Halfway House Music Podcast 2: Electric Boogaloo

Halfway House, a music blog that understands the opportunity our city has lying between two major cities, Detroit and Chicago. Catching bands on the road and bringing in Grand Rapids native talent to Stone House Recording for professionally produced audio/visual media they share for free on their website.

Another example of why I believe we can always look to music for the next step in a progressively creative economy.  Halfway House seems to understand not only the importance of raising up local talent in a professional context to get an equal chance against more conglomerate sources, but also to create that context where local musicians are sharing a platform in a larger dialogue of the artform and surrounding culture, geography aside.

This being a subject I could quickly exhaust your interest in, I'll leave it there and you can get back to Facebook and that (3) on the tab.  Just leave the podcast playing while you do.

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“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn, The Optimism of Uncertainty, Adapted from “The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear”, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb

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