Grande Ballroom Documentary Sets West Michigan Premiere Screening

"Louder Than Love", a rock doc on the legendary Detroit club where so many rock icons played back in the day gets a West Michigan premiere on February 11.

The Grande Ballroom is literally historic. Added to the National Register in 2018, the Grande (rhymes with "Sandy"), was a dancehall in the 1920s and became notorious as the hangout for the Purple Gang during Prohibition. This gang of petty thieves, bootleggers, and mobsters, "reigned supreme over the Detroit underworld, controlling the city's vice, gambling, liquor, and drug trade." Some of that same atmosphere was restored in 1966 when a Detroit disc-jockey bought the venue. Inspired by the trippy Fillmore Theater in San Francisco, Russ Gibb envisioned a similar place in the Motor City for the new psychedelic music.

The Pink Floyd (as they were called then), Led Zeppelin, Cream, and The Who all played at the Grande. The Stooges, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and Alice Cooper were also regulars and the venue was the site where the MC5 recorded their debut album, "Kick Out The Jams". In his early years, Meat Loaf opened for bands like Bob Seger and the Grateful Dead at the Grande. While the West Coast was grooving to the sounds of the “Summer of Love” in 1967, Detroit was pumping out a hard-driving, gritty, raw sound. At the epicenter of this seminal music scene stood the Grande Ballroom, Detroit’s original rock and roll palace. That sound was louder than love.

The Grande Ballroom era is potentially the greatest untold story in rock and roll history. With everything Detroit has been through in the last several decades, I wanted to let folks know that aside from the automobile industry, the city has some amazing musical history which helped shape American pop culture.

-Tony D’Annunzio, Louder Than Love director/producer

The award-winning film, culled from more than 60 hours of interviews with artists and other insiders from the Grande’s heyday including musical icons B.B. King, Alice Cooper, Roger Daltrey, Mark Farner, Tom Morello, Wayne Kramer, Lemmy, Ted Nugent, Henry Rollins, Don Was, Slash, and Dick Wagner, was completed in 2012. It has been screened at a number of film festivals, but never before seen in southwest Michigan. Don't miss your chance to see what they're calling "the greatest untold story of the history of rock and roll...until now."

• Louder Than Love- The Grande Ballroom Story
• The Acorn | Three Oaks, MI
• Friday, Feb 11 | 8 pm
•  Tickets: $20 | $30 VIP packages available

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