There's Something About Detroit

There’s just something about…

DETROIT

When I was 16 I went to live in Detroit for a summer. My sister had a baby and needed help with her toddler and now her new baby, a preemie the size of my palm. It was the summer of love actually, for me. I fell in love with the city of Detroit, the boy down the street whose folks owned a local deli, but mostly, I fell in love with Detroit radio.

I would do everything I could to help around the house spending time with my niece when my sister and her husband were at the hospital for hours on end. I had unlimited money and use of a car and so I taught myself how to get around Detroit. Some days I’d drive east on 8 Mile to the Lodge Freeway and ride downtown. On other days I’d drive south towards Grand and go as far east as I could and end up on Lake Shore Drive. While there was no comparing Detroit’s LSD to Chicago’s, it was still a lovely ride.

I spent a lot of time in malls as the Detroit area has some of the largest and fanciest. I took my niece to ballet class in Dearborn – a suburb we reached via the Southfield Freeway. We visited Windsor just to go to Canada. I felt like a stranger in a familiar land and I liked that feeling. Detroit is as special as it is seedy and you can’t put your finger on why that's the case.

It took me at least two months to get acquainted with the cute boy in the house down the street. He always made it home by 5:30 and I always made a point to be outdoors. Each day our eyes would stare longingly into the other’s as he passed our house. He would pull into the driveway and park, and stare at me all the way to the door of his home. I guess we were both too shy to go beyond that at first. When we finally did talk it was as if we couldn’t get enough of knowing each other. He was a year younger than me, played baseball and worked in his parent’s deli afternoons.

I went to the deli to see him one day after we broke our silence. He had an amazing smile and the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. He gave me a corned beef sandwich for free. We would spend my last days in Detroit together in the evenings when he’d return home, sitting outside on the porch or in the grass, sharing a hug, a touch of the hand or a simple kiss. Soon I would return to Chicago to leave for my first year of college.

Having a summer love in a new city was truly special, but before I found Johnny, I found one thing that was truly different about Detroit and made me love it all the more and that was its radio stations. I had my first Walkman that summer so I spent hours tuning it to hear what was being played and found plenty to love about Detroit music. I often stayed up late into the early morning with my headphones on, listening to Detroit’s strange brew.



For one, the formats there seemed to be much freer than Chicago’s. Perhaps it was the proximity of such colleges as U of M, MU or Wayne State as college radio is by most accounts a slurry of all kinds of independent music making for an eclectic mix. Detroit’s stations seemed to be continuing that aesthetic or maybe I was actually listening to college stations?

One station I found turned me on to the early punk incarnation of the Beastie Boys, and another band who called themselves The Cure. I also heard a lot of “Rock Over London” and got very acquainted with a band call King. I hunted down their music in the mall record store and ended up with several cassettes; one of which was The Cure’s, Staring at The Sea: The Singles. I found “Killing An Arab” to be mind-blowing.

Sometimes I would hear a station that played all kinds of house and funky music like Kraftwerk, Devo, B-52’s and that ilk. It made me feel like I was home although it wasn’t exactly a house mixshow like on Chicago’s WBMX, its sameness had just enough difference to keep me excited. What I didn’t know then but realize now is that I may have been listening to the legendary one the pioneers always talk about, Electrifying Mojo.

Yet still other stations were quite rap heavy, a place Chicago hadn’t dared go, so I heard plenty of the best east coast rap coming from NYC--another treat to my ears. With so much diversity on the dial I can see why Techno would naturally emerge from Detroit.

My “Summer of Love” culminated with a trip to Woodward Avenue and the landmark Fox Theater where I would catch the “My Adidas” tour that featured Run DMC (who’s same titled album had blown up that summer), along with LL Cool J, Whodini and a little known punk band made up of three boorish characters name Ad Rock, Mike D & MCA.

About ten years after that I would be engaged in my first year of being known as DJ Lady D and meet some of my heroes of Detroit techno. I always made a point to talk to the guys when they came to play. Derrick May was an outgoing dude who’d answer all your questions and make you laugh like crazy. Carl Craig was a bit more mysterious and always gracious. Juan Atkins was pretty funny and liked to mix it up with folks. I also got my first of several invitations to play in Detroit when Jennifer Witcher aka DJ Minx hosted me for my debut in the Motor City. Since that time, I’ve formed bonds with many of my peers in Detroit that can’t be broken; symbolic of Chicago’s immense love for Detroit and Detroit’s intense love for Chicago. After all, I-94 is a two way street.

If you ever get the chance to visit Detroit and meet some of its citizens, I know you will enjoy your stay. I liken it to that flower in the concrete that, even after hardship, somehow manages to surface and bloom. That is Detroit. Capital improvements to the city have made the roads easier to navigate and new hotels and buildings show signs of life in a once flatlined market. If you get the chance to go during the Movement festival this year, I think you’ll see what I mean and I do recommend you go. Detroit can be your Johnny, and if you stare long enough, you could fall in love.

Signing off,

The Sexy Moderate