Death

In 2009, I walked into a record shop called Magnolia Thunderpussy with a friend who gestured offhandedly to an album; its cover had a city skyline beaming a red to orange prism through a stark geometrical text formation, it read DE▲TH. He knew them from this bootleg, the “No One Left to Blame” comp that came out in 2001. “You’d like that,” he said, a vast understatement. Throwing on the A-side, I heard the beginning notes and felt the onset of summer, even though we were well into it…I saw the noisy, dusty, glaring blue sky like the beginning of a movie, where the fresh protagonist externalizes their strange angst by way of musical soundtrack. I was ignited by the music of three blood brothers from a motor city, the Motown city with a wall of sound, a wasteland of cars and machines. Detroit. In “Rock-N-Roll Victim” you can hear the motor long-idling, choking, and finally turning over, a sonic chassis. “Let the World Turn” is a psychedelic joint that yields drag-racing guitars into a stairstep for this 40 second long drum solo, idling like a ‘68 Plymouth Barracuda fresh out the Chrysler plant in Hamtramck. “Politicians in My Eyes,” an age-old tale of how your elected officials pretty much hate you, ticks into the chorus like the starter solenoid telling you that for at least for now, you ain’t goin nowhere.

In 2012, the documentary A Band Called Death came out, explaining some of the story of Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney, like how their mother spent settlement money on instruments, and how they spontaneously wrote “Keep on Knocking” while girls from the block broke down their door. They started as a funk band called RockFire Funk Express, and detoured into protopunk. David, especially, had a singular vision that explained their name and sound…and would not stray, even when just about everyone in the music industry refused to work with them, unless they budged. After a complicated journey that encompassed decades and a lot of heartache, the old masters that were recorded in ‘75 were dragged back out and set to wax. That’s the record that I fell in love with, called …For the Whole World to See. By this time the brother David had passed (rest in power). Eventually Death started playing again, and even released new songs. In 2019, they came to my city on their “Final Curtain tour,” and played a venue on the same block as the shop I’d first discovered them in. Dannis threw a drumstick in the air and a friend of mine caught it for me, knowing how much I loved the band, and that I was a drummer. Dannis signed it, even. And now, on the 50th year anniversary of their initial studio session, I get to design a shirt for them! Drawing references a photo by Tammy Hackney. – Raeghan Buchanan

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