CD Review: Various Artists - Motor City Is Burning (2025)

A hell of a lot of great music has come out of Detroit, Michigan and surrounding areas, from blues and soul artists like John Lee Hooker and Aretha Franklin to the Motown machine of the 1960s, which featured talents like the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes, among many others. The Motor City has also made a name for itself in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, beginning with Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels in the early 1960s and Russ Gibbs’ mid-decade Grande Ballroom Scene, which made stars of the Stooges and MC5, with the thread running through 1980s-era bands like Destroy All Monsters, the Mutants, and the Romantics to ‘90s trailblazers like the Gories, the Detroit Cobras, and the White Stripes.

For those of us that grew up listening to – and loving – Detroit rock, however, the most exiting era of the city’s rock scene was roughly between 1967 and 1977, a ten-year period that saw the emergence and ascendance of the scene to a commercial pinnacle in the form of artists like Bob Seger and Ted Nugent. This is, more or less, the period chronicled by Cherry Red Records’ new historical compilation, Motor City Is Burning: A Michigan Anthology 1965-1972. Comprised of 66 songs spread across three discs and packaged in a study cardboard clamshell with an accompanying booklet, Motor City Is Burning offers up tracks by some of the usual suspects (Ryder, Stooges, MC5) along with some lesser-known but beloved bands (SRC, Brownsville Station, Frijid Pink, The Frost) and more than a few welcome surprises and rarities.

Motor City Is Burning

The first CD is loaded with mostly 1960s-era goodies, taking on a distinct, Nuggets-styled garage-rock vibe, especially since it opens with the classic “96 Tears” from ? & the Mysterians. Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels are represented by the irrepressible “Jenny Take A Ride” and the disc offers up other essential rock goodies like Dick Wagner & the Frost (“Mystery Man”), former Grand Funk RR Svengali Terry Knight’s early band the Pack (a psych-drenched cover of the Stones’ “Satisfaction”) and, hailing from Niles MI, Tommy James & the Shondells’ deep cut “I’m Alive” (a psych-rock delicacy). Scot Richard Case (SRC) and the Rationals are two of my all-time fave Detroit outfits, and they offer a devastating one-two punch with the former’s scorching take on the Skip James’ blues classic “I’m So Glad” and the latter with an electrifying cover of the Kinks’ B-side “I Need You.”

There are some fine obscurities here, too, like the Ted Lucas-fronted Spike Drivers’ 1966 folk-rock single “Baby Won’t You Let Me Tell You How I Lost My Mind”; the Shaggs’ (no, not that one) 1969 flapjack “She Makes Me Happy,” with its cool Byrdsian twang; the Troyes’ raging 1967 single “Help Me Find Myself”; or the Apostles’ 1967 melding of the Cadets and the Kinks on “Stranded In the Jungle.” The disc includes a couple of intriguing, never-before-released tracks in Dearborn City Limits’ “Come See About Me,” a poppy, keyboard-driven rocker believed to have been waxed in 1966 that could have been a radio hit, and the enigmatic Felix’s 1968 “Outside Woman Blues,” a blues-rocker in a Cream vein that is exceedingly rare. Throw in groovy tracks by long-gone rockers like Tidal Waves, the Solitary Confinement, the Innsmen, the Thyme, and the King’s Court and you have an inspired compilation already.

Scot Richard Case (SRC)

Disc two catches the scene as it transitions from the garage to the revered Grande Ballroom and then onto festival stages in both Michigan and, in some instances, nationwide. Focusing largely on hard rock, this is where heavy hitters like the Stooges (their timeless “1969” still packs a wallop, like a crowbar to yer eardrums), MC5 (the buoyant, complex “Teenage Lust”), Grand Funk Railroad (from Flint, but close enough for their cover of Eric Burdon’s “Inside Looking Out” to wrench your cerebellum), and Alice Cooper (who remade their image in the Motor City and came up with the eerie “Halo of Flies”). The disc includes a couple of beloved “also-rans” in SRC (the former Scot Richard Case), whose “Up All Night” channels the Pretty Things with jolt of Motor City madness and Savage Grace, whose ethereal 1970 cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” gives Jimi a run for his money.

Detroit Rock, Soul & Funk   

Cub Koda & Brownsville Station

 

The second disc also includes a handful of worthy bands that should have been a hell of a lot bigger, starting with Cub Koda’s almighty Brownsville Station. Although the band released seven albums of blues-tinted rock circa 1970-1978, they remain best-known for their 1973 novelty hit “Smokin’ In the Boys Room.” As shown by their rowdy 1970 cover of Bo Diddley’s “Road Runner,” which features Koda’s fiery guitarplay and a swinging rhythm track, they were a hell of a lot more than that humorous, if ultimately misbegotten single. Frijid Pink were another “coulda, shoulda” outfit, remembered for their hit cover of “House of the Rising Sun.” But “Pain In My Heart,” from their 1970 sophomore effort, displays a harder-rock facet of the band’s talents. There are also some relatively unknown gems here, too, like the previously-unreleased livewire 1972 track “Wake Up People,” a skronky guitar ‘n’ keyboards rave-up from Kopperfield. Power trio Head Over Heels is another shoulda-been band, and their “Right Away” is a deliciously bluesy rocker while rare singles by bands like the Glass Sun, Resolution, and Sunshine round out the disc.  

The third CD of Motor City Is Burning is probably the most pleasantly surprising of the three, largely comprised of soul and funk jams from Michigan artists like the Temptations, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Chairmen of the Board, and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. The disc isn’t all just Motown hits, although the Temps’ 1970 single “Ball of Confusion” is a prime slab o’ psychedelic soul. Often times, producer/curator David Wells went with the lesser-known choices. The Supremes’ “Reflections” – a classic Holland-Dozier-Holland single – offers a severely underappreciated and wistful performance by Ms. Ross while the Miracles’ “Flower Girl” is pop-soul at its very best. Chanteuse Freda Payne’s 1971 anti-war single “Bring the Boys Home” is a gorgeous example of the power of song and Chairmen of the Board’s “Hanging On To A Memory” is a boiling pot of funk with frontman General Johnson belting out the vox with the incredible Funkadelic laying down the backing groove.      

As for the non-Motown tracks on the disc, there’s a wealth of great material to be explored, beginning with the early (1970) Parliament song “I Call My Baby Pussycat,” which pairs a rockin’ intro to a high-voltage soundtrack with funky flow and chaotic instrumentation and vox. Blues legend John Lee Hooker is represented by the anthology’s title track, “The Motor City Is Burning” a stone-cold boogie-rock tune with scrappy guitar and a heart full of napalm. The L.A. based Sussex Records label wasn’t around for long (1969-1975) but they released several cool records by Detroit artists like Dennis Coffey & the Detroit Guitar Band (the Top 10 instrumental hit “Scorpio”) and Sixto Rodriguez (discovered and produced by Coffey, it would take audiences 40+ years to discover his sublime, Dylanesque “Inner City Blues”). Rare Earth was Motown’s “rock” imprint, but they were also a band whose 1968 “Sidewalk Café” offers up a pulse-quickening joyful noise mixing rock and soul. Another band on the label was the hard-rockin’ Sunday Funnies, whose 1971 single “Walk Down the Path of Freedom” reminds one of a bluesier Bob Seger with loudly-spinning guitars and keyboards. Another underrated Detroit rocker, Ruth Copeland’s cover of the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” is pure fire & brimstone with fatback git licks courtesy of Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel and Ray Monette, from Dennis Coffey’s band.  

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

To be honest, Cherry Red had me hooked with the initial premise, and I have to say that producer Wells did a yeoman’s job in collecting some tasty treats from the deepest, funkiest vaults of Motor City rock ‘n’ soul for this anthology. Sure, there are plenty of “marquee” attractions here, artists of a high degree of familiarity to attract the punters. It’s the obscurities and rarities found in the other grooves, however, that make Motor City Is Burning both an entertaining and historical collection of performances from one of the grandest, and grittiest music scenes to ever take root in the continental U.S., a scene that continues to burn out of control to this day. Grade: A+ (Grapefruit Records/Cherry Red, released March 17th, 2025)

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