Posted by dull thud on May 10, 2001 at 04:55:05:
Though hardly a major star on the national level, blues-rocker Flint Michigan does have a loyal cult following. His songs may be short on subtlety (they include My Penis Is Bigger Than Yours and the much-covered Your Mother’s A Bucktoothed Whore) but they are big on grinding riffs and hipshaking rhythms. Vinyl pressings of his debut album Look What I Found Down The Back Of The Sofa are highly sought-after by collectors.
Michigan is known as much for his short temper as for his songs; firing musicians at the drop of a hat, often while on-stage, means there’s a constant flow of players through his backing band. One local fanzine estimates that forty percent of drummers in the city have worked for him at one time or another. As a consequence, their name changes almost on a weekly basis. They are currently billed as Flint Michigan and the Meddling Kids, but that will have changed at least twice before you read this. In his twenty-five year career, he has recorded under forty different band names and performed under countless others. These include:
Flint Michigan and the Trigger-happy Diplomats
Flint Michigan and the Reasonable Doubts
Flint Michigan and the Ill-judged Cancer Jokes
Flint Michigan and the Ungrateful Godsons
Flint Michigan and the Air Traffic Controllers On Crack
Flint Michigan and the Herman Bloody Melvilles
This turnover reached its peak in a now-legendary show at the False Address. Michigan fired two guitarists and a drummer during the first verse of the show-opening Do The Iguana, fired their replacements during the second verse of the same song, announced their name-change to Flint Michigan and the Liberal Extremists, dismissed the bass player and tenor saxophonist during the last chorus and finished the song alone before kicking into a demented nine-minute a capella cover of You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman. The fact that most of the audience continued to pogo throughout is a testament to their affection for this true musical maverick.
--Michelle Dearn (rock critic, What’s On In Parodopolis)