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Only one American conquered the UK in the past month and he wasn’t playing that big grey football coffin in North London. Forget The Boss – Mick Collins is the daddy. Forget 4 hour endurance tests of indulgent choreographed moves; a crisp 45 minutes of pure soul-driven rock’n’roll proves who’s keeping the torch ablaze. The first gig that Mick Collins ever attended was Bo Diddley in 1972 and if there’s one person in the world who could now fill that cat’s shoes, it’s the mighty Mick C. ULU is only halfway to selling out but the crowd is characterful – I’ve never seen as many sideburns and neck tattoos (and that’s just on the ladies…) outside a rockabilly convention.
You’d think that the Dirtbombs would be hard flogging their new album. They play a fair selection from it – the Art of Noise-ish ‘Indivisible’ stands out, as does Mick’s plaintive cry of defiance ‘They Have Us Surrounded’ and the squally ‘Leopardman at C&A’ - but the most memorable tracks are covers. They play the most propulsive spitting-fire cover of ‘Ode to a Black Man’ that I’ve heard them do, plus ‘Chains of Love’(with Mick dancing like a horny six-foot-three Prince), Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘Underdog’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and a superpop treatment of ESG’s mighty ‘Rollercoaster’. Their brilliant cover of INXS’s ‘Need You Tonight’ has all the sultry soul that the original lacked. These aren’t just paint-by-numbers versions of familiar songs; Mick Collins has a talent for installing brand new engines in obscure songs and making a modern custom classic out of them.
They end with Curtis Mayfield’s ghetto funky ‘Kung Fu’ and it’s here where they get very loose. Ben Blackwell abandons his drums and, stealing a mic, goes into the audience reciting stream of consciousness verbiage; the other drummer Pat Pantano takes a snare drum forwards, leaving both drumkits to be occupied by Mick Collins and, leaping like a salmon from the audience, Ben (See See, Soledad Brothers) Swank while Kelley Stoltz returns to play anything he can get his hands on. It all ends 15 minutes later in crashing chords and feedbacking amps as Ben and Pat stand imperiously on their bass drums, staring out over the crowd. It’s not the best attended Dirtbombs gig I’ve been at but it’s probably the best I’ve ever seen. Their sweat attests to their effort but their cool is effortless.
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