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Saturday Looks Good To Me
The scorching August heat seemed out of place in autumn. When the temperature soared to 90 degrees on an October day, I was uncertain as to what exactly was going on. With headlines of a near shutdown of Michigan’s government, I began to wonder: Was Detroit’s climate about to change? I’ve heard the talk on the streets and the whispers on the Internet of the 400-some murders in the city this year already. Many friends and relatives of mine are fleeing the Motor City and not looking back. Fred Thomas has left, too.
As the mastermind behind the brilliant, addictive pop jingles of the once Ann Arbor-based Saturday Looks Good To Me, Thomas has long been a major player in the local rock scene, starting Ypsilanti Records (an imprint for limited-release CDs and 45s) and playing in bands such as His Name Is Alive, Lovesick and Flashpapr. Molding Motown magic with the pop sensibilities of Brian Wilson, Thomas and SLGTM became critically acclaimed indie-darlings with stellar albums including All Your Summer Songs (2003) and Every Night (2004). Always excited to tour, Thomas has toured with SLGTM consistently during the band’s stretch, traveling roads that lead far past the Great Lakes.
Thomas hasn’t lived in Michigan for a few years. First, he moved out to Portland and now he’s been living in Brooklyn for nearly a year. With all the great success SLGTM had found in Ann Arbor, what caused Thomas to vacate the state?
“I don’t even have any idea why I decided to leave,” Thomas says. “I’d been here for a long time and it kinda made sense to me at the time. I can’t remember why it was, but I packed up and left.”
Although Thomas is gone, Michigan will always be special and he looks forward to coming back to play shows when on tour — but things have changed. For one, those Motown influences have seemed to subdue a bit. Thomas mentions that at some point, he thought it was fake to churn out those happy go-lucky Berry Gordy tunes when he wasn’t even listening to much Motown anymore. Hence, the new SLGTM record, Fill Up The Room, is draped in modern aesthetics with some slight cues from '90s alternative.
And living in Brooklyn has had an effect on the band as well. “It's way different there because there’s so many bands, and they’re all clamoring to break out in a way,” Thomas says. “But for me, it just motivates a desire to be different and not sound like anything that’s getting any attention. If something happens in February, by May, there’s 35 copycats trying to sound exactly like what was really exciting in February and there’s always a bunch of hype and it has nothing to do with inspiration.”
To me, this sounded a lot like Detroit: a bunch of starving artists trying to make it. But SLGTM was never a “Detroit band," were they? Is there a divide between Ann Arbor and Detroit (and other cities/suburbs) that makes it twice as hard to make it in this town?
“People who lived in Ann Arbor were like ‘Man, Detroit, it's scary and weird,’ ‘Why is Detroit so angry?’” Thomas says. “Detroit would be like, 'Ann Arbor is a bunch of college kids, they’re idiots, there’s no music there, it's just a bunch of frat parties.’ But those are just isolated opinions — I had a lot of fun in both places and I think it's kinda all the same.”
With all the different places Thomas plays in the world, it must be nice to come back to Michigan where it doesn’t change much; for now, anyway. | RDW
Saturday Looks Good To Me • 10/26 • Blind Pig
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