***“Detroit is, as ever, a mystery wrapped in a wasteland. After Motown blew out of town, as if on the last chopper out of Danang, the volatile periphery remained intact—minus its binding barycenter. A young RICHARD RISTAGNO was there, naively participating in the riots that cancelled Detroit’s application to the echelons of the modern American cities. After hearing about the riots on the radio, he and his MIDNIGHT RIDERS garage band ventured into the periphery, only to get busted for looting. He would be detained again, a year or so later, by Selective Service. Narrowly escaping an uncertain fate in Vietnam, Ristagno served his time in sleepy zones like Fort Knox in Kentucky and German outposts. Returning to Michigan in 1971, without an education or a plan, he found work in the galley of an iconic banquet club named The Rooster Tail. While working the line, slopping sauce on overpriced hunks of meat, he plotted his first recordings. With two original songs in mind, he hit the phone book and found a vanity operation just over the border in Canada. He stamped out what was to be an initial pressing of 500 copies, nearly all of which were sent to radio stations nationwide. After the world failed to beat a path to his door, the initial pressing became the only pressing. He moved on... finding union labor at Wyatt Services, a steel treatment plant, he managed to accumulate the largesse for a more grandiose scheme. What Would It Be Like...
LP $19.50
04/16/2013