"Digging out these old recordings has been fun, but it also has made me realize what a great place Ann Arbor was in the middle Sixties. The Prime Movers Blues Band formed in the summer of 1965, the same time as the Grateful Dead were doing the identical thing out in San Francisco. Neither knew about the other. Later, of course there was interaction among these new music groups that were appearing all over the country. There was something in the air. It was the Sixties! The Prime Movers had gone to Chicago.

"Friends of the Sixties" with Michael Erlewine, a half-hour show on the legendary Ann Arbor blues group the Prime Movers Blues Band, with Iggy Pop as their drummer, complete with dozens of photos, live tunes, and Iggy Pop singing "I'm a Man" with the Prime Movers Blues Band. Michael Erlewine is founder of the All-Music Guide and former lead singer and amplified-harmonica player for the Prime Movers Blues Band.

This video originally appeared here.

Part Two of an interview by All-Music Guide founder Michael Erlewine with harmonica virtuoso Peter Madcat Ruth, an internationally known musician. These video-podcasts are part of a series of interviews for the Michigan Music Project, a documentary on Michigan musicians, artists, venues, and music supporters. The interviews in this series represent basic archival footage (roughly edited) from which excerpts will be taken for eventual documentary.

This video originally appeared here.

This is a rough-draft of some footage Stephen Erlewine took back in 1970 at the second pivotal Arbor Blues Festival, where his brother Michael was in charge of food and drink for the blues artists, and also served as interviewer for scores of the performers. This was a life-changing experience and led some years later to Michael founding the All-Music Guide (AMG).

This video originally appeared here.

"A question I get a lot is why did the Prime Movers never record and get famous? The short answer is: it was not in the cards. The longer version is actually pretty funny. Here it is in brief: There were two attempts to hitch our wagon to the stars. For a short time early on, we had the now-legendary 'Jeep' Holland, manager of the rock group "The Rationals" as our manager. For sure, he wanted to get us into the mainstream of popular music and to this end he tried to get us to conform, to wear little suits, and whatever he thought would help us.

Short film of the Community High School 45th Year All-Class Reunion and 34th Commstock music festival, produced in conjunction with the feature-length documentary Welcome to Commie High from 7 Cylinders Studio.

U-M Center for World Performance Studies visiting puppet artist Tom Lee presents a special workshop exploring Japanese traditional puppetry techniques that have had an enormous influence on world puppetry performance. Following a short talk on bunraku-style puppetry, participants had a hands-on opportunity to handle traditional Japanese puppets and draw back the curtain on how these beautiful puppets are brought to life through skillful puppetry technique. ​​​​​​​

Enlighten us, but make it quick!

How would you share your passion in 5 minutes, with just 20 slides? We asked Ann Arbor this question; Ignite | Ann Arbor is the response. Watch your neighbors engage in this international phenomenon of fast-paced geekery!  Discover what your community geeks have to say – whether it's food, tech, business, music, art, history or something strange and new, it's sure to be a feverish night filled with discovery!

The first Ignite took place in Seattle in 2006.

Well known Indian and western musicians come together to talk about the concepts behind Indian and western music, and how they collaborate to create new music. This is accompanied by a short concert where they will present music based on these concepts.

Musicians San, Emily and Brian presented a program of songs from classic Broadway musicals such as Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, The Fantasticks, Follies, Bridges of Madison County and more.

San is one half of the duo, Gemini, his daughter Emily graduated with a minor in musical theatre from EMU and Brian Brill is an Emmy Award winning composer and pianist from Chelsea.