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By Max Conroy
On Wednesday night, Donita Sparks and her band the Stellar Moments performed at the Magic Stick. They were great. Unfortunately, there had to have been less than fifty people there, even thought it was a featured event in most Detroit entertainment papers. It’s a bummer, but those are the breaks; hopefully the turnout in Detroit wasn’t indicative of the turnout for the entire tour.
Observing this band from a slight distance makes me like them all that much more. They all hung out in the bar before the show and seemed approachable and even goofy. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately and had a chest cold, in the middle of a heat wave, the night of the show, so I opted not to speak to anyone other than Cousin Justin, and I could hardly understand what he was saying half of the time. Most of the band also made it a point to watch the young opening acts, and were very supportive of them. This shows a lot of empathy and character because there is nothing more disrespectful or arrogant than not paying any attention to your opening acts. The Stellar Moments also tuned their own instruments and did the sound check; to save costs I’m sure, but the overall sound of the show only benefitted from this simple act.
They played a full hour set and did an encore. The set consisted of the entire Transmiticate album and three L7 tunes. Donita has still got it to be sure and was all over the stage shaking her ass, blonde hair a blur, gold tooth shining in the lights. Allan the Italian was a perfect lead accompaniment to Donita and Logan’s rhythm guitar. Dee Plakas created a driving train of sound while Dat No (probably spelled wrong) carried the rhythm. Donita declared that the crowd was tiny, but mighty. Everyone there loved it and was dancing instead of head banging, as Donita predicted in the interview that I did with her. Should have been there, man. You missed out on this one.
I’m posting a couple of tracks from the show. Again, a Digital Voice Recorder that has a built in mic was used, so this is hardly representative of what the show actually sounded like; the vocals were much more prevalent at the show.
Pretend We’re Dead:
Headcheck:
RA: Resident Advisor - Sounding Off: Why vinyl can’t survive
This guy’s dead wrong, frankly, but the ILXers do a better job of putting him to rights than I would.
Well, along with your records (which we need), we need somebody to tell us how to repair our old ass amps and record players. Cleaning contacts, fixing loose wires, doing basic maintenence, all on older equipment.
We also get calls about this all the time from customers, and we’d love to refer ‘em.
Southeastern Michigan folks prefered, since that’s where we are, but let us know all over (since we have customers from all over the world).
Where do you get your record players repaired, folks?
