LIVE FROM MEMPHIS

I was thinking about an old friend the other day, a guy in a band who I used to share shows with back in Murfreesboro. He was smart, talented and a damn good musician. One of those guys who just craps art. He could write ten songs to my one, and every one of them was a gem. But the tragic end to that story is that he gave it all up.  He found love and this love did not love the fact that he loved writing and playing music. Maybe it was the clubs. Or the booze. Or the possibility of other women being in these clubs with booze, who knows. So he quit. Just gave it up.Through the years, I have had a handful of other friends that threw in the towel. Kids, shitty bosses, fear, and unrealistic expectations have all claimed their casualties. 

Simon’s front man Lee has the calm of a serial killer. He holds his gaze just a hair too long, momentarily unsettling you.

I’m not the biggest metal fan. And I don’t care to argue what is and what isn’t metal. I use the term as loosely as it has been used since the genre's inception. I didn’t necessarily grow up on it either. Geraldo Rivera’s 1988 special on Satanism and metal hijacked any possible interest I may have had. On the bus in seventh grade, I was listening to the Sugarcubes and wearing Bauhaus t-shirts while facing the weekly threat of an ass-kicking from a dagger-earring wearing dude named Peanut. It took years of intense therapy for me to build compassion for the metal heavy.

When one of the LFM boss men asked me to review this record, I was a little hesitant. I’ve never written a record review before and I didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the other handjob reviews I’d read. I’ve gotten the impression that these critics don’t let the music sit with them—they just listen once or twice through and then write. I have to give it some time, play it in different settings, and think about what I've heard. Plus, how would I rate the thing? I considered a starred rating system like in kindergarten, or maybe a number thing from 1 to 10, or an academic letter grade system. But really, all that shit seems arbitrary. Instead, I can sum up my opinion in a short but precise manner: The album is awesome, but not great.

Let me tell you something you don’t know: the Dirty Streets rock.

The Dirty Streets bring the full pleasure grimace. Photo by Adam Dodds.

One of the main reasons I’m doing these blogs is to get my ass off of the couch. I spent too much of my twenties stoned in front of the TV, vacuuming up as many hot wings, crab legs, and Bud Lights as I could fit into my gaping yap hole. Being out-of-the-loop for so long, I picked a band at random out of the Flyer. I’ve seen the name "Dirty Streets" around, so I went online to check them out. It was a little dodgy. The recordings were flat and the songs were fairly stock. But I liked the name of the band and I rarely trust my first impressions.

For a Monday night in Memphis, I was surprised to see a healthy crowd inside of the Hi-Tone. I was also taken aback by friends I had inside that were far more hip to the Streets than I was. Hi-Tone door man/guard dog Danny Lewd filled my ear about how great they were. Apparently there is a buzz about these guys.

The Dirty Streets are a 3 piece blues-psych-rock band somewhere between The Whigs, early AC/DC and Cream, with maybe a little Grand Funk Railroad thrown in there for good measure. While I am not much of a fan of some of the other throwback, roots-oriented bands in town, The Dirty Streets have two things the others don’t: youth and bawls. They are too young to intentionally pander to the tradition lovers and heavy enough to avoid the genre's beige complacency. Thankfully, their live show trumped the recordings I heard online.

They can play, and the dude can really sing, but the most promising part of the show came out of seeming disaster. Crapped-out bass heads, anonymous feedback, and a runaway bass drum were all throwing wrenches into the works. During one squirrelly kick drum episode, a guy jumped up on stage to aid the bass player as he secured the drum. The guitar player was left to cover by vamping on a finger-picking, John Lee Hooker type thing for about two minutes. He sang with his mouth on the mic in a soft but throaty slur. It was a small flash of potential brilliance that was strongly punctuated by the soon-to-be recovered rhythm section. Upon their return, the bottom dropped out with a ferocity that got the hairs up on end.

The Dirty Streets are a good band, but right now the stock is in their potential. It’s incredibly hard to keep a band together and functioning, sometimes damn near impossible. The various organizational, personal, and as The Dirty Streets experienced that night, mechanical conundrums a band can find itself in are extremely taxing—but these hardships are exactly what can make a band like this go from good to great. A year or two from now, when they find out how dirty the streets really are, everyone will know about The Dirty Streets.

It’s no secret that I am a Robby Grant super-fan. I have all the Big Ass Truck action figures. I have a Vending Machine vending machine in my garage that is chock full of Mouserockets. I even have his rookie card from Fester. As a matter of fact I am sitting in a lawn chair across from the street from his house right now. It looks like his family is sitting down to eat. It’s hard to tell. These binoculars are foggy.

^{When you're as awesome as Robby Grant, you can expect to have LFM bloggers stalking you. (photo by Don Perry)} 

Self-contemplation is a bitch, especially when one awakens to one’s own hypocrisy. Whenever the gerbil wheel slows for a moment, such revelations can creep into the cage. Not that this examination is unhealthy or unproductive—quite the opposite, it is essential to personal evolution. Buddhist thought leads us to believe that we are all the product of what we think or have thought. So if opinions are like assholes, and we are the product of our opinions, then I assume we are all just a bunch of walking gravy traps. But as the saying goes, “to assume is to make an ass out of you and me.” Well, let me tell you the details of my latest enema.