Gore Gore Girls' Gretsches are pleasure units.
Wow—this was the most deadass crowd I’ve ever seen on a Friday night (and I’ve seen a lot of Friday night crowds). Looking like dull-eyed corporate drones failing to seem engaged at a meaningless staff meeting, the audience at the Galaxy mostly sat on their dead asses and stared vacantly at one of the country’s most entertaining garage-rock groups, Detroit’s Gore Gore Girls. You could sense the quartet’s frustration at playing before such unresponsive folks, but it only seemed to spur them to intensify their attack. That’s some raucous, Motor City raw cussedness right there.
Wearing go-go boots, patent-leather mini dresses that revealed glittery silver and white panties (my journalism degree did not go to waste after all), GGG ground out scorching songs that reinvented that high-mileaged gay-raj-rok wheel with a Russ Meyer-starlet panache and punch. The immediacy and hookiness of GGG’s material would seem to make it a natural catalyst for instant aural gratification and loose-limbed revelry. But no. Most of the Galaxy’s customers weren’t budging from their moderately comfy seats.
Alpha-woman singer/guitarist Amy Gore witnessed the staid crowd and said, “I wanna lubricate what you got down there”; thereafter things perked up a bit, but still not to usual Friday-night standards. With songs like “Loaded Heart,” “Sweet Potato,” “You Lied to Me Before,” “Astral Man,” “I’m All Grown Up” and that one whose primary riff alluded to the Stooges’ “Loose,” GGG strove mightily to crumble the stony wall of tepid the audience had erected and they made some progress, especially after Amy ventured into the medium-sized gathering near the stage to rustle up some energy.
GGG’s riffs sounds as familiar as those on any Nuggets comp, but, amazingly, they imbue vigorous life into them. The final song ended with a thrilling series of crescendos and false endings. In response, the majority of the punters looked worried about their mortgage payments.
