Something We’re Not: John Brannon, Negative Approach, and the Ruins of Detroit

Abstract

This paper considers the musical output of Detroit-based hardcore punk band Negative Approach (and particularly its vocalist John Brannon), as a lens through which to understand Detroit’s place in what Andreas Huyssen calls the “imaginary of ruins.” During their short existence from 1981-1984, Negative Approach developed a sound that is frequently understood to reflect Detroit, the band’s intensity and Brannon’s vicious vocal timbre correlated with the image of a city ‘ruined’ by the economic decline and racial inequities hastened by its infamous 1967 riots. Drawing on ruin studies, a history of Detroit, the context of American hardcore rock, and on the timbral and structural qualities of Brannon’s music, the paper considers both the usefulness and problematic limitations of using ruin imagery to understand a surviving city, of reducing its material reality solely to metonymic expression of post-Fordist decline. While the paper does elucidate the correlation between Brannon’s music and the city’s struggles—which include a strained relationship with its wealthier, de facto segregated suburbs—it also illustrates the extent to which such designations are inherently problematic both for flattening the music’s affect and for overlooking the material reality of a city and its citizens, who struggle onwards with dignity and imagination rather than defining themselves solely in reference to their challenges.