marquee on it. Indeed, if not for seeing the line going in, one wouldn't even know it was a concert hall. New York's infamous Hell's Kitchen didn't scare me one bit...at least the watered down 21^st century version that I saw. By Detroit standards it was Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

The venue is a narrow, cavernous beast with three levels. We were really close, being 9-10 rows from the stage if there were seats. The sound was incredible from where we were. I normally like to poke around venues and see how it sounds in different spots, but we got there before the openers and didn't want to lose our spot. Various Yelp users seem to hate the place, citing sound quality as the #1 complaint. It was great from where we were...in the front. This place holds 3,000 people, and I did walk around all three floors when we arrived. Looks like the third floor would blow if you were stuck up there.

This was my third Crowes show this year, and like the one we caught in August, they opened with Under A Mountain. I've got to say that the fellas were on fire right out of the gate. Chris was wearing a Neil Young and Crazy Horse ¾ sleeve baseball jersey with a black body and white sleeves. Awesome. Gone was a great one to hear live, as I've never heard them play it before. Exit...shit, what can you say other than wow? I mean, seriously, if you want to dig deep, then this is holy grail shit. I have this one on the bootleg from the Tall sessions, but I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined that they would dust this off live. Never. It's a really hard funk type of song that I can't figure out why they've never used on an album before. 

No Use Lying was The Crowes at their darkest live. The eerie guitar effect on the intro, the red lights...Chris looked and sounded positively evil, like some evil wizard. He sounded incredible tonight, easily his best vocal performance out of however many Crowes/solo shows I've been to. His voice was clean and he was singing high with no cracks or clipping notes. Everyone was singing good tonight, and the band was mighty fierce. My favorite Crowes gig has always been the February 1999 show at the State Theatre in Detroit, and this was really close to matching it. 

Black Moon Creeping was up next. Virtue And Vice is always great to hear live. By Your Side is an underrated album that seems to be overlooked live, so I was happy to hear it. Again, Chris Robinson's vocals were great. He was really working the stage tonight. He always does, but he was like a caged panther or something, really into it. The whole band seemed really, really into it. They seemed to have tapped into something really cool this year and it bums me out that they are going back on hiatus after this tour wraps in December. I would love to hear a new album with their spirits this high.

They did Sister Luck at the August Detroit area show, and this was only the second time that I have heard them do this one live. Everything about tonight had a point, like the band was really going for the throat. Even the jammy intro to Thorn In My Pride had a sense of urgency to it. Whatever it was that they were into tonight, bottle that shit up. It worked. 

Nonfiction is always done in different arrangements live, and I've seen it go from cool to maddeningly dull. Tonight's version was cool. Isn't It About Time was tonight's Rich Robinson lead vocal spot cover tune. Then we got Soul Singing. The crowd loves it. My wife loves it. Obviously the band loves it, because I can't get away from it live. It is the only song in their entire catalog that I would classify as getting on my nerves. I can't put my finger on why, but I just can't dig on this song. It has become a running gag between my wife and I whenever they launch into it. 

Sting Me, Twice As Hard, and the Hard To Handle/Hush/Hard To Handle medley gave the crowd the one-two-three punch that the band has been doing for this tour. The songs change every night, but they tend to do a few songs in a row, usually singles, to bring it home for the more casual fans in the crowd. I can dig it.

The encore was monumental. I love every album that the band has done, and dig hearing stuff live from all of them. I knew something was up when Chris slung a guitar around his neck. He was a surprisingly good lead player on Wee Who See The Deep. While that song was great, the next song is what really blew my mind. The Led Zeppelin B-side Hey, Hey What Can I Do capped off a great night. My wife was bummed that we didn't get Remedy, but I can live with that tradeoff. Seriously, go back and peek at that setlist and tell me you wouldn't have been happy with this show.

Like the other two shows that I caught on this tour, they played a tight 2 hour set that left the crowd begging for more. I've seen The Crowes do three plus hour shows that have left the audience begging for mercy. Better to leave everyone wanting more. I'm bummed that this is it for who knows how long. Two years? Ten years? Hopefully sooner than later. 

On the walk back to our hotel room we saw the work crew put up the Christmas decorations at Radio City Music Hall. We walked by it on the way to the show and none of that stuff was up yet. Crazy. My Mom always wanted to see this city, especially Radio City Music Hall. It kind of bummed me out but we had a great trip overall. 

Review- John Carpenter's Asylum #3

John Carpenter's Asylum #3 (Storm King, 2013; no cover date- released on October 9, 2013)

Writer: Bruce Jones

Artist: Leonardo Manco

Colorist: Kinsun Loh

To quote Keanu Reeves in The Matrix: WHOAH. This series hasn't exactly wasted a lot of time in the first two issues, but things really get moving this month. Not only does it hit the fan like a bloody stump, but it gets shredded and splatters everywhere. Detective Duran and Father Beckett find themselves in way over their heads, and I can't see them getting out of this mess.

Everything is high quality as usual for this series. Leonardo Manco and Kinsun Loh are beasts. Every panel is a camera angle, and every panel is perfect. I also have to give mad props to letterer Janice Chiang. I admittedly loathed her style in the '80s and '90s, but she has truly perfected her craft here. Lettering is one of those subtle things that can make or break a story. You might not think that something so seemingly insignificant could be as important as the words or the brushstrokes, but you would be wrong. It can make the difference between being readable and being really enjoyable. Bravo!

This title is among the best on the stands today, and is one of the few titles so compelling that I must read it every month as opposed to waiting for the trade...which I will also buy if and when it is released.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 5 out of 5.

Reviews- FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2013 offerings Part the Fifth

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2013 offerings Part the Fifth

Note: Free Comic Book Day will be referred to as FCBD from here on out in these reviews.

This is the fifth and final installment of my reviews of the books that I picked up on my daylong, multi-county (okay, it was only two counties), multi-store marathon on FCBD 2013.

2000 AD Free Comic Book Day 2013 (2000 AD, cover date 2013)

Writers: Various

Artists: Artists

This is a compilation of material from 2000 AD Progs 47, 525, 1241, 1398, 1750, and Judge Dredd Megazine (Vol. 5) No. 5, with publication dates ranging from 1978- 2011. This was the rarest of the FCBD issues, at least in this neck of the woods. I only saw one store carrying it, and it was the very last one that I went to. This is chock full of great stuff. Future Shocks: Red Moon, is one of the most delightfully fucked up stories that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The Visible Man is also incredible, and it will be collected in the forthcoming trade paperback 2000 AD Presents Sci-Fi Thrillers, available December, 2013. I'm totally in for that one. The Judge Dredd stories are both good. Insurrection is available as a trade paperback which I have already scooped up. The purpose of these FCBD issues are to spur sales, and this one has definitely sucked some money out of my wallet. Bravo!

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4.5 out of 5. 

Barack The Barbarian No. 1 (Devil's Due Publishing, cover date June, 2009)

Writer: Larry Hama

Artist: Christopher Schons

Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg

I had always intended on buying this but never got around to it. There was an Amazon fish* floating around for a trade paperback for a while but the book was never officially solicited. Then Devil's Due was dropped by Diamond Distributors and nearly imploded, leaving this series in limbo.

(*Amazon fish is a term originally coined by Jeph York on the Masterworks Message Board. The term is used to describe books which pop up on Amazon through the book market channels before they are officially solicited through the Direct Market. These are often unreliable as contents, page counts, and price points change before the book becomes an official release. The denizens of the MMB have used this term for nearly a decade. It is now common fan vernacular, even used in articles on Bleeding Cool. All because of Jeph York.)

Regardless of your political stance, this is a hilarious spoof of our then-new President of the United States, Barack Obama. His admitted childhood love of Marvel Comics, particularly Spider-Man and Conan, endeared him to nerddom. Here we have Obama recast as a barbarian in a story titled Quest For The Treasure Of Stimuli!, where Barack journeys to Warshingtun . Filled with groan-inducing yet highly amusing puns, this silly and painfully dated read is worth a chuckle.

This was not a proper FCBD comic, rather it was one of those excess store stock, please help us get rid of it comics. I enjoyed it quite a bit and would still buy a trade paperback of it.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 4 out of 5. 

Tabula Rasa (Image, cover date September, 2006)

Writer: Shannon Eric Denton

Artist: Matt Jacobs

This was also not a proper FCBD comic, rather it was another one of those excess store stock, please help us get rid of it comics. I enjoyed this well enough.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 3 out of 5. 

Arrow #1 Special Edition (DC, cover date December, 2012)

Writers: Andrew Kreisberg, Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti, and Geoff Johns. Back-up story by Judd Winick

Artists: Omar Francia; Back-up story by Freddie Williams and Rob Hunter

Colorists: Rex Lokus; Back-up story by Richard & Tonya Horie

Did it really take 4 writers to do 11 pages of story? Good god, talk about waste. This is an underwhelming preview for the new CW television series and is a waste of time. The only redeeming quality is the Mike Grell cover art.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1.25 out of 5. 

My Favorite Martian FCBD (Hermes Press, cover date 2012)

Writer: Unknown

Artist: Dan Spiegle

I love old stuff, but some stuff is just lost on me. Nothing about this reprint of Gold Key's My Favorite Martian No. 2 from 1964 works for me. It's a horribly dated read from a horribly dated concept. Hermes Press has issued this in a deluxe Archives hardcover for those who have nostalgia for this series. Given the lackluster quality of the story and the mediocre restoration techniques used when prepping the material for digital, I think I'll pass. Your mileage may vary.

Junk Food For Thought rating: 1.75 out of 5. 

 

And that's it for my FCBD marathon for 2013! I had a lot of fun going to all of these shops with my kids. My son and I have gone a for a few years in a row but this was the first year that my daughter went along too. She was quite the trooper and hung in there the whole day. I look forward to repeating this again in 2014.

 

Review- Wolfman Band/ The Go/ Redd Kross @ PJ's Lager House on Friday, April 12, 2013 in Detroit, MI

Wolfman Band/ The Go/ Redd Kross @ PJ's Lager House on Friday, April 12, 2013 in Detroit, MI

PJ's Lager House is a fascinating place. The building itself is over 100 years old and it has that awesome ceiling work from the 1930s found in many buildings in Detroit. Tonight was sold out, and the body heat makes things heat up pretty quick in there. Those with a fear of rubbing elbows with strangers would do well to stay away. Those of us who like stiff drinks and Rock and Roll quickly feel right at home. 

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I adore werewolves. Sure, I likes my vampires, but only the old school ones, not those Twilight ones. Werewolves are untainted by poseurs and soccer moms. One of my dreams is to see the '70s Horror comic book Werewolf By Night made into a movie. Until then, I have the Wolfman Band. Not one werewolf, but an entire band of werewolves. This made perfect sense to me for some reason. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy watching werewolves play instruments and sing songs? I recognized snippets of songs played, such as Is It My Body? by Alice Cooper. If the band had offered shirts with werewolves on them for sale they probably would have gotten a drunken T-shirt purchase out of me by the time they were done. 

It's been years since The Go played a show for the general populace of Detroit. While many in the building were here to see headliners Redd Kross, my wife and I came for The Go. My kids are early risers and so I have become accustomed to going to bed early. Luckily I was off today and managed to get a good nap in so I could go the long haul. They came on around 11 and played for roughly 30 minutes, with everything played tonight coming off of the new album Fiesta. The songs were all played at 78 speed with little or no breaks between them. Voices Rant On seamlessly shifted gears into Beyond the Beyond, ditto Live Inside A Hole and So Let's Pinch. It Always Happens To You was a lot of fun live. I'm A Dot In Place seemed to lose it's snarl when sped up but was still very cool. I love the lyric Girl I'll never live without it, try it now you'll dream about it. 

The Go is once again a five piece, and I noticed that they also had a new drummer. I'm thinking that the new guitarist and bass player were from Magic Jake and the Power Crystals but I am not certain.

For Me Alone and Can't Rely On It were both great at 78 speed. The latter lost some of it's bubblegum sound at that tempo but still worked. Tease My Ears is one of my favorites off of the new album. Ya Gimme That Feelin' was my favorite of the night, hitting that magical hypnotic space in the brain that makes you involuntarily move to it. I've even watched my 3 year old daughter do it. In The Go's home dimension on Parallel Earth, the band appeared on an episode of the '60s Batman TV series. They use the song's hypnotic groove to entrance people, making them dance uncontrollably and commit crimes while they are helpless. They played pied piper villains that crash some society ball, with all of the fat cats dropping their watches and jewelry into sacks as the band plays the song while wearing bandit eye masks and black and white striped shirts. Hilarity ensues as Batman and Robin crash the scene and are forced to do the Batusi while The Go steal the Batmobile. 

During Dirty Room I noticed that the horn parts were played as twin harmonies on guitar. They sounded like the original Alice Cooper band's harmonies when played that way. After Last To Know Bobby Harlow shouted “Fiesta!” (as heard on the opening of the LP) and that was it. I wanted more more more but them's the breaks. It's better to be left begging for more than screaming for mercy at a show's length.

I hung out for a while, catching the first few songs by Redd Kross. They were fast and punchy and the kids seemed to love them. By kids I mean folks my age and older. There were many an old school Punk in the room, crawling out of the woodwork and out from under rocks to catch the band's first Detroit gig since 1997. One guy was even carrying around his personalized license plate that read RDKRSS or something similar.

My wife was tired because she worked, and so we ended up leaving during them. The room was so packed that we couldn't see it very well anyways. I did feel bad leaving during them, because I know how many folks were unable to get tickets to this show. It sold out pretty quick.