Detroit City Council, Cyril Lords, Freddy Fortune & Maltese, Gore Gore Girls @ the Magic Stick on January 22, 2005.
(poster from www.itcamefromdetroit.com) by Tom Deja
The “It Came From Detroit” benefit show lived up to its name, but really the first thing that came to Detroit was about a foot of snow. We really should be used to that by now, but the usual panic and ineptitude seemingly infected way too many of our fellow Detroiters. The streets and freeways were filled with the usual collection of cars facing the wrong way or spinning their tires while that car didn’t move. This certainly didn’t keep me from the show, but the crowd certainly was not as big as expected. (OK – I admit that I drive a 4-wheel drive Ford Escape, so these kind of days are actually fun).
In case you didn’t know – “It Came From Detroit” is a work in progress. It’s a documentary about the Detroit garage scene and all of your and my favorite bands are probably in it. They have a really cool web site (www.itcamefromdetroit.com/) that will give you more info this awesome project, but I was just happy to hear some great rock & roll. In spite of my 4-wheel drive heroics, I did miss the Detroit City Council, as I realized that not everybody else on the road shares my enthusiasm for plowing through snow with the Briefs blasting on my stereo. Therefore I rushed in just to catch the Cyril Lords midway through their set. I’ve always loved these guys, even when they were still the Bloody Hollys, not to be confused with the other Bloody Hollys from Buffalo, so anyway they are now the Cyril Lords and they still rock. It’s always amazing to me how many great bands I can see around Detroit in any given night. In most cases, I would be happy just to see one band as good as the Lords, but I tonight I got to see three !
Next up was the return of Fortune & Maltese; most of these guys made it to Detroit from Kalamazoo, which puts my pathetic little drive down Woodward to shame. I also have to admit that I haven’t seen these guys in ages, so this was certainly worth a little frostbite. (Disclaimer #2 – yeah, I’m the guy that wears sneakers and a leather jacket when there’s a foot of snow on the ground, but in the end – you're still going to be cold). The Fortune & Maltese show was an absolute blast – within 30 seconds we were all back in the 1960s rocking & rolling and hoping desperately that most of the 1970s would never happen. All you needed was Little Steven and some go-go dancers and we could have our own garage festival right here. Every time I hear a Fortune & Maltese song, I halfway expect Dean Martin to pull up in one of those classic Corvettes or Mustangs and buy a martini for everybody. OK, I admit I was at the auto show that day, so I had the whole car/rock & roll thing going. Unfortunately, the set ended way too quickly and I found myself back in mid-winter Detroit wondering why I could have a Molson in my hand, but have no Red Wing hockey to watch.
Luckily, the next item on the agenda was a trailer from the movie; since I paid my $10 – I felt that I was almost an investor in the movie. The trailer is awesome – it contains short little snippets of rock & roll interspersed with interviews with a whole bunch of Detroit musicians. It’s the classic rock & roll documentary, but this time – I actually know some of the people in the movie and I sure as hell have seen all of the bands. And even better yet – this movie will get done while everybody is still around to see it. (I’m still moping a little after seeing the Ramones documentary too many times and there’s very few Ramones around anymore).
The evening ended with a rousing performance by the Gore Gore Girls, who also made my evening by having a new CD available. I admit that I do most of my music and clothes shopping at the “merch” table at shows. It’s the perfect shopping scenario – the real-world version of one-click shopping; you can hear the band live, drink a beer and fill these holes in your record/CD collection and wardrobe – all at once. Just try to find a store or mall that can provide that.
Anyway, the Gore Gore Girls were great as usual – some new songs mixed in with the old classics. By that time I had already decided that this movie was going to be great (so far, my favorite rock & roll documentary about a "scene" is Hype (the Seattle grunge scene), but "It Came From Detroit" will have to be just as good, if not better. If we have to slog our way through a foot of snow, then we certainly deserve a great rock & roll movie. My other favorite Detroit rock & roll problem is that there are way too many great bands - I just can't figure out who's my favorite - so I guess that I'll have to be back next weekend to try again.