Raphique Barakat at Hamtramck Labor Day Festival

The Quitters is the name of more than one artist: 1) New York garage band 2) Calgary garage rock band 3) Las Vegas punk band Also see Quitters 1) The Quitters are a garage band from Rochester, New York that helped spark a second garage revival in the city in the mid-nineties along with bands such as the Thunder Gods, the Squires of the Subterean, McFadden's Parachute, and later the Moviees; the first revival occurred when the Chesterfield Kings, another Rochester band, helped spark a nation-wide garage revival back in the early eighties (Moviees frontman Paul Morabito went on to join the Kings).Dave and Dan Snyder had been playing with local favorites Dog's Life as the front man and drummer respectively for around eight years before deciding they had had enough. Dog's Life had been playing an optimistic surf pop sound that the Snyder's had begun to get tired of. They enlisted the rhythm section from Rochester surf band Duke Galaxy and the Pipeliners, Keith Parkins and Rob Filardo, while the brothers moved up to playing guitars and sharing vocals. Although they would go on to inspire a new scene in Rochester that culminated with a series of shows called Garage Pop which in turn spawned a record label, the Quitters never achieved the same mass success live that Dog's Life had. Their music was still pop and even bubblegum at times, but still too dark for the fan's of Dog's Life who were used to hearing songs about characters like Moth Man. The new Snyder brother's songs were both self-aggrandizing and self-effacing at the same time. Most of the earlier songs began to focus around the increasing problems that Dave was having with drugs which also helped to turn away Dog's Life fans eager to here about orange and vanilla motorcycles. Things came to a head when Keith had setup a showcase for their first label, Trashcan Records, at the Knitting Factory in 1997. A couple of months before a showcase that was to feature the Quitters, their frontman Dave was checking himself into rehab. A month before the showcase, the guy who booked it at the Knitting Factory decided to quit to pursue a career with a band that he was forming. The new booking agent wanted to cancel the show. After a phone call that ended in a screaming match, the show did go on, but Keith was beaten. After Dave got out of rehab, he left town leaving the Quitters with a cd recorded put not pressed. Dave was replaced by Jay Kast as the band continued to gig to try to get support to release their first cd. Three years later, Dave Snyder started hiking the Appalachian Trail,a 2,175 trail that runs along the east coast of the United States. When he reached New York from Georgia, he'd had enough and came back to Rochester for a visit. The Quitters had just started to get the support they needed to put out the cd, The Quitters are King, which they had recorded so long before. Dave stayed, and the Quitters went on to release "Second Album", and "1982." This period has often by cited as their peak and saw the Quitters opening up for bands ranging from the White Stripes to Arab on Radar. After MTV picked up a couple of the Quitters tracks to use on their shows, Keith left to help form Hinkley and later Tiger Cried Beef. The Quitters continued to play for a number of years with different bassists before Dave left. Dan and Rob still perform occasionally as the Quitters with Keith Suhr of the Thunder Gods and the Grinders on bass.

Born in and around the Motor City in 1988, the Volebeats formed due to a mutual displeasure and boredom with trendy bands and music. Starting as an acoustic outfit, lead guitarist/vocalist Matthew Smith and vocalist/guitarist Jeff Oakes began writing songs with Terry Rohm and Jeff's brother Al. With Keir McDonald (from Detroit's Medusa Cyclone) on drums, the Volebeats began performing on street corners throughout the Detroit suburbs. For the first few years of its existence, the band had a revolving group of musicians that included another Oakes brother, Brian, on upright bass, drummer Mike Murphy and guitarist Mark Niemenski (both from another Detroit band, Hysteric Narcotics), drummer Bill Peterson, and Rebecca Kaplan on fiddle. Fusing hardcore country and folk music with a melodic pop flair and rock & roll sensibility, the Volebeats released their debut, Ain't No Joke, on Relapse Records in 1989, with current guitarist and songwriter Bob McCreedy -- who had played with Oakes in the Frames in 1981 -- joining the group shortly thereafter. Over the next few years they recorded a single for Icon Records and could be found on various compilations. Then in 1994, the Volebeats signed with the Safe House label, releasing their second full-length, Up North, which garnered the group critical acclaim. A six-song EP, Bittersweet, was released in 1995 and featured a cover of Barry White's "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby." With drummer Scott Michalski and bassist Russell Ledford joining the band, the Volebeats' lineup was solidified as the group entered the studio to record its 1997 release, The Sky and the Ocean. Two years later, the group issued Solitude, and their 2001 release, Mosquito Spiral, featured pop and psych influences that recalled Medusa Cyclone and Smith's other band, Outrageous Cherry. Those influences were also present on Country Favorites, their 2003 release for a new label, Turquoise Mountain. The group, which after the departure of Bob McCreedy consisted of Jeff Oakes, Russell Ledford, John Nash, Scott Michalski, and Matt Smith, next released Like Her in June of 2005. It would be five years before the group's next release, The Volebeats, was issued in 2010.

Carjack consists of one man, an army or robots, a guitar and a drum machine, who allegedly crash landed on Earth two years ago from the ex-planet Pluto. Carjack is the brainchild and also the alter-ego of Metro Detroit musicphile and home-recording-mad-scientist Lo Fi Bri. If it's possible to whittle down this anomaly, then it's essentially hardcore/American-underground-informed punk rock mixed with the early experimental days of techno, with a freer, straightforward lyricism. Hardly dance-punk and hardly electro-rock, Carjack has a futuristic, aerodynamic sound that blends freewheeling cartoonish antics, hard-pounding beats from a drum machine, shredded SST-inspired guitar riffs, Atari samples, break-danceable rhythms and rousing anthems.

Esham Attica Smith, known mononymously as Esham, is an American rapper from Detroit, Michigan. Emerging as one of the first ever hip hop artists from Detroit, Esham released his debut studio album, Boomin' Words from Hell, in 1989 at the age of 16. Since then, he has gone on to release 21 full-length studio albums in total and is best known as a representative of the hip hop subgenre horrorcore. In 1992, he co-founded the horrorcore group Natas. He and his brother James Smith founded and ran the Detroit hip hop label Reel Life Productions.