(originally appeared in The Flint Journal, January 10, 2008. All images and photos courtesy of The Flint Journal. www.mlive.com/entertainment/flintjournal)
Some of Flint's most vibrant music has found a new home.
For years, downtown venues like Churchill's and Flint Local 432 have nurtured a strong local music scene, providing a haven for plenty of eclectic bands and their fans. While most of those groups are just memories these days, some of their performances were captured on tape for posterity. And now they've all been gathered in one place.
The Flint Underground Music Archive Web site is a treasure trove for those who've spent any time in the downtown punk and alternative scenes, and serves as a good primer for those who haven't. The extensive site, located at www.takenoprisoners.info, houses a seemingly endless collection of vintage band recordings spanning more than 20 years, as well as some recent live shows filmed by site creator Aaron Stengel.
A longtime participant in the downtown scene, Stengel was inspired to create the site after reading some online conversations about local music. When he found a general lack of Internet information about Flint favorites like the Need or Medulla Oblongata, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
"Flint-related discussion groups began popping up," Stengel said, "and they were filled with references to obscure local bands that no one seemed to have any recordings of.
"With my background in Web development, music collecting, cultural research and a natural tendency over the years to document the scene by recording the shows, I decided to follow through on the archive site as a pet project," he said.
So far, so good. Launched in December, the archive already is packed with audio and video footage of plenty of classic Flint rock bands, including Political Silence, Dissonance and Guilty Bystanders. It includes band demos and rehearsal tapes, and Stengel hopes to add summaries and essays about the featured groups. And he promises much more is on the way.
"I am sitting on thousands of audio files that will take me probably a few months to fully include," he said. "Then, I have a long list of people's collections to raid."
But the heart of the site is Stengel's extensive documentation of Flint's seminal "Take No Prisoners" radio and television shows. Newcomers and longtime listeners alike now have easy access to the show that redefined Flint radio in the early '80s, when a local music fan named Ben Hamper joined with a future Academy Award winning filmmaker to make some noise, literally, on the local airwaves.
"At the time I was writing record reviews and music columns for the Flint Voice," Hamper said. "Michael Moore, my editor, became interested in some of the bands I was writing about, and we began bemoaning the fact that there was no outlet to hear these groups.
"Being the motivated sort, Mike got in touch with some people he knew down at WFBE," Hamper said, referring to the former public radio station, now a commercial radio station that plays country music. "He told me they'd meet with me and discuss a potential radio show. I went down to the station and gave them the pitch. Moore threw in his two cents and they decided to give it a shot."
Originally titled "Other Voices," the program debuted in early 1981, with Hamper showcasing relatively underground bands like Black Flag, the Ramones and the Dictators, along with anything else that caught his ear.
"There wasn't much of a blueprint at the beginning, or for that matter, ever," he said. "My only goal was to provide a forum on the airwaves for rock 'n' roll artists who were being shunned or ignored by corporate outlets. It didn't matter what you looked like, what label you were on, who did your hair, how many copies of your record were being pressed."
The show hit its stride when co-host and kindred spirit Jim McDonald arrived a few months later. Hamper and McDonald quickly transformed into "Sunlight" and "Cherry Boone," and for the next decade, the duo's Saturday evenings were dedicated to showcasing hardcore punk music, promoting local events, and goofing around. Not necessarily in that order.
"I recall during an early fundraising show at which Moore was present," McDonald said, "I suggested we say that for a $500 contribution, the WFBE program director would marry a horse. To my amazement, Moore went on the air and said it. That caused a bit of trouble.
"We certainly didn't pander to our audience," he added. "If people called and requested something we hated, we'd throw on the Carpenters or something like that instead.
"I think a lot of people were exposed to music they wouldn't have heard otherwise, which is a good thing," McDonald said. "We certainly viewed the show as our little sandbox to play in."
It wasn't long before local bands were invited to the party. The hosts encouraged listeners to send in their own demos and recordings, and then made sure the amateurs were featured right alongside the national acts. And according to Hamper, you usually couldn't tell the difference.
"Some of the best rock tunes I ever heard in my life were written by guys who are probably laying asphalt in Clio or bagging groceries in Burton," he said. "It didn't matter to us if it was something you and your buddies recorded on a ghetto blaster in your uncle's garage, as long as there was an honesty and an attitude about it."
Local musician John Vamossy was one of the show's earliest fans, and he didn't hesitate to send along a tape. It wasn't long before his band, Guilty Bystanders, was featured regularly on the show.
"Nowadays, you can record something, post it on the Internet and in theory the whole world can hear it," Vamossy said. "Back then, you'd record it and you'd have a tape in your hand and ... then what?
"As for how much the show helped us, I can honestly say that without 'Take No Prisoners,' there would have been no Guilty Bystanders," he said. "When they played our first song on the radio, we were hooked."
Lots of other music fans were also onboard by this point, and they remained loyal as the show evolved. McDonald exited in the early '90s, and was replaced by fellow punk rock fan Jerry Humphrey, who also relished filling the local airwaves with strange new sounds.
"Ben and I would talk about people driving through Flint on I-75 and tuning in the show accidentally," Humphrey said, "and wondered what they thought about the stuff we were playing. It was the kind of music we would want to hear if we were listening."
Eventually, the show expanded to local television. Hamper and Humphrey, in cahoots with director Steve Hester, produced over 70 one-hour shows from 1989-1997. Bands lined up to showcase themselves on the anarchic program, which also featured skits and plenty of other shenanigans from the hosts.
"Someone once told me that they started a band after seeing 'Take No Prisoners,'" Hester said. "I consider that to be the highest form of flattery."
The show had become a Flint institution, but its days were numbered with the sale of WFBE in 1997. Hamper, who left the program years earlier and now broadcasts a weekly radio show on WNMC-FM (90.7) in Traverse City, returned to help give the show a raucous sendoff.
"I was sad to see the station get sold," Humphrey said. "Not just because of my show but because I hated to see public radio end in Flint. But nothing lasts forever, life goes on."
And now, thanks to Stengel, longtime fans of the show can rediscover a big part of the Flint music scene, and everyone else can see just what the noise was all about.
"Up until now, you had to know someone to get a copy of this stuff," Stengel said. "Not anymore."