WHAT IS DETROIT IF NOT THE CITY OF DREAMS?

By Bill Holdship on Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 11:28 am

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Discovered this yesterday while Googling to find something else. Seems that a writer/columnist named Laura Barton in Britain's great The Guardian newspaper actually celebrated (for a change!) our city's car culture and how it relates to our wonderful musical heritage. It's a tad late -- the story ran on February 20th -- but, on the other hand, it's never too late to read something in the international press that actually says nice things about Detroit.

Here's a paragraph from the piece:

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Detroit has been fired by cars and music. As well as the Ford Mustang, the Chevrolet Camaro, the Pontiac Firebird, this city gave us Motown and revelled in garage rock, hip-hop, techno, blues, jazz, gospel. It gave us Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Bill Haley, the MC5, Smokey Robinson, the Stooges, George Clinton, Madonna, Martha Reeves, Brendan Benson, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the White Stripes, Touch and Go Records, J Dilla, Eminem, and Creem magazine.

Here's another pertinent sentence:

Right now, in musical terms, the city is poised somewhere between Sufjan Stevens' "Detroit Lift Up Your Weary Head (Restore! Rebuild! Reconsider!)" and the White Stripes' "The Big Three Killed My Baby."

There's even an interesting quote from Iggy Pop.

Read the entire column by clicking here. Very cool stuff...