She's Allman

We were probably among the happy few to have obtained a fix of rock without serious hassle last night.The snow, which proved such a boon for c-list Long Island TV reporters, and made the Suffolk County Chief Executive sound so super-badass ("This is a State of Emergency. Stay in your homes. Sag Harbour belongs to the Hunta now"), crimped our movements a tad. There was a poor lady outside our window in a rear-wheel drive Jaguar that spent several hours trying to get out of the snow, and exhausted the patience of numerous helpful passers-by.

Now we're fairly sure that while your fancy Manhattan streets are clean, we're still taking a while to get ourselves accessible, and Brooklyn can stay snarled up for quite a while. Fortunately, the rock was a very short trudge round the corner at Southpaw. They were having some kind of second-tier Detroit band night, which in our book is more than enough reason to displace the The Rub.

We got there in the middle of Wide Right's set, during a burst of enthusiasm in an otherwsie sludgy performance. We'd hate to say it, but we think that these "Rust Belt" power-poppers might be inbibing too much metal. You heard it here first. No excuse for the guys round the pool table to keep poking her in the back with the cue afterwards, though. Not really from Detroit.

The Everyothers were much more focused, had a properly skinny and wide-eyed singer, and some riffage. They say they're comfortable being compared to Tony Visconti-era Bowie, but we don't think they're really shiny and metalic enough. The Von Bondies are still much more likely to mutate into Duran Duran. Not remotely from Detroit. The Bowie reference included.

The Detroit Cobras are mostly from Detroit, and specialise in cranking out souped up 60s and Motown covers. We had been pitching them as "Cher fronting the White Stripes" to anyone who fancied a trudge down Fifth Avenue, and if we persist in spouting fatuous nonsense like that it's a miracle that anyone goes to a gig with us at all. The Cher link we think comes from her marriage to Gregg Allman, and we can hear a bit of them in here.

It's these hairy boogie merchants lurking in the background while Rachel Nagy croons and stomps her way through the songs. Not a lot of Cher there, truth be told. The people who want to compare her to Janis Joplin have much more of a point. Although we don't hink she was toting a whiskey and ham onstage, though. It's awesome background music, and when you get bored of nodding, and after a couple of the cheap Rheingolds, you can dance like an idiot with your companion. Yeah! It does get a tad annoying to listen her "come on get up and party" schtick, especially when it's the music's job to do that. Behavior like that earned the Cobras an ass-kicking when they double headlined with the Dirtbombs a while back. But we were much more impressed this time.

Anyway, time to get out of bed - there's some sleddin' to do.