Shonen Knife ticket and concert flyers

You may recall the first time I took a trip to Shonen Knife Planet back in 2007 (if not, the URL in the preceding text will helpfully take you back to that time). Last night I booked a return trip, as Shonen Knife came back to town in support of their latest record, Super Group (which I also reviewed here not too long ago). This time was their first time playing Detroit with their new bassist, Ritsuko (indeed, it was mentioned during the show that this is Ritsuko’s first time in America), and thus — I believe — the first time founding member Atsuko has not played on a U.S. tour.

Shonen Knife once again played at the Magic Stick in Detroit, and once again I went with good old Forster. If you don’t know what the Magic Stick is like (or didn’t read my previous SK concert post), envision this: the ground floor is a bowling alley (the “Garden Bowl”). In a corner by the front entrance there’s a counter that sells pizza (dubbed “Sgt. Pepperoni’s”). Directly in front of the front entrance is a stairway leading up to the second floor, which is a large single space (with a fairly low ceiling); in the back is a bar, and directly opposite that on the far side of the room is a stage maybe two to three feet off the floor. Along one wall is an upraised platform with a bunch of pool tables lining it, and the other wall has a narrow upraised platform that seems to serve no real purpose. That second floor pool hall? That’s the Magic Stick — that’s where the concert took place. To say it’s an intimate setting is a bit of an understatement.

Shonen Knife Concert Poster

Anyway, Forster arrived at my house directly from work, and we were both hungry. The last time I saw him (when he brought me a monitor to replace my now-dead flatscreen), he had told me he had a major hankering for White Castle — so of course, we hit up Noodles & Company. This time, though, his Crave® (the word “Crave” is now apparently a registered trademark of White Castle) would not be denied. So we grabbed a sack (it’s sad that we could smell White Castle from the road before we arrived), ate, and were on our way.

Since Michigan is newly flush with federal stimulus money, the state government and MDOT have decided to start a billion road construction projects at the same time, and at the absolute worst time of year — right before winter. As such, we weren’t sure if any of the normal ways would be choked with traffic, but we truly lucked out — traffic was really light. In fact, for a while it seemed as we were in an alternate dimension of some sort, since not only was traffic light, but the few cars on the road with us were all traveling 55-60 MPH (on stretches of highway that usually have people going 90). The traffic was so much in our favor, in fact, that we arrived just before 7:30 — doors were listed at 8.

(It also helped that we didn’t take the wrong exit off of the freeway this time.)

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