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| October 2, 2002 | |||||
| Rubble and rock Detroit Bands Tongue untied No rhinestones, ever Correct
Techniques
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Rubble and rock By Jimmy DraperTHERE WAS A rumor running through Detroit's garage scene that the grand prize for a contest run by a British music rag was an all-expenses-paid trip to the Motor City. I heard it at a Detroit Cobras show at the Magic Stick, the epicenter of the city's rock underground on the Woodward strip, and at CPOP, an art gallery-music venue on the same block. It made its way to the Blind Pig, a shoe box-size club in nearby Ann Arbor, Mich., and, much later, to the Adult. concert the night the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. It probably wasn't true – although I never found proof otherwise – but I heard it so often that it didn't matter whether it was rooted in fact, fiction, or fun. It was telling enough that it existed at all. That anyone would consider Detroit – a postindustrial wasteland riddled by potholes, crime, and ungodly urban decay – a desirable vacationland was, at the very least, absurd if not outright laughable. Still, no one seemed to doubt the rumor. And why should they? Things were already surreal: by the end of 2001, in the eyes of the media, the blasted wreck of a city was the center of the musical universe. Again. The media wouldn't let anyone forget it, either. The White Stripes had placed in the top five on the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop poll reviewing the year 2001, and they were being played on MTV. Andrew W.K., one of those suburban meatheads whom Detroiters would expect to find at metal den Harpo's, had received a four-star review in the cutting-edge bastion known as Rolling Stone. Kid Rock got props for bringing trailer park rock to the mall. Eminem was, well, Eminem. The city had, in the eyes of many, gone from the edge of the world to the center of cool. Star search"When all the attention first started to happen," says Patrick Pantano, a member of the Come Ons and the Dirtbombs, "nobody really knew what to say. Now everyone's been interviewed so much that they've got their pat answers, or they've at least thought about it. There are more people interviewing us than come to our shows. It's a little silly." Even sillier, he says, is how the onslaught of press since the release of the White Stripes' 2001 breakthrough, White Blood Cells, has misrepresented the scene's success. "People are always very surprised to find out that I have a day job," Pantano says. "People ask about [singer] Mick Collins a lot too. They're like, 'Is he a star and running all over the country?' It's like, 'No, the motherfucker don't even got a car! What are you talking about?' " Actually, a lot of the city's musicians can't afford cars – no matter how many times they're pictured in the pages of NME or name-checked in Rolling Stone. Most, like Detroit itself, are impoverished. Still shattered by the '60s race riots and an economy that went into decline with the American auto industry decades ago, Detroit is more rubble than rock. Visitors are surprised by the lack of pedestrians downtown even in midday; racial segregation plagues the city; empty, burnt-out warehouses give the streets a postapocalyptic feel. Add to the mix a shitty school system, a high crime rate, and an embarrassingly pathetic public transportation system, and the postindustrial sprawl of the city's downtown can seem about as desirable as a romantic rendezvous in Chernobyl. "It's pretty much a stigma," Gore Gore Girls singer-guitarist Amy Surdu says about living in a city with a reputation as a crime-riddled hellhole. "For a long time cops wouldn't come – for anything – so there was a sense of lawlessness. But that's the sorta atmosphere that's gonna attract artists and musicians." And, increasingly, journalists are looking for music's new Valhalla. Forget Seattle and Athens, Ga.; welcome back to the wasteland that spawned the Stooges and the MC5. "There's totally a romanticized view of Detroit," says Chris Handyside, ex-music editor of Detroit's Metro Times and onetime member of the Dirtbombs and Hentchmen. "The reality of Detroit, though, is very barren and very self-sufficient." It's that very desolation and self-sufficiency that can turn a shithole – a word even Detroit denizens use to describe their city – into a petri dish of creativity. In fact, it's exactly why a godforsaken burg like D-Town can produce talent that ranges from the Stripes' blues punk to Eminem's poor white raps and DJ Assault's booty beats. "You cling to who you find," Handyside says, "so things heat up rather fast in terms of groups of people working together. There's also a lot of boredom, and there's a lot of living low to the ground." Consequently, a lot of talent throw themselves into their art. "It's like all we do is work, 'cause there are no distractions," says Adam Lee Miller, who runs the label Ersatz Audio and performs with partner Nicola Kuperus in the electronic duo Adult. "It's not like, 'Well, let's go to the club tonight.' It's more like, 'Let's work all night.' " If boredom drives musicians to create, affordable rent and enforced isolation allows them to create on their own terms. Surrounded by hundreds of miles of Middle America outside city limits, Detroit is relatively unaffected by – or, at least, safely distanced from – the many trends that sweep New York and Los Angeles. Musicians can work at their own pace and in their own way, honing their craft well below the mainstream media radar. It's something that, historically, has allowed a lot of important music to develop in the city. In the '60s, Motown churned out superstars such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, while the Stooges and the MC5 defined the city's punk rock sound. Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent, George Clinton and Funkadelic, and Grand Funk Railroad kept the city on the musical map in the '70s, and the '80s saw the rise of techno-innovators Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May, as well as pop superstar Madonna, who spent many high school and college nights in Detroit's gay clubs. Excluding the much-missed Aaliyah, the early '90s were less fruitful – Sponge, anyone? – yet the Gories were setting the city's garage rock revival in motion, and Marshall Mathers was taking his rhymes to the street. "Detroit's musicians don't suffer from the anxiety of not getting signed or not having a connection to get their music in a film," the Stripes' Jack White wrote in the liner notes to 2001's Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit, a compilation he recorded at his house in the southwest part of the city. "We know from the beginning that it's never gonna happen. No suit from L.A. or New York is gonna fly to Detroit to check out a band and hand out business cards." The success of last year's White Blood Cells has already begun to change that, but so far Detroit musicians have been left to write and record in relative peace. "We're far away from the coasts, so people here just take their influences and sorta redefine them," says Sam Valenti IV, whose Ghostly International label has been getting props in electro circles for the release of the wildly popular Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau compilation as well as for releases by regional acts such as Midwest Product and Tadd Mullinix. "Here the music is about being an outsider, hands down. It's definitely insider, cool-kid music, but it's not like New York and all self-aware, like 'this is hip' and 'this is trendy.' It's about being from a place that's not the core and trying to make your own thing." A small sceneThe White Stripes are part of a tight-knit scene that began when Mick Collins formed the Gories in 1986, reviving Detroit's decades-old glory days as garage punk mecca. By the time that band broke up in '93, the stage for Detroit's garage rock scene was set. The Cobras and Demolition Dollrods appeared soon after, followed a half-decade later by acts such as the White Stripes, the Von Bondies, the Come Ons, and the Dirtbombs, bands that shared bills, traded members, hung out, and recorded at Jim Diamond's Ghetto Recorders. "There certainly is a core of people working together, or at the very least drinking together a lot," Handyside says, referring to the dozen or so bands on Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit that comprise the bulk of the garage rock scene and are often the acts referred to in much of the press. "It's an incestuous scene, sometimes painfully so." Ko Shih, singer-bassist for Ko and the Knockouts and longtime bartender at the Magic Stick, chimes in on this. "What has traditionally fueled everybody in the scene is a sorta healthy sort of competition," he says. "I don't even like to use the word 'competition' because that makes it seem a little more, well, competitive, than it is. You go see, for instance, the Hentchmen play at the Magic Stick, and they have this brand new song that they unveil, and it's amazing, and you go, 'Oh my god! I can't believe that song is so good!' and so the next time you go practice, you think, 'I want to write a song as good as that.' " The band that has continually upped the ante for songwriting – and success – in the city is, of course, the White Stripes. Like so many American bands before them, the duo first gained notoriety across the pond, where they and the Strokes were championed as the bands that could save our rock 'n' roll souls. "The most visceral, arresting live band in the world right now," gushed NME in a typical write-up. "They are our future." Peel sessions and cover stories followed, as well as Detroit showcases, tabloid press, and BBC documentaries before the hype spilled over to the States. Not that the musicians are falling all over themselves just because journalists have finally deemed Detroit worthy of attention again. "I did an interview recently," says a bemused Wendy Case, singer-guitarist for the hard rock band the Paybacks, "and [the journalist] was like, 'It seems like these bands are pretending they don't want the attention and it's more of a cool thing.' I'm like, 'No, they're just wondering where you've been! Nobody's trying to be cool here, but where were you when I was 25 instead of 35?' " Ultimately, the media and the Stripes themselves, milking the are-they-or-aren't-they-married angle to this day, have done a good job of blurring lines between reality and hype. "The White Stripes are a great story, and Jack has always put forth a great story," Handyside says. "So whether he's feeding the romance [of Detroit] or the romance is feeding the story of the White Stripes, I think they're interconnected." It's still too early to know whether the Stripes' success will inspire copycat bands such as those that emerged after the grunge explosion, or if the attention will influence creativity within the scene – which, for all the hype about Detroit garage music fueling the future of rock, is surprisingly conservative. For now, most musicians interviewed insist that changes within the scene have so far been minimal – other than the fact that there are more people in the audiences than there were two years ago. "You used to be able to go to the shows and see the same 50 people there, and it was always the same 50 people," Shih says. "Now there are a whole bunch of people there, and a lot of the same 50 people you used to see aren't there anymore because they're out on tour." "The hype has given one small segment of the music community in Detroit a notion that success at large is possible," Handyside says. "Before, it was a lot of getting in the van and playing to between 40 and 100 people over and over again, but now there's a lot more opportunity to go to Europe and to make some money and to actually pursue it." For all the hype heaped on Detroit, however, the bands couldn't care less why or how their hometown has suddenly gotten so huge. "There are a million answers, and they're all true. Then again, they're all not true," Pantano says. "There are just a lot of great bands in Detroit – period. We're just all doing it, getting drunk, making records, and having the time of our lives." Von Bondies play Sun/6, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 621-4455. Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, and Ko and the Knockouts play Tues/8, 8 p.m., Bimbo's 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, S.F. $15. (415) 474-0365.
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| Design by Rhatia Carr |