It may be 2005, but for the last few weeks my favorite CDs in the car have been the Mutants & Negative Approach. I don’t think that there are too many other cars in Michigan with that kind of CD lineup, but it’s fitting that I take the time to talk about Detroit’s musical legacy as personified by these two very different bands.
The Mutants CD is a live show recorded at Lili’s when the band reunited for a brief time back in 1996 – it showcases one of the most intriguing and misunderstood bands in the history of Detroit rock & roll. Nothing about the Mutants was very simple to understand – they always seemed to operate on a level that was different from everything else that came out before or after them. The Mutants sprang out of the rich Hamtramck music scene in the late 1970s that also produced the Romantics and the Reruns and they became part of what was lumped into as the Detroit “punk rock scene”. In those days, anybody that played original music and didn’t do covers or disco was going to fall under the “punk rock umbrella”. The Mutants music was smart, full of irony and inside jokes and did something that very few other bands could do – make you think. One of the things that I always hated about a lot of rock bands was this disdain toward thinking. What is wrong about trying to be smart and listening to rock & roll at the same time; however bands that were a little too smart were always criticized and shunted aside. I’m not trying to imply that the Mutants were some pseudo-intellectual band, but I just love a band that could manage to cover the following material in one set:
· Pizza
· Concentration Camps
· Childhood diseases (like Mumps)
· Mr. Clemma (because he loved the pope)
· Workplace coffee breaks
· The benefits of a college education (somewhere between being born and dying in Florida college might come in handy).
Everybody now knows the story of the Mutants – a couple of brilliant singles released on FTM (Fuck the Mutants), an album that seemingly sank without a trace and the legacy of missed opportunities. Everybody had their own pet theory about the ultimate commercial failure of the Mutants, but at least I’m grateful to have seen them the many times that I did over the years. The official CD of the Mutants is called “Giddyup Mutants” and it’s still available from motorcityjams.com – it’s a live recording of their reunion show at Lili’s on August 17, 1996. There are 13 songs and all of the old favorites are all covered here. However, thanks to Pasadena – I also have two more little treasures in my hands – the Mutants live at Bookie’s in 1980 and the Mutants live at Mitch’s in 1983. These CD’s give us a glimpse into the Mutants at their absolute prime when every Mutants show would send me home wondering what those guys were going to come up with next.
The other half of my Detroit musical treat comes from one of the most intense and explosive bands to come out of anywhere – Negative Approach. The time was the early 1980s – the location was the Cass Corridor at places like the Clubhouse, Freezer Theater, the Music School and a few other abandoned storefronts on Cass that never did have a name. By now the reputation of Negative Approach has achieved mythical proportions, so most people probably don’t think that anybody could be that great – well – I did see Negative Approach many times & they were even better than you could imagine. The reason for my recent glee was the release of a new Negative Approach CD “Ready to Fight”. This tasty little morsel contains 50 (!!!!) tracks including two sets of demos and live recordings of two shows – one at Paycheck’s in 1982 and the other at the legendary Graystone in September of 1983. By now, everybody that wasn’t there must think that a typical NA show was full of violence and only attended by pseudo-skinheads that were looking for fights. I don’t want to sugarcoat it too much, but it was very easy to attend an NA show without seeing or getting into any fights. It didn’t really matter to me – NA was so awesome that I would gladly take the chance of getting beat up just to see them play. It just seemed like a magical time where only a few of us could appreciate what kind of energy and passion a band could bring into our lives. The new NA CD brings most of that energy alive, but it’s really hard to appreciate their intensity from a few old recordings. The Paycheck’s show was a personal favorite of mine as NA rarely played most of the regular bars around town – I actually asked Mr. Paycheck about this show and he remembered it quite well. According to the liner notes, NA was banned from Paycheck’s after a bottle was broken over his head, but Mr. Paycheck’s recollection of the event is quite different. In either case, the new NA CD brings NA back to life and that is always a great thing.
With all of this history in my CD player – it sure makes my daily commute across Detroit a hell of a lot more bearable.
(The Mutants CD is available from motorcityjams.com and the NA CD is available from Reptilian Records.)