Detroit The Dream Is Dead: Collected Works Of A Midwest Hardcore Noise

'Detroit: The Dream is Dead - The Collected Works of a Midwest Hardcore Noise Band 1982', documents the band Blight featuring Tesco Vee of the Meatmen. This package contains the TG10 7 EP originally released in 1982 and liner notes include recollections from Tesco Vee and Steve Miller. Whispers abound about it's formation, it's live appearances, it's recorded output; it's very existence. Now, finally, the story can be told. Formed in 1982 in Lansing, Michigan, Blight was created in the wake of another great band's demise, the Fix: one of the earliest bands of the Midwest hardcore scene. Two of it's members, Steve Miller (guitar) and Mike Achtenberg (bass) met head on with Tesco Vee - lead throat and ringleader of the legendary Meatmen. With the addition of Pat Clark on drums, the band was complete, and ready to dive headlong into it's short and fiery existence. Staying together for a mere four months, the band's recorded output consisted of a single 7. The eponymous EP was recorded in '82 and released on Touch And Go the next year. Live shows were sparse, with only five live appearances in that same time span. The CD contains the Blight EP, a pair of 4 track demos, and live recordings culled from a July 1982 appearance in Detroit with the Dead Kennedys. This is the sum total of Blight's recorded legacy. With the incessant, clanging industrial thud of Lansing as a soundtrack to their existence, the group was bound to sound industrial. Literally. Blight sounds like machinery set in motion, punctuated only by the aforementioned wash of pure noise, or the electrified tones of Tesco's trumpet, the band was propelled by a single-minded purpose. The songs on this compilation bear it out: Blight's existence was short, fleeting even, but the energy expounded within that time period was visceral, intimidating, artful, and completely essential.