The Inspiration of Music and the City of Detroit
Do you have a memory of the first time you heard a song that changed the way you heard music? I am a child of the 80’s and 90’s and as such spent the majority of my grade school years (and into high school) as a latch key kid and on top of that, we did not own a television. It may have been because we couldn’t really ever afford one but also my mother was very much adversed to my older brother and I becoming overly commercialized. Seems like a foreign idea in today’s mindset of total life immersed marketing being shoved down our throats at every turn. I would come home from school make a snack of saltines and grape jelly or the occasional package of Ramen and put one of my mothers old rock-n-roll LP’s on the player and just zone out. There were the usual rock standbys, Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Hendricks, and even a Tanya Tucker album that folded out to a centerfold of her in a red body suit that I thought was the most amazingly sexy thing I had ever seen. I loved it all. On the weekends at my fathers house it was all jazz all the time, and he had a fancy hifi set –up with top of the line speakers and diamond head needles on the record player. I enjoyed this type of music as well. However, my first introduction to the kind of music that spoke to me personally and made a clear impression on my soul has to Bowie, David Bowie of course. It was rock, yet not exactly. His music had this strange outsider/alien thread throughout that echoed how I generally felt in day-to-day life. I don’t think most of my friends and family really got it, but I did.
Fast-forward to 1994 and my introduction to the world of indie music. This was also the year I truly began discovering Detroit. Growing up in a distant Suburb I did not come from a family that frequently visited downtown. The riots of the 60’s had chased many families away and they were not in any rush to return to the now broken city. We did go once a year at Christmas to a deli that my family had been going to since my great grandparents days, to pick-up the holiday Italian sausages, imported olives, and fortissimo wine.
I, on the other hand, was going to Detroit for an entirely new and exciting experience, the dance clubs. Wearing a thick protective layer of teenage angst along with a cut-off sweater ripped up jeans and steel toed boots; we were a gang of eyeliner, clove cigarettes, and vodka. This was not a lets go out and talk to cute boys kind of a group. This was a lets get drunk, pick a fight and Rage Against the Machine until someone passes out, kind of a group. It’s also when I would be introduced to an entirely new world of music that I didn’t even know existed. It was the start of my long and very special relationship with Pj Harvey, however the domino effect tumbled over into other bands such as Tricky, Portishead, Cop Shoot Cop,Skinny Puppy,KMFDM, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Lords of Acid, just to name a few. Of course this was also the early days of the world of Detroit techno and the beginning of the Rave scene that seemed to follow me across the country with my move to LA.
Those days with my friends spent in underground clubs and bars watching shows and meeting like minded people was what helped open my mind to bigger things. Leading me to have the courage to pack up all of my earthly belongings into my Honda CRX and drive across the country with the prospect of a “bigger” life for myself than Michigan could provide. I still hold those Detroit years in a special place in my heart. The city is going through some amazing changes currently and I can’t help getting nostalgic for the city that introduced me to my life long obsession with great music. I go back and visit just about once a year since I still have family there and I like the idea that the city is making somewhat of a comeback after years and years of lying dormant waiting for someone to unearth its history of greatness and the amazing music scene that has been at the heart of Detroit from Motown and beyond. If you ever get the chance to visit I highly recommend it!
