Thursday, January 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

CDVS

Hound Dog Taylor was born with six fingers on his left hand, which made him good for three things: counting to 11, playing guitar and performing complex digital manipulations that left the ladies squealing in orgasmic rapture. Not surprisingly, the first proved rather inconsequential since 11--unenviably sandwiched between the smug metric 10 and the anomalous American dozen--has never been held in particularly high regard within any internationally recognized system of weights and measures. Nor did the last do Taylor much good since his equal-opportunity fornicating tended to rouse the ire of the local anti-miscegenation authority (in 1942, the Ku Klux Klan ran Taylor out of Mississippi after he was caught doing the six-finger shuffle on a delighted Southern belle).

But Taylor's extra digit proved essential to his skills on the axe, and after hightailing it out of the Magnolia State, he set up camp on Chicago's rock 'em sock 'em South Side. Backed by the Houserockers (Ted Harvey on the skins and Brewer Phillips picking out a pseudo-bass line on his Telecaster), Taylor turned out tin-toned bottleneck riffs that shook like Chuck Berry on a 48-hour PCP bender. As evidenced by Taylor's self-titled debut, it was terrible and wonderful--loud, lo-fi and sopping in soul. It was also the sole reason for the foundation of blues stalwart Alligator Records, which formed when Delmark Records refused to publish Taylor's album.

The sum of which makes Taylor virtually invincible in any CD duel--that is, unless Dirtbombs frontman Mick Collins gets thrown into the mix. If Taylor is the six-fingered Svengali of slide, then Collins is the delirious demagogue of Detroit rock--a shucking and jiving testament to the saving power of rock 'n' roll. Despite taking a back seat to Motor City figureheads such as Iggy Pop and the ubiquitous Jack White, Collins' bands have always embodied the 8-cylinder pulse of Detroit. And driven by two bass players and two drummers, the Dirtbombs' new record is no different. Opening with the soot-belching furor of "Start the Party" and closing with the Motown jiggle of "F.I.D.O.," Dangerous Magical Noise delivers a 37-minute blast of high-octane joy.

Thus, this contest comes down to a matter of regional preference--Chicago's gutbucket electric blues vs. Detroit's distortion-heavy guitar rock. The artists themselves rise above the fracas. Before dying of cancer in 1975, Taylor left behind the self-penned epitaph, "When I die, they'll say, `he couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good.'" Someday, they'll no doubt say the same thing about Mick Collins. The Dirtbombs play the Cooler Lounge Jan. 29.--Newt Briggs