Fire in the Disco! Fire in the Taco Bell!

I headed out this evening with a couple of friends to see some fine Detroit rock & roll (that's pronounced DEE-troit, by the way...) at the Doug Fir.

Unfortunately, we missed the opening band, We Are the Fury (who are actually from Toledo), but we got to the show in time to catch the Gore Gore Girls. I enjoyed their set, but I wasn't as impressed as I felt like I should have been. Their formula is a good one, somewhere between Josie and the Pussycats and the Detroit Cobras, but they just didn't quite sell it. The musicianship was there, and frontwoman Amy Gore did manage to channel a pretty impressive Joan Jett-ish sort of energy, but they seemed too, I dunno... nice. Perhaps the Cobras have ruined me for this sort of thing. Rachel Nagy pretty much defines the boozy punk rock torch singer archetype, and once you've seen her do her thing, well, even Storm Large falls a little flat. But still, if the GGGs come to your town, they're well worth checking out.

Next up was Electric Six. These guys have been around since the nineties, and it seems like they've been through Portland a couple times in the last year or so, but I only got around to seeing them tonight. I was not disappointed. This is a band that clearly enjoys working a crowd. They offer up a little something for everyone, weaving together elements of punk, disco, garage rock, arena metal and new wave, with a little vaudevillian showmanship thrown in for good measure. And of course, they couldn't get out of the building without playing their signature song.

As this is, at least nominally, a food blog... We met up before the show at the Morrison Hotel, where I had the pork tenderloin and spicy sausage ragout, served over polenta. Very tasty!