After a couple of years helping to promote his friends' electronic dance music nights in Washtenaw County, Evan Oswald started thinking about ways to grow the local EDM scene. An avid dancer and sometimes DJ, Oswald saw an opening for a regular weeknight happening that didn't take away from what others were already doing well. After some trial and error, he settled on Gear Lords, a monthly Wednesday night series focused on live music production where genre is less important than the means of production; Gear Lords performers create electronic music using hardware—sequencers, synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, etc.

"I was talking about live sets. People that would plug a bunch of pieces of equipment into each other—a bunch of wires and knobs and stuff," Oswald says.

While he admittedly didn't know much about how the music was made at first, and many people told him why it wouldn't work, Oswald pushed ahead as promoter and recruited friend and musician Javan Cain (AKA "OMO") as Gear Lords' resident artist. A year and a half later, Gear Lords has hosted around 30 events at a handful of venues around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, building a regular community of performers and patrons along the way. 

"I really just wanted more going on in my neighborhood, and I didn't want to copy other people or step on other people's toes," Oswald says.

Gamergate debuted in 2014 when a video-game designer's former boyfriend falsely accused her of having relations with a journalist to score a good review.

But Gamergate exploded when trolls at 4chan used the story as a jumping-off point to start attacking women and minorities over various things—from gaming to politics—with the results spilling out on Twitter, other social-media sites, and message boards, then eventually into mainstream news.

Internet harassment wasn't new when Gamergate hit, but the speed and size of the attacks were at a new scale, offering a playbook for the kind of bad actors who often dominate the web now. Disinformation campaigns are the norm, lies are truth, and weaponized anti-social media is the default mode for many who engage with these websites and platforms.

David Wolinsky has covered Gamergate for 11 years as a freelance journalist and author of The Hivemind Swarmed: Conversations on Gamergate, the Aftermath, and the Quest for a Safer Internet, whose paperback edition comes out in August. Wolinsky is also a dedicated archivist whose Don't Die project features more than 600 interviews with people from the gaming industry, the media, commentators, and more about the state of the internet in the wake of Gamergate.

For a deeper understanding of Gamergate, Wolinsky and Caitlin Dewey's Links I Would GChat You If We Were Friends Substack compiled "The Links x Hivemind Swarmed Reading Guide to Gamergate." This collection of articles will get you up to speed on the pervasive influence of Gamergate ahead of Wolinsky's visit to the Ann Arbor District Library's Downtown branch on Friday, April 25, from 6-7 pm for a panel discussion: "Swarmed: Gaming and the Social Internet’s Impact on Culture and Identity":

When film auteurs Joel and Ethan Coen were writing the script for the 1998 caper comedy The Big Lebowski, they listened to the sort of groovy artists they imagined would be adored by the main character, The Dude: Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, The Eagles, and Creedence Clearwater Revival in particular.

Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, as played by Jeff Bridges, is a slacker with the same name as a millionaire, and this case of mistaken identity plays out across Los Angeles and a bowling alley. With his long locks and penchant for robes, The Dude looks like the sort of chilled-out guy who knows all the great tunes.

When producer T Bone Burnett was asked to suggest more artists for The Big Lebowski soundtrack, he kept one thing in mind: “Since the Dude was high all the time, he would have to have incredible taste in music," the music archivist told Rolling Stone in 1998.

Rootsy music by Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and Nina Simone sits next to avant-garde songcraft by Meredith Monk, Captain Beefheart, and Moondog, which dances alongside exotica from Yma Sumac and Henry Mancini. Those initial inspirations of Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Gipsy Kings' cover of "Hotel California" also appear. Carter Burwell, who did the original soundtrack music, added his noir-inspired compositions to flesh out the ambiance, and there are many more songs in the movie that didn't make the official album by the likes of ZZ Top, Santana, Booker T. & the MGs, Eagles, The Monks, and more.

The Dude Revue is a now-annual sonic tribute to The Big Lebowski, with core members James Bourland, Jordan Otto, and Connor Otto bringing together friends to perform music featured throughout the movie as well as act out scenes. This second edition takes place on Saturday, April 26, at The Blind Pig in Ann Arbor.

I asked guitarist-singer Bourland about how The Dude Revue came together to honor this cult classic.

After a tumultuous period, Kyle Rasche prefers to pause and reflect.

The singer-songwriter and guitarist ponders heartbreak and growth after experiencing many life changes on Take It Easy.

“These songs were born in a period,” said Rasche, who performs as Kyle Joe, about his latest indie-folk album.

“There was a lot of heartbreak, and there was a lot of really beautiful love, too. And then as the writing went on, I started leaning into more of the lessons I was learning along the way and trying to make the music represent those moments instead of just the heartbreak.”

In those vulnerable moments, Rasche rediscovers himself and his sense of purpose across seven tracks. Collectively, they demonstrate the resiliency that comes from weathering a divorce, loving yourself, and finding kindred spirits.

“I hope more than anything that people hear the hope,” said Rasche, who hails from Alto, a small town about 20 miles southeast of Grand Rapids. “It can get pretty dark … but there’s some light in there.”

Best friends don't always have exactly the same interests, but it can be especially fun when what excites one pal complements the thing the other enjoys most.

For Batcat and Al the Ghost, one literally feeds the other: Al loves to cook and Batcat loves to eat. What happens, though, when their favorite hobbies take on a competitive edge?

Batcat: Cooking Contest!, the third volume of Meggie Ramm's early middle-grade graphic novel series, finds the colorful residents of Spooky Island testing their respective skills as part of a local festival.

The book is fun and cute, and it explores Big Emotions.

Ramm will launch Batcat: Cooking Contest! with a signing session at Vault of Midnight in Ann Arbor on Saturday, April 26, 4-6 pm. (They will also be at Sidetrack Books in Royal Oak on April 19 and at Constellation Cat Cafe in Lansing on May 2.)

I spoke with Ramm about the latest book, the origins of Batcat, and what they hope kids and parents will take away from volume three.

Divorce is not just one thing; it's not just the moment of making the decision or signing a piece of paper. The events before, during, and after hold rage, heartbreak, pain, fear, freedom, and many more emotions and qualities, as poet Carmen Bugan documents in her new collection, Tristia.

Yet, even from the start of the book, the poet makes clear that this pain does not define her but rather serves as an experience to surmount:

Those who caused us pain
Will be left holding the chains
They have fashioned for us.

We are rising on the back of the wind.

The rise demonstrates that more than one thing can be true at once—pain exists alongside cultivating resilience, finding joy in children and nature, traveling, and reimagining how life looks. “It’s Possible,” says the poem by that name, that “Like an egg, the soul / Is ready to break again. / Like a river, the soul is ready / To rush over the banks.”

The path through the dark woods of divorce and a father’s death does not cut straight or clear. As the poet shares, “Today I met an old man who was lost,” the similarities between these two people emerge on “Archer Street”:

“How do you / keep stones from sinking like that, I wonder? / How do you hold the wild shoots / of spring inside you, instead?” Now is the right season of year to contemplate these questions from the poem “Preparing” by Ellen Stone in her new poetry collection, Everybody Wants to Keep the Moon Inside Them.

The Ann Arbor poet will debut her book and be joined by two other local poets, Monica Rico and Ashwini Bhasi, on Wednesday, April 9, at 6:30 pm at AADL's Downtown branch. The event will include a reading and Q&A. On Saturday, April 26, Stone will be one of the poets in the Celebration of Jewish Poetry from 2 pm to 6 pm at Temple Beth Emeth. One of Stone’s poems is on display at Comet Coffee in the Poet Tree Town project throughout Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti during April.

The appearances of the moon in various forms generate a comforting presence in Stone’s collection as the simile “tidal as the pull toward moon” in “How I want the road to you” illustrates. In the second poem of the book, called “Bright side of the moon,” the poet shares how some things are nevertheless amiss since there is “Scarlet fruit scattered in the garden straw as if / the strawberry moon splintered. I gathered shards.” The poet discovers and picks up such shards for the rest of the book. The poems tell stories of lives unfolding through the natural order of marriages and motherhood as well as the pain of sexual assault and loss.

Poet Tree Town infuses public places with poems in windows around town as well as online. The poems are ephemeral, just up from April 1 to 30, during National Poetry Month.

The third rendition of Poet Tree Town is expanding to Ypsilanti, continuing in Ann Arbor, and launching with a kick-off event on April 1, 6-9 pm, at Dzanc House. The event includes an open mic, book swap, a community-written poem, desserts by local baker Fragola Forno, and a meet-and-greet with your local poets.

“Welcome to all, whether you are a poet yourself or a poetry appreciator!” said Poet Tree Town founder and organizer, Cameron (Cam) Finch, about the event.

The poems, written by community members, number 157 on display at 66 locations for 2025—up from 87 poets/poems at 38 locations in 2024. Ypsi will host 30 of the poems for the first time this year.

“The expansion to Ypsilanti felt like a very natural next step for this project,” Finch told Pulp. “At the same time, it was important for me to maintain the name Poet Tree Town, as a nod to where this project was born, and where it is growing out and up from.”

The lives of sisters Consuelo and Graciela intertwine and unravel, both with each other and separately, and then crisscross the globe in The Volcano Daughters, the debut novel by Gina María Balibrera.

Much of what happens to the sisters is not their choice. They suffer great losses of their mother and loved ones, abuse at the hands of the General in El Salvador, and repeated setbacks in their efforts to regain a home, sustenance, and love.

These two daughters of mother Socorrito begin their lives on a volcano where the women harvest coffee for el patrón of la finca (the boss of the estate). When their lives converge with the rising dictator, who despite despising their Indigenous roots also finds them attractive, the girls find themselves in significant danger, which they only fully comprehend looking back:

When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy at an attorneys firm
I cleaned the window and I swept the floor
As I polished up the handle on the big front door
I polished up the handle so carefully
That now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navee
                                                           —W.S. Gilbert

It seems like Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas never grow old.

Whether it’s Sir Joseph Porter bragging that he never went to sea and became the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee in H.M.S. Pinafore or the ambitious Lord High Executioner KoKo making a list of enemies (who never will be missed) in The Mikado, the biting satire still rings as strong as ever, maybe even stronger. Arthur Sullivan’s pliable music still moves gracefully from comic to lushly romantic and W.S. Gilbert’s librettos are as fresh now as they were in the 1870s..

The University of Michigan’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society (UMGASS) is presenting H.M.S. Pinafore at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, April 3-6.