You know, I thought I was being reasonable, as I've been to a number of shows this week, but how flippin' dumb am I to have missed this show....Answer, real dumb.
washingtonpost.com
From Motor City's Garage, Dirtbombs' Collision Rock
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 12, 2003; Page C01
The day we begin to measure a city's greatness by the hours of outstanding music it has produced is the day that Detroit looks less like a festering sinkhole and more like a miracle of urban planning. Forget those deadly dull criteria like "prosperity" and "quality of housing stock" (ZZZZZ). Judged on the basis of Great Pop Songs Per Capita, there isn't a town in this nation -- or any other -- that can touch the Motor City.
You want R&B? Detroit gave us Motown: the Temptations, the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and on and on. You want rock? Detroit gave us the early punks, Iggy Pop and the Stooges and the MC5 and, later, a couple of the most popular arena rockers, Ted Nugent and Bob Seger. Rap? Eminem has your back. Some neo-garage rock? The White Stripes hail from you know where.
How has an otherwise blighted 130 square miles of Michigan incubated so much talent? For one theory, lend an ear to the Dirtbombs, who plowed into town Monday and played a pitilessly rambunctious hour at the Black Cat. The quintet makes a sloppy Joe of sound that tosses just about every Detroit ingredient into the dish, with a heavy emphasis on the fuzz-tone guitar. It's a bit of a mess, really, but precision isn't exactly a Dirtbomb priority. They'd rather make it unruly than get it right. You've never seen so much unsynchronized leaping in one show.
Among an impassioned subculture that cares about this style -- saleswise, it has yet to make many millionaires -- the Dirtbombs get a lot of credit for the renewed interest in Detroit rock, an interest that has turned the town into the new Seattle -- or the old Detroit. The band is led by a singer-guitarist named Mick Collins, whose previous band, the Gories, is perpetually credited by Jack White of the White Stripes and others as a key influence.
And if Dirtbombs bassist Jim Diamond isn't the father of the new garage rock sound, he's at least its OB-GYN. His studio, Ghetto Recorders, has become the new Hitsville U.S.A., the studio of choice for bands in search of the pre-digital basement sound, and he has produced half a dozen banner-wavers of the genre. That includes the White Stripes plus great and underappreciated albums by the Compulsive Gamblers, the Detroit Cobras and the High Strung.
On Monday night, the Dirtbombs took the stage about 11 o'clock and assembled in their one-of-a-kind formation: two bass players, two drummers and Collins on guitar and vocals. Exactly why the group assigns two people to jobs typically handled by one isn't obvious; the doubling doesn't add much. Diamond and co-bassist Ko Shih pretty much play the same notes, and drummers Ben Blackwell and Pat Patano virtually shadow each other on percussion.
Collins struggled to be heard over the din of this low-frequency storm, his voice barely audible on songs like "Get it While You Can" and "Motor City Baby," both cuts from the band's third album, "Dangerous Magical Noise." He and the band also dug liberally into their second album, "Ultraglide in Black," a batch of soul and funk covers that have been garage-ified.
Those covers, and the Dirtbombs' genre-connecting inclinations, are what set the band apart. Collins, who is black and working in a sliver of pop that traditionally has been woefully low on color, has found a new way to couple the great elements of Detroit's musical posterity -- to meld Iggy and the Miracles. On songs like "If You Want," a Smokey Robinson tune, the Dirtbombs become a living bridge, a link between traditions that have existed side by side, in the same neighborhood, but have never partied together with such abandon.
The group also covered Eurythmics ("Missionary Man") and Sly and the Family Stone ("Underdog") with frequent stops for Collins's fumbly guitar solos. On the last song, Blackwell swung upside down and twirled one of his cymbals as the band rolled to a shambles of a finish.
It was more like a fender-bender than an ending, and the sense of collision might help explain Detroit's amazing musical run. Order works well in a city if you're a pedestrian or a taxpayer or a tourist, but when it comes to music, there's a lot of upside to a little mayhem. Switzerland might be a nice place to visit, but what was the last great band to come out of Zurich?
