Category Archive

Some things never change.  The alarm clock rings each morning, and it’s time to get ready to go punch in again.  For a lot of Michigan folks, this means working on the automotive assembly line.  Detroit isn’t called the Motor City for nothing.  But now that the rest of the world has caught up, we’re losing jobs left and right.  Ford just announced they were putting 8,000 more people out of work.  It should only add to Michigan’s unemployment rate, the highest in the country.  The times are a changin’.  But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  According to the Detroit band Stix and Stoned, and Plymouth, Michigan’s David Walz, working on the line gives them a bad case of the blues. 

The band Stix and Stoned was formed by a group of buddies who worked together at the Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.  They had those rou-ou-ouge plant blues, and they had ‘em bad.

listen to Rouge Plant Blues:

I recently discovered this record by Plymouth’s David Walz, called Country Old Country New.

And to my delight, the lead off track on the B side was Assembly Line Blues.  Stix and Stoned were not alone as a local bar band who was factory rat by day, rock and roll dreamer by night.  I’m sure that playing music was much, much better, and this only contributed to the blues they all felt while bolting in those door panels or assembling those steering wheels.

David Walz doesn’t look like he has the blues, but that’s because he was posing for the cover of his new album instead of sweatin’ on that line.  Give his take a listen and see who makes the most convincing argument.

listen to Assembly Line Blues:

Who needs the blues?  As many of the immortals have said, They ain’t nothin’ but a low down achin’ chill, and if you ain’t never had ‘em, I hope you never will.  And if you listen to Stix and Stoned or David Walz, that’s all those auto jobs are good for anyway.

Well, it’s Monday. Time to go back to work and grind it out until the next weekend. In honor of working, workers, unions, and the good ol’ labor force, I thought it was time to tell you about the song Rouge Plant Blues.

The long time Detroit blues-funk bar band Stix and Stoned recorded their lone single (pictured above) “Rouge Plant Blues”, inspired by a couple factory worker buddies who formed the band. The Ford Rouge Plant, located on 2,000 acres in Dearborn, is quite impressive. In the 1920’s and 30’s, Henry Ford developed it into the largest industrial complex in the world, as well as the most technologically advanced. If you live in Michigan, you either work for an auto company or know about 20 people that do. I heard so many stories about working on the line at one of the Ford Plants - and the Rouge Plant is the big dog of them all.
I wish I owned that 45 on Bumpshop. Instead, I discovered this song while listening to my Michigan Rocks II compilation.

It’ll lift your spirits as you plug away at a new week.

.

jsREVIEW:
“These previously unissued sounds from the drag strip represent a selection of the finest recoding ever done on those fantastic machines which emanate from the back yards and garages all over the country. Perhaps the builders of these machines are never put to so severe a test (or at least, so concentrated a test) as they are on this record. For here, the results of their tuning and designing are clearly and openly heard, without the benefit of a flashy pain job, or a snazzy crash helmet festooned with red, white and blue foxtails— or anything else that might distract attention.

That most of these builders and designers are successful is obvious in listening; and the ones who fail to do so, we hope, in good spirits and share our laughter at the peculiar sounds made by their goofs.

At any rate, here are the unabridged noises of a fantastic collection of automotive machinery. They deserve some careful listening.”

— From the back of the LP jacket, Riverside Records 5517.

There’s no date on this album, though my guess (based on the rest of the dates for the Riverside label) is that it came out in the late ’50s, when hot-rodding was a growing concern. The album promises “Hot new sounds from the drag strip,” and that’s what it delivers, in beautiful hi-fi mono.

In its most literal sense, this is a “noise” album. There are no songs there, no real intended sounds as such. Nothing that can really be recognized as intended as music. This was, first and foremost, an epistle to America as low media, a record for kids and gearheads to listen to as they dreamed of their own hotrods. The liner notes make it seem like there’s some way for me to tell which of these are the gallant and which the gufus based on the tunings, but I grew up too late for that. This is essentially sounds of machines.

There are three types of noise albums, and I tend to think of this as the third. The first would be those albums that sometimes get called “noise rock.” Merzbow or Nurse With Wound or Throbbing Gristle. They tend to have discrete tracks and show the evidence of being listened to as music, even when they attack the traditional signposts of music. Sounds are often layered and distorted in unnatural ways in the first type of noise album.

For the second type, there’s the sound effects put out for commercial and educational use. Think those blings and boings of a radio ad, or the Wilhelm scream. I could see an argument being made to place Rods ‘N Rails in with these, as it would be handy if I ever had to convince someone that I was at a drag strip over the phone. But for the most part, the engines rev for too long and there isn’t necessarily a good cut point between the cars. Certainly, this would be a pain to cue from.

The third type is the field recording. This isn’t that either, strictly, but it falls closer than any of the other categories. Like a birdsong guide for the freeways of the late ’50s, it reminds me more of sleeping in my grandmother’s house on First Ave., North Riverside, Il., than anything else. The surge then disintigration of cars passing a single mic, then dopplering out, is strangely soothing. It’s a lullaby imagined by Depero.

A beautiful burst of nostolgia for futures past, Rods ‘N Rails is worth listening to both as a document and as an album.

-js

SOLD OUT