bierkergaard

When I shared with friends and family that I was heading to Detroit for my annual Christmas Vacation get-away, the reaction I typically received was "Why Detroit?" Most of my yearly jaunts are to where it is fairly obvious why I am heading there at least in generalities. They have some draw to them, be it the scene, the scenery, or some other attractive attribute(s). Detroit seemed to be viewed as a dead-end, and a dangerous one at that. Even Detroiters were puzzled but pleased by my visit. I guess it is rather unusual to be a tourist in town.  I heard the author above speak about Detroit on CSPAN2 BOOKTV in the Fall sometime on a Saturday about the destruction and decay of this great American city. His use of the word autopsy is no hyperbolic word-play to catch the eye. The book is one sad story after another, like piling the dead of a plague on top of another, and then setting the rot afire. The book was depressing but did have a good dose of graveyard humor. LeDu...

A couple of Thursday nights ago, I wanted to watch the documentary about the musicians who were the the players on almost all of the Motown hits. They were know as the Funk Brothers. Most of them were Jazz musicians but could play other styles. They recorded in the Snake Pit which was the name for the first floor studio in Motown's home/office/studio. From this small space, the Funk Brothers would play take after take until the song was right. It was all live due to the limitations of recording technology back in the day. So, the Snake Pit was an apt name. Motown had very high standards and the exacting nature of the work was stressful. Much of the recognition deserved to the Funk Brothers was never given. In fact, until Marvin Gaye's legendary album and late in Motown's run, What's Going On , these musicians were never even listed in the record's liner notes.  They played in anonymity.  Yet, their innovative musicianship was the backbone for the Motown songboo...

I am going to switch gears and tune this week from Detroit and Motown (note the clever automotive and music references). It isn't from design. I had a blog all ready to publish this morning that had not saved properly and it is gone except for a beginning fragment like ancient papyrus. I don't know if I have it in me to write again. Probably good to take a break from this focus anyway. I still have a few more Motown and/or Detroit blogs in my head for down the road. We'll see if they get written or not. However, there is another topic that I can write about that has a nice simple point but a good lesson. And it involves automobiles. A couple of weeks ago I was hosting the monthly Craft Church where good theology and good beer co-exist and one of the regulars couldn't make it because she was ill. Her boyfriend still came and we had a good time talking over James 1:8 about being a double-minded man, what it meant. We in attendance had a deep time talking about and th...

I think I have a couple of more Detroit/Motown blogs in me. At least one for sure...this one. We will see. Oh, the anticipation! I think I will skip the diatribe on the clogged toilet if you have been following the thread. Although there were some good lessons in that sordid affair I shall keep them to myself. I have visited a lot of cool places in the last 25 years or so. Detroit was different. More melancholic. The pathos of Detroit is hard to shake. When visiting Motown, I purchased the autobiography of Berry Gordy Jr., the founder of Motown. It is a bit dated yet still has staying power. By any standard, Gordy is a big success story. A Black entrepreneur with a slate of mostly local Detroit young singers and homegrown songs which had an enormous impact on popular music from the 1960's onward. Unlike those born into wealth whose major task is to not blow it, it is quite another story to start with little and wind up with a lot. The autobiography seems to have been written...

On Tuesday after school I stopped by my barber to get my mane cut back. As I wrote last week, I let my hair grow long and the beard get scruffy so I wouldn't look as much like a mark out in Detroit. I have written about my barber before. Walking into the shop, it is a step back in time. There is a fading picture of pitcher Bruce Sutter on the wall (a Columbia boy who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals three decades ago). The decor and furniture look decidedly ancient. The radio plays oldies. My barber has been cutting hair professionally before I was born.  He specializes in annihilating bushy eyebrows. As I settled down for my shearing, a Four Tops song came up on the radio. I went with the vibe and let my barber give me a crew cut. I was expecting Archie and Jughead to come in the shop for a trim before meeting the girls Veronica and Betty for chocolate malts at Hinkle's (an old school local restaurant that recently put in a retro soda fountain).  I had tried to elu...

Well, I will be on a Detroit train for the next week or two. Other topics will have to come after that. Although I had an interesting and somewhat gross experience today with unclogging my toilet on the Sabbath. Which I will probably write about soon enough. I refrain from work on Sunday as a personal Sabbath. The root word in Hebrew means rest. I don't care which day people take a Sabbath but that they should have one 24 hour period weekly of disengaging from their labors, resting, and reflecting, I am certain. It is good for the body and soul. So, stay tuned for a missive on works of necessity on the Sabbath. I just didn't want to have to deal with a clogged john tomorrow morning before work as I sensed that it wasn't going to be a quick and easy job. And I always have a morning constitutional, which makes a clogged toilet even more problematic. It wasn't easy and quick to unclog today. And it was nasty. For those of you with biblical knowledge, definitely a don...

Wanted to drop a quick blog post about being back from Detroit. I had a great time; it was everything I had hoped it would be and then some. Highlight of the visit was a trek to the original location of Motown. It is not often that I can put myself right in the middle of where history happened. A very humble start in a house to a music company that changed the world of popular music. Motown's success remind me of that verse to "Not despise the day of small beginnings."   Think of this...the incarnation of Jesus started small, in the womb of Mary.  Motown's founder Berry Gordy wrote songs in his head while he worked on a Chrysler assembly line. He would do his job quickly and then transcribe the tunes onto paper using a simplified musical note system while waiting for the next car to arrive. From that two year experience of working on the assembly line, he essentially created a musical assembly line for tunes that cranked hit out after hit. One photograph at t...