Barreling forth from the ashes of Detroit’s primo guitar-whirling outfits, Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, a supergroup by definition, remains among music’s most perplexing enigmas. With the MC5’s rhythm guitar doyen turned lead maven Fred “Sonic” Smith (or “the best,” according to Lenny Kaye) and the Rationals’ soul mover Scott Morgan at the helm, along with a Stooge manning the drums, the band fortified itself within Ann Arbor’s Second Chance, the hallowed refuge for the high voltage that would come to be known, fittingly, as Sonic’s Rendezvous.
Though they immediately displayed a penchant for rock ‘n’ roll at its most incendiary, pioneering a guitar-laden wall of sound that remains wholly singular, the group remained entrenched in the Ann Arbor circuit from 1974 until its dissolution in 1980, sometimes accompanying Fred’s wife, one Patti Smith, or, in another case, backing Iggy Pop on a brief European tour in the summer of ’78. All the while, the band’s reputation remained confined to this innermost circle of Detroit’s rock acolytes.
Over halfway through the group’s duration, the result of SRB’s lone studio session emerged, a double-sided single containing both a stutter that shames Roger Daltrey and perhaps the most unrelenting dual guitar blitzkrieg known to conscious life. In 1978, Orchidé Records unveiled “City Slang” with hardly an ounce of promotion, leaving its reputation in local hands and ears.
Serving as the band’s show-stopping closing salvo (the live cut off the Sweet Nothing compilation is a personal nomination for the next Voyager Golden Record), “City Slang” encapsulates the spirit of Detroit. Armed with indecipherable lyrics that morphed with each and every performance, Sonic crafted a song in which pure dynamism and abiding urgency are the only identifiable players. The small details of Smith’s rallying cry, namely the words, matter only to an extent, though “keep a-talkin’ those city dreams” is as good as “slip and slide communication” is apt. Rather, they remain entrenched on the fringe until the titular chant comes calling to signal the next firestorm, feigning climax only to heighten in desperation until an ending that is anything but.
The chaos plays on, produced by a band in such control of its powers that one might mistake the sheer force of “City Slang” for an unhinged spectacle, and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band for the stuff of myth whose inferno lasted so briefly as to make one question if such a confluence of electric power ever existed, that perhaps the waning days of no-holds-barred rock ‘n’ roll promulgated a modern folktale in the Motor City. Then again, maybe they knew what no one else did, and kept a-talkin’ that c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-city slang.”
