Blight – Detroit

The Dream Is Dead – The Collected Works of a Midwest Hardcore Noise Band 1982

Short lived but influential band from Detroit featuring Touch and Go Records founder Tesco Vee of Meatmen fame and Steve Miller formerly of The Fix. Cover art features photos by Ewolf. Metallic bronze ink used for the band name.

The Ewolf pic we picked was evocative of the imagery we were attempting to convey thru our music when we re-popped out entire collected recorded output in 2005. Not a slam on our beloved City, but rather a representation of what the band was all about and this pic just resonated with us. PreDating the ruin-porn craze, a broken down church pretty much summed it up. Blight was proof I can be serious and have a soul. For a few nano seconds anyway – Tesco Vee

On occasion, I’d hear the comment that I shot “too pretty,” that my photos made people or things look too polished. That ran counter to the punk aesthetic (did it?). I was a little concerned, therefore, when asked to shoot the Blight cover that I could come up with something in the spirit the band intended. Finding the subject was easy enough. After all, this is DETROIT, the blight capital of the world, after Hiroshima was rebuilt.

To produce photos that were technically or compositionally fucked-up only for the sake of being fucked-up would have been to sell the band short. Besides, a decent shot can always be made worse. It’s much harder to go the other way. Like Tesco says, this was before the ruin porn craze and, for the particular subject matter, the buildings were still approached with a kind of reverence, me marveling at what they once were instead of mocking the city’s decline. In the end, I was happy that the band was happy with the photos.  –  Ewolf