Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This all-electronic-music edition features sounds from Pastland, Stunna + Calculon, The Waffle Tower, evbp/Owasurenaku, and CrispySafe. 

This story originally ran on July 17, 2019. We're rerunning it on what would have been Asheton's 77th birthday.

July 17 is Ron Asheton’s birthday. He died in 2009 at the age of 60, but not before he and the band he helped make famous had one last run when The Stooges reformed in 2003.

The Stooges arose from the rich musical compost of the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area in the late 1960s and while the classic original lineup (Asheton on guitar, his brother Scott Asheton on drums, Dave Alexander on bass and Iggy Pop as frontman) only lasted a few glorious, intense years, the racket they made proved durable. They were a quartet of teenage cavemen with four chords between them, amps set for aggression, gnawing at the deepest atavistic urges of the human animal. Like all geniuses, they were unappreciated in their day but went on to inspire generations of future primitives around the globe and made punk rock inevitable. 

After the Stooges, Ron Asheton enjoyed a long music career with bands such as Destroy All Monsters, New Race, and Dark Carnival. He passed away from a heart attack shortly after a high-profile Stooges reunion. The man’s legacy in the annals of rock history is secure, legitimized by no less an “authority” as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but that isn’t the reason we’re here. 

What is discussed less about Asheton is his acting career, which found him playing both major and minor roles in five low-budget, locally sourced horror films shot in Michigan between 1988 and 1995. From all reports a genuine fan of the genre, Asheton holds his own in these cheap, gory, and frankly ridiculous films, sometimes emerging as the most believable actor on the screen (the competition is hardly stiff). He’s unrecognizable as a former rock guitar mangler, opting instead for a somewhat schlubby onscreen persona, sometimes as comic relief or second banana to a more traditional lead. 

So in honor of Asheton’s birthday, let’s review his filmography:

During the Civil War, the United States was “a nation that was still younger than its oldest citizens,” writes University of Michigan professor Scott Ellsworth in his new book, Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. This young country was figuring out what it was just as much as it was figuring out what it wasn’t. This dilemma, as history shows, was divisive.

Midnight on the Potomac supplies a plot-driven, nonfiction account of the people involved in the Civil War, both famous and not, and how their actions influenced the trajectory of the war. Ellsworth examines the leadership during the war, as well as the conspiracies, attacks, weapons, and battles.

Most centrally, the book focuses on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln through profiles of both John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln. Ellsworth juxtaposes Booth’s acting career with his support of the Confederacy. Ellsworth also discusses Lincoln’s habits and moods. For example, a description of Lincoln notes his features:

Kelsey Detering has found her groove.

The Ann Arbor indie-rocker recently started playing bass and features new wave-inspired basslines on her four latest singles.

“Musically, I feel like I found myself starting at the end of 2023,” said Detering, who’s traded her previous Ceolsige (pronounced see-ole-sidge) artist moniker for Kelsey. (pronounced Kelsey period).

“I found myself as an artist and as a person, and everything locked in. That’s what happened to me, and I thought, ‘This is so different than Ceolsige, and it feels different.’ I’m hearing music differently since I started playing bass, and I’m writing and approaching it differently.”

Initially a pianist, Detering credits Duran Duran bassist John Taylor with inspiring her to pick up the bass—a Rio Dream bass.

“I learned all the [Duran Duran] basslines and started to branch out to other basslines and players, too,” she said. “That’s really the foundation of my playing. The first [bassline] I wrote was for ‘Throw the Stone,’ and you can hear [John Taylor’s influence] all over that. He was inspired by [Blondie], it’s a thread that goes through it.”

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features big-voiced indie rock by Petalwave, jazz vocals by Allan Harris, modular synths by The Chillennial, guitar explorations by Confusion Reactor / re:fusion cc:ontractor, and punk by Reckless Manner.

This story originally ran on May 21, 2025. We're rerunning it because "Hometown Summer" will be at the Michigan Theater again on Saturday, July 12, with screenings at 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm.

Comedies come in cycles. There was a time in the late 1990s and continuing through the early 2010s when movie theaters regularly welcomed rated-R-for-raunchy flicks with over-the-top humor. 

But as social mores changed, and movie theaters struggled to get people into their buildings, many of those movies went straight to streaming.

Wolverine Productions' Benjamin Vomastek misses when salty comedies with no-holds-barred japes populated the cineplex, and the University of Michigan grad is doing his part to bring them back.

Vomastek's film debut, 2024's Rosetta Stoned, filmed in Ann Arbor on a $30,000 budget, features a pothead who convinces a socially awkward classmate to exchange homework answers for weed. 

The new Hometown Summer, also filmed in Tree Town, premieres at the Michigan Theater on Thursday, May 22, at 7:30 pm. The cast and crew will appear after for a Q&A session.

In Hometown Summer, three young pals spend the warm months in Ann Arbor, and all kinds of mayhem happen when they get mixed up in a crazy business plan and indulge in all sorts of vices.

Vomastek makes no secret that his films are indebted to outrageous comedies of the past, such as Superbad and There's Something About Mary, so I asked him to discuss some movies that were direct influences on Hometown Summer.

"Each of these films carries a theme of human authenticity and realism that has inspired me as a filmmaker," Vomastek said.

Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features melodic indie-punk by Shindig Machine, smooth jazz by John E. Lawrence, electronica by NYKNYAK and wøunds, and hip-hop beats by prod. P.

In August 1983, 200 people entered a new dimension above the Heidelberg in Ann Arbor.

The clubgoers stepped into an unfamiliar yet fascinating music realm at the Big Beat Club, now known as Club Above, to dance the night away.

“Want to be on the cutting edge?” wrote Jim Boyd for The Michigan Daily on July 28, 1983. “New York, as usual, is the place to be, but this Friday you can save the plane fare by going to the Big Beat Club. There you will be able to experience the latest music/dance craze that is now surfacing in New York. It’s called ‘hip hop’ and its impact may prove to be culturally vast.”

The show was pushed back to August 5, 1983, but when the concert finally happened, curious viewers arrived to watch Harold “Whiz Kid” McGuire, a New York City DJ, spin and mix records in a “new” musical style known as “hip-hop.”

In Nothing Special, Callie has been surrounded by magical artifacts and creatures her entire life, but there's nothing special about that. She knows she's not human—after all, she can see and commune with the spirits of vegetables—but beyond being part daemon on her dad's side, she hasn't a clue what else might be in her lineage. That begins to change when Callie and her boyfriend Declan embark upon a rescue mission past the town gate she had been forbidden to cross, joined by enigmatic companions including the demon prince Lasser and a dead radish named Radish.

Created by Ann Arbor artist Katie Cook and originally serialized online on the Webtoon platform, the third volume of Nothing Special is now available in a chonky print graphic novel. Cook's artwork is fresh and bright, complementing her surprising, laugh-out-loud humor. Yet some of the conflicts these characters encounter speak to heavier, darker themes. 

I spoke with Cook about Nothing Special, its inspirations, and how it compares to her work on Star Wars and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Actors playing animals in a veterinarian’s waiting room?

I’ll admit that this premise—played out in the Purple Rose Theatre’s new world premiere production of Matt Letscher’s Bert & Trixie Visit the Vet—initially threatened to trigger my eye roll reflex.

But expectations are funny things. Sometimes, when you go into a theater with both skepticism and an open mind, delight and surprise creep in, and you find more resonant substance in the work than you anticipated.

Bert & Trixie opens with the default owner (Meghan VanArsdalen) of two sibling dogs, Bert (Jonathan West) and Trixie (Jamie Elvey)—left behind by their philandering original owner—arriving at a vet’s office, where there’s also a resident caged parrot (Leonard, played by John Seibert); a pot-stirring stray cat (Bitchy, played by Mark Colson); and an alarmingly unfiltered nurse (Maria Ru-djen).

As the animals talk with each other, and a health scare for one looms, they weigh the pros and cons of belonging to someone versus living free and unfettered in the world—which is a question humans, including some high-falutin’ philosophers, have grappled with for centuries. So there’s meat on this seemingly silly play’s bones and, to Letscher, the cast, and director’s credit, it’s also often quite funny.