Ann Delisi's Essential Music Listening Parties Are Great

I went to my first live show in over a year today...and I needed it. I would hesitate to call it a concert, though. It was a very neat idea. The person running it, Ann Delisi hosts a radio show on the local NPR station, and she hosted listening parties once a month all summer at the Majestic Cafe in Detroit. I wish I had known about these earlier this summer, because I would have gone to more of them, but unfortunately, today's seems to have been the last of this year, seeing as it's the last date listed on the ADEMLP webpage.

The way it worked was Ann would play a clip of a song, and then ask for feedback on it before telling us who the artist was or what the song was. Everyone got to fill out a survey telling her whether or not she should play it on the next show. This repeated for 20 songs, and then the local featured band played a set to end the night. I didn't recognize a lot of the artists that she played, and I neglected to write any of them down (mostly because I didn't have a pen or an extra piece of paper). The only ones I remember are Feist, Beirut, and Amy Winehouse. I do remember liking almost all of what she played. There were, of the 19 she played today, two that I didn't like, and two that I liked, but that I wouldn't want played on her show. One of them would fit much better on a college radio station than on NPR. One of the songs, I really liked everything about the song except the singer's voice. It made me sad because I wanted to like it, but the voice was a deal-breaker.

After that, the local band, The Strange, played. They had a pretty varied set. Some of it was learning towards psychedelic rock, but other songs were a lot more ... "concert-friendly" for lack of a better term. I quite enjoyed all of their music, and would have bought a CD had they been selling them, and, I should mention, had I had cash. The lead singer had kind of an awkward stage presence, though. He looked fine when he was singing, and he sounded great, but during solos and the like, he looked like he didn't know what to do with himself, and he just looked very uncomfortable. That's the only thing I'd say they need to work on. Musically, they were very talented.

As an aside, the Majestic Cafe makes a good venue for smaller bands. It's, fittingly, very good as a cafe setup, but I don't know that I would want to see a show at the Cafe if the audience was big enough that they would have to move the tables.