as we may blog

It’s appropriate that a song singing the praises of Detroit should come directly from the suburbs. After all, who gave the suburbs more than Detroit? John Nixon hopes to give a little something back.

Detroit’s People Mover is ready to spring to life to accommodate sports-hungry visitors to The ‘D’

Can a song save Detroit?

Officials at the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau hope one can at least bring tourists and businesses to town, especially for the July 12 All Star game and Super Bowl XL in February. So they’ve released a Detroit tribute called “What It’s Like in The ‘D.’ ”

The tune, officially released last month to coincide with the Motor City Music Conference, is being used to advertise Detroit in western Michigan and parts of Ohio. The bureau plans to spend more than $244,000 in print and radio ads through mid-November selling the city.

"It was no architect designed this view"

“It’s closer than you think,” sings Greg Brown of Detroit, and “there’s always something more.”

“The song is to teach you to be proud of the city you’re in,” said Brown, an airbrush artist at Creative Studios Airbrush Co. in Oak Park. “It’s a Detroit anthem.”

John Nixon of Grosse Pointe wrote the track, which he said has elements of classic rock, funk, gospel, electronic music and echoes of Detroit’s Motown era.

Nixon, 39, found Brown through a friend in music circles. Brown isn’t known as a performer, but has sung jingles and commercial music before.

“It’s not a war zone. It’s not a place without culture,” Nixon said.

Nixon, who grew up in Warren, has been composing advertising music for 15 years. He runs Coda music in Birmingham, where he put together the song at Ron Rose Studios. He’s lived in the Detroit area all his life, leaving briefly to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

His is not the first song to be written about Detroit, but is one of the most positive.

“Amityville” by Eminem crowns the city as “the murder capital.” “Motor City is Burning,” sung by John Lee Hooker, is about the 1967 Detroit riot.

“What It’s Like in the ‘D’ ” … “may not be the” city’s “savior, but it is the start” of a larger renaissance, Nixon said.

The bureau last released a Detroit song in 1998 called “It’s a Great Time in Detroit,” for a similar ad campaign.

Nixon says his song is along the lines of Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Hello Detroit,” which brags on the city.

“You got to check it out,” he said. “Give it a fair shot and you’ll have a better understanding of what it’s like.”

It’s disappointing that Superchunk’s classic "Detroit Has a Skyline" was omitted from the list of songs extolling the city’s virtues. Personally, I don’t think Detroit needs a jingle to reinvent itself, the statistics speak loudly enough. What other city can brag that it is no longer #1 in crime because the city’s population fell under 1 million?

Though no one in this city can use a shopping cart corral to save their lives, there is something to be said for Ann Arbor’s lively blogging scene. Ann Arbor Is Overrated is often an entertaining source of local news:

# Dan Faichney, a planning student*, stood up and gave a speech that outlined a few main points to support the DDA’s plan. The only part of it that could have been considered inflammatory was his characterization of the greenway as an “environmentally irresponsible” plan with the potential to “undermine Ann Arbor’s reputation as a place for everyone.” Loud booing followed.

# A pro-greenway speaker asked those in favor of the greenway (that’s how he worded it — he didn’t mention the specific Easthope proposal) to stand. Everyone around us stood, and we couldn’t see anything. We didn’t notice anyone who was standing in the standing-room-only chamber sit on the floor to signify their non-support.

You get the idea. You can bet that pretty much anything I say about Ann Arbor is in some way ripped off of that site. Anyway, the whole point of this post was supposed to be to draw your attention to this AA Is Overrated post from a week ago that makes fun of this LiveJournal community of UM undergrads whose “craziest” drunken exploits include puking, calling someone’s mom, falling down, and, uh, puking some more, this time on someone else’s lawn.

But wait, there’s more: umstudents retaliates by not quite getting the original joke! Hijinx ensue. The comments section of the AAIO post is especially fun reading. Those of you looking for a description of the time I dove into a dumpster after a puke-stained shirt that had (has!) Sexual Chocolate emblazoned across the front in black cursive fuzz letters should save yourself the time.

Mr. Stadium officially jumps the shark.

This is pretty cool stuff:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Google and the University of Michigan today (Tuesday) announced a joint agreement that will add the 7 million volumes in the U-M library to the Google search engine and open the way to universal access to information.

… Google will digitally scan and make searchable virtually the entire collection of the U-M library. A person looking for information will gain the extraordinary capability to use Google to locate and read the full text of printed works that are out of copyright. For works in copyright, a search will point the way to the existence of relevant volumes by returning a snippet of text, along with information that identifies publishers or libraries where the work can be found.

… At its current rate of digital production, however, it would take the University more than a thousand years to digitize the 7 million volumes in the collection. Google plans to do the job in a matter of years.

Google also has entered into agreements with Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library.

I wonder if that copy of Czechoslovak Forestry I walk past nearly every day will make the cut?

Blame fate for scheduling A2 cameos by Tara Reid and Kid Rock during the busiest time of the semester. I dare say that meeting the Future Mrs. and Mr. Rock would’ve been bigger than that time I got my picture taken with Brad Lohaus.

A spur of the moment decision sent us into a foggy, chilly night for an opening by a group of artists in the Compuware building in downtown Detroit last night. It was my first trip to the megalopolis to the east, unless you count the trip to the Crate and Barrel in the suburbs a few months back (yeah, that’s right, we had a pretty nice little Saturday planned). In short, Detroit is easily one of the strangest, most intruiging places I’ve ever been.

Perhaps Hollywood’s interest in downtown Detroit is the best way to explain the feel of the place. The Island, a Michael Bay joint starring Ewan McGregor and that busty creature from Lost in Translation just finished shooting there recently. Apparently the movie is set in some sort of dystopian future in which Hawke is running from the law or something. So there’s that. There are also rumors that Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remake will do some shooting in downtown Detroit as well.

So perhaps you’ve got a picture of this place as a surreal mishmash of war-torn buildings and futuristic glitz. And your mental image would be right on. In the space of about two blocks we wandered past heaps of rubble and a deserted downtown to an ice-rink opening complete with local media and a big band ensemble playing tunes. The Compuware building itself reminded me of one of the last levels in the original Max Payne (Scott, help me out here). Walk two blocks in another direction and it looks like the city was bombed fifty years ago and no one decided to clean it up.

But that’s not to imply that it wasn’t an enjoyable night. Clearly Detroit is in the middle of some sort of a revival (it’s hard for me to say from one visit whether it’s totally planned or not). Most of the construction going on is a result of preparations for the Super Bowl. But I picked up on a real sense of vitality despite the surroundings, like people were happy to be spending some time downtown on a Friday night. We went a couple miles down Woodward, passing the Fox Theatre, Comerica Park, and Ford Field for dinner at this great little restaurant across the street from the Majestic. I had a huge burger. The waitress was really kind.

So yeah. It’s not that I had expectations for Detroit. But it’s a striking, intruiging place, a city that seems to have a real identity to it, warts and all. I’ll definitely return.