Sufjan Stevens Greetings From Michigan

Also, if it's worth anything, I did finally go to the U.P. and Sleeping Bear Dunes and Petoskey and both Sault Sainte Maries for the first time two summers ago. They were nice. Sort of.

Not in the sense of having an agenda or a message, but I was impressed that he dealt with these topics at all (the first song is about Flint, and nicely covers the same ground as Roger & Me without Michael Moore's mugging). In another version of my blurb I namechecked John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy, which is a far greater work but had some of the same themes of describing ordinary lives and mimicking the pace of industry or lack thereof to tell a deeply American story.

Mostly I'm impressed that Sufjan would make a - let's not say political, but cultural - statement at a time when so many musicians (outside maybe rap?) seem oblivious to the nation around them, a few immediate post-9/11 shockwaves aside. In fact, it's a bummer the music wasn't more ... I dunno ... original or varied or whatever, to keep up with the lyrics.

Thanks for saving me some time, chuck.

Did anybody hear about the trouble with the new Michigan Commemorative Quarter? Apparently they had to recall a bunch of them because the tape kept unwrapping the cluster holding one nickel and two dimes.

This might actually be ok if it was the original 13 states, though.
(Or the 13 that start with the letter "A," assuming that's how many start with the letter "A," or whatever.)

Well, having lived most of my life in Michigan "below the tree line" from Benton Harbor to Ann Arbor to Detroit, I'm not willing to accept the contention that I lack "Michigan" credibility. Detroit may not be the sum total that "Michigan" represents, but it's a pretty damn big part of it.

/asshole music snob

Still love this album. What the hell's he up to these days? His states project seems to have stagnated.

I will still rep for this album even though I don't think anything else he's done quite measures up

ok I can't really say that since there's a bunch of shit he did I haven't even bothered to listen to, got real tired of him years ago, but I'm revisiting Michigan and still like it

all good naysayers is such a great song, flint too, vito's ordination song...i prefer illinois, and both records are bloated (like the song titles), but yeah it's great, and i wonder where he's been the last four years..

apparently he put out a single this year called "A Little Lost" so that seems to answer your question

it is an arthur russell cover

oh and I guess it's actually on a comp about to come out: red hot + arthur russell

I should revisit this one over the winter (but not before)
I wonder if there's as much vibraphone as I remember