Hi, I'm Tiana, and I'm Ryan, and we're from Arcada, California.

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Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles, I'm Jesse Thorn, and this is the Sound of Young America from MaximumFun.org.

It's the Sound of Young America. I'm Jesse Thorn, America's radio sweetheart. My guests on the program are Mick Collins and Ben Blackwell.

They are the frontman and one of the two drummers, respectively, of the band The Dirt Bombs. Their brand new record is called We Have You Surrounded.

They're stalwarts of the Detroit rock and roll scene for the past 15 years, and Mick is actually a stalwart of the Detroit rock and roll scene for some 25 years at this point, something like that anyway.

Gentlemen, welcome to the Sound of Young America. Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure to have you.

I feel like I don't have any understanding of what Detroit is like as a place. Reading about your band and your careers, it's so embedded in Detroit.

It's difficult. How do you explain what it is to somebody who doesn't know?

Imagine a company town that doesn't have a company anymore, but all the employees are still there, and that's a sink to description of Detroit.

And nothing's coming back to take its place.

No company, no other selection of smaller companies. Nothing.

Is there something in Detroit that as a native San Francisco and just absolutely boggled my mind when I was talking with a friend from Detroit about it,

which is vacant real estate, real estate that's not just vacant because it's between people occupying it, but it's it's it's state is vacant for an indeterminate period into the future.

Oh, yes. Definitely.

Yeah, there's entire blocks like that.

Huge industrial complex is in fact, we briefly had a rehearsal space inside one that was thousands and thousands and thousands of square feet actually crossed into millions of square feet.

It was enormous renting out one little room at a time.

Yeah, they're just renting out to people. One of the nice things about it though is that the cost of living in Detroit is so low that if you, you know, if you're an artist, for example,

you can just get a place to live and not have to worry about getting getting turfed, you know, because you don't have any money because the cost of living is really low.

You can actually do your work and not have to, you know, live like a human being.

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