BITS OF SOUND: Duende!'s Jeff Howitt on The Shivas live at Jumbo's Detroit

Bits of Sound is an ongoing music review column 

written by alternating local musicians from the Motor City.

This week is Jeff Howitt of DUENDE!

covering the band The Shivas live at Jumbo's Detroit.

I've known quite a few people who have lived in both Oregon and Michigan and climate wise felt pretty natural between the two. If you come to the Mitten or more specifically Detroit or it's Metro areas you probably have the Stooges on your mind at least or want to drive by the Motown Museum or if you saw the new Jarmusch film ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE want to drive by the boyhood home of Jack White. Hipper people might track down the Myth of The Stooges Wax Museum or go to the corner of 12th (now Rosa Parks) and Clairmount where the Blind Pig raid was that started the '67 Riots or Or OR…

If you were visiting the Northwest and all it's traversable cultural isolation that brought you The Sonics, The Wailers and the Barefoot Bandit himself, Colton Harris-Moore, you may have slightly more macabre and moody stops beyond muddy banks, Space Needles and the near Ghost Town that holds the set of Northern Exposure. I know I'd have to go to Olympia's K RECORDS and buy everybody lunch. If you have been listening to INDIE ROCK inside the last twenty years you may have heard of Beat Happening, The Make Up, Calvin himself  and all his sonic exaggerations and now The Shivas who hail from Portland, Oregon. They have plenty of Psyche bombast and driving melodic chaos as much as they draw from early 50's Rock 'n' Roll and with beautiful minimalism abandon cakewalk into town/onto the stage.

Sunday Night Life in any town can be difficult. When I booked at Corktown Tavern Jay Reatard played a Sunday to little more than a handful of die hard music fans but he was passing through and needed the gig. Tonight was a little like that and to The Shivas credit as powerfully performed. If any band knows anything in Detroit they all know that it's mostly bands coming to the off nights and out of the way venues. Not that Jumbo's is that unheard of but it is one of those spots that you just have to know about. With new stages simmering up at Trinosophes and UFO Factory we can only hope that the people bringing these bands in on, well, a Sunday Night, in a town that goes out every other night of the week, start to do more than build it and hope that the public will come.

Definitely check out The Shivas wherever you may find them. As tonight proved, it may not seem like the right place or time but that is when the shit really starts happening so GET WITH IT.