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Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll by David A. Carson

2006; Volume: 32; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mhr.2006.0003

2327-9672

Steve Waksman,

American Political and Social Dynamics

Book Reviews 125 public following the Kent State tragedy. To draw this poignant contrast, he cites three letters written to the parents of William Schroeder, which are housed at the Kent State University May 4 Resource Center. All express the same sentiment, dismissing Schroeder as a "dead, destructive, riot-making Communist," and wishing that that the National Guard had killed more such youths. These extreme examples serve to underscore what Caputo deems to be the greatest tragedy of this event: that it failed to convince the American public that the state was committing horrors in its name. Besides personalizing the tragedy and emphasizing public perceptions in the immediate aftermath, Caputo's book does little to further our understanding of the actual events at Kent State. The book fails to offer any new historical interpretation or promote any solid conclusions regarding the legacy of May 4. He begins the book with an obligatory but cursory look back at the social and political climate of America in the late 1960s. Caputo's description of how events escalated at Kent State over the long weekend of May 1-4 does not deviate from the accepted narratives other historians and investigators have provided over the decades. For readers with any significant exposure to literature on the antiwar movement or on the tragedy at Kent State, this history will not provide any new details. Despite these drawbacks, 13 Seconds remains important in the scholarly discourse on Kent State as it reminds us that every person carries and translates historical experience differently. This is best exemplified in the book's final chapter where Caputo explores the lessons and legacy of May 4 through interviews with the campus community. These insights from professors, alumni, survivors, and current students reveal the ongoing debates about the significance of Kent State on both the local level and the national level, and emphasize that after thirty-five years no real consensus has emerged regarding the lessons of this tragedy. Joshua D. Cochran Gerald R. Ford Library David A. Carson. Grit, Noise, and Revolution: The Birth ofDetroit Rock 'n'Roll. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Pp. 320. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper, $24.00. Few regional rock settings have given rise to as much great music, and as much mythmaking, as the scene that took shape around Detroit from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s. David Carson's Grit, Noise, 126 Michigan Historical Review and Revolution is an overdue history of that scene. A journalist and one time Michigan disc jockey, Carson brings a wealth of knowledge and detail to his account of Michigan rock. Although he spends some time on the city's deep history of blues and rhythm and blues?including Motown?and takes his history back to the 1950s, the vast bulk of Grit, Noise, and Revolution is devoted to the proliferation inDetroit after 1964 of bands, clubs, and ballrooms devoted to a young white audience. Carson discusses many of the best-known bands and performers associated with Detroit, including Mitch Ryder, Bob Seger, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Ted Nugent, and especially theMC5, whose saga is inmany ways the focus of the book. The real strong point of Grit, Noise, and Revolution, though, is the coverage of many lesser-known figures, including musicians such as Gary Quackenbush, guitarist for local luminaries the Scot Richard Case (later SRC); club owners such as Dave Leone, founder of the Grosse Point Hideout, and Russ Gibb, who created the pivotal Grande Ballroom; as well as a host of record-label entrepreneurs, including Ed Wingate of Golden World Records, and Pun Plamondon, the force behind the independent A-Square record label. Profiling local institutions with as much attention as he does the bands that made the music, Carson provides a multidimensional portrait of a thriving music scene and also carefully describes the conditions that led to its demise. If the book has a shortcoming, it is that Carson has no strong interpretive angle on the material he covers so thoroughly. He does not gloss over complex issues such as theway that race and class structured Detroit rock, or themanner inwhich politics informed the scene through themusic of the MC5 and...