The Paybacks Photo credit: E. Wolf The Sights

Detroit is Rock City

Sure, missing most of the Sights’ set was partly my fault. But they forgot to put me on the list, and I had only budgeted for beer, so it was off to the ATM. After that fiasco (you try finding an ATM on Woodward Avenue after dark), I only managed to catch the last two songs of their Standells-meets-Jam mod stomp. But I’ve seen ‘em before, and highly recommend them.

Easy Action, the second band on the bill, is fronted by an authentic Detroit underground-rock god, John Bannon of Laughing Hyenas and Negative Approach, both cornerstones of early ‘80s hardcore. Like Jesus Lizard? Thank Laughing Hyenas. So when Easy Action shamble out in their dressed-up-for-‘92 Pavement-chic, I’m expecting a punishing explosion, all cutting riffs and pummeling rhythms. Sure, it wouldn’t fit in all that well with the Sights or the Paybacks, but hell, how often do you get to see a scene’s godfather with his new band?

Easy Action’s set starts out well enough, despite garbled song titles and copping a riff from Ministry’s “Stigmata”, but only gets, um, blander from then on. John Bannon has given up his larynx-rending screams (which, admittedly, could be more obnoxious than interesting even in the good ol’ days), and taken to trafficking in a twin Jim Morrison/Rob Zombie vocal fixation, crooning like the Lizard King and growling gutturally like he just bought La Sexorcisto and couldn’t get enough of it. Too dorky and inanimate to pull off a menacing hard rock sound, too formula-bound to grunge retreads to stand up next to the raw energy of their Detroit peers, Easy Action beg the question, how can anything this loud be this boring?

Still, their ample instrumental chops show (especially their drummer’s), and if they had shown up in the early ‘90s, Easy Action would be hailed alongside, well, if not Soundgarden, at least Stone Temple Pilots. Competent, repetitive, and flat, they keep the fat girls in fishnet stockings and the hunchback (swear to God, a real hunchback) rocking for a good 45 minutes through calls for the Paybacks and at least one thrown beer can.

Then after an interminable wait (three cans of Black Label in bar time), the Paybacks saunter onto the stage. Do you remember Crucial Taunt, Cassandra’s band in Wayne’s World? Spitting out a cover of “Ballroom Blitz” as their signature tune? Well, imagine if they were good. Wendy Case, lead singer of the Paybacks, takes classic cock-rock and wears it as a skin around her shoulders, inhabiting the perfect front-woman persona, bawdy and brassy and one-too-many-cigarettes, punched through to a crowd held in sway like charmed snakes.

When I saw the Paybacks before, opening for Radio Birdland, they played like dilettantes, weekend-warriors slingin’ guitars when they weren’t in button-downs and khakis. It may be the lighting, it may be the stage, but tonight the Paybacks don’t just feel like rock stars, they are Rock Stars. Case vamps, her voice sounding more than a little like Rod Stewart’s, but, you know, with balls. She clips into a barnburner, “Blackout”, and the line at the bar goes empty, everyone pushes up to the front of the stage. The band is new enough that not everyone knows the words, but the show has the feeling of one that people will talk about “being there then”.

The show continues at this pace, while the band feels comfortable, loose, casual. They’re clearly at home with people shouting for more, and guitarist Marco Delicato keeps getting more and more acrobatic with his solos (spinning ‘round, behind the back, did I see a jump-kick?). The whole time Case is swigging beers, bending over slightly to sing over the crowd, and generally having a hell of a time, playing like there’s no “garage-rock revival”, ‘cuz, man, it never went away.

After a bit of banter from Case comparing Detroit girls to Hollywood ones (“Detroit girls drink whiskey from a plastic cup,” she slurs, grinning), they blast through their final two songs, “Hollywood” and “Vegas”. After a bit, the crowd shuffles downstairs, some to drink more, some to bowl (The Stick’s got an alley downstairs—that’s Detroit.). There are plastic cups lying empty on the ground, and the bands have all hit out the back exit. But this is it; this is a snapshot of why rock and roll still matters. If you doubt me, go check out the Paybacks and see for yourself.