DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: 2025

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Jane Rose & the Deadends

Didn't Know the Devil

(Self-issued)

It's predictable: When Jane hauls off and lets fly a booming shout and her kick-ass allies give it all they've got, walls will quake and shingles will scatter. Heightening the group's appeal is an ability to take it down just a bit to render smoldering hypnosis. Don't mess with this if you can't handle the good stuff.

Recommended: "Lies," "Didn't Know the Devil," "Tuff Teddy Boy," "Jivin' Jim," "Gimme That Sugar," "Petty Betty," "Red Hot Mama," "Spaghetti Jane"

Videos: "Lies" "Jivin' Jim" (live, Viva Las Vegas 28) "Red Hot Mama"

Back in the day, 1959

Lloyd Price

The Exciting...

(ABC - Paramount)

From his 1940s church-choir brethren, to Ed Sullivan's 1960s TV audience, to 2014 Viva Las Vegas rockers, all who were fortunate enough to hear Lloyd knew he was of a voice golden. His debut LP showcased the man to be no less adept at "Stagger Lee" stomp as "What You Do To My Heart" aching romanticism. Difficult to grasp as it surely is for those aware of Lloyd's mastery, there are some today to whom his name rings strange. Their woe.

Recommended: "Stagger Lee," "I Wish Your Picture Was You," "Talking About Love," "What Do You Do To My Heart," "Mailman Blues," "Where Were You (on Our Wedding Day?), "Just Because"

Videos: "Stagger Lee" (live at Viva Las Vegas 14), "I Wish Your Picture Was You" "Mailman Blues" "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" (live w/Little Richard on TV, 1994)

Back in the Day, 2001

Andy G. and the Roller Kings

That Kings County Sound EP

(Sympathy For the Record Industry)

Brazenness bursts omnidirectionally, its cranked-to-the-extreme volume and headfirst dash appropriate to the splash of Rock'n'Roll orthodoxy that sparkles its vibrancy at the core of every kicking party. Big grins decorate mugs and shoe-leather scuffs at delightful speeds as sax and guitars raise up good ruckuses. The beat cannot be resisted. Rocking Pop gestures recalling transister radios and sidewalk surfing swing and bop with the welcome familiarity of old friends. Kids are even dancing on the roof.

Recommended: "My GTO," "Stay Awhile," "Summertime Girls," "Dance Last Night," "Feelin' So Good"

Videos: "My GTO" "Summertime Girls" "Dance Last Night"

Back in the Day, 1985

X Invaders

"Storm Boys" b/w "Lover Boy" single

(Pinner)

Early 1980s English juggernauts X Invaders did release full-length platter X Sessions, but it was not available for present review. This 45, though, proved sufficient for transporting this writer backward to a time and place in which neo-Rockabilly shouted with gleeful freshness and absolutely no regard for status quo strictures. The crisp style's creators sported natty glad rags and took razors to their heads. And X Invaders' amphetemine reading of classic moves spurred to feral footwork cooler members of their generation. Rock'n'Roll will always be.

Videos: promo "Storm Boys" "Lover Boy" "Out of Line" (unreleased track) "

Facebook

Discogs

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Handsome Dick Manitoba

Back On Broadway 7" vinyl EP

(Heavy Medication / Ghost Highway / Take the City)

It's clobberin' time.

Since 1975's The Dictators Go Girl Crazy (Epic) first perched on shop shelves, Handsome Dick has been the prototypical Punk band's global visage. Given those decades of branding, surviving members' current attempted relaunch without their storied frontman is as futile as would be a 'new' Stones without Sir Mick.

His 2019 solo debut, Born In the Bronx (Liberation Hall), heralded the larger-than-life, one-man power crisis's return in limber fettle. As affably bombastic as ever, he tossed off brash attitude with pipes undiminished by seasons; it was as if the seventies' wise-cracking Two Tub Man was again charging from a turnbuckle. Dynamic, metallic robustness raged at each turn. It was a colorful opus whose alternating textures and ambitions satiated.

As Back on Broadway attests, he is unmolested still by the calendar. Brusque and blasting. The wall-bouncing life of the party assembled an urban squad of formidable torpedoes. Frank Meyer (Streetwalkin' Cheetahs), Scotty Slam (Circus of Power), Michael Butler (Jetboy), and Craig Berhost (Two-Bit Thief) forge and maintain a hard-line propulsive force no counter could best. Chords crush, changes unspool with lightning-flash drama.

Notable, too, is his clever way with a lyrical pen. The sunglassed brawler can contrive swaggering japes with the finest on offer. Self-penned studio cuts "Back on Broadway" and "DeLuise Nation" split waxen turf with Dictators tune "Savage Beat" and "The Party Starts Now," a free-for-all from the Manitoba's Wild Kingdom era.

Handsome Dick's trophy-belt possession remains undisputed.

Recommended: "Back On Broadway," "The Party Starts Now" (live), "DeLuise Nation," "Savage Beat" (live)

Video: "DeLuise Nation" (live at Bowery Electric, 2021, w/saxophonist Arno Hecht. Song starts at 1:50)

Take the City Records

Bandcamp

Kid James

"Bewildered" single

(Wild Records)

As he recently evidenced at Viva Las Vegas, Kid James embodies all the flames and crazily hopping dervishness with which classical Rockabilly punched its way through 1950s' staid popular music ethos. "Bewildered" is a sterling stage for him to mount his talents. Throwing out lyrics in growls, jackhammer exclamations, and histrionic whoops, he attacks electrified strings in paroxysmal abandon that befits the flat-gone bop agitator he devastatingly is.

Video

Facebook

Discogs

Zabilly

"Mobilete" single

(Self-issued)

Issued in the afterdraft of Psycho killers like "Seca Sovaco" and "Acenei e Sorri," Zabilly's crispest barrels with soundly slapped double-bass in its proper upfront location. Of course, it's hardly alone: serpentine guitar strikes, skins battered insistently, and sneers en español proclaim their coarse virtues in 3:27 of ruggedness replete with gang shouts.

Video

Tommy Ellsworth and his Rockin' Jesters

The Hertz Sessions

(Self-issued)

These never-issued songs were put to tape in 1963. Tom Nazziola ("Tommy Ellsworth") led a combo through gracious turns that exemplied Rock'n'Roll in an evolutionary stage. Southern-spawned Rockabilly's rip-snorting defiance had by then conceded real-estate to more widely accessible tunefulness that bespoke the influence of Northern inclinations and lacquered crooning. As apparent here, such smooth gestures harbored their own especial magnetism.

Endeavors benefiting from majestic harmonies and genteel instrumentation predominate. They cast shine on Tom's personable vocals, ones for which no note exceeds grasp. Sporadic inclusion of uptempo, somewhat sterner jaunts points up resourcefulness.

Singer Nazziola's son Tom recently discovered the reel-to-reel masters in storage. And together with his brother Jay, Tom the younger has now made these available in CD and streaming formats.

Recommended: "Every Day I Have to Cry," "Raining in My Heart," "Little Town Flirt," "Charms," "Your Lips," "If I Had a Hammer," "Black and Blue," "The Right to Love," "True Love Ways," "If You Wanna Be Happy," "Take Good Care of My Baby," "Every Day I Have to Cry" (background vocals version)

Videos: "Every Day I Have to Cry" "Your Lips" "Take Good Care of My Baby" "Little Town Flirt"

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Guitar Slingers

Six String Bandit digital album

(Diablo Records)

Doyley just uploaded Guitar Slingers' 2010 second release to Bandcamp, for digital marketing. Within these grooves breathes the misbegotten issuance of Psycho and Punk having made Shakespeare's "beast with two backs." (Brisk Swing and Mex airs also thrust legs 'round the back-curtain, in striking cameos.) For happy lunatics, knowledge that Doyley stars is sufficient to mandate purchase. But the illustrious axeman/producer/label magnate was abetted by a slew of wicked co-conspirators: Names like Fantomas, Koefte, Daniel De Leon, and Nigel Lewis further spur wallet grabs. As those culpable despoil others' fabrications, electricity seethes with peculiar toxicity.

Recommended: "The Bandit," "Django Meets Bastardo," "Seven Deadly Sins," "Red Hot Rockin' Blues," "Don't Blame Me," "High Heel Sneakers," "Right Now," "Mexicali Baby," "Can't Catch Me," "Madame Oscar," "Bop a Lena," "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock Ya," "Momento Di Uccidere"

Videos: "Seven Deadly Sins" "Bop a Lena" "Mexicali Baby"

Facebook (Philip Doyle)

Instagram (Philip Doyle Music)

Diablo Records

Bandcamp

Discogs

Atomic Drifters

Atomic Man EP

(Self-issued)

Small wonder, that Viva Las Vegas 26 habitués tapped to this outfit's output; they and attendees were of one blood. Slouched Country disposition here imbues tunes whose jumped-up manners leave zero question about their rightness for that venue. Cowboy hats and cat music in hep symbiosis.

Recommended: "Atomic Man," "Come With Me," Devil In My Mirror"

Videos: "Atomic Man" "Come With Me" (live)

The Hammer Horrors

Creepy Cocktail

(Self-issued)

Delectable creepiness resounds off gray-stone walls, but that's only half the good news unveiled. The remainder is that the wretches who grabbed up angry instruments, having left shackles dangling, perpetrate strange savageries at once titillating and deleterious to moral being. If songs seem to pass quickly, that's because time flies when you're up to no good.

Recommended: "The Shape in the Shadows," "Tombstone Shuffle," "Creepy Cocktail," "Hot Bitch From Hell," "Friday Night Frightmare," "Every Dead Thing Needs a Hole," "Just Buried," "Bloodmobile," "Sundown In Bloodtown," "Beast"

Videos: "Tombstone Shuffle" "Just Buried" "Beast"

The Honkytonk Wranglers

Hangin' Around

(Swelltune Records)

In 1971, at 12 years old, I spent a weekend with a paternal uncle and his family. They lived in one of Iowa's tiny rural towns.

I was from a city. So, for me, country life was a different reality. Sunday meant all-day fundamentalist church, punctuated at noon by a houseful gathering. A table was loaded down with hot dogs, cold meats, breads, pop, and potato salad. A spirited throng gathered, dressed in church-going finery.

Roaming the rooms, I found a black-and-white 8x10 stashed on a bookshelf. It was a posed publicity shot, and depicted a country western-type combo complete with stand up bass, acoustic, electric, and steel guitars. They sported de rigueur cowboy attire: big hats, neckerchiefs, boots.

I didn't know the photo's vintage, nor did I recognize anyone featured. Some distant family members, perhaps -- ones who'd once dreamed vainly of celebrity? (Excerpted from the author's "Flesh Made Music.")

The Honkytonk Wranglers brought back that memory. They just played Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend, and the Country they genially offer - polished (as in professional), but never overly so - is the sort of rug-cutting affair home-folks can never get too plentifully.

Each hand present maintains cool poise. Whether arrangements call for pacific interpretation, or for all on deck to lean back and let loose with jaunty diversions, caliber of executive rank is consistently on tap.

They are too damn good to end up like the unknowns in that 8x10.

Recommended: "Hangin' Around," "Cryin' In the Deep Blue Sea," "Sunday Down In Tennessee," "Better Safe Than Sober," "Under the Influence of Love," "Much Too Young To Die," "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down," "There's Not Any Like You Left," "The Late and Great Me"

Video: "Hangin' Around" (live) "Better Safe Than Sober" (live) "Cryin' in the Deep Blue Sea"

Sunday, May 4, 2025

High Street

Welcome to High Street

(JLC Audio)

"We are currently releasing our album one song at a time for streaming, and the rest is available for purchase on our website," read the message sent me by High Street. (This reviewer was provided with confidential audio.) While putting songs to tape, group members trod the same Union Avenue studio floor as had giants. Arising amidst many spring-heeled ravers are a few reserved offerings that boast urbane harmonies and mannerly instrumentation.

Back in days when primordial Rock'n'Roll burst from blinking Wurlitzers, romps of identical spirit earned every cool kid's coins.

Recommended: "Little Emma," "Where is the Time?," "Call Me," "What's a Man Gotta Do," "Watching (With Those Eyes)," "High Street Hop," "Your Little Secret," "Doctor, I Don't Know What I Got"

Video: "Little Emma"

Rampires

Voodoo Queen four-track EP

(Ring Of Fire / Bat Rock)

Discogs observes this orgy of the dead is limited to 100 hand-numbered copies. Those digging it will find themselves in the crazy-stitched company of tiltedly barreling Psychos who know precisely how to evoke calamitous uproar, whilst evidencing musical bents only true horror-men harbor.

Steal into the nocturnal cemetery, put an ear to the grass, and witness sounds wraiths relish.

Recommended: "Voodoo Queen," "Calling Me a Monster," "Werewolf Priest," "Blood and Bones"

Videos: "Voodoo Queen" "Werewolf Priest"

Kieron McDonald

Because Of You 4-track EP

(Sleazy Records)

Australian finger-popper Kieron (the Flatfoot Shakers' founder) is possessed of pipes eminently suited to let's-get-loose bop. While cats at his back give out with snapped-tight shakings - prominent are Kid James' lapel-seizing guitar lines - Kieron dispatches lyrics with cool-daddy aplomb; consistently on the beam, the man plainly digs the melody cruise. And when's the last time anyone heard a Rockabilly Rebel name-check Dino?

Recommended: "Because of You," "All She Wants to hear is Dean Martin," "Exotic Woman," "At the Bop Hop"

Videos: "Because of You" "All She Wants to Hear Is Dean Martin" "At the Bop Hop"

Howlin' Ramblers

Shake It Around!

(Sleazy Records)

Harmonica colludes with beloved standard axes to throw out jump-stepped exertions. Blues and Country prove themselves of congruent bloods. Here rallies Rock'n'Roll of evergreen favor, the real kind that kicks forward naturally. To paraphrase the Treniers: "Rockin' is their business."

Recommended: "Shake It Around!," "Cachon River," "Itchy and Scratchy," "Devil On My Mind," "Sundown Calls," "Fate's Hand," "Love's Gone Cold," "Dressed In Black," "Hot Dog Man," "Whisky & Women"

Videos: "Chacon River" "Itchy and Scratchy" (live) "Fate's Hand" "Dressed In Black" (feat. Bettie P. footage)

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Ten Pin Rattlers

Read My Lips 3-track EP

(Sreaming Hyena Records)

To borrow a phrase: Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy. Two cuts arrayed here follow in the furrow etched by the group's previous knock-down, drag-out fare (like 2021's "Rodeo") - hell-bent-for-partying power-blasts with common-man waggishness. Such is their towerblock presence that turning down volume may prove impossible. Which is a good thing.

Bookended by those lusty eruptions is the measured and self-aware "Save Me." Evident here is that the body-slammers have sensitivity; their burliness is (somewhat) curtained off by profundity, yet still thrusts balled fists.

Recommended: "Big Sexy," "Save Me," "Give Me Back My Wig,"

Video: "Give Me Back My Wig"

The Fadeaways

s/t

(Groovie Records)

Perhaps a beneficent twister ripped from U.S. soil the 1960s garage in which combos like the Seeds, 13th Floor Elevators, and ? and the Mysterians stropped their insistent growlings, and replanted it in today's Land of the Rising Sun. Surly voicings strut atop the unstoppable force of drums, organ, and guitars, driving Go-Go obstreperousness in the strobed and trippy Middle-Finger discotheque.

Recommended: "1966," "Drive Me Wylde," "Favorite Time," "It's a Cryiny Shame," "How Many Times," "I'm Gonna Make It," "Going Away Baby, " "Ghosts In Me," "Mirror of Your Mind," "Psychotic Reaction"

Videos: "1966" "It's a Crying Shame" "Going Away Baby"

Brandon Wayne & his Lonesome Drifters

Shake the Barn single

(Self-issued)

In simpler eras, many-a slickered-up farmhand swirled his perfumed sweetheart to such plainly hewn musicalizing. Red barns that by hot days knew only Bessie and hay bales came alive on special nights. Calloused, sunburnt hands took up all manner of home-folks' stringed implements and produced lively country airs. Brandon and his pals make merry with exactly such gladdening romp, adding rollicking ivories and skins direct. More genuine purveyors of common-world magnificence cannot be cited.

Video

Ravagers

On the Loose

(Self-issued)

To this writer's mind, Metallic blast-force bombardments, though already often worth pursuit, are wrought most delectably when infused with the concussive ire only Punk can manifest. Now before us is a hot-wire example.

The instruments themselves bear no blame for the devastation perpetrated by their no-bullshit handlers. Having crafted airtight diatribes, the Baltimorians hurl them like bombs. Sneered vocals lend aptly raffish flourish.

A lieutenant tore free the printer dispatch. He ran to the chief's office.

"Chief! Chief!"

The grizzled 30-year veteran looked up from his paperwork. "Boy, you know better than to run in here..."

"I know, sorry!" The aide gulped for breath. "But this is BIG!"

The chief reclined. "Let me be the judge."

His hand shaking, the lieutenant handed over the dispatch.

"RAVAGERS?!" The chief nearly fell off his chair. "RAVAGERS ARE COMIN' HERE?!"

His shoulders slumped, the chief trudged to the window. "Real peaceful town, we used to have..."

Recommended: "Public Hell," "Razor Love," "Total Crime," "Dogs," "Poison Rite," "Night Of the Bastard," "Wicked Bones"

Videos: promo "Dogs" (official video) live (29:02)

Spaghetty Town Records

Vulture City Apparel

Amazon

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Bang Bang Betty & the H-Bombs

"Fatal Attraction" EP

(Trickster Music)

Class to the nines. Settling in is recherché Jazz mature enough to know how most efficaciously to dispense charms, yet so audacious as to raise up bold implications. An entrée into the Make-Believe Ballroom: Glasses clink, gowns sheath, and bow-tied wolves strategize.

Recommended: "Fatal Attraction," "That Mellow Saxophone," "Swingin' With You," "The Professor"

Videos: "Fatal Attraction" "That Mellow Saxophone" "The Professor" "

Lawn Dart Massacre

"Fight For That Life" "Waste of Time" "Salt and Paper Cuts" singles

(LDM Soundworks)

Presently germinating in Indianapolis's better environs, Lawn Dart Massacre have on offer a trio of economical numbers whose jaw-thrust dispositions comprise Punk and Ska. The Ska bobs trippingly, its Pied-Piper air summoning limber legs to muster, and rumbling Punk of the '90s sort skids its evergreen appeal. Propitious outings.

Videos: "Fight For That Life" (live) "Waste of Time" (live) "Salt and Paper Cuts" (live)

Sandbox Bullies

Chicken Roast

(Loaded Bomb Records)

The present writer has always found compelling the wit and muscle a-pulse in all worthy roots-grounded adventurings. Such is the gladsome case in these studio and gig cuts. A safe wager is that windows were broken during the making of these recordings.

Bashings are relentless. The same wildspark that fires these rambunctious song-missiles enjoyed electric animation in every bygone barrelhouse, secret lair, and after-hours joint that made possible this contemporary uproar. When kicks are raging, clocks are meaningless.

Recommended: "Make You Regret," "Can't Be Your Man," "Chicken Roast," "Cadillac Smile" (live), "Rock'n'Roll Woman" (live), "Let's Go" (live) "Life of Sin" (live)

Videos: "Make You Regret" "Can't Be Your Man" "Cadillac Smile"