Detroit Cobras At The Music Mill

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 by Sal Lucci

Detroit Cobras, Those Young Lions, Little Boots and Drusilla
Music Mill, Indianapolis, IN
December 5, 2008

“Rock and roll is the best job of all time. You don’t get to call in sick.” – Mike Edison, author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go

Well, you do if you’re the Detroit Cobras, most recently evidenced by their first area show in several years. Strike that, the band was having fun but the singer wasn’t. How about calling in “I just don’t give a shit?” I mean really, could it have been more obvious singer Rachael Nagy didn’t want to be there? She stood still, rolled her eyes and tapped her feet (and not in time to the music.) Many audience members noticed it and commented on it. I heckled at one point “At least it’s better than a day job” but got no response.

For those who don’t know, the Detroit Cobras play covers of obscure oldies, soul and rock and roll. The first time I saw the Cobras (New York, 2001) Nagy was amazing – they didn’t go on until 2:30 a.m. and she was slinging back drinks, chain smoking, fucking with the crowd and just belting ‘em out. I saw them 5 other times between then and April of 2004 and performances got progressively worse, from Nagy drunkenly mumbling songs to blatantly asking my friend and I while we looked at merch “Do you know where I can get any dope?” (That particular scenario ended about two seconds later when a gigantic man, who did not look like he fit in at a rock show, appeared behind me and exchanged phone numbers with Nagy.)

I stopped seeing ‘em after that and only held out so long because of the power of Nagy’s voice and their fantastic first two albums. Subsequent releases can’t touch the first two and are so-so at best. This isn’t the Cobras’ fault because after recording their favorites, they could have gone down one of two paths – covering more popular, well-written songs or covering more obscure, half-hearted songs that tried to sound like the hits of the day (which they did.) Maybe it’s time to hang it up.

I’m not going to waste much space on the opening acts. Those Young Lions switched between quirky garage and indie rock and were so-so. Little Boots and Drusilla was god-awful.

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