MOHA Presentation III
Presentation III: Support Your Scene: Socioeconomic Context and Competing Authenticities in Detroit Rock from Early Punk to the Garage Revival
Abstract: My research focuses on the underground Detroit rock scenes beginning with the early punk scene of the late 1970s run out of a gay bar and former disco club called Bookies on 6 mile just west of Woodward Avenue, followed by the hardcore punk scene in the 1980s made up mostly of teenagers from the surrounding suburbs of Metro Detroit, based out of run-down storefronts, bars, and clubs in Cass Corridor. This small angst fueled group founded Touch and Go Records, an influential indie-rock label of the 1990s, and were instrumental in inspiring the garage rock scene of the 1990s and early 2000s, which birthed the White Stripes. Using oral history, fanzines, and documentaries I explore how musicians and fans were driven by a politics of authenticity to create alternative culture producing systems, and how their music and organizing was influenced by the changing social and economic context of Southeastern Michigan.
Benjamin Thomason’s background is in history (BA and MA) with a focus on cultural studies. He is interested in how punk communities both resist and reflect the social, economic, and cultural contexts they developed in, and how they adapted over time. Punk communities provide a good lens to understand wider youth culture and changes in American socioeconomic life. He is also recently researching contemporary imperialist interventions and Hybrid Warfare in Global South nations, and how popular culture and media is mobilized and weaponized for these covert and overt operations. He has focused specifically on Syria in the past decade, connecting it with US history of supporting fundamentalist and sectarian Islam against secular nationalist and socialist governments. He is planning on connecting Middle East and Latin American operations for his dissertation, with special focus on how pop music, rock, and hip-hop is weaponized for operations in places like Cuba and Venezuela.
Q&A Session
Facilitated by: Cameron Michael Amin, Professor of History, University of Michigan-Dearborn and Brittany Fremion, Associate Professor of History, Central Michigan University.