Furious
"Wash My Hands Of You" b/w "Hold My Heart"
(The state51 Conspiracy)
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"Hold My Heart" is gently melodic, a sentimental tale set to strummed acoustic. But know that the A-side is where the action is - a straight-up raver with sax and piano fortification. To hear is to gladly surrender. Furious never disappoint.
Video: "Wash My Hands"
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Rusti Steel & the Star Tones
Hey DJ! It's...
(Western Star)
Hear that Western Swing has its particular way of rockin', with immaculately toned guitar and melodious crooning. Elegant regular-folks ambiance, in which all are welcome. A good time will be had by all at the barn dance, tonight.
Recommended: "Hey DJ!," "You Move Me," "Wise In Their Own Eyes," "I Like It Like That," "I'm a Rocker," "I Lost My Cool," "Dance Baby Dance," "Let's Rock (C'mon Roll)," "I Ain't Lookin' For a Fight"
Video: "You Move Me"
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Mick Wigfall & the Toxics
Hot Legs
(Gypsy Rose)
Loud and proud, like Rock'n'Roll should always be. And strutting and swaggering, into the bargain. Mick tosses off lyrics with brusque cheek and slaps his doghouse senseless, while his two confederates easily complement the tumult. A grittier exercise may exist, but this writer hasn't heard it.
Recommended: "Up Jumped the Devil," "Hot Legs," "Money Man," "Bird Dogging"
Video: "Up Jumped the Devil"
Eightball Boppers
Engsele Gén Engels!
(SBB Records)
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It quickly becomes obvious that the only thing this combo cares about is its crackerjack approach to rocking. And when this side is spinning, that's all you'll care about, too. No stomping or pretensions to profundity, just old-style fun and much of it.
Recommended: "'t Huus Stũt Te Shudde," "Vier Daag Te Voet," "Vulste Hoog," "Vuulde'ou Te Gruts," "D'n Tandarts"
Video: "Vier Daag Te Voet"
Dex Romweber
Good Thing Going
single
(Propeller Sound Recordings)
This latest wax finds a matured Dex enjoying the benefits of sweeping background harmonies and lush (but not overly so) production. There is much good to be got from punched-up horns, as we learn. Every instrument acts in conjunction with all others to advance the ambitious arrangement to splendid fruition.
Video: "Good Thing Going"
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Left Hand Lewis
Rockabilly Boogie
(Independent)
Recommended: "The Worryin' Kind," "Shake It Up," "Baby Let's Play House," "The House Is A-Rockin'," "Go 'Way Hound Dog," "Black Slacks," "Rockabilly Boogie"
Video: Rockabilly Showreel
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Generador
Cuesta abajo
4-track EP
(Snap!! Records)
In a moonlit garage, two fun-fraught souls churn a melange of fuzzy punk. Imagine wigged-out bone-monsters doing the frug beneath multi-colored strobes. One recalls the Cramps, at moments, though the overall efect is singularly stimulative.
Recommended: "Voy Cuesta Abajo," "El Sueño De Los Muertas," "Cementerio De La Almudena," "No Me Consigues Divertir"
Video: "Voy Cuesta Abajo"
Still Cursed
Album 4
(Independent)
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Spongy and efferfescent pop that elates as it enlivens. More than a few inhibitions will be eagerly cast away to these fizzy sounds. More than sufficient to make dancers from wallflowers.
Recommended: "Grow Up," "Planet B," "Havana," "Born To Die," "I Wanna Have Fun"
Video: "Grow Up"
Back In the Day, 2010
Viktor Huganet & His Band
Come Back Train
(Big Beat Records)
Recommended: "Mystery Train," "Rock Around With Ollie Vee," "Pink Thunderbird," "School Of Rock'n'Roll," "Baby Blue Eyes," "Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie"
Video: "School Of Rock'n'Roll"
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Sickhausen
Other Worlds 3-song EP
(Independent)
The compulsion that fired young Elvis, nascent Stones, the Ramones, and Sex Pistols imbues this amphetemine disc. We hail it as the ageless spirit of real rock'n'roll, and it's a huffing powerhouse in 2023. Next? As the Vibrators sang: "Into the Future."
Recommended: "Other Worlds," "Same Shoes," "Hoodrat Hooligans"
Video: live
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Back In the Day, 1999
Twistin' Tarantulas
Welcome To Our Underworld
(P-Man Records)
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The puissant Twistin' Tarantulas have seen several line-up changes, but leader "Pistol" Pete Mitgard always stands tall at the center. Here hurtled adamantium bluntness urged on by a swinging backbeat.
Recommended: "Welcome To Our Underworld," "Two Dogs In the Street," "Ballad Of the Midnight Ballerina," "Roughneck," "Hurricane Love," "Barroom Confidential," "In the Arena," "Kiss thee Ring of 'The Man'"
Video: Majority of LP
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Back In the Day, 2001
Hillbilly Hellcats
Our Brand
(Rockin' Cat Records)
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Founded in 1993 by Lance Bakemeyer and Chuck Hughes. The Hillbilly Hellcats craft tunes that join stalwart rocking (and country) with acidic, humorous commentary on the scene and its dogmatic denizens. (If you can't laugh at yourself...) Clever self-awareness to which dancers exult.
Besides, what musician can't relate to "I Never Thought?" Chuck emailed me the band recently played Florida shows.
Recommended: "Road Rage," "Everybody There Was Drinkin' Martinis But Me," "Hillbilly Love," "Train To Nowhere," "Cats Like Us," "I Never Thought," "The Roadkill Cafe," "Ghost Train," "That's Not Rockabilly," "There Better Be Some Drinkin'," "I'm Leavin' Colorado," "Hot Rockin' Rhythm"
Video: "I Never Thought"
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Zombie Jamboree
Gadjo Boogie
(Wolverine Records)
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No sooner had I concluded this would be an issueless day, than this came over the transom. And happy I am, too. For this LP/digital release contains enough slap to energize whole cities, plus easeful country of a melodically harmonious sort. A vivacious outing, and a tuneful one.
Recommended: "I'm Gonna Let You Cry," "Pick a Bale a Day," "Gadjo Boogie," "Cotton Field," "When I Play the Rock"
Video: live
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Anth Purdy
Furious
(Independent)
A high sheen of suavity glosses instrumentalist Anth's work. His labyrinthine compositions, and flammable realizations of same, loom formidably as debonair passages. He swings an axe in the master rank.
Recommended: "Furious," "Black Dahlia," "The Crazy 88," "The Cat's Gone Crazy," "Nightwalk," "65 Boogie," "The V," "The Spy Of Marrakech," "Surf's Up," "Welcome To the Thunderdome," "When the Lights Go Down"
Video: "Nightwalk" (live)
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Johnny Bach and the Moonshine Boozers
Bachin' Mad
(Atomic Cowboy)
'Johnny Bach' is actually John Lewis, and he's abetted here by Darrel Higham. Which communicates that this is wildcat rocking not to be overlooked come purchase day.
Recommended: "Hey Porter," "Stranger Blues," "Sam Hall," "Bopping the Blues"
Video: "Boppin' the Blues" (live)
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Ruby and the Mystery Cats
Rhythm & Booze
(Independent)
Palpable in chestnut revisitations is genuine affection for the source material, a quality shared by group and audience. And that readings are uniformly scintllating advances the mission. Vivid and vigorous.
Recommended: "Tear It Up," "Fujiyama Mama," "Flying Saucer Rock'n',Roll" "40 Cups Of Coffee," "A Little Mixed Up," "One More Time," "Bloodshot Eyes," "Hit, Git & Split," "Tough Lover," "Brand New Cadillac," "Girl's Gone Rockin'"
Video: "Flying Saucer Rock'n'Roll" (live)
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Marty and the Psych Oligie Arkestra
Born To Be Mind
(Mellow Records)
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At first listen, one is impressed by lo-fi sound quality and deliberate sparseness. Then sophistication rings in. This blues-bathed presentation offers much to those tolerant of relaxed exercises. Prepare for guitar pyrotechnics.
Recommended: "Rock Me Mama," "It's a Man Down There," "Victim of Circumstances," "Tattle Tale"
Video: "Tattle Tale"
Rock'n'roll necessary in PC 2023
by DC Larson
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There is a foolish conceit holding that, as societal wrongs were once sanctioned by laws and customs, absolutely everything of their eras is similarly deserving of rejection.
By that tilted fancy, past artistic expression has no greater moral validity than separate drinking fountains.
1950s rock'n'roll represented a social unity that voices of divisiveness, including Jim Crow-allegiant officials, viewed as threatening to an illusory order made possible by strictly enforced segregation.
Young men who would help birth the music drew upon country airs of rural America that were rooted in European forms, as well as blues and jazz idioms that enlivened the nation. Over time, as ecstatic mongrel blends emerged in countless juke joints, honky tonks, and shoestring recording endeavors, rock'n'roll came into brash being. And the world was forever bettered.
But that unplanned nascency was only possible because of musicians' and audiences' broadminded attitudes of cultural appreciation and openness to creative cross-pollination.
(By the way, I refer to real rock'n'roll -- think Elvis and Chuck Berry -- not contemporary, corporate-processed pop and rap products. Too often, the latter reinforce separatism; real rock'n'roll constitutes a challenge to them and their values.)
With its varied bloodlines and conduciveness to brotherhood, rock'n'roll is as needed in these times as when Ike put up feet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
And those who now argue against it sound like the racist idiots of old.
Present PC days are inhospitable to blending styles, but with a twist. Whereas in 1952, for instance, it was the forces of established manners that decried looming integration, it is today a fresh generation who would stand against artistic unity.
Traditionally, the ideal was oneness, unity, 'E pluribus unum' - from many, one. Now, everyone is divided into identity groups, each with its own hyphen, organizations, spokesmen, fraternities, political ambitions, and exclusive social circles.
And art. Consider the concept of "cultural appropriation." This imagining holds that every cultural expression is the sole property of the community in which it germinated, and that for outsiders to include it to any degree in their own work is immoral and illegitimate, constituting colonialist plunder.
That mindset would decry multi-sourced rock'n'roll just as did the hooded cretins of decades past. It was detailed by one anonymous online poster:
"Cultural appropriation is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group, especially if the adoption is of an oppressed people's cultural elements by members of the dominant culture...This is often seen in the use by cultural outsiders of a minority, oppressed culture's symbols or other cultural elements, such as music, dance, spiritual ceremonies, modes of dress, speech, and social behavior, among other cultural expressions."
The philosophy propounded is plainly no more tolerant than was the 1950s orthodoxy that reviled rock'n'roll. And it is at odds with the notion of equality.
Whether rock'n'roll's birth could occur now, when segregation is again the fashion, separateness the ambition, and creative openness is vilified as theft, is an open question.
In PC 2023, rock'n'roll remains rebel music.
Waterloo, Iowa writer DC Larson counts among credits Goldmine, Rockabilly Magazine, No Depression, and Blue Suede News.
James Intveld
Let's Talk It Out
single
(Independent)
Hearts in turmoil being a common real-country theme, James explores one iteration. His take holds no unanticipated jolts. Instead, it offers a plain-spoken narrative that manages handily to entertain as it wends its path. Instrumentation and production are conducive, unobtrusively advocating for the swinging whole.
Video: "Let's Talk It Out"
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Gun Saloon Especial
Jungle Rhythms
(Independent)
Loud and brutal chords take paths unexpected. These men beat their instruments, and that targeted abuse is a marvel to witness. But it's hardly unfocused bombast; each barrage is guided by judiciousness.
Recommended: "Zombie Love," "Zulu Rock," "Voodoo Doll," "Sailor Song," "When Women Come Around Me," "Space Invaders," "Cherokees," "Jungle Rhythm"
Video: "When Women Come Around Me"
Dave Del Monte and the Cross County Boys
Slaphappy!
(Independent)
Dave's presentations benefit from homespun demeanor and comfortable guitar enunciations. A prolific tune scribe, he excels at highlighting real-life phenomena others might overlook as they angle for Big Issues. He's now compiled his wittiest singles on one disc. And a sterling compendium it is, too.
Recommended: "Road Ragin' Mama," "Bald-Headed Daddy," "One Dark Day," "Sloppy Jalopy," "The Cow Jumped Over the Moon," "My Heart's In the Gutter," "Can't Stop Buying Records," "Well!!," "Hunker In My Bunker"
Video: live
Emma Mattucci
Mind and Heart
(CIRO Records)
You may not know sprightly effervescence can be delivered with an ingenuous country backbeat. But, oh boy, can it.
Recommended: "Mind and Heart," "Datin'," "Lookout Heart," "Candy Kisses," "Hey Daddy," "One More Year To Go," "Teenager In Love," "Jealous Guy"
Video: "Lookout Heart"
The Bop Kings
Eponymously titled
(Independent)
Sometimes, simplicity is appropriate. But it's also difficult to pull off successfully. Without the obfuscation afforded by involved arrangements and instrumental busyness, weakness can be apparent.
Paradoxically, then, winning simplicity is hardest to realize. More so than its opposite.
It can be located on this disc. Tuneful and affable picking place it solidly in the country bop column. The narratives range from defiantly optimistic to pensive, but the music always carries on. Good-times and plenty of them.
Sometimes, simplicity is appropriate.
Recommended: "Clouds and Silver Linings," "Blue Moon Bop," "'59 Black Cadillac," "Stay Late Daddy," "I Should Have Left You," "Faded Jeans," "Fool With the Blues"
Video: "'59 Black Cadillac"
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Killer Tone Jones
Pure Blossom From a Bad Seed
(Independent)
Reel in aghast wonderment as unearthly ostinatos, reverberated soundscapes, and eerie voodoo tattoos stain the dank night air. Behold creatures revelling in scarlet abandon. Fall in alongside them, your essence writhing to the pulse...
Joe evinces great adventurousness as he explores the limits of uncanny compositions. His creative notions intrigue.
Recommended: "The Phantom Planet" "Roadkill," "Boom Boom Burlesque," "Red Snow," "Short Drop Rope"
Video: "Boom Boom Burlesque"
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