The Most Important World Capital of Pop Music Is...

Wally Pleasant used to sit in front of a fountain in downtown East Lansing and play the same four songs oooover and ooover and ooover.

1. There are lots of black people in Southeastern Michigan.

The reason that this is important is because in Detroit, everything revolves around and is judged according to the standards of black music. It is not like other regions where you have a predominate white cultural influence, and black music is just trying to sneak in there somewhere. The primary measure of music here is that it touches the audience and is emotive. Detroit music has feeling, if it doesn't it will not get any respect from the locals.

2. Detroit has better radio than most of the country.

We bitch about how homogenized radio has become in the US(AND IT HAS!) but in Detroit you have a great deal of creative radio programming. Ed Love and Liz Copeland are playing great music 5 nights a week on WDET. You have smaller college stations playing more fringe music like WHFR in Dearborn(the whole reason why there way a space rock scene 7 years ago) and CJAM in Windsor(which allows me to play weird German computer music on saturday nights and not get sacked for being non-commerical) and the different highschool stations.

Another radio station to mention is WDTR, 90.9fm. 90.9 is the Detroit public schools radio station, where you can hear anything from obscure 50's rockabilly, dancehall reggae, biz markee, and kraftwerk. The most noteworthy show is on thursday afternoon's when Theresa Hill invites the Detroit house glitterati to throw down old school house mixes from 5-6pm every thursday. You can hear people like Mike Clark, Delano Smith, and Theo Parrish throw down oldschool hotmixes.

Beyond that, you have a ton of black radio. WJLB is the #1 station in the city, along with other stations like 105.9 and 92.3. The best time to listen is during the mix shows when you can hear DJ's like Wax Taxin' Dre, Earl "Mixin" McKinney, Kim James, DJ Polo, DJ Godfather, DJ Assault and a host of other DJ throwing down whatever they feel like, from hip-hop, classic Detroit Techno, Electro, Detroit Bass and House. This is the peak time for commerical black radio because it is the only time when the corporations are not regulating the playlists.

3. People in Detroit love music.

It is weird, but when you come to Detroit you will find that a lot of people know a lot about music. There are 12 cd people everywhere, but in Detroit the average person knows what is going on in music.

4. People in Detroit need music.

I do not leave the state much, and when I do it is a real shock. To go to places like Chicago, DC, Toronto, or Montreal and see how people live is just amazing to me. You guys actually live in functioning cities. Detroit is an absolute mess, I love it, but the entire region is screwed up. Detroit is the only city in the US where you can look back for the last 60 years and say: if there are only two options and one is cheaper, more beneficial, and obviously better, and the other costs more, will cause more problems, and is a horrible solution, Detroit picks the wrong one every single time.

I do not care what color you are, or what class you are from, Detroit is a hard place to live. What is there for young people in Detroit, Nothing! If you are a bit strange, you are not interested in malls and football, or any creative inclination, music is your only option. There is nothing else here, and people need an outlet for the tension that is caused by living here. Musicians in this town cling to music because the only way you can get through your day is to hold on to that dream and chase it for all you can.

5. There is a hell of a lot more money in Detroit that most people think.

Believe it or not, Detroit is a great place to make a fortune. If you have a little ambition and some smarts you can start a business and have it thrive. There is a good chunk of money here, and because of that even the low end service jobs pay more than they do in the rest of the country. When you couple that with a relatively low cost of living it enables people to rent practice spaces, buy musical equipment, and devote time to music.

6. Detroit is a ghost town.

The thing that separates us from Chicago or NYC is that there is nothing to do here. I cannot understand how people can deal with the kind of distraction that most major metropolitan areas offer. There are 100 different things to do every night in Chicago, and 100 different places to be. Detroit is much smaller as far as the music scene goes, there are only so many gigs and so many venues, and you wind up seeing the same people and bands all the time.

The reason this is important is that it allows scenes to build up and become close-knit. It also allows fledgling acts to gather momentum at a much greater rate than in other cities. The different scenes are much more concentrated and focused. It is much easier to be recognized in Detroit, there is only so much going on. It also allows cross pollination, because different scenes share venues. Also, there is only so much going on, so if you really want to go out all the time you have to venture into unfamiliar territory, be it a garage rock gig, an urban poetry evening, a small house music loft party. All these weird little Detroit subcultures exist right beside each other. Another thing is that there is just enough going on keep things interesting, but not so much that different people have to fight for places to set up shows and do their thing.

7. Detroit people have a certain way of dealing with life.

Detroit is a working class region and there is a certain lack of pretention here. You are either good, or you aren't and people will not lie to you. You had better be good, because people will not be happy if they spent 5 dollars and you did not take care of business.

There is also a certain practicality and work ethic in the people who make it out of here. You have to sit down, work your act out, and get it right. The way you look and who your friends with is secondary to the music. The music is primary, everything else comes after that. If people don't feel it, then it doesnt matter. You can wear the latest trowsers and quote Deluze and Guttari all you like, but if the music is not right people will not respect it.

8. Nobody gives a shit about any of us.

The fact of the matter is, everybody thinks detroit is the biggest shithole in the western world. All the regular people in Detroit have absolutely no interest or respect for anything that is different. When you do something in Detroit, there is no big money to be made, there is no huge audience to play for, and there is no adoring public to tell you how GRATE you are.

I do not care how big you are in Germany, Japan, or the UK, Jack White and Derrick May are not shit in Detroit. Nobody here cares who they are or who they were here. They both have their fan bases, but they are definitely not celebrities in any real sense.

When you are getting started you do not have to worry about the business, you just do your music to do it. Nobody cares, nobody is listening, you are working in a vacuum. The music is being made because the people who are making in are doing it for pure reasons, they need to express themselves. The reason you get so many extreme characters from Detroit is that the larger culture here is absolutely hostile to anything interesting or out of the ordinary. They are making their music inspite of complete lack of interest from the greater culture. They do their thing for themselves and the small pack of people who are moving in the same circles.

Also, we are very isolated from the rest of the world. This allows influences to slowly seep in and mutate in isolation from the rest of the world. The latest trends are not being bought and sold here. This gives us room to be the authors of our own culture and forces us to be the importers of the ideas that we fervently believe in. There is no fake indie culture here, if you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. There is a vacuum here, and it makes it very easy for young people with little money to fill the spaces with their own ideas.

The NYC and Californian culture industries are not breathing down our necks looking for the latest trend to swollow up. By the time acts are mature enough to export to the rest of the world, they have been working in Detroit for awhile. When Detroit acts are finally ready to leave here, they can kick the shit out of a lot of the other acts they come across.

I could go one, but I think I have spent enough of my saturday afternoon on ILM.

Funkadelic wanted to be (and were) a metal band

I luv Geo Clinton, but Funkadelic is about as metal as Abba i.e. not. Maggot Brain's mindbending guitarwork notwithstanding.

Despite the Detroit lovefest I gotta give pop props to Stockholm where an alarming percentage of pop gets produced & exported.

I would also say, for boring historical reasons that we don't have to go into here, that Memphis must be in with a shout.

what a fascinating post en totale, but did actually Kurt move to LA? I know he's spent some time out there this year and last recording his new album.

But demerits for its cameo appearance in that crap song "Walking in Memphis."

60s - The Doors, Love, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Millennium, The Association (where would indie music be without)

70s - The Eagles

Early 80s - The Germs (Without which you would never have Pat Smear playing on the beautiful Nirvana In Utero), The Go-Gos, Lydia Lynch (who could forget the sex scene with Teardrop Explodes era Julian Cope), FEAR (John Belushi - so LA Rock and Roll, (see Decline and Fall of the Western Civilization Part Une)

Mid 80s - Birthplace of Paisly Underground - The Bangles (without which you would have no Spice Girls, Atomic Kitten, et al.), Rain Parade (the mighty), Dream Syndicate, Three O'Clock, Long Ryders (which without you would never have had Stone Roses, Baggy, C86, the Death of English Punk Rock)....and.....

Mid 80s - Cat Club, Motley Crue, etc without whom we would never have pop metal see: Decline and Fall of Western Civilization Part Deux.

Early 90s - Mazzy Star

Now - Beachwood Sparks, The Lilys, The Blondes, The Warlocks, Superbee, The Bellrays, The Charlatans, The Tyde again coming up as the psychedelic/hard rock/metal capital.

70s - Flying Burrito Bros, Dennis Wilson, Gram Parsons without which you would not have country-rock, Primal Scream's Screamadelic e.p, The Clientele's Lost Weekend e.p.

Without Captain Beefheart - you would not have heard Lee Mavers, Happy Mondays, etc!!

Also forget - Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions.

80s - Black Flag - would not have hand Rage Against the Machine and Nu-Metal and Emo!!!

L.A. Wins It!

Plus - for literary rock and roll - Philip K. Dick without whom there would be no Sonic Youth - Schizophrenia or Primal Scream's A Scanner Darkly or the wonderful Blade Runner Soundtrack or without Tricky's sample off of Maxinquaye...!!

Beachwood Sparks, The Tyde

This isn't evidence for LA, this is a further reminder that both bands need to be hunted down and killed. THEN LA might start to improve on a miniscule basis.

also when elliott smith gets it together to put out a new record, then you can include him among 'new' people. otherwise, sorry.

And West Coast rap "always" kicking the ass of East Coast rap is about as sketchy as Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.

And any L.A. list that keeps pumping the Lilys and the Doors as psychedelic rock's ne plus ultra without mentioning Love is HIGHLY suspect.

I included Love you just have to read the list again.

I enjoy The Tyde and Beachwood Sparks as I enjoy psychedelia and country.

Tell me what your capital of pop music is?

Otherwise *shrugs shoulders*

And I agree wholeheartedly with Detroit, but (as I've already said) I think Memphis deserves the nod over L.A. for US #2.

Buenos Aires is suddenly more important in South America than Rio or Sao Paulo. Weird, huh?

err... even more fascinating conclusions... wow.

ned raggett:

This isn't evidence for LA, this is a further reminder that both bands need to be hunted down and killed. THEN LA might start to improve on a miniscule basis.

ned, what is your take on further (live/later-era preferably)? if you could coax brian mc out of retirement, what would he add? shadowland (please don't...)?

Sorry, Jim. ;-) FWIW, YLT just vaguely bore me, whereas the Tyde are truly odious.

Gygax -- the one time I saw Further they were okay enough, but I never felt inspired to investigate more. Shadowland, a much different subject. Pain! Pain! Not as bad as Lions and Ghosts though.

all my favorite bands are from the suburbs. macomb county rocks!
aurevoir borealis, live from the mean streets of rochester hills.