DVD Review – I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House

Take a man’s pluck, his moxy, his raw, unfettered anger at life, then concentrate it, purify it, and personify it into a root’s-based rock n’ roll outfit, and what you get is Portland, Oregon’s I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House. They exist in the essence of the id. They are rowdy, bawdy, opinionated to a fault, arrogant as a rule, in your face, and unapologetic. That little part of all of us that is buried deep inside, that just wants to fly off the handle and tell the whole world to fuck off, that’s this band’s muse, and their commodity.

Any good band will always be better live, but when when you come out swinging like I Can Lick Any SOB, this rule of thumb gets magnified. Only appropriate then that they release a DVD that accurately captures the rawness and energy of the live experience, and that is exactly what they’ve done with the help of Nick “Ginger” Lindsay of No Brow Productions. Recorded on June 16th, 2010 at Seattle’s famous Tractor Tavern, it is 45 in-your-face, hard-grooving, high-energy, chest pounding, hair-flinging minutes that include many many words of the four letter persuasion.

The injection of politics and religion into music is usually a no no for me, but when the targets are so indiscriminate, the anger so unchecked, and the message so undeniable from its rawness and universality, it becomes more about the anger than the message. And normally a band this miffed would don guitars whose shapes are inspired by spider web’s and growl into the mic to the point of incoherence while double bass pounds your skull into submission. But I Can Lick Any SOB keeps it simple. It’s everyman music from a blue collar band, and the harmonica and groove make the music rabidly infectious.

The music nerd in me would have maybe enjoyed maybe some interviews or background on the band added to this DVD, but the point was to capture the fist-swinging rawness of I Can Lick Any SOB, and it does so to the point where you’re out of your seat, off the couch, trying to avoid the coffee table as you’re moving around like you were there in person.

Two guns up!

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I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House – Live In Seattle is available from CD Baby.

The audio only can also be purchased from Bandcamp, or listened to in its entirety below.

(Caution: Many dirty little words)

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