Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Music for your Piehole - Detroit Rock City

Look, it ain't no secret: I got no love for New York City. One thing that really gets my goat is that anywhere you are in America, some transplanted New Yorker (or worse, someone who spent a weekend in New York and now regards themselves more cosmopolitan than need be) will go all up in arms anytime you try and perform one of the most basic American tasks, which is ordering a pizza.

One of my favorites: "Oh, your from Texas so you don't know what good pizza is."

Want to watch a throwdown? Get some asshole talking New York pizza, then throw someone from Chicago into the mix. You know, "The Windy City" did not get its moniker because of the Lake Michigan breeze, but rather because it's a metropolis chock full of braggarts.

Look man, I just like pizza. I like to put it into my mouth and chew it up and swallow it. Why everytime folks try to eat something it has to be turned into some foodie food blog is beyond me. It makes me wonder if there's something in the water up in New York City that turns everyone into a douchebag so they can ruin grinders or knishes or Reuben sandwiches for the rest of the country. But it's pizza goddammit so please, eat it and quit instagramming it.

But I got news for you. There's another kid on the block and he ain't so much about making noise. He's about being cooked and eaten and he knows New Yorkers and Chicagoans and food bloggers and just plain old douchenozzles will freak out at the mere mention of another type of pizza.

I'm talking about Detroit.

Detroit style pizza is some good stuff fella, and it's the revolution that's quietly taking over the country. Originally cooked in auto parts pans, the pizza is crispy and crunchy and a downright pleasure to put into your face. Best I can tell, it started at Buddy's Rendezvous in Hamtramck at 17125 Conant St. (it's still there today). Other pizzerias caught on, including Cloverleaf, Jet's and the Detroit Style Pizza Co. (to name a few).

But the reach is growing. Jet's has put a few shops around the country, including some over in Raleigh. Speaking of Raleigh, you can order Detroit style pizza off a truck at Klausie's Pizza. But the best is probably found in Louisville at a shop called Loui Loui's, where owner Mike Spurlock took and accountant-slash-mad scientist's approach by systematically studying the best Detroit style pizzas and creating his own award-winning recipe. Seriously, Loui Loui's is where it's at.

So there you have it. I could post pictures of my food, or go on and on about what it tastes like by overusing words such as chewy or cheesy or even use made up words like umami or nom nom but I won't because I am not a food blogger; I'm a for-real writer.

What I will do instead is give you some music that will rock your face off. Unless of course you are from New York City. In that case, I have nothing that will help you.

TOP TEN SONGS ABOUT DETROIT
Let's just get it out of the way. It's the one you've all heard of and folks will flip their lid if it's not somewhere on this list. So here it is. But I'm sticking to my guns re: Eminem and Kid Rock. Now, let's all join the adults at the Big Table.
I double-dog dare you to talk about Detroit and not talk about race. Can't do it. Well, maybe you can, kicking it down in the urban sidewalk beaches of Dan Gilbert-ville, under the watchful eye of the video cameras, sipping on an iced latte or pina colada and saying "Ahh, now THIS is the real Detroit." But as living conditions became increasingly intolerable in the Jim Crow South, more African-Americans migrated northward to urban centers. Where most companies employed discrimination tactics, auto companies such as Ford recruited blacks to assist with labor demands, especially during the periods of World War. Songs such as this from Fats Domino sound as if they had been commissioned by the city to encourage folks to move.
There's a lot of songs about trains with Detroit in the name. It was a coin flip between this one and "Detroit
Arrow" by Shy Guy Douglas but this is the one that had a YouTube video, so there you have it.
This song rocks. It's about a 60s activist who was given ten years for trying to sell two joints to undercover cops. It got a bunch of people in a tizzy, including former Beatle John Lennon. This may come as a surprise to you, but a lot of other famous people came from Detroit. Like Axel Foley, for instance, the super cop who TWICE saved Beverly Hills from corruption. Also Elmore Leonard, who lived there until he died (of natural causes). Or Sonny Bono. Or Francis Ford Coppola, Roger Corman, Richard Keil, James Earl Jones, George C. Scott, Tom Selleck, Sam Raimi, Aretha Franklin, IGGY POP, Madonna, and Mitch Albom.
And my wife and her ancestors.
And more.
But John Sinclair's the one who had a song about him.
Because he sold two joints to cops.
You know who else is from Detroit? Jack and Meg White, that's who.
Tampa Red says nobody knows Detroit like he do because he's rambled it through and through. If this was true, then he knows all about Detroit's signature sandwich: The Coney. Yes, back in 1914, Bill and Gus
Keros, Greek immigrants, started the first Coney Island, which is a Michigan "diner." Their restaurant was called American Coney Island. A business dispute caused the brothers to disband, with Gus heading next door to start Lafayette Coney Island. All Coney Islands feature the Coney, an all beef hot dog topped with meat chili (no beans), onions and mustard. Chili cheese fries are the natural accompanyment. You put this in your mouth and chew it. It is good.
All of Detroit is split down the middle by where they like to eat their coney. You are either American or
Lafayette. Unless you are a suburbanite (live beyond 8 mile), then you throw National into the mix.
Coneys are good. A little known fact is that the saying originally was "A Coney a day keeps the doctor away" but the apple lobbyists got their fingers on it and history was changed.
For a Southerner to list a Neil Young song on his top ten blog is kind of like admitting that you think Derek Jeter may be a "stand-up guy." Because, you know, we don't need him around anyhow. But man, this song is catchy and has a beat you can dance to. And I'm sure he's teaching us all a lesson. So thanks Neil Young.
Man, this song has it all. It's like Bowie read an Elmore Leonard novel then picked up a guitar. If any word captures old-school Detroit, it's "panic." A city with a reputation hard enough to spawn Axel Foley has to have a gritty, crime-fueled song as an anthem and this one will do it.
Man, this is the coolest song ever. You can't talk about Detroit without talking about cars. Blondie does it with "Detroit 442". Reverend Horton Heat does it with "Galaxie 500." Clint Eastwood took a break from talking to chairs to do it during the end credits of the horribly edited Gran Torino. Everybody has been doing it since cars were invented, but it takes a truly revolutionary son of a bitch to talk about creating his own car compiled of pieces stolen off the GM assembly line. I think this song best captures the spirit of a town run by big auto, then let down by them.
Well, here we are. By this time, some folks may be pulling out their hair, screaming about me not including anything Motown or hey, where's the Kid Rock or how come you ain't got no Eminem or any of that. While I think "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas is one of the scariest songs ever, I just don't get the Detroit feel to a lot of those songs. When I think of Detroit, I think of cars and the Lions going 0-16 in 2008 and the auto bailouts and crime and the riots of 1967 and the Murder Capital of the World and Pizza Liquor Lotto at the party stores. I think of streets named after miles and Hell Night where it's perfectly legal to set the entire city on fire. I think of Ben Wallace telling Ron Artest you can't act like that around here and the  "Malice at the Palace." ("They have gone beserk in Detroit! There's bedlam in Detroit!") The Bad Boys. Ty Cobb telling everyone to go fuck themselves. The banana in the tailpipe. Robocop. How a city built an entire nation of cars and put us in the mix through industrialization and two World Wars, then through corrupt management and corrupt politicians, let it all slip through their fingers and now the entire world is watching and waiting for it to redefine itself and come back from the ashes like a phoenix from this great big fire.

But man, what a fire and how bright it burns.

Did I miss something? There's a place for that, you know. It's called the comments section and it's down yonder.

ERYK PRUITT is a filmmaker, author, and screenwriter living in Durham, NC with his wife Lana and his cat Busey. His short film FOODIE won several awards at film festivals across the US.  His fiction appears in The Avalon Literary Review, Pulp Modern, Thuglit, Swill, and Pantheon Magazine, to name a few.  In 2013, he was a finalist for Best Short Fiction in Short Story America. His novel Dirtbags was published in April 2014 and is available in both print and e-formats. A full list of credits can be found at erykpruitt.com.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)