One of staples of the Detroit garage rock scene has always been the Detroit Cobras. The femme fatal combo of Rachel Nagy on vocals and Mary Ramirez on guitar have been rocking the scene with a regular rotating cast of Detroit players since at least 1995. The band was founded by Steve Shaw (The Fondas) and Jeff Meir (Rocket 455) as a cover band to play forgotten rare R&B hits cherry picked from their extensive record collection. At some point the band broke up and reformed later without the founding members, but the original formula stuck and the band has just gotten better and better since.

This particular song, “Bad Girl” is a cover of The Oblivions’ tune “Bad Boy” with the obvious lyric change. I have to admit that it took me a lot of Cobras shows to get one that both looked and sounded this good. Their live shows that I witnessed from 2001-2006 in Detroit seemed to be hit or miss depending on Rachel’s mood that night or the particular line up. This show was just perfect on both accounts featuring Steve Nawara (Electric Six, Rocket 455) on bass, Kenny Tudrick (Rocket 455) on drums, and Joe Mazzola on lead guitar. Rachel seems like she genuinely wants to be there and puts on a great show, proving to us why she earns her diva status.

I could have done without the strobe light, which Mary brought that night. I give them credit for trying something new, but it ended up just messing with my auto focus. Antal Zambo was on second camera near the mixing board on a tripod. The room was so loud that the camera shook a lot if he wasn’t holding it down. I managed to cut around it, though. I hope you enjoy the first of a series of great videos taken from our ICFD archive.

James