Detroit Scene
Fell in Love with a Band: The Story of the White Stripes, Chris Handyside
St. Martin’s Griffin, 226 pages. $13

You knew it was only a matter of time before publishers started rushing paperbacks to market, trying to capitalize on the White Stripes’ enormous commercial success. I cynically assumed that this book would be such a widget, written by some New Yorker without a clue about who the White Stripes were and more importantly about the Detroit rock scene from which they sprang. This is definitely not the case here. So if you are looking for a rock-bio in the “Jack’s favorite food is peanut butter…..” vein, you need to pass on Fell in Love with a Band and keep your eyes tuned to the check out lanes at Meijer, where I am sure such a turd will show up eventually. Author Chris Handyside was penning the Metro Times’ music column “In One Ear” when the Whites were coming up in places like the Gold Dollar and the Old Miami, and had a dive-bar view of the movement that was taking over Detroit and soon the world.
It is the Detroit rock scene that made the White Stripes possible at all, and Handyside does an impressive job of walking the reader through the clubs, record labels, publications, producers, individuals and bands that contributed. It all just came together at one time. With no shortage of clubs in which a punk rock’n’roll band could play, Detroit played host to a movement taking place across the much of the U.S. On any given night you could go out and see the White Stripes, Dirtbombs, Bantam Rooster, Detroit Cobras, The Dirtys (in which I played guitar), Clone Defects, Von Bondies, the Oblivians, Guitar Wolf, New Bomb Turks, The Go, The Hentchmen, Demolition Dollrods, The Hookers, and on and on—all great bands in their own right. Then you add to the mix Jim Diamond of the absolutely fantastic Ghetto Recorders, a producer/engineer who shares the minimalist passion and aesthetic extolled by the bands, and shazamo! It could only happen in Detroit.

Chris Handyside will read at Shaman Drum Bookshop on Thursday, October 21, at 8 p.m.
—Marc Watt

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