Machine Gun Blues

“Combining the forces of ’60s R & B and Murder City Sleaze, Machine Gun Blues won’t be accused of artsiness, understatement or good manners."

-John La Briola, Westword

The singer’s dirty fingers peel a flimsy t-shirt—glossed yellow from sweat and beer—off his back while the audience pretends to disperse after the most recent Machine Gun Blues show at Bender’s Tavern in Denver, Colorado. Maybe nobody’s noticed the thin rivulets of blood beginning to run down the singer’s back. Or maybe they’re hoping that MGB will keep burning more of its exhaustive, visceral energy. Delivered in part by the shaking lighting rig overhead (easy access for any dedicated frontman who’s willing to crawl on the catwalk and belt out a song while he hangs over the stage by his knees) and by the unrelenting sound of sex set to convulsive bass, organ, and guitar, the Machine Gun Blues’ music gets to the point as quickly as its graphically humble Myspace page gets to the band’s philosophy: “Beer soaked, ground licking, shameless rock… we work our asses off to bleed onstage.” Literally.

Claiming that they only “know how to drink and how to play music… and that’s it,” the Machine Gun Blues’ naively self-destructive attitude correlates with its sonic reminiscence of blues mashed with rock and roll—a sound hailing from ’60s British R&B—and with behavior immortalized by anyone willing to toss a television set out of a hotel window. In its infancy, MGB already battled debate regarding a loudly publicized, yet minimally fact-based, “bulldozer incident.” Undebatable incidents run the gamut from pissing their pants in a local bar to falling off apartments buildings and waterfalls. However, this band’s not out to epitomize 1976, as proven by MGB’s ability to engage audiences when sharing a stage with acts such as Mudhoney, the BellRays, the Giraffes, the Von Bondies, Atomic Bitchwax, and John Wilkes Booze.

Despite a reputation for glorious chaos, MGB’s musicianship is what propelled the band from the stage’s spotlight into the critics’ spotlight, where they exceeded all expectations. In 2006, MGB ranked in the Top 20 out of 306 bands in The Denver Post’s Colorado’s Best Underground Bands. 2006 also marked the release of the band’s first EP (self-titled, Not Bad Records), a project that “[was] in the works for almost a year, held up by perpetual revisions and perfectionism as the group evolves even further into a seething, punk-injected bastardization of the Spencer Davis Group” (Jason Heller, Westword).

So, how does a band with only one four-song EP and no discernable marketing approach become one of the most-watched bands in a continually burgeoning urban music scene? It’s simple: When you hear the Machine Gun Blues, you think, ‘Oh… this is rock and roll. My daddy told me about it, but I never really knew.’ Combining technicality with sheer ballsiness, MGB calls to our primordial understanding of the meaning of rock.

They’ll piss you off, make you want to lick the ground, hang out, fight, drink, and smoke with them.

And you’ll love them for it.