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Why Be Something That You're Not: Detroit Hardcore 1979-1985
by Tony RettmanTouch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79-'83
by Tesco Vee and Dave StimsonReading, 80s Hardcore Video Screening, and Signing - Refreshments will be served
Tuesday, August 24, 7-9 PM
The powerHouse Arena
37 Main Street, Brooklyn
For more information: (718) 666-3049
In the early 70s, Detroit was the musical hub of America. Everything from the chart topping sounds of Motown Records to the vicious proto-punk of The Stooges was being brewed out there and it seemed like there was no end in sight. But by the early eighties, the city was both a physical and cultural wasteland due to major-label buyouts of the artists as well as the crippling drug habits of some of the others. Detroit's most well-known musical export at the time was the vapid sounds of New Wave heartthrobs The Romantics; This wasn't good. It took a gaggle of suburban skateboarders, a grade school teacher and a census bureau clerk to wake this city up from its slumber and start one of the first hardcore punk scenes in America. Why Be Something That You're Not chronicles the first wave of Detroit hardcore from its origins in the late 70s to its demise in the mid-80s. Through a combination of oral history and extensive imagery, the book proves that even though the Southern California beach towns might have created the look and style of hardcore punk, it was the Detroit scene—along with a handful of other cities across the country—that cultivated the music's grassroots aesthetic before most cultural hot spots around the globe even knew what the music was about.
About Why Be Something That You're Not: Detroit Hardcore 1979-1984
"The Michigan hardcore scene was a crazy mixture of DC-style teen-thug-purists and debauched elders with a taste for the newest in high-energy freedom. Tony Rettman has done a great service to Western culture by interviewing the prime knuckleheads involved in this scene and reporting what he finds. It's hard for me to believe the Necros first record was done almost 30 years ago, but it's the sad goddamn truth—we're all grandpas now.
Tony doesn't let any of the potential blowhards prattle on for too long, but he gets some great stories out of 'em and presents them with lean fast strokes. He dug up some boss pictures too, and the whole shebang makes some of the other volumes I've seen about this spot in the time-space continuum look even lamer than they did previously. There were certain aspects of the Michigan scene that made it the brightest, hottest spot on the world-underground music map for a few brief moments. Tony would like to tell you why." — Byron Coley
About Touch and Go:The Complete Hardcore Fanzine '79-'83
Touch and Go fanzine was the brainchild of Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson and was launched in Lansing, Michigan, in 1979. Major fanatics of the new punk happenings in the late '70, Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson set out to chronicle, lambaste, ridicule, and heap praise on all they arbitrarily loved or hated in the music communities in the U.S. and abroad. In laughably minuscule press runs by todays standards, Touch and Go was made by guys within the Midwest scene strictly for the edification of scenesters and pals in other cities like DC, Philly, Boston, LA, SF, Chicago, et al. Inspired by magazines such as Slash and Search and Destroy and writers like Claude Bessy and Chris Desjardines, Vee and Stimson pumped out 17 naughty, irrevent issues together, and Vee did another five solo. This is the first time the issues have been collected and published as a complete set.
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