CHARITY BEGINS AT EIGHT

I propose that, from now on, we all make the harrowing decision not only to go to more shows featuring local music, but to show up early enough to watch the opening bands. I know, I know, utter madness. In Detroit, and I'm sure most other places in the world where logic takes a backseat to the absurd, showing up to a dingy backroom bar or shitty art space for a midweek “8 p.m.” show on time will have you staring at the walls for hours waiting for the action to begin and crawling out quite drunk past two if you attempt to stay for the whole program. “Punk time,” they call it. “Lazy fuckwits who have no consideration for the bedtimes of working people,” others have thought. While often the phenomenon of a local show starting late and dragging on can be chalked up to a lack of professionalism among the bands or a bar trying to get as much coin as possible out of the clientele, it is often a more sad and romantic notion: If we wait, the audience will come. And the audience living in these burgs of the absurd knows this, therefore they’ll show up later and later to avoid this punk show purgatory.

So yes, I’m asking you bands and bookers to start early if only to persuade these people to show up on time to catch the opening, often local bands. These bands are also called “support," much the same way a jockstrap supports the testicles. The headliners would be “the testicles” in this scenario. I have two reasons you should want to blindly waste a night on bands foolish enough not to be super popular or “blowing up on your socials.” The first reason will be painfully clear to anybody who has tried to go see live music that is popular, blowing up, or blown all over your socials: The live music industry hates you. I’m writing this months before it’ll get published, but I’m pretty sure Ticketmaster and all the big touring conglomerates will still be overcharging and screwing over any audience willing to spend way too much to have a whiff of a chance to stand around for hours in their charnel houses of sound. Sure, the stoned asshole who takes your $10 at the door down at the local bar is odious, but do you really think he’s worse than getting the service-fee screw job in order to experience some national act phone it in at a hockey arena? You’re a snob about eating locally and shit, why not extend that to standing next to the bass player’s mom to watch the third-best nti-speed ska band in town?

My second reason for begging you to throw your life away and go see some local openers might sound like “You may find your new favorite band,” but it’s not. I always hated that phrase. Besides, you’re reading my column and by doing so you are now financially liable to consider my band Protomartyr your favorite band in perpetuity. No, the second reason is that you get to witness guileless creativity in its purest form—bands that are unmoored from the financial burdens of “making it,” willing to express themselves without promise of reward, and perhaps weird-sounding and mutated enough to catch you off guard. You’ll see true talent in the embryonic stage, all for the price of a bag of fancy gourmet chips. But most important, the local support is your city made flesh. They live down the street and need to borrow your car to transport their amps. They usually have a day job to get to the next morning just like you. Sure, they, if lucky, might’ve snagged a few drink tickets and talked to the really cool headliners side stage, but you too can do that! These places don’t have backstage toilets, just bug the lead singer of the headlining band while he’s trying to take a preshow shit! Bring your own drink tickets! Most of these bars use drink tickets you can buy in rolls at a Staples, and I’m sure the opening band will show you what they look like. Because they are you! They might even give you one, because their mom is there and they, you know, don’t wanna party too hard in front of her.

Having come up with this soul-edifying yet modest plan to support the opening bands of Detroit wherever they might be, I decided to put my advocacy to the test. So, this past December, I headed down to the Outer Limits Lounge to catch the truly great Deadbeat Beat. I’m sure I’ll write about the Outer Limits one day, it has a musical history and a crew of characters working there that make it one of the best places to see a show. Deadbeat Beat have been around for years, always kill it, and will also be written about whenever I’m tasked with a “best band in Detroit” article. I had no idea who this local opener, Decliner, was. This will be perfect.

Uh-oh. I show up on time at nine. The flyer said the show was at eight, but I’m not THAT stupid to think the customary dead hour wasn’t going to happen. But there’s a DJ. How long will this go on? DJs have been known to start and never stop. Will I be trapped here for the rest of my life?

Luckily, Decliner soon take the stage to a fairly large crowd, large enough to probably contain a few moms. Immediately I am happily surprised with their sound. As a side note, Deadbeat Beat play an interesting sort of jangling, propulsive power pop, but they have the keen mind to play with openers who are often great but always different. Anyone will tell you a night of all similar-sounding bands, while programmatically sound, can dull the ears and make you loathe a genre you used to love. Decliner are not power pop. There’s twangy, post-punk-esque guitar and a hectoring frontperson, but what really pushes their sound out is locked down by a drum machine and synths that sound less goth and more indebted to techno. It’s the sound of exploration, perhaps trying to be influenced by one thing, then seemingly failing but falling backwards into something, if not new, then excitingly fresh. At times the songs make the audience dance in odd ways. I'm reminded of the Detroit “good old days” when the sound of techno and dance music rubbed up joyously against the art punks and suburban trash looking for party music. The singer makes room for an extended instrumental run, and the drum machine turns hissy and industrial while vague notions of Nitzer Ebb, KMFDM, and local favorites ADULT run through my thick skull. The crowd loves it. The singer takes his shirt off and I do not love that, but I'll just chalk up that faux pas to the youthful abandon that propels Decliner toward the end of their set and thorough applause.

After, in the Outer Limits backyard, I spoke to Decliner’s singer, Rob Luzynski, to try to figure out what I had just heard. Luckily, his shirt was back on. Later, over email, he expounded on their short history. They began in the fall of 2020 when Tim Barrett and Steve Stavropoulos of the live techno act Ke Thu reached out to an old college friend (Rob) to collaborate. After working on some demos, including a cover of a Robyn song, they hooked up with local electronic producer Omar S., who recorded their debut EP, Remember, and put it out on his FXHE label, which primarily releases dance and electronic music. They recently had their very first out-of-state show in NYC opening for Lightning Bolt, an interesting coup for a fairly green band. They appreciate playing eclectic bills, and while the show was their first at Outer Limits, they often play UFO Factory, which is known for its dance nights, punk shows, silver decor, and infamous bathrooms. Besides that, Decliner seem to have a healthy ambition tempered by modest plans for the future.

It all makes sense why their music pricked up my ears that night. Their sound, while current and in conversation with trends sprouting up all over Detroit at places like UFO Factory, Spread, and more underground spots, hearkens back cleverly to a lineage of music makers—both honored and forgotten—in Detroit’s past. There’s also a drive to break out, needed by any band looking to avoid the mark of the also-rans. They even seem to have honest-to-goodness fans. Another trip to the backyard at Outer Limits brought me in contact with a long-haired, gangly fellow named Nathan who just wanted to talk to the “reporter” (I must stop wearing my fedora with the printed PRESS card in the band to shows). He said Decliner were his favorite band. He didn’t know why exactly. He wasn’t “really into music,” but there was something about them he liked. After a bit of thought he concluded, “Because they’re different.”

So, Decliner are of the moment but with attractive bits of the past, full of piss and ambition, with a confused but enamored fan base. That’s just the kind of shape a local opener needs to be in to transform into the fetal stage of local headliners, with way too many drink tickets in their hands, staring down 1-75 toward the Michigan border. What lies beyond, we may never know.