Archive for the ‘Detroit’ Category
Squeezing the fountain: How General Motors became Admiral Motors
The history of fountain sponsorship at Comerica Park in Detroit is spotty, given the turbulence the auto industry has dealt with in the decade or so since it was built.
A giant fountain behind center field is set off whenever the Tigers score, and also between innings, with bursts of water also referred to as Liquid Fireworks. The water show is also played pregame and postgame, and can be set to music. General Motors sponsored the fountain and held the naming rights from 2000-2008. Two GM vehicles were placed atop the fountain during that time. For the 2009 season, the fountain sponsorship was dropped by GM, due to their financial trouble. The Tigers decided to keep the General Motors logo on the fountain however, and also added the logos of Chrysler and Ford, with the statement “The Detroit Tigers Support Our Automakers”. In 2010, GM again sponsored the fountain, renaming it the Chevrolet Fountain.
Which is why, while watching copious amounts of baseball on MLB’s various iPad and web products I get a kick out of this every time:
The Admiral Motors fountain! MLB Advanced Media certainly doesn’t want to give General Motors any free branding on its apps. And GM probably didn’t want to do a deal. So, we reach an impasse, and Admiral Motors is born. Our national pasttime, putting an ad on every possible surface, meets our national automaker, not spending much money on marketing.
But what about all the other fields? Well, of the nine hosting games this afternoon, Wrigley Field, O.co Coliseum, Busch Stadium, Fenway Park, Tropicana Field, Minute Maid Park, Nationals Park, Kauffman Stadium and Sun Life Stadium, only Busch and Minute Maid have any branding for anything other than the generic team name or Major League Baseball, MLB.com products (like “MLB 11 The Show” videogame). Minute Maid has a nice big logo where it presumably appears at the stadium, and Busch has a big fat ‘Cola’ sign where a Budweiser billboard would be. Certainly a case for Gladys at Product Displacement.
I can’t really fault MLB.com for trying to monetize it all–I’d rather blame them for the crappy display inventory that’s rusting their brand like sea air, or the auto-renewal of the MLB.tv package, a $100-something charge that hits your bill every February, or the fact that even once you’ve bought MLB.tv you have to pay more to watch on your phone, or your iPad, or the lame-ass Saturday blackout rule that has me listening to the Tigers and missing my beloved Mario and Rod while Boston and Texas go at it in the national broadcast on Fox. But Admiral Motors, really? If I ever run into Bob Bowman again, and he’s back on the trail to become the governor of Michigan, there are going to be some questions.
RIP Dan Sicko: A True Techno Rebel
I’m incredibly saddened to learn Dan Sicko, husband, father and author of the hugely influential history/hagiography of electronic dance music Techno Rebels passed away today after fighting the vicious cancer ocular melanoma.
You can read more about Dan’s medical struggle here: http://mattsicko.blogspot.com/
Many people who knew Dan, either through his work in music or the online advertising world, only found out he was sick very recently; he faced his illness bravely, without making a public fuss about it.
Admirably, many who have had their lives touched by Dan’s work and spirit have joined together to stand by his wife Amy and daughter Anabel and help defray costs of his hospice care and other outstanding medical expenses.
You can donate to help the Sicko family here: http://www.gofundme.com/DanSicko
Dan’s book that remains, for me, the defining work on electronic music in America, and getting to know him better revealed a patient and caring guy.
I met Dan several times after coming into contact with his work very early in my career as a journalist, listening on the 313 list and trying to soak up every slice of information I could about electronic music.
When I was in town every year for DEMF, I’d get in touch with Dan and try to rendezvous and chat about music. Every time, he wasn’t the slightest bit irritated a fan would try and track him down and seek his thoughts and opinions on what was important or interesting to him.
It was only later that I learned Dan was working at Organic, coincidentally also involved in the wooly world of digital advertising. Dan’s name inevitably brought out good cheer in people who’d worked alongside him, which wasn’t surprising at all.
I last saw Dan in May, when he was hanging out in the Ghostly International tent at the festival, signing copies of the new, expanded edition of Techno Rebels. I joked I’d take a few, because, like most of my favorites they have a habit of getting pressed into friends arms with “you have to read this!” and not returning.
If you haven’t read it, it’s a must for any serious music fan. Purchase the new edition here.
Please consider helping Dan’s family; here’s the link again.
Consider how deep the void he left behind, yet how wide he spread electronic music’s message.
Weingarten, the Volt and Me
Over the last two years I’ve watched my father, an automotive engineer who toiled in the Metro Detroit area for ~40 years selling parts and systems to the Big Three, negotiate and produce a job he admits is the most complex of his career.
His company supplies the motors that circulate the coolant around the Volt’s batteries, which are uncommon because they are required to be on continuously for the entire lifetime of the car: when it’s running, when it’s charging, until it fails.
The process has been fraught with uncertainty. They’ve been at the job through the GM bankruptcy, through the ups and downs of the economy, designing, prototyping, negotiating, testing, retesting. All the while, it’s still a paradox to me as to how you engineer and test something in four years so it’s designed to last for 40.
It’s his last big project before he retires. And I’m sure there are a lot more folks like him attached to the car, Boomers who have invested an uncommonly large amount of personal pride and care in developing it thinking “this one will be different.” People who know it could be the biggest revolution in American auto manufacturing in recent history.
So it makes me really happy and grateful to read someone like Gene W start skeptical and experience the bits of delight and wonder that can change your heart. I can’t wait to drive one, because I know it’ll make me happy and hopeful too.
Gene and the Machine: The shocking truth about the electric Volt.
Flashback…October 15, 1984
97.9 FM in Detroit has long been home to WJLB, one of the finer R&B/’urban contemporary’ radio stations in the country. While kicking around on the excellent Detroit Radio Flashbacks I found the website featured weekly charts, “hip pocket surveys,” for much of 1984-85. These were the final years legendary DJ The Electrifying Mojo was at the station, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at what was getting played just about 25 years ago. I mostly missed the Mojo era, but JLB was a hugely influential radio station for me; it played loads of local records and was one of my first exposures to live turntablism, with a party/booty show every Friday night. So, I hope you enjoy these tunes. There are some hometown favorites here, stuff that stayed pretty local, and things from the last throes of Motown. Not surprisingly, Rochester Hills’ own Madonna is the only white performer on the list. Also not surprisingly, Prince, a Mojo favorite, appears a few times, both in his own work and through Apollonia 6 and Vanity. Pardon the dodgy embeds, Most of the record companies don’t like it enabled on their YouTube offerings…
24. You Get The Best From Me – Alicia Myers
23. We Don’t Work For Free – Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five
No video…but here’s a taste of the song.
22. The Jacksons – Torture
21. Tonight – Ready For The World
See the Top 20 singles from Detroit's WJLB on October 15, 1984
McPheeters & Miscellany
photos by Billy Whitfield
It’s always interesting when punks get old. That’s why my emphatic finger-point this week is towards a story in Vice by former Born Against frontman Sam McPheeters. McPheeters ventures into one of the Midwest’s strangest regions, the wealthy suburbs of Michigan’s capital, Lansing, to profile Doc Dart, former frontman for hardcore group Crucifucks. Dart, who calls himself “26,” appears to be suffering from several forms of mental illness, and has become a suburban pariah in the Mason-Okemos area.
Detroit, by the depressing numbers
Michigan Central
I’m not usually in the position of emphatically recommending anything on the cover of the Weekly Standard, but this story on Detroit is too important to pass up, if only because it’s able give a high-altitude view of the staggering failures that continue to define this once-majestic place.
Yeah, you’ve got to put up with a bit of Scott Templeton under-the-bridge stuff but Matt Labash does a really good job of sussing out some of the complexities of Charlie LeDuff, one of the best guys in the business, whose personality seems to be between the gentle inquisitiveness of a Jon Ronson and the advocacy of someone like Muntadhar al-Zaidi (not the best comparison, but the latter is close at mind, give me a break).
If Detroit has a future it’s with the LeDuffs of the world, the sparking, idea-oriented tied to this place who can bring some of the ingenuity and passion back. Whether they’ll be attracted by the blank canvas decades from now when the city is little but a sterile downtown surrounded by desolate blocks or will come sooner, when there are still things worth saving, is the big question.
(Check out the map at the bottom of this article to get a sense of the city’s scale, Boston, San Francisco and Manhattan can fit into the city limits, 30% of which is now estimated to be vacant.)
