The Dirtbombs @ Bowery Ballroom

The Dirtbombs; Kelley Stoltz
@ Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY - April 11, 2008

At this point, after so many feeble attempts at being something akin to a rock critic, why bother? You all know how I feel about the music itself and about how they play live. All you need to know about tonight is that it was a much cooler, calmer performance than last night's explosion in Philadelphia. It was a straight, maybe even scaled back, performance - probably because the band was exhausted and also because the Bowery Ballroom just isn't conducive to Blackwell's shenanigans.
So let's just personalize it, in the spirit of a true blog, and not some half-assed hipster "mag" deal:

It was a night of accomplishment. After all these years, I was finally able to get a number of friends of mine to see the Dirtbombs live. It had only happened once before a couple years ago with my most notoriously stubborn and curmudgeonly rock classicist friend. The last two nights I was able to bring various sets of friends, from different walks of life, to see this unifying band. And it was a major success. Everyone was converted to a fan. Every single one. The non-rock guys loved the funky beats and the jams. The rock guys - one coming from the perspective of a musician, the other a casual fan whose personal tastes run along the lines of the Cure and the Smiths - each cited the same thing in their praise: professionalism. The casual fan even noted that having never seen either the Dirtbombs or Kelley Stoltz live before - and being a general fan of the Grateful Dead/Band style the latter works with - he was struck by how he was convinced he had just seen the highlight of the night until the Dirtbombs came on and made the whole thing look effortless (that's no slight at Stoltz, there is something admirable in what he's doing up on stage every night).
As a side bonus, 2 of the friends who did not previously know each other shared a fondness for comic books, which led to a nice discussion of the Alan Moore-infused "Leopard Man at C & A" with Mick Collins after the show (that song, by the way, as a live lead-off, is just phenomenal).

A lot of other bands have been filling the "pages" of this blog for a good while now and they are great bands all, but at the end of the night - by the power of their own performance, the warmth of the community they foster, and their ability to make true believers out of anyone - it is always satisfying to come home to the Dirtbombs.