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The Four Tops usually play larger venues, so this New Year’s will be a good chance to see them up close, along with a pretty stellar line-up of some of their colleagues, Motown and otherwise.

Also on the bill: The Original Vandellas(Rosalind and Annette); The Velvelettes (”Needle in a Haystack,” “Really Saying Something”); the Shades of Blue (”Oh How Happy”); Carolyn Crawford; Laura Lee (”Women’s Love Rights”); and Spyder “Stand By Me” Turner will emcee.

The show starts at 8 p.m., and there will be champagne and refreshments. $90 concert only, $150 concert and dinner, $399 per couple for a concert, dinner and hotel stay package. The Hotel St. Regis is located at 3071 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. Call (313) 873-3000.

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by on Wed, Dec 19, at 12:06
Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie: Merry metal Christmas

It was a headbanging holiday celebration Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena, as Rob Zombie and Ozzy Osbourne celebrated the season with plenty of pyro, thunderous riffs and devil horns.

If that doesn’t get you in the Christmas spirit, what will?

Zombie opened the show, spinning around stage like a cyclone and setting an energy level the frail Osbourne had no hope of matching. Zombie’s show was the full monster movie spectacle you’ve come to expect from the rocker-turned-filmmaker, and B-roll footage of naked breasts, anime and his own films “House of 1,000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects” backed his muscular, 55-minute set.

Zombie culled from his solo and White Zombie material (”Living Dead Girl,” “Thunder Kiss ‘65,” “Never Gonna Stop,” “American Witch”), which pretty much all sounds the same but is a sound she undoubtedly owns. All big riffs, growls and chants of “yeah!,” his songs all carry the unmistakable Zombie signature, just as his films carry his distinct, grungy, ’70s-obsessed stamp.

MBB: Looking fastball.

(GP): Yes, and then you ground out to the second baseman and you’re walking back to the dugout saying, “You idiot. Why did you swing at that pitch?”.

You leave that pitch alone, maybeen its 3-0 maybeen its 2-1. Maybeen that 3-1 is not a ball and you walked. Now you wait until it’ 3-2. Now I’m either going to walk or I’m going to put the ball in play. You might strike out. You got two good things that can happen and only one bad one. its in my favor.

That’s what happened. I started getting more serious about when I should and when I shouldn’t swing.

MBB: Twenty-twenty hindsight…why couldn’t Vada have come over and told you that years earlier? acoustic electric guitar guitar string
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(GP): Vada was probably the closest (thing for me) having a hitting instructor who aimed me at figuring out how to do things left-handed. Until then, it was just athletic ability, but not trained. I had no idea what I was really doing. I wish I had found out earlier; if someone had just told me to go back before you go forward, so you can recognize the pitch and do more with it…
Back then the common theory was “stay back”. I’m staying back. But then what do you do? You launch yourself forward. As I said, you have to go back before you go forward.

Right-handed, I did that, but I had learned to do it trial and error from Little League onward. It was a natural thing.

Take a quick look at the BB walks and on-base percentage column in Pettis’ line above. Learning plate discipline is not normally soemthing that comes later in a player’s career, and its usually self-taught, a technique the smarter ones latch on to so they can extend their career, powered by years of observation and advertent or inadvertent study. Pettis, though, ran into a fellow Centerfielder who had been a very good offensive player and they worked out a new approach to the switch-hitter’s approach when he was batting left-handed.