it came from detroit

My sister had a birthday party for her boyfriend this weekend so I stopped by to hang out and be her designated photographer since most of her friends are friends of mine also. Got the inside info on local people to vote for and caught up with people I haven't seen in awhile.

Had to leave early to go out and meet up with my good friend and fellow grunge enthusiast Frank to catch the Dirtbombs at the Beachland. The crowd was pretty cool and we ended up hanging around outside talking to random people.

They sounded fantastic and it was one of those shows where it goes faster than it should because the sound is so tight and it's just so good with its combination of punked out garage rock and covers by the likes of Curtis Mayfield, Phil Lynott and Sly Stone.

It can sound sloppy on the records sometimes in that good way, but live, it works so well with the two drummers and two bassists, and there's lots of those deep almost tribal drums and fuzzed out guitar tones that call to mind the Rolling Stones back before Keith Richards started falling out of palm trees.
I tried taking some photos but we weren't that close so instead here's some Youtube footage from previous shows to give the general vibe.





The buzz got killed a little in the encore by the drummer's overly long drunken rant about politics and dirty jokes which culminated in some heckling and the drummer suckerpunching a guy standing next to me. Or something. I didn't totally catch what happened but people were getting testy. I hate election season because if this was any other time, people would be way more chilled out.

I assume that most musicians are more political and such but if I wanted that, I'd go see Tom Morello instead of a garage band playing awesome party music from Detroit. But hey, I got free tickets, so I can't complain too much. And Mick Collins might currently be the coolest living guy in the music world.