Musik og liv med Kenneth Sulu.: The Dirtbombs.

Ever since my old boss at Soundstation introduced me to this band I've been listening to them very regularly and they are still some of my favourite rock albums, almost 10 years later. Mick Collins is a bit of a legend as far as Detroit rock goes and you may also wanna check out some of his other projects, he's done about 50.000.000 of them. Dirtbombs is definitely the band I like best, though, especially the second and third studio albums: "Ultraglide in Black" and "Dangerous Magical Noise".

Ultraglide is all covers of old rock and soul songs (Stevie Wonder, Thin Lizzy) played in the typically shambolic Dirtbombs style. How do they actually sound? Really bad, actually. None of them are particularly good at their instruments, but the thing that shines through is their WILL to play this stuff, no matter what. They really love what they're doing and that's an extremely contagious quality. Stevie Wonders' "Livin' for the City" constantly sounds like it's completely falling apart, covered in fuzz and nobody seems to be hitting any of their notes anywhere NEAR clean, but the enthusiasm and soul they put into it is awesome. That's basically how every song on the album is, although the band actually do have quite a wide range of expression, from slow and grinding to fast and choppy. Not a dull song on the whole album.

Magical Noise is mostly songs penned by Mick and is absolutely stunning. The band is slightly tighter, but still loud and abrasive, the production is slightly cleaner, but still with massive amounts of fuzz and the quality of the songs is really, really good. Mick sings his heart out on "F.I.D.O.", "Stuck in thee Garage" is some of the most distorted, screechy rock ever and "I'm Through with White Girls" is straight up sleaze. Essential purchase.

I found some live vids on youtube, but the sound quality is even worse than on record, but it should give you an idea.

"Stop" from "Dangerous Magical Noise":