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The Algiers Motel Incident: Detroit police play murderous ‘death game’ with teens during 1967 riot
06.08.2017
02:37 pm
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The Algiers Motel Incident
 
At 2:00 am on July 26th, 1967, the Detroit Police Department received a call: “At the Algiers Motel, check for dead persons.” When police arrived, they found the bodies of three black teenagers. It was Day 4 of rioting in the city, which would prove to be one of the most damaging community events in American history. What became known as “the Algiers Motel incident” is the most infamous episode to take place during the uprising.

There were a number of issues in the city of Detroit that led to the July 1967 rebellion (it’s still debated how the event should be categorized), but police brutality—namely the use of violence by the largely white police force against the city’s majority black residents—was front and center. During the early hours of July 23rd, police raided a blind pig located at 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue on the city’s near west-side. As rumors circulated that officers had beaten some of those arrested, a young black man threw a rock at a cop car. It wasn’t long before someone broke a store window and people began looting. Hundreds of fires were set over the next few days, as residents clashed with local and state police, and eventually the National Guard, while looting continued. On July 27th, order was restored and the disturbance officially ended. All told, they were over 7,000 arrests, nearly 1,200 injuries, and 43 people died. Many of those who lost their lives were killed because they were—mistakenly—thought to have been snipers.
 
12th Street, July 23rd, 1967
12th Street, July 23rd, 1967.

National Guardsmen and city residents
National Guardsmen, with weapons drawn, as city residents look on.

A National Guardsman watches for snipers
A National Guardsman watches for snipers amidst the chaos.

Not long after midnight on the morning of July 26th, sniper fire was reported coming from the area around the Algiers Motel—specifically the Algiers manor house, which was adjacent to the Woodward Avenue motel on Virginia Park Street. Police and National Guardsmen moved in quickly on the manor. By the time law enforcement left the scene, Aubrey Pollard, 19, Fred Temple, 18, and Carl Cooper, 17, were dead. Five days later, the Detroit News broke the story. In his 1968 book on the subject, The Algiers Motel Incident, author John Hersey noted what had become evident.

It is by now, on Monday, July 31, clear that the killings in the Algiers were not executions of snipers, looters, or arsonists caught red-handed in felonious crimes in the heat of a riot, but rather that they were murders embellished by racist abuse, indiscriminate vengeance, sexual jealousy, voyeurism, wanton blood-letting, and sadistic physical and mental tortures characterized by the tormentors as ‘a game.’

The Algiers Motel Incident was written quickly and was controversial upon release; Hersey received much in the way of criticism for its seemingly haphazard structure. Reading it nearly fifty years after it was published, I would argue that the narrative is purposeful, with often powerful results. Hersey interviewed everyone he could, including traumatized witnesses, distraught family members, and, incredibly, the security guard and three police officers suspected of wrongdoing. The book is undeniably harrowing and heartbreaking.
 
Aubrey Pollard's parents
Aubrey Pollard’s parents: Aubrey Pollard, Sr. and Rebecca Pollard. Their grief is palpable in the pages of ‘The Algiers Motel Incident.’

When I’m not writing for Dangerous Minds, I’m working as an archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library, which is a part of Wayne State University in Detroit. Danielle L. McGuire, an associate professor in the history department at Wayne State, has been conducting research at the Reuther for a book she is writing on the Algiers episode. Her essay, “Murder at the Algiers Motel,” has been included in the new anthology, Detroit 1967, published by Wayne State University Press. We have an excerpt from Danielle’s stirring account of the waking nightmare that was the Algiers Motel incident.

 
The Algiers Motel
View of the Algiers Motel, with the manor in the background, July 1967.

In the early-morning hours of July 26, 1967, a flurry of Detroit police officers, National Guardsmen, and state police officers, led by Senak and two of his colleagues, raided the Algiers Motel after hearing reports of heavy “sniper fire” nearby. The Algiers, a once-stately manor house in the Virginia Park neighborhood of central Detroit, was a relatively seedy place, what Hersey described as a “transient” hotel, with a reputation among police as a site for narcotics and prostitution. But that night, because of the uprising and citywide curfew, many people sought refuge at the Algiers, including two white runaways from Ohio, a returning Vietnam veteran, and the friends and members of the Dramatics, a doo-wop group who performed songs like “Inky Dinky Wang Dang Do” at the Swinging Time Revue, headlined by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, downtown at the Fox Theater.

According to one witness quoted in the Detroit News on August 2, it was a “night of horror and murder.” Just past midnight, police and soldiers tore through the motel’s tattered halls and run-down rooms with shotguns and rifles. They ransacked closets and drawers, turned over beds and tables, shot into walls and chairs, and brutalized motel guests in a desperate and vicious effort to find the “sniper.” At some point during this initial raid, David Senak and Patrolman Robert Paille encountered Fred Temple, a teen on the phone with his girlfriend. Senak and Paille barged into the room, startling Temple, who dropped the phone. According to Senak, quoted in Sidney Fine’s Violence in the Model City, he and Paille fired “almost simultaneously” at Temple, who crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood.

When Senak and Paille failed to find any weapons, Senak ordered all the guests against the wall in the first-floor lobby. One of the young black men at the hotel that night, seventeen-year-old Carl Cooper, rushed down the stairs and came face-to-face with a phalanx of heavily armed police and guardsmen. A witness, quoted in a report by Detective Inspector Albert Schwaller, heard Cooper say, “Man, take me to jail—I don’t have any weapon,” just before hearing the gunshot that tore through his chest.

Police herded the other guests, a group of young black men and two white women, past Cooper’s bloody corpse, into the gray and beige magnolia- papered lobby, and told them to face the east wall with their hands over their heads. Even though two young men were already dead, the lineup was the beginning of what Hersey called the “death game.”

The details of exactly what happened next are complicated and convoluted—clear memories forever lost to the chaos of the moment, the tricks of time, and the disparate recollections of the survivors traumatized by violence and terror. But this is the gist of what we know: three Detroit policemen, David Senak, Ronald August, and Robert Paille, and a private guard, Melvin Dismukes, took charge of the brutal interrogation. They wanted to know who had the gun, who was the sniper, and who was doing the shooting.

 
Federal conspiracy trial
L-R: Ronald August, Melvin Dismukes, Robert Paille and David Senak. Federal conspiracy trial, February 25th, 1970.

When the young men and women who were lined up against the wall denied shooting or having any weapons, the officers mercilessly beat them, leaving gashes and knots on the victims’ heads and backs. According to another witness interviewed by Schwaller, a police officer “struck [a] Negro boy so hard that it staggered [him] and almost sent him down to his knees.” A military policeman, part of the contingent of federal paratroopers and National Guardsmen sent to help restore order in Detroit, who arrived at the Algiers in the midst of the raid, is cited by Fine as seeing a Detroit patrolman “stick a shotgun between the legs of one male and threaten to ‘blow his testicles off.’” Senak and his colleagues raged against the two white women working as prostitutes at the Algiers, Karen Malloy and Juli Hysell, calling them “white niggers” and “nigger lovers.” Both women testified that police ripped off their dresses, pushed their faces against the wall, and smashed guns into the their temples and the small of their backs. Roderick Davis, the stocky Dramatics singer who sported a stylish conk and moustache, told Hersey that Senak sneered, “Why you got to fuck them? What’s wrong with us?” Another witness told Schwaller that he heard one of the cops say, “We’re going to get rid of all you pimps and whores.”

Then, the “death game” really began. The police pulled the unarmed men one by one into different rooms and interrogated them at gunpoint. Davis told Schwaller that Senak took him into a room, forced him to lie down, and then shot into the floor. “I’ll kill you if you move,” Senak said as he left the room and returned to the lobby.

 
Keep reading after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bart Bealmear
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06.08.2017
02:37 pm
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The White Stripes were no Donny & Marie
05.04.2017
09:19 am
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Around 2000 it didn’t take too much of a clue to realize that there was a lot of cool shit going on in Detroit. The powers that be declared it a garage revival, but what it was was just vital rock and roll in the city that had given us Motown and the MC5 and the Stooges. Bands like the Von Bondies, the Detroit Cobras, the Electric Six (formerly the Wildbunch), and the Dirtbombs were on everybody’s lips. The White Stripes’ album White Blood Cells came out in the summer of 2001 and catapulted them to a whole new level.

In 2001 the Dutch TV station VPRO sent a crew to Detroit to document the goings-on, with a focus on (of course) the White Stripes. The program was directed by René Hazekamp and the interviews were conducted by Helmut Boeijen. The Dirtbombs’ Mick Collins is the closest thing the show has to an MC, we follow him around on Detroit’s People Mover as he explains the nuances of the Detroit scene. (Can’t help but think of the Electric Six song “Egyptian Cowboy,” in which Dick Valentine sings that “there’s never any people on the People Mover.”)

Technically, the title of the show is Detroit Rawk!!! In addition to the White Stripes and the Dirtbombs, the program checks in with the Demolition Doll Rods and the Paybacks.

In Jack White: How he Built an Empire from the Blues, Nick Hasted writes:
 

In early November [2001], ahead of the White Stripes’ European return, Dutch TV station VPRO filmed an evocative documentary showing a Detroit scene on the cusp of change. Mick Collins optimistically opined that if the White Stipes were its Beatles, “the Dirtbombs are the Rolling Stones,” while the Paybacks’ Wendy Case described a community that was finally “coalescing,” with bands “helping each other and booking shows together.” ... Did [White] feel obligated to pay attention to other Detroit bands, his interviewer, Helmut Boeijen, perceptively asked. “It feels good to take another Detroit band on tour with us,” Jack said. “They deserve it,” Meg loyally put in. Now he was home, Jack could duck fame’s chores like a naughty kid, as with the previous day’s phone interviews. “I just had my roommate [Ben Swank] do ‘em,” he laughed.

 
Towards the end of the program Jack is explaining that they had turned down a million bucks from the Gap to do a Christmas commercial, and makes the mistake of invoking Donny and Marie. Their friend and manager Arthur Dottweiler hilariously gives them endless shit for it. “You guys are not Donny and Marie!! You think you’re Donny and Marie?? Do you guys have your own network prime time television program??”

Dude did have a point.

Watch it after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.04.2017
09:19 am
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Motor City is burning: A gorgeous look at the thriving queer vogueing scene in Detroit
07.28.2016
09:52 am
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Family portrait
 
The seminal queer documentary Paris is Burning famously captured the underground NYC voguing scene while still keeping an eye on the violence and poverty its subjects endured—a difficult balance to strike. Filmmaker Mollie Mills managed the same delicate storytelling, and captures something really intimate in her little mini-doc, Vogue, Detroit. What’s startling is the similarities between the two documentaries, which have 600 miles and nearly 30 years between them.

It’s encouraging to watch progress like the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage and the mass cultural shift regarding queer people, but the majority of the country is still pretty homophobic, and the voguers Mills found have formed de facto families, just like the NYC voguers of Paris is Burning. Some things have changed, of course—Mills travels to an LGBTQ youth center, who have designated resources specifically for vogueing, but even in a post-Madonna world, vogueing is a thriving scene for a working class queer subculture, an escapist artistic outlet in the midst of urban decline.

And of course, the dancing is amazing.
 

 
Via Dazed

Posted by Amber Frost
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07.28.2016
09:52 am
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A NSFW look inside a decaying porn theater that has seen better days
04.28.2016
09:46 am
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A look inside the decaying adult theater, The Park in Detroit
A look inside the decaying adult theater, the Park, in Detroit.
 
Detroit’s Park Theater (also known as the “Lincoln Park Theater”) has had a rather long and diverse history. When it originally opened in 1925 in Lincoln City, Detroit, it was an elegant Art Deco style movie theater. In the late 1960s it was briefly converted into a live music venue where Lincoln Park natives the MC5 often played for next to nothing to large crowds. Then, sometime in the early 1980s, it became an adult theater that operated (much to the displeasure of many Lincoln Park residents) for nearly 30 years.

When the theater closed in 2008, the owners (who wanted to develop the building as a part of a multi-million-dollar strip club operation), donated the Park as part of a settlement agreement. The Park has since been converted into high-end lofts and retail space. However, before it was restored, the once opulent theater fell victim to decay and vandalism. The images that follow are perhaps not for the faint of heart, especially since the intrepid photographer used an infrared camera to pick up some of the “sticky mess” that was left behind after the Park closed its smutty doors. Hopefully he or she was up to date on their tetanus shot. That said, I still feel like it’s necessary to say that the photos you are about to see are NSFW.

If these walls could talk, eh? They’d be screaming “WASH ME!”
 
UPDATE: A kind commenter has corrected my error noting that this adult theater was not located in Detroit, but in Vancouver. Photo credit: Michael Mann
 
The Park Theater back in its heyday, sometime in the late 1930s
The once beautiful Park Theater back in its heyday, sometime in the late 1930s.
 
The projector room at The Park Theater
The projector room at the Park Theater.
 
The urinals at The Park Theater
 
More after the jump, including those ‘sticky’ infrared film shots…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.28.2016
09:46 am
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The MC5 kick out the jams next to a busy Detroit highway in 1970
02.22.2016
08:40 am
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MC5, early 1970s
The MC5, early 1970s
 
On July 19th, 1970 the MC5 performed at Detroit’s Tartar Field at Wayne State University (alma mater of MC5 bassist Michael Davis, (RIP) and drummer Dennis Thompson), while cars roared by on the I-94 highway behind them, unable to drown out the sonic boom coming from the Michigan natives at the top of their game.
 
An ad for the MC5's second record, 1970s, Back in the USA
An ad for “Back in the USA”
 
According to a 2014 interview in Detroit Rock n Roll Magazine with MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson, the band had just returned from a small, rural farming town in Michigan called Hamburg, where they had recorded their second album, 1970’s Back In The USA, produced by Rolling Stone journalist (and future Bruce Springsteen manager) Jon Landau. Thompson was not “into” Landau at all, and would refer to him a “fascist.” He was also deeply concerned that the 23-year-old didn’t have enough industry experience for the job.

But perhaps Thompson’s initial negativity toward Landau had more to do with the fact that he forbid the use of drugs and booze (the band were huge fans of LSD and were avid pot smokers), and even had them on a strict diet and exercise routine while they were in Hamburg. In a nutshell, Landau had the MC5 doing the exact opposite of what every other band (or most young people for that matter) in the 70s were doing. And the result is what many fans consider to be the band’s best outing, despite the fact that it was somewhat of a commercial failure when it was released.
 
Jon Landau and Wayne Kramer, 1970
Jon Landau (right) and Wayne Kramer

This footage captures the band performing “Looking at You” from Back in the USA, for the very first time live, as well as “Ramblin’ Rose,” (during which Wayne Kramer does a pretty hot imitation of a James Brown-style shuffle), and “Kick Out the Jams” from their first album, Kick Out the Jams. The looks on the faces of the awestruck crowd is one of the many highlights from this ten-minute piece of fuzzed-out rock and roll history.

Set your speakers to stun!
 

The MC5 performing songs from 1969’s “Kick Out the Jams”, and their 1970 album “Back in The USA” at Wayne State University’s Tartar Field, July 19th, 1970

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Motor City’s Burning’: The incendiary 60’s Detroit music scene from Motown to the Stooges

Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.22.2016
08:40 am
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Did Black Sabbath lift the opening riff from ‘Paranoid’?
07.22.2015
09:18 am
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Black Sabbath circa 1970
Half-Life? Never heard of ‘em.

A friend recently shared some vintage garage-rock goodness with me from the Saginaw, Michigan band, Half-Life and man, it knocked me for a loop. On June 27, 1969 Half-Life recorded the track “Get Down” at GM Studios in East Detroit (the same studio that the MC5 recorded Back in the USA).

The minute I hit the play button, I was immediately floored by the opening riff in “Get Down” and its remarkable resemblance to Tony Iommi’s fuzzed-out riff on “Paranoid.” Even the opening percussion is eerily similar to the Sabbath classic. Recorded in only one take, when the band started shopping “Get Down” around to local Detroit radio stations they were told it had no commercial viability. Half-Life would later drop the song from its
 
Half Life, Saginaw, Michigan. Circa 1969
Half-Life, a garage band from Saginaw, Michigan. Circa 1969

So this could mean one of two things. Either Half-Life are actually time bandits of the most awesome kind or Black Sabbath somehow caught wind of “Get Down” from 3,652 miles away (the approximate distance between Detroit, Michigan and Birmingham UK), allowing Iommi to claim the sweet lick for his own. Not only do both scenarios bear the markings of a lunatic conspiracy theorist, the first one has no real basis in reality. No matter much I wish that it did. Another interesting fact to add to this weird mix is that “Paranoid” almost didn’t make it onto the record and the track came came to be in a somewhat similar way that “Get Down” did—according to Sabbath bassist, Geezer Butler:

The whole story of how we created that song is funny. It became the most popular song from the album, but it wasn’t something we thought much of when we wrote it. In fact, we finished the record and then the producer told us we needed one more song to finish up the album, so we just came up with “Paranoid” on the spot. Tony [Iommi] just played this riff and we all went along with it. We didn’t think anything of it.

In all seriousness, the riffy similarities between “Get Down” and “Paranoid” are rather uncanny, but I’ll leave you to judge that with your own ears. Just press play below. Now do I believe that Tony Iommi, one of the most influential guitarists of all time lifted the epic riff for “Paranoid” from a little known garage-band from Saginaw? Of course not, and neither do you. However, if you dig “Get Down” (and I strongly suspect you will), I recommend that you pick up the compilation A-Square (Of Course): The Story of Michigan’s Legendary A-Square Records which features “Get Down” and other rare recordings from the Ann Arbor-based label from bands like the legendary MC5 and The SRC (The Scot Richard Case).
 

“Get Down” by Half-Life (1969)
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘New’ footage of Black Sabbath on German TV, 1970

Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.22.2015
09:18 am
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SATAN! Amazing trove of outsider art found in Detroit
04.23.2015
11:22 am
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A very Henry Darger-ish story has begun to unfold in Detroit, USA—an asbestos inspector (what a thankless job THAT must be in Detroit) found several drawings in a house slated for demolition, and gave them to that city’s alt-weekly, the Metro Times.

Reader Joseph Goeddeke found these drawings in an abandoned Detroit house that he was inspecting for asbestos while working for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The house was scheduled to be demolished later that day, and Goeddeke (who says he’s “not an art guy” but thinks “they are great drawings”) decided to save the art and send it to us. We’re glad he did.

We don’t know anything about the artist other than that one of the pages is signed “Clifton Harvey” and dated “12/79.”

The Metro Times’ Lee DeVito has asked that anyone knowing who Clifton Harvey is or was contact the paper at arts@metrotimes.com.

The drawings are not entirely unlike editorial cartoons, some depicting Satan leading humans into hateful acts. Harvey seems to have had a very specific loathing for racism.
 

 

 
Some, unsurprisingly, depict eschatological themes, especially Satan’s ultimate demise.
 

 

Oh great and powerful Satan, King of all kings, the coming of the other Lord has drawn very near. Most of your people have gone into hiding and say they will not fight by your side against such a great and powerful force. More and more people on the Earth’s surface are starting to turn toward the Bible and worship this enemy. They say they can no longer fear a king who can take only the body, but the one who can take both body and sole great Lord.

 

 

Behold Satan, Lord of all evil, your last day has come. Death to you and all like you. No longer shall your wickedness be tolerated. I shall [indecipherable] you and yours from all the rest. As of this day never again will you bother anyone.

 
A great big, sloppy, wet Ave Satanas to Taylor Rick for this find.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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04.23.2015
11:22 am
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Detroit protopunk pioneers Death release a new single (and it sounds like… Death!)
02.09.2015
10:21 am
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If you’ve not yet familiarized yourself with the 1970s Detroit proto-punk band Death, I highly suggest you get on it, starting with the fantastic 2012 documentary, A Band Called Death. The anomalous three-man group—comprised of of brothers Bobby, David and Dannis Hackney, switched from funk to rock ‘n, roll after seeing a Who concert, and they created some absolutely amazing music that was rarely heard by all but the most dedicated rock historians, until the doc.

Now brothers Bobby, Dannis and new guitarist Bobbie Duncan are promising a new album (literally titled N.E.W.), on their own label in April—even featuring some previously unrecorded songs written with the original lineup. You can hear the first single below, “Look at Your Life,” and honestly, it sounds like Death—heavy, erratic and wild, with the sort of nasty Motor City sound that pulses through Detroit peers like The MC5 and The Stooges. “Look at Your Life” is not however the first single in 40 years—as every outlet seems to be reporting. Two years ago, the same line-up put out a song called “Relief”—also worth a listen.

You can pre-order N.E.W. here.
 

 
Via Monster Children

Posted by Amber Frost
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02.09.2015
10:21 am
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Holy relic of Detroit high energy rock: Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith & the mysterious lyrics of ‘City Slang’


 
“City Slang,” the punk single Sonic’s Rendezvous Band released in 1978, is every bit as good as “Search and Destroy,” “Kick out the Jams” and “Sonic Reducer.” A summer day that doesn’t end with the cops confiscating your wading pool and scratching the needle across your priceless copy of “City Slang” is a summer day wasted. We’re all going to need a lot more priceless copies of “City Slang” around here.

 
Around 1975, after the breakup of the MC5, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith put together a supergroup with former members of bands from the MC5’s Detroit scene. Sonic’s Rendezvous Band comprised Smith, Stooges drummer Scott Asheton (a/k/a “Rock Action”), Rationals guitarist and singer Scott Morgan, and Up bassist Gary Rasmussen. The “City Slang” single (“City Slang” in mono on one side, stereo on the other) was the only thing the band released before breaking up, though there are now several compilations and live records, including a (mostly live) six-CD box set.
 

Fred “Sonic” Smith in his spacesuit, onstage with the MC5
 
The words to the song have always been a mystery. Seven or eight years ago, I wrote Rasmussen through the Sonic’s Rendezvous Band MySpace page to ask for the lyrics to “City Slang.” He replied: What lyrics? In the live version of the song on Sweet Nothing, Smith does seem to be giving voice to pure glossolalia:
 

 
On the other hand, there’s this interpretation posted on Yahoo! Answers, where it is (perhaps dubiously) attributed to Scott Morgan himself:

Some dirt in my hand
A part of the land
Slip and slide communication
Downtown on the street
They measure the beat
To understand the situation
A taste on the tongue
And no place to run
With all the chances to be taken
The stranger he buys
The angel she flies
My heart is cold just like the nation
Like a dog they kick at night
Gypsy laughin’ but that’s alright
Momma’s cryin’ sister thinkin’
Well you know it’s just city slang

We rode in the car
Slept in the car
All the way to the citadel
Slept on the floor
Surfed on the floor
All the way to the Coronet
Rock was pissed in Paris
Mad in Madrid
Took the sonic European way
Gary and Rock
Sonic and Scott
Meet again up in Ishpeming
When you hear that hammer fallin’
Ain’t no reason to feel left out
Ain’t no reason to call any names
Well you know it’s just city slang

With Funky and Dog
To Minni and Mad
All the way to the Aragon
Cleveland and Chi
Ann Arbor, Detroit
All the way back to the Second Chance
Je suis un son
Un autre son
Qui n’entend qu’une cloche n’entend qu’un son
Je suis le son
Je suis son son

Hey what kind of fool do you think I am
Keep a-talkin’ those city dreams
Well you know alright you know what I mean
Detroit, Chicago now New York to L.A.
They all been talkin’ bout city slang

The first verse matches the single very closely, but the second and third don’t match at all aside from a few lines and phrases. These lyrics don’t match any live recording I’ve heard, either, and yet they seem credible enough. They mention a number of contemporary Midwestern landmarks—the Aragon Ballroom in Cleveland, the Second Chance club in Ann Arbor, the tiny township of Ishpeming, Michigan—and the passage in French, which consists of a proverb bookended by puns on the French word for “sound,” seems like the sort of thing Patti Smith’s husband might sing. Or am I the naive victim of a cruel hoax perpetrated by a teenager? You be the judge.
 

 

Face-damaging footage of SRB playing “City Slang”

Posted by Oliver Hall
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08.06.2014
11:26 am
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Gorgeous psychedelic handbills and posters from Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, circa 1967-68
07.22.2014
02:49 pm
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Simply stunning vintage handbills for Detroit’s historic live music venue The Grande Ballroom. The majority of these trippy handbills and postcards were designed by Gary Grimshaw (who died in January of this year) and Carl Lundgren. Historically significant, yes, but from a design perspective, these are just jaw-droppingly, face-melting goodness, aren’t they?


 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.22.2014
02:49 pm
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The RAPID deterioration of Detroit according to Google Street View is both shocking and sad
05.29.2014
02:50 pm
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The Tumblr GooBing Detroit shows the utterly jaw-dropping deterioration of neighborhoods in Detroit using Google Street View and Bing Street View. What’s shocking is how rapidly the decline happened! A lot of these examples only span five years!


Eastside Detroit: Arndt between Elmwood and Ellery: 2009, 2011, 2013
 

Northeast Detroit: Boulder between Liberal and Novara: 2009, 2011, 2013
 

Northeast Detroit: Hoyt between Liberal and Pinewood: 2008, 2011, 2013
 

Northeast Detroit: Hazelridge between Celestine and Macray: 2009, 2011, 2013
 
Below, Google Street View video of apartments on Houston Whittier in northeast Detroit:

 
More images after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.29.2014
02:50 pm
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‘Bad Graffiti’: Vulgar, juvenile, misspelled & ignorant wall scrawlings from Detroit (NSFW-ish)
09.09.2013
02:02 pm
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The book Bad Graffiti by Scott Hocking is a celebration of craptastic graffiti spotted in and around abandoned properties in Detroit, Michigan.

“Bad graffiti can be vulgar, juvenile, poorly scrawled, misspelled, ignorant, sexist, racist and ridiculous,” Hocking writes in the prologue from the book. “Yet, it can also be… so bad, it’s good.”
 

 

 

 
More photos after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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09.09.2013
02:02 pm
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All that scratchin is making me itch: Awesome mid 80s DJ sets by The Wizard, Jeff Mills
06.18.2013
11:27 am
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In celebration of Detroit-based DJ Jeff Mills aka The Wizard’s 50th birthday today, Nerdcore lovingly posted his groundbreaking DJ sets from “The Electrifying Mojo” radio show on WJLB from the mid 1980s.  When it came to beat juggling and scratching, Mills was in a class by himself. He was also an early member of the “militant” Detroit techno outfit, Underground Resistance at the end of that decade.

When Mills DJs, he most often uses three turntables (or now CD players), a Roland TR-909 drum-machine and utilizes (I guess “plays” is the wrong word) up to seventy records an hour.

If this doesn’t make you wanna get up and shake yer ass, nothing will!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.18.2013
11:27 am
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Haunting images of Detroit’s decline through past and present photos
12.14.2012
01:42 pm
Topics:
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image
 
Once what was full of life and thriving, is now forgotten, abandoned and graffitied. These haunting images of a Detroit high school from when there were still students in the classrooms are composited with what the abandoned, decaying building looks like today.

The unions know what they’re fighting for in Michigan: their lives.

Images by Detroiturbex.
 
image
 
image
 
More after the jump…
 

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.14.2012
01:42 pm
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‘Bang The Box’ mix: 44 808 & 909 tracks in 52 minutes

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This mix is a bit of a departure in my djing style, featuring as it does hardly any disco (gasp!) and instead quick cuts and layered mixes of drum-machine based tracks. NOLA Bounce, Miami Bass, Chicago House, Detroit Electro… you know, that kind of thing. Mixed fast and constantly moving, this is like aural caffeine. So if you are just waking up, hit play and get energised.

Oh, and can we start the hip-house revival now?

Tracklist [yes, some of these tracks are NSFW]:

BIG FREEDIA - Look At Her
BIG FREEDIA - Azz Everywhere
PRINCE - 1999 (New Orleans Bounce Edit)
MISSY ELLIOT - Joy
SOUL SONIC FORCE - Looking For The Perfect Beat
KRAFTWERK - The Man Machine (live)
NEWCLEUS - Jam On It
EGYPTIAN LOVER - What Is A DJ?
DEREK B - Rock The Beat (Bonus Beat)
RUFUS & CHAKA KHAN - Ain’t Nobody
MC TWIST & THE DEF SQUAD - Just Rock
FUNKADELIC (Not Just ) Knee Deep
SNOOP DOGG Who Am I? (Acapella)
THE NIALLIST Dance Club (Haunted Edit)
THE NIALLIST Dance Club (acapella)
SISSY NOBBY Lay Me Down (DJ Sega Mix)
A GUY CALLED GERALD Voodoo Ray
ADONIS Two The Max
JJ FAD Supersonic
HANNAH HOLLAND Transexual Bass
FAST EDDIE Hip House
HOUSEMASTER BOYS House Nation
PIERRE’S PFANTASY CLUB Dream Girl
AZEALIA BANKS Liquorice
LONE Pineapple Crush
THE 2 BEARS Bear Hug (acapella)
T-TOTAL & FERAL Phearsome Bitch
MASTER AT WORK The Ha Dance (KenLou Mix)
CUNT TRAX Beats Werkin’
THE 2 BEARS Bear Hug (Niallist Acid Mixx)
ELECTROSEXUAL Discolition (Niallist RoboVogue Edit)
STEVE POINDEXTER Work That Motherfucker
CHERIE LILY Werk (Nita’s Battle Ready Mix)
SPANK ROCK Put That Pussy On Me (Diplo Mix)
2 LIVE CREW Throw That D
MURK If You Really Love Someone (Murk Groove)
CAJMERE Percolator
TRONCO TRAX Walk 4 Me
LIPPS INC Funkytown
PHUTURE Acid Trax
DONNA SUMMER I Feel Love
THE NIALLIST Work It (acapella)
SEX BAND I Have Got The Answer
 

 
As Soundcloud seems to be cracking down on dj mixes and non-creator owned content, I am migrating all my mixes over onto Mixcloud - including the previously DM’d Skool Of Rock, Disco Argento and Disco Argento 2 mixes, and my ‘Best of 2011’ mixtape. You can follow me, The Niallist on Mixcloud, here
 
BONUS!

If you like 808s going boom and some funky dancing in a fly late-80s fashion, then check out Detroit’s The New Dance Show, clips of which have been uploaded to YouTube by the excellent Caprice87. This one is a particular fave, featuring Jesse The Body and some slick mixing (you can see more of these via Shallow Rave.)
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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04.25.2012
10:14 am
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