Excellent Look in 1975 at Detroit’s Dying Concert Scene

 I was looking at this story and photo of the Cobo Hall marquee from 1975. Damn, that’s an impressive roster of bands coming down the line in November. I saw the Roxy Music show, Styx and Angel the unlikely openers. The story laments the passing of an era, one in which out of town bands dwarfed the locals, a switch from the previous decade, when visitors would be blown off the stage by Detroit’s wrecking crews. Cream? Fuck ‘em, we’ve got the MC5. Alice Cooper? Got so into the Detroit bands it was seeing on its never ending early tours that the band moved to a house on Brown Road in Pontiac and wrote Love It To Death and some songs for Killer.

This story ran as the Michigan Palace was about to close and Ford Auditorium, which had hosted everyone from the Stooges to Deep Purple in the preceding few years, was also on the way out.

The biggest things with a Detroit name attached were Bob Seger and Ted Nugent, who were both in the process of being all sold out. There was no more seedy, hungry, lean bands making music because it felt good. That would have to wait for another five years, when punk rock hit the city. Along the way, The Romantics put some power in pop and came out with a couple Detroit-vibed singles, “Little White Lies” and  “Tell it To Carrie.” The band’s debut album hit #61 on the charts in 1980. It was Detroit’s success story.

But back to the 1975 story; It’s a well-written, well reported story by Frank Bach, who was also vocalist in The Up, one more Detroit band of the Grande Ballroom era.  While the story is brief, it describes the last leg of concert rock in Detroit, before megacorporations took over the radio and the booking. And the Ann Arbor Sun? The paper founded in 1967 by John Sinclair had another year left. Everything has a beginning and an end.

Blue Oyster Cult Lyric Sheet from 1973

Lester Bangs, graced with an audience one night at his house on Brown Street in Birmingham, proceeded to play Raw Power and Tyranny & Mutation over and over. Bob Mulrooney, aka Bootsey X, who would become one of Detroit’s most prolific musical Men About Town, was working at a college radio station in 1974 and headed over to Lester’s after obtaining an obscure Velvet Underground tape from a NY collector with instructions to give a copy to Bangs.

“Dave Marsh lived there and so did Ben Edmonds,” Mulrooney said. “I went there with a couple friends. I wasn't even a drinker at the time, and Lester's hands were shaking. It was the early evening, but he was shaking when we met, and he goes, ‘let's go get some beer.’ I said, ‘whatever,’ so we got loaded. We put on the tapes for a minute and Lester goes, fuck this shit, let's put on Raw Power. So we played Raw Power like, over and over and over, for hours. Only that and Blue Oyster Cult, Tyranny & Mutation. Lester, his whole room was all albums, you couldn't even sit on the floor, and he had these huge speakers but only one of them worked.”

Yea, the second BOC album was part of that trio of greatness the band produced in the 70s, starting with the self-titled first one and ending at Secret Treaties. Like so many New York-area bands, BOC pounded Detroit, playing anywhere and everywhere, from the Michigan Palace to Pine Knob. The band always had this futuristic trip going, and was among the first bands to use lasers in its light shows, run by a trippy dude they affectionately called Larry Laser.

For Tyranny, it was possible to send a letter to an address provided to obtain the lyrics. This was before the days that every corporation sought to track everyone, and I can only imagine there was a mailing list angle. I sent for the lyrics and was never contacted by the Cult people again. I did get the lyrics, which are presented here. I dig the early 70s IBM printout, back when those crazy punch cards were the epitome of progress. Better yet, though, I got to read along to “OD’d on Life Itself.”