October: Detroit Rock City
Hey folks! I seriously could not be typing this up at a worse time. Between work, Halloween, and the election, I've been stuck between busy, stressed, and unmotivated. This probably won't be much. October's Search/Play/Repeat playlist is a shorter one that focuses on artists from, or at least very associated with, Detroit, Michigan.
Earlier this month, my wife and I took a vacation to visit her family in a suburb of Detroit, so I thought why not focus on some artists from the Motor City. All were fairly older releases. I didn't listen to any new albums this month. There's also a slight Halloween/Horror-esque theme. Whenever I browse people's record collections, particularly Hardcore-Punk collectors, one release that always pops up is a 7-inch which is graced with the horrifying image of Linda Blair as Regan from The Exorcist. I finally decided to check out Negative Approach's Self-Titled EP. This lead me down a rabbit hole of early Hardcore-Punk and Proto-Punk where I came across bands like Necros and The Gories. While Necros isn't technically from Michigan (from a town on the edge of Ohio), they're considered a staple in the early Detroit-Punk scene.
I decided it was time to give more of The Stooges a listen as well. I've never been that big on The Stooges. They just don't do much for me. I prefer Iggy Pop's Lust for Life more, although to be fair, I've really only spent time with Raw Power. I hadn't checked out their second album, Fun House, before so I gave it a shot. I enjoyed it more than Raw Power, but it's also been awhile since I revisited that album. Listening to The Stooges lead me to discovering Destroy All Monsters, of which guitarist, Ron Asheton joined at one point. Destroy All Monsters was essentially a band of art students playing punk music. Though they deemed themselves "Anti-Rock."
My wife most likely would have killed me if I hadn't listened to/included Alice Cooper on this. He was pretty much apart of her upbringing. Besides the main singles, I wasn't familiar with anything else. I went with Killer and the album was solid! My only complaint is a few songs overstay their welcome. Same could be said for some tracks on Fun House as well. The last of the Rock albums I checked out are the debuts from Garage-Rockers, The White Stripes and The Von Bondies. I haven't listened to either of the albums from The White Stripes before White Blood Cells and honestly, I didn't even realize The Von Bondies released anything other than Pawn Shoppe Heart (Quick note: "C'mon C'mon" is such a damn good song.) I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Lack of Communication. I really wish it could have PSH's production though.
I couldn't get away with a Detroit oriented playlist without some Motown. I'm disappointed in myself for not listening to more though. I listened to The Temptation's first album, but decided against including a song on the playlist simply because nothing fit too well. However, "Oh Mother of Mine," was my favorite from Meet The Temptations. I, of course, also had to give The Queen of Soul some respect and listened to Aretha Franklin's first album, Aretha: With the Ray Bryant Combo. A track from that album did make it at least. Closing out the playlist is a song from Ray Parker Jr.'s, Women Out of Control -- the album that came out before he did the "Ghostbuster's Theme." The album is primarily R&B/Dance-Pop, but there was one track that was pretty different, "Invasion," and clearly sounds like something from the artist that gave us the "Ghostbuster's Theme." There's even a synth-progression that's very similar to the Ghostbuster's hook.
As always, thanks for checking in. Time to get back to closely watching election results and stressing.
