We have a guest post today from the best looking DJ in retro rock history! Jim "Bad Boy" Baade who is also a superb Rock Radio filmmaker.
We thought my readers and fellow retro music fans would love to see all of Jim's historic rock history films! Hopefully, many more to come! Kick em Out Bad Boy!
Photo of Jim with Greta Van Fleet holding up a copy of Local DJ (Left to Right Sam Kiszka, Me, Jake Kiszka and Josh Kiszka. Photo Credit Sophia Baade
Flint’s Best Rock was a passion project I made while taking a filmmaking class at Mott Community College in 2012. I didn’t realize the movie would resonate with so many people, but it did and that just blew me away. The film recounts the glory days of WWCK, an Album Rock powerhouse in the ’80s that went to become the Best Rock Station in America according to Billboard Magazine!!
It wasn’t corporate radio, but true radio- when radio had a lot of power! I wanted to be as honest and intelligent as I could in telling the story about something I loved and was a big part of... and it kinda sent shockwaves both locally and nationally to an extent. It won Best Doc at the Flint Film Festival and was elected to be in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
Photo Credit Sophia Baade
Local DJ was a tribute to my mentor and true Rock n’ Roll Hero - Peter C Cavanaugh!! It was my highest professional honor to have Pete endorse and love my film.
The group photo is of a small reunion of WWCK DJ’s (left to right: Jim, Randy Stephenson, Tim Siegrist, and Randy Bhirdo)
Local DJ is 101 minutes of an immersive experience connecting key elements of a half-century of radio, Rock n’ Roll and Culture featuring Michigan’s significant contributions. A microcosm of our shared experience to Rock music in American with non-stop throbbing, pulsing and pulverizing red hot Rock seen through the life and times of Rock n’ Roll Hall Fame DJ Peter C Cavanaugh.
In this news-breaking narrative, decades of women who brought down sexual predator Larry Nassar offer groundbreaking new insight, with the first known survivor and many others sharing their stories exclusively for the first time.
We think of Larry Nassar as the despicable sexual predator of Olympic gymnasts -- but there is an astonishing, untold story. For decades, in a small-town gym in Michigan, he honed his manipulations on generations of aspiring gymnasts. Kids from the neighborhood.
Girls with hopes of a college scholarship. Athletes and parents with a dream. In The Girls, these brave women for the first time describe Nassar's increasingly bold predations through the years, recount their warning calls unheeded, and demonstrate their resilience in the face of a nightmare.
In 1906 George Shiras III (1859 -1942) published a series of remarkable nighttime photographs in National Geographic. Taken with crude equipment, the black-and-white photographs featured leaping whitetail deer, a beaver gnawing on a tree, and a snowy owl perched along the shore of a lake in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The pictures, stunning in detail and composition, celebrated American wildlife at a time when many species were going extinct because of habitat loss and unrestrained hunting.
As a congressman and lawyer, Shiras joined forces with his friend Theodore Roosevelt and scientists in Washington, DC, who shaped the conservation movement during the Progressive Era. His legal and legislative efforts culminated with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Come See About Me, Marvin is accessible, honest poetry about and for real people. In the collection, Brian G. Gilmore seeks to invite the reader into a fantastical dialogue between himself and Marvin Gaye-two black men who were born in the nation's capital, but who moved to the Midwest for professional ambitions.
In trying to acclimate himself to a new job in a new place-a place that seemed so different from the home he had always known Gilmore often looked to Marvin Gaye as an example for how to be. These poems were derived as a means of coping in a strange land.
Detroit is home to an amazing architectural sculpture-a host of gargoyles, grotesques, and other silent guardians that watch over the city from high above its streets and sidewalks, often unnoticed or ignored by the people passing below.
Jeff Morrison's Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City documents these incredible features in a city that began as a small frontier fort and quickly grew to become a major metropolis and industrial titan. Detroit developed steadily following its founding in 1701.
Aretha Franklin and Linda Solomon
"Aretha was private. I respected this and she trusted me." Linda Solomon met Aretha Franklin in 1983 when she was just beginning her career as a photojournalist and newspaper columnist. Franklin's brother and business manager arranged for Solomon to capture the singer's major career events-just as she was coming back home to Detroit from California-while Franklin requested that Solomon document everything else.
Everything. And she did just that. What developed over these years of photographing birthday and Christmas parties in her home, annual celebrity galas, private backstage moments during national awards ceremonies, photo shoots with the iconic pink Cadillac, and more was a friendship between two women who grew to enjoy and respect one another.
Nearly two months after the death of Aretha Franklin, The Queen of Soul's 4,148-square-foot “castle”—a five-bedroom manse with 6.5 bathrooms in Bloomfield Township, Michigan—is hitting the market with a RESPECT-able $800,000 asking price.
Should it get a matching offer, the profit will be divided among Aretha Franklin’s four sons, an agreeable outcome considering that at the time of her death she didn't have a will to settle her $80 million estate.
The home—which has now been cleared of the artist's belongings—is situated in the exclusive Hills of Lone Pine area, with access to a community swimming pool and community tennis courts.
The marble-decorated entrance flows into a double-floor great room with hardwood floors, extensive floor-to-ceiling windows, and a fireplace.
The master suite is also awash in marble accents and includes a large walk-in closet, as do most of the bedroom suites in this grand abode.
The house has an impressive amount of outdoor living space thanks to a massive deck that overlooks a large yard and two ponds. Other amenities include a three-car garage, a sauna, and a jetted tub.
While the home is part of the $2 million in property Franklin owned in and around the Detroit area, the singer was living at Riverfront Towers in downtown Detroit at the time of her passing.
In March of 1966 there was a sighting of UFO's that were spotted by Sheriff's Deputies. They are known to be pretty reliable witnesses. But as I was just 10 years old and living in Ft Leonard Wood MO instead of my home town of Ypsilanti, I missed this story back then.
My friend Joe told me all about it and another of my good friends is retired from the Sheriff's Department. Joe believes it and Mike remembers it making the Sheriff's Department, State Police and local community the "laughing stock" of the midwest.
Here is what happened according to the media from back then...
This March 14, 1966 article from the Ann Arbor news described the area's initial UFO sighting.
It began in March, 1966 , with a sighting over a farm in Dexter.
Lights were seen hovering and then zipping across the sky. Reports came in from all over the area. One Washtenaw County sheriff deputy was quoted as calling the objects, whatever they were, “the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.”
The official explanation — flares caused by the burning of gases bubbling up from the area’s swamps — was unsatisfactory to many of those involved. Then-congressman Gerald Ford called for a congressional investigation. It never happened.
It wasn’t long before UFO mania had swept the nation. UFO reports were pouring in from all over the country. This was the era that sparked Hollywood’s love-affair with aliens, leading to blockbusters like E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Walter Cronkite anchored a 1966 CBS report titled, “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?” which featured the Dexter incident.
But after the UFO fever subsided, after the Hollywood productions made their millions, after NASA's moon program closed for good—in short, after America moved on — the question remained: what really happened in Dexter that March?
Harry Willnus was a teacher in the area at the time. He has been searching for an answer to that question for the last 51 years.
During the course of that half-century, Willnus has spoken with many of the most important humans involved in the incident.
Nothing he's heard or seen has convinced him that the official version of events is the correct one.
“I’ve been studying this,” Willnus said, “I’m convinced that planet Earth is being observed.”
Willnus described a particularly strange series of events involving Allen Hynek, the scientist brought in by the Air Force to investigate the incident.
One afternoon not long after the sightings, Hynek spent several hours looking for evidence in the Dexter swamp. He was accompanied by Washtenaw County SheriffDouglas Harvey, who led the local response to the sightings.
Afterwards, on the drive back from the swamp, Hynek told the sheriff he still did not have an explanation for the sightings. But later, back at the sheriff's office, Hynek received a phone call from Washington, D.C.
"Hynek stepped out of the office, took the call, came back in a few minutes later. Harvey described him as looking a bit shaken," Willnus said. "He had his head down and he was mumbling ‘Swamp gas, swamp gas, it was swamp gas.' I don’t think Hynek knew what swamp gas was.”
Listen to our full interview with Harry Willnus above, in which he recounts a UFO sighting of his own.
Bloomfield Hills, MI - The Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research is pleased to announce the launch of reinvigorated and expanded tours of Cranbrook's landmark Saarinen House.
Curated by Center Collections Fellow Kevin Adkisson, this three-month installation expands on the life and work of the remarkable Saarinen family, presenting drawings, letters, and family photographs from the Cranbrook Archives and bringing out treasures designed for use in their home, at Cranbrook, and for projects around the country.
Designed in the late 1920s and located at the heart of Cranbrook Academy of Art, Saarinen House served as the home and studio of the Finnish-American designers Eliel Saarinen (Cranbrook's first resident architect and the Academy's first president and head of the Architecture Department) and Loja Saarinen (the Academy's first head of the Weaving Department) from 1930 through 1950.
Saarinen House has been open for tours since 1994 following a careful restoration overseen by Gregory Wittkopp, now director of the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
While continuing to interpret the house as a total work of art, new stories, sounds, and objects will enrich the space and add insight into how the family lived, entertained, and worked in their home.
Visitors will see silver, glass, and ceramics selected or designed by the Saarinens for Cranbrook sparkling on the dining room table, study Loja's intricate weaving on test pieces she made on her hand loom, take a close look at eclectic titles of the hand-bound volumes in the family library, and even inspect the steamer trunks they used to travel back and forth between Europe and the United States.
The Saarinen House Studio--where Loja worked on designs for her rugs and monumental tapestries, and Eliel practiced architecture and discussed projects with his two partners, son Eero Saarinen and son-in-law J. Robert F. Swanson--will be transformed into a showcase of work produced by the entire family from their arrival at Cranbrook in 1925 to Eliel's death in 1950.
Sketches, plans, and presentation drawings of their furniture and buildings, as well as period books, articles, and catalogues by or about the family, will be arranged on drafting tables in the Studio for guests to explore. Weavings by Studio Loja Saarinen, ceramics and illustrations by daughter-in-law Lily Swann Saarinen, dresses and tableware by daughter Pipsan Saarinen Swanson, and furniture by Eliel, Eero, and J. Robert F. will also be on display.
The exhibition will open to the public with a free Open House on Sunday, April 30, from 1pm through 4pm, during the Cranbrook Academy of Art OPEN(STUDIOS) event. During the remainder of the exhibition, visitors experience this special installation on regularly scheduled public tours May 5 through July 30, Fridays and Saturdays at 2pm and Sundays at 1pm and 3pm.
All tours start at Cranbrook Art Museum, where tickets may be purchased on the day of the tours. Saarinen Home tours cost $15 for adults, $13 for seniors (65 and older), and $11 for students with ID.
Tour price includes admission to the Art Museum. Private tours may be scheduled by calling the Center for Collections and Research at 248.645.3307. Private tours are $20 a person, with a $100 minimum to make a reservation.
Complementing the regularly scheduled tours will be four Finnish Fridays (May 5, May 19, June 9, and June 23, from 6 to 8:30pm), held in conjunction with the Cranbrook Art Museum's exhibition, Finland 100: The Cranbrook Connection. These evenings will include live music in the studio on the Swanson-designed piano, treats served in the house's courtyard (Loja's pineapple upside down cake), as well as Saarinen home movies screened in the living room.
Enjoy a cash bar on the Art Museum's Peristyle, with period games and Finnish-inspired art-making activities for your enjoyment. Center and Art Museum curators, archivists, and program presenters will be on hand with behind-the-scenes-stories to complete these remarkable evenings. Advance tickets for the Finnish Fridays are $12 per person; admission at the door is $15 each. Admission may be purchased by calling the Cranbrook Art Museum at 248.645.3320 or visiting their website: http://www.cranbrookartmuseum.org.
The "Saarinen Home" exhibition and interpretive project was organized by the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research and curated by Kevin Adkisson, the Center's 2016 - 2018 Collections Fellow. Foundation support for the Center's 2016 - 2018 Program Year is provided by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Towbes Foundation, and the Clannad Foundation. Addition support for the "Saarinen Home" project is provided by Knoll, Inc.
For more information on the "Saarinen Home: Living and Working with Cranbrook's First Family Design" exhibition or the Finnish Friday events, please call the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research at 248.645.3307, email center@cranbrook.edu, or visit www.cranbrook.edu/center.
Just a few weeks back My Mom (right) and her friend Carol (left)) accompanied me to Charlevoix, Michigan to experience The Mushroom House Tour in person! We shot a lot of photos!
Welcoming you to the Park Avenue section of homes is a 7-ton boulder placed at Park Avenue and Grant Street.
The Half House aka The Honeymoon House
The Half House aka The Honeymoon House
GEM TOURING CAR
Mushroom House Tours offer walking and driving in GEM car tours of the legendary architect/engineer Earl A. Young's famous Mushroom Houses of Charlevoix, Michigan. We have been guiding tours for the past 7 years and would love to take your group!
Amazing stonework by Earl Young
Alex King and I shot all of these photos and they are going to be captioned soon. For now I just wanted to share a bit of this gorgeous tour that Edith Pair guides so beautifully.
Photo: 1983 at WWCK goes to Michelle LaRose
