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By Cousin Geoff
Aaron Timlin, executive director of CAID, is planning a 192 hour dance-in to protest the unnecessary force Detroit Police used to break up a recent after-hours funk dance party. John Sinclair would be proud.
A dance protest seems like no big deal, except that the Detroit Police told them that they needed a permit to dance, and this was one of the things they got ticketed for. Timlin was quoted in the above mention freep article saying, “We’re standing up for what we believe in. We’d prefer that the police come dance with us.” Translation: screw you and your laws, we’re dancing, come and stop us. Totally a page from Sinclair, who once stated that authority figures have no right infringing on the people’s consciousness.
This has gotten a huge amount of attention, with the freep spinning it in favor of Timlin and those who were ticketed at the party. The comments section on both articles in the freep have a ton of responses, with people taking both sides. My initial reaction was that this was totally uncalled for, but now I am starting to see it from the DPD’s perspective. If the police gave the art establishment a fair warning in advance, and they still broke the law, they had every right to crack down - just maybe not with so much force and intensity.
But let’s break this down a bit further. Had this been a mostly black party or a gay club illegally serving alcohol after hours, would there have been this much fuss made? Or did the police treat these white suburbanite hipsters like they would anyone else?
I am very interested in seeing how the police respond to this act of civil disobedience. Do they let ’em dance, or will they show these hipsters who runs things in Detroit?
Maybe Timlin should hand this 45 to the DJ and see where it takes everything:
By Max Conroy
My struggle lately has been that I have way too much music to listen to. In the past year or so, I’ve had some incredible resources and have acquired more music than I could realistically listen to. It’s obviously the result of some sort of compulsion that I have to collect things. But records are meant to be listened to, and I feel guilty about having some of the best records ever made lying around where I’m only able to dedicate a cursory listen. Also, my interests wax and wane like the moon, so I’ll have some records that I’ve just purchased and my interest in that genera of music will fall by the wayside, the record filed to be stumbled upon when my interest in that music reawakens. I guess the solution is to make it a point to try and not acquire anything new. Don’t worry, readers, I’ll have plenty of stuff to write about.
For some reason, last night I actually went through my CDs and pulled out a huge pile and pretty much froze because it was late, past midnight, and I wanted to listen to everything, but I didn’t want to be up till sunrise. I’ve been getting back into rock and roll, from jazz fusion and soul and funk. I had also just hooked my DVD player up through my stereo, so I wanted to be able to watch a bit of something before I went to bed, so I had to make a tough decision, but I sure as hell made the right choice.
Starship, The MC5 at the Sturgis Armory June 27, 1968 is, in my mind, the best document of the MC5 live. Don’t get me wrong, Kick Out the Jams is a hell of a record, but it doesn’t necessarily represent the 5 accurately with regards to their live show at the time. They knew that they were going to make a record and had to trim parts of the set, like Black to Comm and various jazz and soul medleys from their set to make a digestible product for the masses (I’m not saying they sold out to the man or anything, they do say ‘motherfucker’ in the first five minutes, before their most commercial song). The sound on Starship is obviously from someone in the crowd, so this is how it pretty much sounded if you were standing in the Sturgis Armory. A lot of people don’t realize that soundboard recordings aren’t necessarily the shit because they just capture the sound that’s pumped through the system and not what comes out of it.
Where is Sturgis you ask? It’s in southwest Michigan, not far at all from where I, and Cousin Justin, grew up. The area now is probably a ghost town, but back in the day when muscle cars were king the place was probably still out of the way. This show catches the 5 playing their set in all its glory in a small town and displays perfectly their mettle. They didn’t care where they were playing or who to; when they stepped on the stage it was all over; they were going to destroy any other band that dared share that stage, no matter who it was, Cream or Led Zeppelin.
I had to put the headphones on for this one as it was late and I needed volume, so I recommend that you do the same. Find your headphones and brace yourself…
Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa:
James Brown’s Cold Sweat: Dig Dennis Thompson’s drumming on this track.
PS: In my opinion the only other live performace by the 5 that rivals this is Thunder Express, a live set in a European studio. Go figure, Cub Coda gave it two stars in AMG, haha.
by Cousin Geoff
Alright, one more fantastically awesome 80s Detroit sports 45 and then I promise I’m done for a while and will go back to more, um, serious takes on good music. Maybe.
What can I say about this 45? It was done by Gino Danelli in 1981, the same guy who put out Ain’t No Stoppin’ us Now/Tigers in ‘84. Cousin Justin tells me that Gino still sings around Detroit these days. I think that Gino’s next song should be about Cousins Vinyl’s rec league basketball team that was so sweet two years ago - we led the league in techs, ejections, and illegal alley-oop dunks. We were surely on the same level as these other Detroit sports legends that Gino chose to sing about.
This one is about Thomas Hearns, one of the most legendary Detroit boxers ever. Nicknamed The Hitman, or the Motor City Cobra, Hearns still lives in the Detroit area, and is always at the Pistons games these days flashing around. I shook his hand there once. I said, “Howya doin’ champ!”, as he walked by and he stopped and shook my hand and smiled. What a great boxer - even though he lost, who could forget his classic fight against Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the most electrifying fight in history? Known for his tall, lanky build and his aggresive flicker jab, Hearns won world championships in three different weight classes, and is truly worthy of a Gino Danelli song.
listen to The Hitman, on Trio Three records:
