I am producing a documentary about the Flint, MI Punk Rock Scene circa 1980-1987. This is simply a field journal detailing some of the process steps I am taking during the production of the doc.
The working title is "Hall Show". Hall shows were live music performances that utilized rental hall venues. While not every show and event actually took place in rental halls during this time frame in Flint, people generally referred to the shows as Hall Shows.
If you would like to participate in the production of this film by being interviewed, providing pictures, journals from then, flyers... please contact me at hall.show.documentary (at) gmail (dot) com
I spent a couple hours with Aaron Stengel at the Flint Underground Music Archive vault and was blown away by the amount of stuff he has gone through and organized as well as the stuff he has yet to get to. I was given unprecedented access into the inner workings of an historical archive, for the Hall Show Documentary.
I can totally relate to the feeling that Aaron must get when he accepts a collection from someone in the Flint punk scene, having worked in records management for the largest pharmaceutical company for a number of years. I have seen boxes of stuff that needed to have a level of order placed to it, but that was what I did for my living. Aaron is doing this in his free time, preserving a piece of history that he, I and many others in Flint in the 1980s and 90s witnessed, supported, and participated in.
So, here is some of what I learned about the process. Aaron will receive a box or boxes full of stuff. Since he is really focusing on a small window of time, mainly the 80's through the early 00's he filters out the stuff not in his current scope and organizes the rest.
Depending on the type of media, Aaron will get it from the analog form into a digital form using audio capture, video capture, and image scanning. The various types of media he gets are as follows
Audio
Cassette Tapes
Vinyl Records
Compact Disk (not so common)
Video
VHS
DVD (not so common)
Beta
Film (there is rumor of some 8mm film floating around out there, but it isn't yet in the archive)
Paper
Promotional Flyers
Tickets
Business Cards
Band Promotional Materials
Set Lists
Zines
Contracts (The rider for the first Black Flag appearance in 1984 is pretty funny, it was posted on the board at Wyatt Earps for a while for all to see and get a chuckle out of)
Miscellaneous notes posted around hall shows
Photographs
Depending on what part of the archive Aaron want's to tackle, he takes a batch processing approach to the digitization of the original material. This is why it seems that there is a lag in getting stuff updated on the site. For audio, he first locates the best source material to work from. Usually this is a tape that hasn't seen much play. He hits record on his computer, He is using Sony Vegas for this and play on the tape deck. Once the tape is recorded in to the computer, he marks regions and dumps those out into a batch ofmp3 files. The process goes on from there, as he needs to mark up the ID3 tagging for the mp3 files, and get them all organized and the file names compliant for the upload to archive.org, which is where all of the FUMA files are stored. I really only scratched the surface on the actual process in my explanation here. In fact, there are over 15 different steps that Aaron goes through before recordings make their way online.
I can easily say that without the access I have been graciously permitted to the content within the archive, I wouldn't have enough material to do a documentary in the proper way. Nobody likes just watching a bunch of talking heads remember their past. The aural and visual evidence of this past is such an important part of creating a good story. So in advance of everything I just want to throw a heart felt Thanks to anyone who has contributed stuff to the FUMA.
Making an independent film is really a labor of love, especially when it is being done with out of pocket funding as I am doing right now with the Hall Show Documentary.
As you may know, the Hall Show Documentary is about a snapshot of time in Flint, Michigan history, and it is also a film being produced (currently) in Michigan. There is currently a big push to get films produced here in Michigan, and there is even a state sponsored Film Office. We have looked into getting support from the Film Office, but found that there are mainly tax breaks for productions anticipating $50,000+ budget spending. To make things worse, it costs $100 just to apply for the potential of getting some tax breaks.
The Flint Punk Rock scene started out as a DIY thing with a bunch of really great people all interested in the same thing, good music. That is the spirit I have taken as I conduct interviews, do production planning, and figure out how this whole thing is going to come together. I am currently doing the production with some last gen digital video equipment, a pretty nice audio recorder and still camera, and the confidence that regardless of the deficiencies in my equipment I am telling the story of the Flint Punk Scene, and how it had a positive effect on both the city of Flint as well as a great number of the many participants that performed and attended Hall Shows.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't thing I would turn away angel investors looking to back my production costs, but I am not letting the lack of such funding stop me from discovering and telling this story.
After a good game of phone/email tag, I finally got together for an interview with Brian Orr. The vocalist of Smiling Sacrifice, Brian was a regular fixture on the scene, even before he got started performing. We set up by the dumpster at Wyatt Earp Records (fortunately the smell wasn't too bad) for the interview, as it made a nice back drop with the stickers and rusty metal.
I wasn't super close with Brian back in the day, but very familiar with him, and Smiling Sacrifice. That is one of the cool things about the Flint punk scene back then, you might have not been tight with everyone, but everyone knew that all others were at hall shows for the same reason, supporting local music and the scene. As a result, it was like a big family, everyone welcome. Brian validated this feeling during our conversation. It's funny, as I conduct more interviews there are a lot of common themes that keep coming up again and again. The organic community that was formed by all hall show participants is one of those things.
The sense of community is one thing that set the Flint scene apart from scenes in other cities. There was such a wide variety of musical and personal styles. Music like hardcore punk, swamp rock, metal, grindcore, new wave. Personal styles like skinhead, skater, punk, poseur, preppy. At a hall show you had a pretty good chance of experiencing any and all of these styles, and no one really thought anything of it. In a larger scene like that in Detroit, you would go to a punk show, and see punk music and see punks, or a metal show at a metal club with headbangers. Very little cross pollination. Likewise, if there was a big show in Detroit, and a group or groups from the Flint scene went, there was a feeling that if trouble started (and in Detroit, there were occaisional run-ins with trouble makers) there were people who had your back, because you were from Flint.
As for the support of the scene, it was not uncommon to see many (maybe most) of the crowd show up for the first band, and stay through the last band, and even help load equipment or clean up. As Brian explained, there is more of a sense these days that people simply show up to hear the one band they like, and leave when they are done. Joel Rash also brought this same thing up when I spoke with him. More and more, people are connected to others through various social networking patforms, and you can learn about music through various methods, again on-line. That is great, but it doesn't build a real community in the way that the Flint Hall Show scene did during the '80s. You built friends by actually meeting them and learning that you have things in common. You learned about new music by word of mouth, or by going into Wyatt Earp's and hearing a new record that Doug was playing. You shared things like how to be mature and responsible when you broke up a fight, or cleaned up a hall after a hall show. These weren't things any of us were thinking about at the time, but looking back these real life things were organically embedded as a result of this shared experience.
As I have mentioned before in these dispatches, Wyatt Earp Records is an extremely important component to the entire Flint Hall Show scene. One could say that the scene probably wouldn't have grown as it did without Wyatt Earp Records, and the support of it's founder, Doug Earp. Doug passed away in 2004, and Al Steele (Doug's longtime partner in the store) has kept the store going with the same enthusiasm in music and support of the local music scene as Doug.
Growing up with two older sisters provided me a default soundtrack of '70s music like KISS, Led Zeppelin, Supertramp, Chicago, and Grand Funk Railroad (I grew up in Flint afterall). So when the time came to discover my own music in my teens I found myself enjoying punk rock and bands like Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Minor Threat... I learned that there was this little record store in Flint that stocked that sort of thing, and could order stuff not in stock, so I checked out this place called Wyatt Earp Records. Upon walking into the original Earp's I knew that it was like no other place I had ever been before. First, there was this guy behind the counter who greeted you when you walked in (Doug), and there were all of these crazy records that made it seem like you just reached a musical Nirvana (not the band, the state of mind). I often had questions about bands, music, events, and Doug always was able to offer answers. More importantly he provided pointers to other options to the questions you asked, rather than just the stock sorts of answers you might get from someone who just wants to sell you something, and get you out of the store. It is this helpful attitude, and friendly, quiet nature that kept me coming back again and again. It was also at this point that I started finding out more about the local punk scene and the bands that sold their tapes at Earp's and the Hall Shows.
Flash forward to 2009, Wyatt Earp is still hanging in there in the most distressed city in the most distressed economy in a long time. Al is there when you walk in (just like Doug always was) with a friendly nod, and musical knowledge that you just can't find anywhere else. Best of all is the Vinyl that Al is stocking and selling. I still prefer to listen to my music on a vinyl record more than any other way (except maybe live). Well, Al took the time to give me some insight on the history of the store, and his friend and mentor Doug. I had gotten a little bit of an interview started when I met Tanya at Earp's for her interview, but I knew there was more that Al could share, and share he did!
To do any research on the Flint area, this is where you go. So Dorothy and I headed there the other day to do some quick research on what was going on in the Flint area in the early 1980s. We only had a limited time, so we headed to the reference section of the Library and dug through archival books about Flint. Below you will see some of the pictures I snapped, spy style, of some of the big newspaper books about Buick history and Autoworld. While auto workers were being laid off, there were openings for jobs at the amusement park being built to celebrate the Flint auto making history (how funny, huh?).
I also took some shots of the WFBE radio tower behind Flint Central High School. This is the transmitter that fed me and many others with music every week from the Take No Prisoners and Anarchy radio shows. WFBE is now a country music radio station. Back in the day it was a community funded public radio station.
Here are some photos from the walk around the Cultural Center of Flint, enjoy.
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Thanks!
Field Notes
As I have mentioned before in these dispatches, 
Flash forward to 2009, Wyatt Earp is still hanging in there in the most distressed city in the most distressed economy in a long time. Al is there when you walk in (just like Doug always was) with a friendly nod, and musical knowledge that you just can't find anywhere else. Best of all is the Vinyl that Al is stocking and selling. I still prefer to listen to my music on a vinyl record more than any other way (except maybe live). Well, Al took the time to give me some insight on the history of the store, and his friend and mentor Doug. I had gotten a little bit of an interview started when I met Tanya at Earp's for her interview, but I knew there was more that Al could share, and share he did!
