Motor City Rocks

“The secret is to make a city, not to rest in it” -Thornton Wilder

So if you haven’t heard the news from my twitter, I am going to be taking over at Motor City Rocks. This is a tremendous honor for me since MCR is such a longstanding great music blog. I plan to do the absolute best job I can to make sure that Motor City Rocks will be the first place people look to find in depth info on music of the area.

I will admit that if I were to take on any group of Detroit music insiders at a game of Rock N Roll Jeopardy, I would probably lose. I do not know the “most” about the music scene in Detroit, and I don’t want to be Indie Rock Pete. I genuinely care about this city, and the music “scene” (love or hate the word). There are enough brilliant minds in this city (and I have met them!) to put us on the atlas. Honestly, out of everyone I’ve met working on my show, I’ve realized that the people making all the jamz in Detroit the most friendly, warm, inclusive people I’ve ever met.

The Steve Barman Show is canceled. We are rolling our footage into MOTOR CITY ROCKS!!! a show based solely around Detroit rock music that is worth a damn. There’s a little bit of left-overs (we’ve shot at least 8 hours of footage) which will be rolled into the show in some way.

I think to a certain degree, the written word is dead. I believe that a significant amount of people would rather watch an interview with their favorite band than to read it. The way the facial expressions, a smile and a laugh transfer on video can’t be replicated with text. Kino pravda, right? but we will still be doing a fair amount of written articles, including the Weekend Lowdown, album reviews, and anything else that needs to be said.

To keep a decent balance between the word and the image, we’ll be putting out band interview videos periodically, then placing a half hour condensed show of several interviews on public access – and hopefully soon- commercial television.

If that sounds too grandiose, you should also know that way down the line I’d like to see some sort of print zine going that would replace the Metro Times (but right now that’s just a Creem dream).

On a final note: I call all the bands from “around here” as “Detroiters”. I live in Royal Oak, but I’m constantly zipping back into the city to soak up the culture (and the booze). The antagonisms between the city and the suburbs needs to calm down. Detroit is the heart that pumps blood into the entire state. We need to rebuild our communities by participation, not segregation and not elitism.

Sorry if I ranted a bit too much here. I just drank a ton of coffee. Coming up on Motor City Rocks will be interviews with: Pink Eye, John Sinclair, The Rogue Satellites, -J.R., The City Yards, Silver Ghost, Zoos of Berlin, Sunlight Ascending!
As well as: Taryn Schick, the Dizzy Dames, our Horror Special, Spaghetti wrestling, theremin busking, and hot hot tubs.