I'm Saving Myself for Nichelle Nichols
Something new I've been listening to this week and highly recommend:
The day shifts blew, but I worked two night shifts, Wednesdays and Sundays. Most of my four years at that job were spent with Ko Shih Chien (sp?) as the bartender while I was her barback and bowling counter guy.
Okay, so Ko had this idea to get more people in the bar. She started booking relatively unknown bands (mostly local) to play free shows in the bowling alley lounge area. Keep in mind that this was before the White Stripes were on a major label, before the Greenhornes licensed a song to Jack Daniels, back when the Electric 6 were the Wild Bunch and never dreamed of touring places like New Zealand, and no one ever thought anyone would care about modern Detroit music beyond Kid Rock (who had just broke out).
On those nights, I saw the Go when Jack White was still in the band. I saw Jack White play two solo shows just with his guitar. The Greenhornes came up from Cincinnati and blew us all away. The Soledad Brothers kicked over chairs and rocked out standing on the tables. The Compulsive Gamblers played an unannounced show with Jack White and Ian Ammons (The Piranhas) playing guest guitar and Tim Vulgar (Clone Defects/Human Eye) singing on one song. I saw a one-off soul instrumental ensemble involving ex-members of Godzuki and They Come In Threes which resulted in a troupe of Argentinian acrobats in town for the Auto Show dancing on the bar. Well, dance contests on the bar were fairly common whenever Ko was working, now that I think about it.
Going back a little ways, before I moved to the city I had heard of Crypt Records and started buying up a lot of their albums because I was diggin' the trashy rock/blues/punk shit they were putting out. One of those bands was The Gories. I knew they were from Detroit and that by the time I lived there they weren't together. When working with Ko, she had told me about this newer band called The Dirtbombs. It was a project from Mick Collins, who had been one third of The Gories along with Danny Dollrod of the Demolition Dollrods.
Mick's idea was that the band would only put out a set amount of 45s (15 I believe), and that each one would be totally different in style and sound. He wanted to be like Wire, or The Swell Maps, where every record was high in quality and unique with each release. Also unique to his vision was that there would be two drummers and two bass players along with him singing and playing guitar. In time one of the bass player positions morphed into fuzz bass, but that's peripheral.
I think it may have been after the third or fourth 45 that Mick was talked into recording a full-length record. He really didn't want to, but he did anyway. It was the third single, "Tina Louise" that I remember Ko talking about and how good it was. That first album came out in Spring of '98 and was called "Horndog Fest." Only about three out of the twelve songs were 'song' songs. The kind you can sing along to and maybe even dance to. Those ones were pop garage type stuff. Simple, fun, and easy. The other nine songs were fucking out there. I mean out there. Dense with guitars with vocals buried deep in the mix. I don't know what the hell was going on, but I did like it. It was good, just not the sort of stuff you can play at a party where people want to dance, if you know what I mean.
Then they released four more 45s, then another full-length album. "Ultraglide In Black" would be the record that would put the band on tour all over the world. Unfortunately, it wasn't the clearest representation of the band's sound because it was almost all soul and funk covers except for one original track. Don't get me wrong, it's a mind-blowing record. They bring new life to a lot of Motown and Stax/Volt hits. In re-working the intro to Curtis Mayfield's "Kung Fu," Collins somehow manages to emulate the intro to "Bela Lugosi's Dead" from Bauhaus. Seriously. And it doesn't sound a bit out of place.
Three more 45s, a couple of appearances on John Peel's BBC radio program, several tours taking them to all corners of the globe, and they release "Dangerous Magical Noise" in 2003. Okay, so this album was a much better display of their sound. There are two covers included at the end, but they ain't soul in the most obvious sense, they're from Robyn Hitchcock and Brian Eno. Every song on this record, even the really wild ones are totally listenable and maybe even danceable. But don't get me wrong, there's punk on this one. And rock, and new wave, and soul, yet it doesn't sound forced at all. In fact, it's probably a perfect mix between "Horndog Fest" and "Ultraglide In Black." You get the raw trashy intensity and the soul all in one package.
So, a few EPs, 45s, obligatory compilation appearances, and that brings us to the here and now. 2005. Last month, the Dirtbombs released "If You Don't Already Have A Look." It's a compilation of all of their non-album songs, including all covers that didn't appear on an album. That's a total of 52 songs! FIFTY-TWO. Disc one is the originals and disc two is the covers. You can get this for the price of one album, but it's worth so much more.
You get all the diversity, tight song-writing, influences on sleeves, and 'fuck the garage scene' attitude of the Dirtbombs in that package. Totally worth the money.
So by now maybe you're wondering what Ko Shih Chien has to do with this. She's the girl up there on the cover of the album. She plays fuzz bass with the Dirtbombs. I find it interesting that the first time she told me about them, she didn't know how to play bass, loved the band, and was bartending at a craphole in Midtown Detroit. By the way, now she goes by Ko Melina Zydeco.
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