OKAY, SO RIGHT NOW we’re all just about up to Shaquille O’Neal’s armpits in retro bands dressed in tight black shirts and ladies’ leather jackets — those pretty boys with the translucent skin and the artfully disheveled dyed-black hair, their tiny girlfriends with the dark red lipstick, translucent skin, and artfully disheveled dyed-black hair. (No wonder they’re always out of my shade whenever I go to the drugstore.) They’re everywhere except the mainstream airwaves. Call it a schtick, call it a fad, call it “The New Sub Pop,” but it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Personally, I blame Mike Maker, but that’s just my opinion.
On the last night of the recent CMJ music festival, I was heading toward the legendary CBGB’s to meet with the Go, card-carrying members of the black-clad retro club, and — being from Detroit — Sub Pop’s “novelty” act. I walked up to the slouching group of band members and crew milling around the door, and I realized I couldn’t decipher the Go from the Black Halos from the Murder City Devils — all right, I’m lying; I knew the Murder City Devils from the rest, but imagine what it looked like through my eyes: a dozen tough-looking, dark-haired guys dressed in black, mostly skinny, mostly wearing floppy bangs, mostly with some sort of leather or chain or both wrapped around their neck, each only a slight variation on the next. I stopped for a second, then threw up my hands and walked right on by.
That’s not to say that the Go and their ilk are to be avoided. On the contrary, as far as black-clad retro bands go, Sub Pop has pretty good taste (all right, not with the Halos), and anyone who says the Murder City Devils aren’t one of this city’s best live acts is plain and simply a jackass. And though they aren’t from the Northwest, the same goes for the Go, who mine the ’60s deeply and without apology, but in a way that makes you want to take that ill-applied word “schtick” and shove it up any condescending mutherfucker’s ass who dares even think to utter it. Let’s see how you fill out a lady’s leather jacket, asshole.
The Go Can Fill Out a Leather Jacket
The Go Can Fill Out a Leather Jacket