DETROIT

In 1996, flush from the success of founding, developing and quitting the second most popular R&B act in Minneapolis, Jeff Ham (drums, vocals) and Mark Erickson (bass, vocals) devoted themselves to quick-hit, hilarious interpretations of a wide variety of popular music. Calling themselves DETROIT, they recruited old friends Grant Eull (guitar, vocals) and Jeremy Ylvisaker (keyboards, vocals) to flesh out this vision of music that answers to no one.

The quartet was so successful at fleshing out this vision, in fact, that it soon became clear they had stumbled into a new genre of music entirely: Fleshrock. Riding the Fleshrock stallion as far as it could take them. DETROIT issued four-ish albums (including a double CD), did lots of '90s-style van touring, won awards and critics polls, and the hearts of a very devoted following throughout the Upper Midwest due to a spectacular show that always threatened to veer into uncontrolled mayhem with rented 30-ft inflatable apes, human-sized aquariums, death-defying pyrotechnics, and barely contained intra-band violence. And songs. And guitars.

Eventually, this all came crashing down, but that's a story for another time.