Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

The Music Of Detroit - Part Three This was originally published in the Lowell Ledger Holy smokes, the more time one spends digging into all the music, musicians, and musical talent emanating from Detroit the better it gets. Up until a couple of days ago, my confidence in my knowledge of such things was fairly high, but the more I look, the more I see and the more I uncover, the realization of what I don’t know becomes stronger. We kicked off this series with a fly over of Motown, the first Michigan musical magic that comes to most of our minds when it comes to Detroit. There were so many musicians, singers, and writers who contributed to the Motown catalog it was impossible to mention all of them in one article. When one examines other genres or music, the sheer volume of artists from Detroit is almost overwhelming. It is easy to celebrate top of mind musicians like Bob Seger. He tickled our ears and hearts for many decades with massive album sales, sold out concerts, and tunes that ...

  The opening guitar chords of “Seven Nation Army” is easily one of the most well-known guitar riffs to ever kick off a song. Chanted and sung at sports stadia all over the world, those licks are the product of one of the most impactful musicians to ever be born in Detroit: John Anthony Gillis (aka Jack White) was born there in July of 1975 and it is safe to say that Detroit has a special place in Jack White’s heart. Full disclosure; this writer is a giant fan of Mister White for a plethora of reasons. Some of his songs are a constant on my personal play lists, but there are many of his musical efforts that have zero appeal to me. My fandom is not based on loving every lyric and chord, but my admiration is directed at a fellow Michigander who charts his own course artistically and who, in spite of traveling the world and now living in Nashville, remembers his roots in Detroit and has done a lot to keep the Motor City moving along in spite of all the challenges it has faced over t...

  The Music of Detroit – Part One Part one of a three part series originally published in the Lowell Ledger. In addition to providing motorized vehicles to our nation and many parts of the rest of the planet, Detroit is the birthplace of a wide variety of music and musicians. Just as the effects of the mass production of cars and trucks touched and influenced most of the civilized world, so did the many forms of music represented by many genres and musicians that were born and nurtured in Detroit. In addition to the first and foremost example, Motown Records, we want to examine and celebrate other styles of music and the Detroiters who made them happen. Before we celebrate Motown, I have to share something. Most times when I write, I have instrumental music playing in the background. As I began to type this first article about the global musical impact of one of my favorite cities, a great tune by a master bass player came up on my play list: “Detroit” by Marcus Miller. No kidd...

Encouraging News From The Environmental Front As you may recall, yours truly learned about recycling at the knee of his Ronald Reagan loving, Republican mom from a very young age. For mom, recycling was not about politics, rather it was about common sense. If the glass jar could be made into another glass jar, then why would you toss it in a land-fill? She grew up in a frugal household, my grandmother Wright grew and put away every kind of fruit and vegetable you can imagine - cherries, corn, beans, apples, peaches, grapes, and more. All done on a double lot on Manning street in Detroit. When my mom taught me to recycle, we did not have a service that would pick it up at the curb. We had to save the items and drive them to the recycling center which she did faithfully for many years. I mention all this to let you know recycling is in my DNA. The last few months have given me a lot to cheer about in this regard. My slippers were getting pretty nasty and a new pair was in order. As I am ...

The Pink Arrow football game was the brain child of our former football coach Noel Dean. Back in 2008 he was casting about for a way to help residents of the Lowell area who were battling cancer. Pink Arrow was born and since then the event has grown to be way more than a football game and the best part is that it has been copied all over Michigan and the rest of the country thanks to some national news exposure early on.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Pink Arrow Pride , Coach Dean came up with a plan to have his players (the Red Arrows) play a game in pink jerseys and turn that game into a fund raiser to lend a hand to area residents and their families who were fighting some form of cancer. FYI - the tremendous success of Pink Arrow is the reason that Lowell is home to a Gilda's Club. There is no other town of our size that has one. The  story goes that he floated the idea by one of his friends, Perry Beachum, and asked, "Do you think the team will put on pink j...

Explore A National Marine Sanctuary in Michigan Originally Published in the Lowell Ledger 1.18.23 If you are anything like me and hear the words “National Marine Sanctuary”, the images and places that appear in your mind in some fashion or another probably include the Florida Keys, the Hawaiian Islands, and various places you might explore on the east or west coasts. Such thinking covers almost all of the fifteen locations that have been designated as marine sanctuaries by NOAA - which includes a reference to oceans in the long form of it’s name: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Would you be as surprised as I was to learn that our favorite state has one of the sanctuaries? If you travel between 234 and 250 miles from Lowell, depending on the route you choose, you can visit the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena. When a friend of mine plopped a half dozen publications on my desk that were all about this phenomenal place, it took a minute for me to pr...

  A More Earth Friendly Shave Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 8/13/22 Every little bit helps. Just remember that as you read my story about the pursuit of a way to shave my face every day with minimal impact on the environment. Up until about nine or ten years ago, I would alternate my daily shaving method between disposable razors and an electric shaver. Of those two methods, the electric shaver is by far the more green option of the two, but I would always switch back to disposable razors because it gave me a much closer shave in my opinion. It wasn’t that my facial hair is thick and prolific, but no matter how many times I ran the electric shaver over my face, by the afternoon my face felt stubbly. I would grow tired of that after a couple weeks or so and switch back to lathering up and using whatever set up was popular in disposable razors. When I first started shaving on a daily basis, during the end of the Ford or beginning of the Carter administration, plastic ...

Renewable Energy & Protecting the Environment Should Not Be Partisan Politics   Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7/7/2022   Why on Earth has protecting our environment and conserving natural resources by “going green” in any way we can is turned into a partisan, Democrat vs Republican thing? It should not be this way. Please stick with me and read this whole column before you toss the paper in the trash bin, or better yet the recycle bin. I am hoping I can challenge the thinking of both Blue and Red readers.  The Eagle is the symbol of our country – it is not a mascot for the Red or Blue team. One of the best things I have seen in my lifetime is the return of eagles, not only in Michigan, but all over the country they symbolize. When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my mom had me read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” a book about how we were trashing our environment. At that time, DDT and other pesticides were decimating eagles and other birds of prey...

Water Is Life – We Cannot Take It For Granted   Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 6/25/2022   Michigan truly is a water wonderland. As residents of a state surrounded by twenty percent of all the available freshwater on the entire planet, we might take water for granted. Yes, our little mitten shaped portion of the globe gives us access to one fifth of the fresh water available to the world. Let that sink in, will you?   Julie and I recently took a work vacation trip to Las Vegas to attend a jewelry show. We stayed some extra days so that I could check a visit to the Hoover Dam off my bucket list (more on that later). For most of the daylight hours during our six days out west the temperatures were triple digits – the highest was 111 degrees. Sure, it is a “dry heat” compared to Michigan with the humidity levels at 10 to 15 per cent. However, 111 still feels like walking around in an oven and the decided lack of humidity, read WATER, is the subject ...