I remember going to Detroit one year and here this young guy behind the decks, his shoes were off and he was groovin behind the turntable and he was making dropping these chunky dirty soul fueled house and techno tracks and I said to myself this is the future of this city, this is what its all about that gritty groovy feeling that makes Detroit so magical. That kid was Kyle Hall and fast forward 5 something years later he’s playing all over the world but he still making magic on the home front.
The sad part of this post is the so called revitalization of Detroit. Detroit is starting to lose the culture institutions that make’s it so magical and because there is big money behind it the general public is like oh “yuppification” is a good thing, but what it really does is push out the special places, the magic makers. How Detroit thinks is can survive without the artists, the musicians, the free thinkers that keep pushing that city I’ll never know. But they are losing one of there institutions. Check out this article from about the loss of 1217 Grisewold Street and the closing of Adult Contemporary. The recording above is one of the last Wild Oats parties to be thrown there and is a gritty recording but it captures that spirit, that I hope Detroit wont forget built it’s techno legacy.
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