Grande Ballroom — Detroit, Michigan

The Grande Ballroom at 8952 Grand River Avenue in Detroit was the MC5's home venue and the epicentre of Detroit's late-1960s rock revolution — a ballroom where, between 1966 and 1972, the most aggressive, politically confrontational, and sonically extreme music in America was presented to a devoted audience of students, radicals, and alienated working-class kids. Russ Gibb booked the venue; the MC5 were the house band; the White Panther Party provided the political framework; and acts including the Grateful Dead, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Led Zeppelin all played the Grande during its peak years.

The MC5 — Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer, Fred "Sonic" Smith, Michael Davis, and Dennis Thompson — were the Grande's defining band: their 1969 live album "Kick Out the Jams," recorded at the Grande, is one of the most electrifying documents of rock music at maximum intensity. Their explicit political commitment (to the White Panther Party's platform of drugs, rock and roll, and revolution) distinguished them from contemporaries, and their influence on punk — on the Clash, on the Sex Pistols, on virtually every subsequent band that believed rock music should be dangerous — was direct and acknowledged.

The Grande Ballroom closed in 1972 and the building has been in a deteriorating state for decades, though preservation efforts have periodically gained momentum. As of recent years, the building remains standing at 8952 Grand River Avenue and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of Detroit's most significant derelict landmarks — a place where something extraordinary happened and whose physical survival matters to anyone who cares about where rock music came from.