Halloween descended several days early, with wild and woolly costume- and EDM-driven events in downtown Grand Rapids, plus tour stops by diverse acts from here to the lakeshore. (Photos, video)
Pre-Halloween Revelry: Thousands of costumed partyers flooded Halloween on Ionia for a night of electronic dance music. (Photo/Local Spins)
So I’ve heard that ghosts don’t like parties because they have no body to dance with.
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Apparently, that policy didn’t apply to mammoth pre-Halloween bashes in downtown Grand Rapids on Saturday, where scads of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, zombies and critters of every stripe and fur not only jammed Halloween on Ionia and The B.O.B. for DJ-muscled electronic dance music hoopla, but found plenty of oddly garbed bodies to groove and bust moves with.
Indeed, with the untimely and sad passing of legendary rocker Lou Reed, it all reminded me of the track “Halloween Parade” from his brilliant 1989 album, “New York.”
Costume contests boasting thousands of dollars in prizes and energetic DJs at Halloween at The B.O.B. and the first-ever Halloween on Ionia street party hosted by McFadden’s Irish Saloon made city streets look like a Fellini movie of a parade filmed on another planet. I spotted robots, convicts, Ghostbusters, characters from the Wizard of Oz, Transformers, skeletons, witches, Bigfoots, devils, bees, all manner of animals (giraffes, pandas, gorillas), extra-terrestrials (including E.T. himself), celebrities (Johnny Depp, Flavor Flav, Willie Nelson, Lady Gaga) and even a giant beer drinking, yes, a beer. Check out the wild video of the craziness below, with an estimated 4,500 revelers at Halloween on Ionia alone.
The throngs at Halloween On Ionia.
Beyond this early Halloween hoopla, the weekend also scared up plenty of frighteningly good live music offerings, including jazz greats David Sanborn and Bob James at St. Cecilia Music Center, Chordis Bell doing its Halloween thing at the Inside the Mitten series at Watermark 920 in Muskegon, Gareth Asher and JD Eicher pumping up Spring Lake’s Seven Steps Up, Coheed and Cambria (with Balance and Composure) turning up the volume at The Orbit Room, Big Boss Blues cranking it out at Rockford Brewing, The B-Side Growlers heating up Bud & Stanley’s Chili Cookoff, Out of the Blue uncorking bluegrass gospel at Zellie’s Opry House in Howard City, and Neil Jacobs providing some dazzling acoustic guitar work at The Block in Muskegon.
The bottom line: Things were terror-ific and definitely un-dead.
And congratulations to Brian Haik who won a pair of tickets to Danzig last week and Ryan Dacey who won tickets to Coheed & Cambria, courtesy of Local Spins. Check in next month when we’ll give away tickets to Lamb of God.
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Email John Sinkevics at jsinkevics@gmail.com.
Copyright 2013, Spins on Music
Great article John, thanks for the ongoing support and coverage. Halloween On Ionia was incredible thanks to the people of Grand Rapids.