[LOUDER THAN
LOVE: THE GRANDE BALLROOM STORY screens Wednesday May 16th at 7
pm at the Foster Theater in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and
Museum. The screening is sold out.]
Review by Bob
Ignizio
Russ Gibb was
about as unlikely a rock impressario as one could imagine. A
schoolteacher by trade, he realized he could make more money putting
on dances for area teens, many of whom at the time (the mid sixties)
lived in communities where music and dancing were outlawed. After
seeing what was going on out west at Bill Graham's Fillmore, Gibb
decided to create a similar venue in Detroit. To that end, in 1966 he
acquired the Grande, a dancehall built in the twenties by architect
Charles N. Agree that boasted a huge hardwood dance floor. The style
of music that the Grande would become most associated with was a far
cry from the peace and love psychedelic rock that graced the stage of
The Fillmore, though.
Although
the Grande booked all kinds of music – blues legends like B.B.
King, jazz acts like Sun Ra , and then up and coming rock acts like
The Who, Pink Floyd, and Fleetwood Mac (all on the same bill, as one
flier attests) – it was as a home for homegrown acts like the MC5,
Alice Cooper, and The Stooges that The Grande earned its claim to
fame. These were bands who would help lay the foundation for heavy
metal and punk rock, and they weren’t interested in beads and
flowers and all that hippie nonsense. That more aggressive approach
to rock n roll is implicit in the title of Tony D’Annunzio's
documentary on the Grande, LOUDER THAN LOVE: THE GRANDE
BALLROOM STORY. These were the
bands that, as Alice Cooper once put it, “drove a stake through the
heart of the love generation.”
To
tell the story of this iconic concert hall, D'Annunzio has assembled
most of the major players who worked or played there, and even some
of the folks who used to attend shows there, to share their memories.
Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent (whose Amboy Dukes were another popular
Detroit band), the surviving members of the MC5, Grand Funk
Railroad's Mark Farner, The Who's Roger Daltrey, and Stooges guitar
player James Williamson are among the famous rockers singing the
Grande's praises on camera. Notable for their absence are Stooges
frontman Iggy Pop, and one of the biggest stars to come out of the
Detroit music scene of that era, Bob Seger, whose early bands were
much more hard rocking than the music that ultimately got him on the
charts.
The
main problem I had with LOUDER THAN LOVE
is that it assumes a certain degree of familiarity with the music
that came out of the Detroit music scene of the late sixties. It's
not a problem for me; I'm a fan of many of these groups. Not everyone
knows who the MC5 or The Stooges are, though, or what they sound like
and why they matter when they didn't really sell all that many
records. Also, with its aging interview subjects all coming across as
very serious and reserved (with the exception of noted Republican
nitwit Nugent), the film could have used a bit more of the energy and
urgency of the scene it documents. More vintage footage of the bands
that helped put the Grande on the map would not only have livened
things up, it would have given those who aren't familiar with these
bands an idea what all the fuss is about. Perhaps music rights issues
were a problem, but regardless of the reason it does keep the film
from being more appealing and accessible to those who aren't hardcore
music geeks. 3 out of 4 stars.
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