DC Drive
DC Drive

Raise your hand if you know this sextet from Detroit, who debuted—and unfortunately simultaneously ended—their recording career in 1992 with this excellent piece of funky hard rock, played and produced at the highest level.

Their bad luck was to have released this thing in 1992… Three years earlier and things would have turned out very differently. It’s fifty minutes of raw rock with an unusual saxophone added in, and a bass that relentlessly rolls forward, dragging the whole crew along with it: awesome! Forget Kurt Cobain. This is the kind of stuff that even I, a well-known wallflower, would still dance to at full tilt in a club.

It was the last days of makeup and hairdos… but for them, no makeup—just follicles left free to run wild, as the cover photo shows. In that photo, the second from the right is the band’s undisputed "engine," a distinguished bass guitarist named Doug Kahan. Under his fingers, the Fender Precision generates a perfect funky rock groove on which everyone else can settle in comfortably.

As for favorite tracks, I’d primarily mention “Obsession,” with its bassline as simple as it is brilliant. Hard to choose, though… the album is very tight, sufficiently varied, always energetic and with almost no fillers. I’ll make an effort and also mention the opener “Streetgirl Named Desire,” again with the bass setting the tone and all five others funking and rocking around it, including two fine solos, first on sax and then on guitar.

It’s impossible not to tap your foot—or even shake your hips—to “Just Don’t Get It” once it’s turned up loud: it’s straightforward, irresistible funky rock, with lessons from pioneer James Brown exhumed and converted into Marshall-powered sauce, distorted guitars, and a drummer who hits hard. Same effect with “Get Up and Dance,” which says it all from the title, played flawlessly by all six members.

I wish I had hundreds of albums like this at home: lively and direct, genuine, tense but joyful, played by skilled and sober musicians. It’s really true that in Detroit, a city as grim as they come, rock has always been top-notch: Grand Funk, Rockets, Bob Seger… and also these obscure Dc Drive, to discover and own.