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Drummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68

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Drummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68


Brian Pastoria, a metro Detroit drummer best known for his work with the rock bands Adrenalin and DC Drive, has died, his family confirmed Wednesday, March 18. He was 68.

Pastoria, who hailed from a family of Italian heritage in East Detroit (now Eastpointe) and later operated a downtown recording studio, was a reliably upbeat personality and an avid booster of Motor City music. The outgoing drummer was a well-liked, decades-long fixture on Detroit’s rock scene, carrying a banner for the region’s music history and always eager to support up-and-coming artists.

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Pastoria passed away peacefully in his downtown Detroit apartment, where police found him Wednesday, his brother Mark Pastoria told the Detroit Free Press.

With Adrenalin — a band he formed in the late ’70s with his brother and several childhood friends — Pastoria enjoyed major-label status, landing a deal with MCA Records. The group’s 1986 album, “Road of the Gypsy,” included a title track licensed for the Lou Gossett action film “Iron Eagle” the same year.

His drumming hero was Charlie Martin, one of the original players in Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band, and Pastoria was a workhorse always hustling to advance Adrenalin’s music.

“Brian was a real driving force in the band. He relentlessly wanted to play — then do it again and do it again,” said saxophonist Jimmy Romeo, who played alongside Pastoria in the 1980s and ’90s. “He was a relentless rock drummer.”

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The group cut its teeth at Detroit nightspots such as the Westside Six and 24 Karat Club, where original material was encouraged onstage, and the band eventually landed local airplay via supportive radio figures such as WLLZ-FM’s Doug Podell.

Speaking with the Detroit Free Press in 2003, Pastoria recounted the group’s origins.

“It was 1977, and I was 19 years old. This band was like the gang from the old neighborhood in East Detroit,” he said. “From the very beginning, we were writing our own songs, but we were very much influenced by a lot of the ’60s and ’70s rock. Aerosmith was a huge influence on us. They gave us hope that you could be a rock band and cut your own space out there.”

Pastoria and his bandmates eventually evolved into what he described as “more of an E Street thing” — a reference to Bruce Springsteen’s group — with saxophone, synths and two guitars.

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“We started to see the possibilities of keyboards, multiple singers in the band and all the different musical things we could do,” Pastoria said. “We had a common vision to make music that stood the test of time. We didn’t want to just write a bunch of songs — we wanted to be a voice of where we came from. It’s something we always talked about.”

By the turn of the ’90s, following their flirtation with national success, the Pastoria brothers had transitioned their band into a group they called DC Drive. But they faced the cultural headwinds of the time.

“We didn’t want to be a hair band. We weren’t into any of that. We were still a real rock ‘n’ roll band, still about straight-ahead heartland rock ‘n’ roll,” Pastoria told the Free Press. “It just wasn’t lining up with the industry.”

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He continued:

“We were working on our first DC Drive record, and we heard Nirvana. That blew up, and we were like, ‘Oh my God, are we different than that, or what?’” Pastoria recalled. “That’s when we started hearing (feedback) from the labels — ‘What’s up with the saxophone?’”

Pastoria and his brother Mark, a keyboardist and producer, steered their interests to the business side: In the mid-’90s, they opened Harmonie Park Studios in downtown Detroit, eventually building a clientele that included Aretha Franklin, Dave Mason, Trombone Shorty, Martha Reeves, the Four Tops’ Duke Fakir, Grand Funk’s Mark Farner and others.

In early 1999, the Pastorias’ studio hosted the first hometown fan listening session for Eminem’s “The Slim Shady LP” on the cusp of the rapper’s blockbuster breakout.

Pastoria was a proud and vocal advocate of Detroit’s musical legacy, especially Motown, and in the 1990s he developed friendships with Hitsville figures such as vocal coach Maurice King and choreographer Cholly Atkins, who appeared in the DC Drive music video “You Need Love.”  

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In the 2010s, Pastoria was part of an executive board pushing to build a downtown music museum.

“Brian was very proud of the city’s music heritage,” said Romeo. “He loved that we grew up in that Motown era.”

Pastoria is survived by three sons, Dante, Anton and Jeremy.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

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14-year-old boy shot in chest during Detroit teen takeover testifies in court

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14-year-old boy shot in chest during Detroit teen takeover testifies in court


A Detroit teenager charged in connection with a shooting involving a 14-year-old boy was back in court on Monday for a preliminary exam.

Ramon Smith, 17, is charged with assault with intent to murder, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, felonious assault, carrying a concealed weapon, and three counts of felony firearm.

Shown is the defendant 17-year-old, Ramon Smith.

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CBS Detroit


Smith, who will be tried as an adult, is accused of shooting 14-year-old Tabaun Clark in the chest during a teen takeover in Detroit on May 17 near Farmer Street.

On Monday, Clark testified in court.

“How many shots did you hear?” an attorney asked Clark.

“Two before I felt something,” Clark said. 

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“Where did you feel something?”

“In my chest.”

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Surveillance video of the shooting shown in court.

CBS Detroit


Officials allege Smith got into a fight with a group, took out a gun and fired multiple shots, striking Clark, who was in the crowd, before running off.

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“Were you bleeding?” an attorney asked Clark. 

“Yes,” Clark replied. 

“Did you realize you had been shot?”

“Yes,” Clark said. 

“What was going through your mind at that point?” the attorney asked. 

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“Try to keep breathin(g),” said Clark.

Detective Serena DeJonge with the Detroit Police Department also took the stand, reading written responses from the defendant once in custody, who describes what he says played out the night of the shooting.

According to DeJonge, the defendant said “a gun fell, so I grabbed it and put it in my book bag.” After the fight, DeJonge said the defendant claimed that as he was walking away, the group followed him. DeJonge said the defendant reported seeing “one of them reaching,” and he pulled his gun out of his bag and fired shots at the group.

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14-year-old, Tabaun Clark, testifies in court on Monday, June 8.

CBS Detroit

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Evidence revealed in court alleges the defendant fired six shots instead of three.

Judge Patricia Jefferson said there’s enough probable cause to go to trial. The case is now bound over to Wayne County Circuit Court.

Smith is due back in court on June 15. He remains at the juvenile detention facility.



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Detroit’s Inbolt Launches Vision-enabled Robot Programming

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Detroit’s Inbolt Launches Vision-enabled Robot Programming


Inbolt’s robot programming release is available for FANUC, Universal Robots, and Yaskawa robots with broader brand coverage on the roadmap. // Photo courtesy of Inbolt

Inbolt, the Detroit-based robot intelligence company, is launching two new capabilities that complete the company’s AI vision model for robot guidance: Inbolt Robot Programming and an expanded Inbolt Robot Control.

 

Both technologies will debut at the Automate 2026 trade show at Chicago’s McCormick Place from June 22-25.

 

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“Robot deployment still takes weeks because the digital twin never matches the real factory floor, engineers hand-tune every trajectory during commissioning,” says Rudy Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Inbolt. “With Robot Programming, the Vision Model, and Robot Control on a single platform, that gap closes.

“Engineers build the program from the CAD, our vision model locates the real part, and the robot executes the planned path. One platform from perception to motion, on the robots manufacturers already own. That’s AI perception built for the factory floor.”

With Robot Programming and Robot Control, Inbolt says it covers the full path from virtual commissioning to adaptive robot motion control, for stationary and moving-line applications.

Until now, the company says, deploying a robot on a factory floor took weeks as engineers carefully build digital twins of the production line, then spent the commissioning window touching up trajectories point by point because the virtual environment never fully matches reality. If the robot is anchored 2mm off, or parts arrive in unrepeatable positions, every path gets re-taught and tuned by hand.

With the latest release of Inbolt Robot Programming, the programming capability inside Inbolt Studio removes that step entirely. Engineers build the program directly on the CAD model, in the part’s own reference frame. At runtime, the Inbolt Vision Model locates the real part and adjusts the robot’s motion to execute the planned path exactly.

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“No teach pendant. No iterative tuning. No separate workflow for moving lines,” says Cohen. “Weeks of commissioning now works in one shot. The digital twin and the factory floor are the same thing.”

The CAD-based release is available for FANUC, Universal Robots, and Yaskawa on dynamic (moving line) applications, with broader brand coverage on the roadmap. Two of Inbolt’s four Automate 2026 booth demonstrations will run it live, so visitors can watch the system go from CAD to executable robot motion in front of them.

“Automate in Chicago is where we plant our flag in the U.S.,” says Albane Dersy, co-founder and COO of Inbolt. “Four live demos, two product launches, a deep integration with FANUC and NVIDIA on the show floor, and a panel on the future of physical AI. Our U.S. footprint has expanded across Stellantis, GM, and Toyota plants this year, our team has doubled, and the U.S. contingent doubles again by year-end.”

Inbolt’s second product release is an expansion of Robot Control, the real-time robot motion execution component of the platform, now running natively on Yaskawa, joining FANUC, KUKA, ABB, Universal Robots, and Comau.

Robot Control streams corrected joint commands directly into the robot’s servo loop at native control frequency, closing the loop between what the vision model sees and how the robot moves. The Yaskawa expansion brings Inbolt’s native robot brand coverage to six, giving manufacturers a single intelligence layer for real-time execution across the brands they already own.

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Inbolt also has released updates to the Inbolt Vision Model with improved global part localization models. The model now tracks a wider variety of parts, and the Inbolt Studio dashboard exposes part position, detection status, and live performance tests for each use case. Robotics engineers can troubleshoot and evaluate Inbolt’s performance on their specific station inside Inbolt Studio.





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Air conditioner forecast: Metro Detroit heads into hot, sticky stretch

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Air conditioner forecast: Metro Detroit heads into hot, sticky stretch


Metro Detroit is set to trade this weekend’s comfortable weather for a stretch of increasingly hot and humid conditions this week, with temperatures climbing into the upper 80s and lower 90s and humidity levels high enough to make it feel even warmer.

While Monday remains pleasant, the 4Warn Weather team is tracking a developing pattern that could bring rounds of showers and thunderstorms Tuesday through Thursday, followed by a period of heat that may pose health risks for some people.

The dry weather will hold through Monday before moisture surges northward ahead of a low-pressure system. That setup will lead to increasing clouds Monday night and a growing chance of showers and thunderstorms Tuesday.

The atmospheric moisture levels will be unusually high for June, meaning storms will be capable of producing locally heavy rainfall in a short amount of time Tuesday.

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Metro Detroit will have daily chances for showers and thunderstorms through the week, but attention will also turn to the heat.

Temperatures are expected to soar to around 90 degrees Wednesday and the lower 90s Thursday across Metro Detroit, with muggy nights only falling into the upper 60s to lower 70s. Combined with dew points rising into the upper 60s and lower 70s, heat index values could climb well into the 90s to 100 degrees.

Temperatures are expected to soar to around 90 degrees Wednesday and the lower 90s Thursday across Metro Detroit, with muggy nights only falling into the upper 60s to lower 70s. Combined with dew points rising into the upper 60s and lower 70s, heat index values could climb well into the 90s to 100 degrees. (WDIV)

These values can create dangerous conditions for vulnerable populations, including older adults, young children, people with chronic health conditions and anyone working or exercising outdoors for extended periods.

After weeks of relatively mild temperatures, the human body has not yet fully acclimated to summer heat, making heat-related illnesses more likely.

Temperatures are expected to soar to around 90 degrees Wednesday and the lower 90s Thursday across Metro Detroit, with muggy nights only falling into the upper 60s to lower 70s. Combined with dew points rising into the upper 60s and lower 70s, heat index values could climb well into the 90s to 100 degrees. (WDIV)

Heat Safety

People are encouraged to begin practicing heat safety habits now:

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  • Drink water regularly, even before feeling thirsty.

  • Limit strenuous outdoor activity during the hottest part of the afternoon.

  • Wear lightweight, light-colored clothing.

  • Take frequent breaks in air-conditioned spaces.

  • Never leave children or pets in vehicles.

  • Check on elderly neighbors and relatives.

The hottest day of the stretch is likely to be Thursday, when Metro Detroit could reach the lower 90s. Depending on sunshine and thunderstorm coverage, a few communities may push even higher.

For residents of the Thumb, temperatures will be somewhat cooler thanks to the moderating influence of Lake Huron. Highs there are expected to remain largely in the lower to middle 80s during the warmest part of the week.

Thunderstorm chances continue through Thursday and could briefly interrupt the heat. However, any breaks are expected to be short-lived, and many locations will spend much of the week feeling decidedly summerlike.

By Friday and next weekend, temperatures may ease slightly back into the upper 80s, although isolated showers and thunderstorms remain possible.

Share your weather photos and how you’re staying cool with Local 4 at MIPics.

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Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.



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