For weeks, "Thrift Shop" was the No. 1 song in America. It was recently knocked back to No. 2 due to the "Harlem Shake" craze; but that doesn't mean Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have cooled. No way.
The SpeakEZ Lounge hosted the Grand Rapids debut of Classical Revolution, a movement that aims to release classical music from the traditional concert hall and bring it into taverns and nightclubs.
It goes without saying that the music industry has changed in the last decade. A garage band no longer has to shop around a demo to the biggest labels to "make it."
The Bangups' journey in fashioning its new rock album, Hellcat, took its share of twists and turns, from an invigorating stint on 2012's national Warped Tour to a "crazy" detour into the realm of "chiptune" bands that create electronic music using sound chips from video game consoles.
Legendary journalist Hunter S Thompson once said, "San Francisco in the late '60s was a very special time and place ... there were sparks in any direction." This could also be said of Seattle in the early 1990s.
Traditions aside, I won't wear my jammies to The Jammies. Despite the punny practice embraced by fun-loving volunteer programmers at community radio station WYCE-FM (88.1), the world truly is better off not seeing me in my sleepwear at the annual awards show celebrating West Michigan's vibrant music scene.
You can't have a discussion about thrash metal without bringing up Testament. The band helped define the genre in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early 1980s, a scene widely recognized as one of the birthplaces of this faster, more aggressive take on heavy metal.
Less than two weeks before embarking to Europe, Chicago's Maps and Atlases will navigate around the lakeshore toward Grand Rapids to begin a modest four-day stint in the Midwest – all terrible puns barred.
There are as many endings as beginnings on West Michigan's music scene, sparked by the ups and downs of venues and clubs or the germinations and gyrations of local bands. Such is the case with Muskegon's popular Four Finger Five, an uber-talented trio.
The infamous 'crew' is something of a time-honored tradition in the hip-hop world. Rappers take their friends with them upon getting big. This past year has seen the rise of the Black Hippy crew from Los Angeles and the A$AP Mob from New York. Closest to home is Danny Brown's Bruiser Brigade from Detroit.
