DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: 2025

Sunday, December 7, 2025

The Essential Letdowns

Inferior Demise

(Self-issued)

Before the door closes behind them, The Essential Letdowns have torn into their set list and recorded longtime live favorites as a smirking fair-thee-well. "Hope ya enjoy it! Give it a chance, it's not so bad. You think you hate it now, wait 'til you hear it," read their recent Facebook missive.

Such dismal bannering is undue self-deprecation. Personnel changed through years (as is often true of volatile assemblages), but uproar remained constant. Raggedness endeared. The point was always the kicks inherent in assault - fuck niceties.

"Essentially letting society down since 2013." Again with the undue...

Recommended: "Shake and Die," "Rock'n'Roll Rascal," "Old Skool Ska," "Business in the Front - Party Rockin' in the Back," "Essentially Letdown"

Videos: "Shake and Die" (live) "Old Skool Ska" (live) "Business in the Front - Party Rockin' in the Back"

Philip Doyle

The Guv'nor - A Psychobilly Tribute

(Diablo Records)

Various aspects of Psycho's grim visage are portrayed by distemperous rabble, who pack implements of mayhem. Ireland-birthed Diablo mastermind Doyley lays claim to such an extensive offense log in that field, and his Frankenstein Monster-presence towers so augustly, that the fact of his association suffices to impel wallet grabs. There will breathe no regretful spenders.

Also available at Bandcamp: "[A]ll the new music Philip Doyle creates, including this release and 21 back-catalog releases, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android."

More: "Backstage, I will add unreleased demos, albums that won't be on Spotify, etc., and I will put one of my albums every week. Join monthly, and you can also cancel anytime. There is also a 10% discount."

Bonus: "The satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting me in a sustainable way."

Recommended: "Daddy is a Vampire" (Highliners), "Last House on the Left" (Doppelgangers), "Rockabilly Psychosis" (Spellbound), "Final Kick" (Moonshine Stalkers), "Don't Fuck Around with Me" (Clockwork Psycho), "Hotel in New Orleans" (Jack o' Bones), "Ride This Torpedo" (Guitar Slingers)

Videos: "Daddy is a Vampire" (Highliners) "Rockabilly Psychosis" (Spellbound) "Final Kick" (Moonshine Stalkers) "Don't Fuck Around with Me" (Clockwork Psycho)

Blisterhead

"Wake Up" single

(Sunny Bastards)

"But in our minds, we are blank!" declare Swedish bomb-chuckers Blisterhead, turning one's thoughts to Hell's 1977 "Blank Generation." The two may differ somewhat (Richard's nihilist anthem is dejectedly measured, while these fresh what's-the-point-of-it-all ponderers favor velocitous demolition, of a sort that smashes all surrounding to shards), but each flowered in a 'hood where denizens function without digging exactly why.

Full-length wax is in the offing.

Amazon (US)

Amazon (DE)

Apple

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Back in the Day, 1969

Steve Cropper

With a Little Help from My Friends

(Volt - US, Stax -UK)

In Jimmy Vaughn's phrasing: Six Strings Down.

Wednesday the third brought news that Steve Cropper had expired, departing in his 84th solar orbit.

Steve's deft stylings took him from the 1960s' Stax house band (Booker T and the MGs) - with whom he gilded way too numerous Soul/R&B gems for succinct enumeration - to recording and filming with Blues Brothers John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, to further global pinnacles unglimpsed by most.

A city cat and his country cousin slapped hands, threw their respective uptown blues and backroad bends into high-stepping frolic, and left for lucky us a plate piled high with tuneful savoriness.

By adding his writing faculty to the crafting of "Knock on Wood," "Soul Man," "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," "Green Onions," "In the Midnight Hour" and more, he ensured his shadow would forever hover above American popular music.

Here is where the legend began its journey. A wholly instrumental work, it trained the spotlight on the man's plectrum prowess - as was only proper. Steve's manner was both judicious and adventurous; he steadily intuited how best to traverse ambitious avenues, digging the soulful capacity alurk in every meaty passage.

A host of delights abounds. As ears are filled by sounds too cool for rules and too funky for button-down strictures, muscle memory may well answer the call, producing good-time limb gesticulations not viewed since Don Cornelius commenced the Soul Train Line. And Steve's own "The Way I Feel Tonight" is textbook belly rub stuff.

2023 witnessed an Omnivore Recordings vinyl rerelease. A digital, remastered and expanded version saw daylight in 2024.

If there be any sunshine piercing the dark cloud of a string master's sad demise, besides mourners enjoying works left behind, it is this: up-and-coming pickers can avail themselves of the inspirational example. The pick is passed. Such is the way.

Recommended: "Crop Dustin' "Land of 1000 Dances," "99 1/2," "Boo-Ga-Loo Down Broadway," "Funky Broadway," "With a Little Help from My Friends," "Oh Pretty Woman," "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water," "The Way I Feel Tonight," "In the Midnight Hour," "Rattlesnake"

Videos: "Crop Dustin'" "99 1/2" "Boo-Ga-Loo Down Broadway" "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water" "The Way I Feel Tonight"

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Facebook (Tributes and condolences may be posted here)

bandcamp (digital, expanded)

Amazon (Omnivore vinyl)

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Mental Shakedown

"Reno Neon Lights" / "Here Comes the Sound"

(Bop 'n' Destroy)

It's likely these firecrackers Bop the Blues in their sleep. Truer passions for the steadily moving, country/blues ripsnorter adherents hail as Rockabilly cannot be located. Dedicated to late drummer Burnout Bruno, these tunes teem with revered flashes and dynamite downbeats endemic to the style, as were first wrought by names now matters of lore. The single can be bought in any of six colors, 50 of each having been rendered.

By the moment your eyes scan these words, current drummer Stephan will have played his final Mental Shakedown show, in Berlin. Future days will tell who will terrorize skins in his stead. Fieriness will be a requisite.

Video promo

The Dusty 45s

Butterflies EP

(Sleazy Records)

Regardless of the style they take up - comfortably settled Rockabilly, het-up hijinx remindful of baggy-pants Vaudevillian carryings on, Bert Weeden's ethereal 1960 excursion, or Jazzy geniality accustomed to high-toned niteries - combo members turn hands ably. Poise walks hard and trumpet skedaddles merrily.

Recommended: "Simple Thing," "Butterflies," "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women"

Videos: "Simple Thing" "Butterflies" "Apache" "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women"

Raunchy!

"My Own Way of Rockin'" single

Countrified Rhythm and Blues full-length

(Sleazy Records)

In promotion of their approaching event, operators who engineer Spain's Screamin' Festival trumpet that Raunchy! offers "originals, sharp covers and a rhythm section that keeps strollers and shufflers locked in." To that sketch, I would add salt-of-earth vocals and guitar that knows well which foot-paths to take and how most entertainingly to navigate them. The Crazy Cavan cover shows precisely where members reside.

(Sharing the Screamin' bill will be the Delta Bombers, the Firebirds, Don Diego Trio, the Royal Flush, and numerous others. )

Recommended: "My Own Way of Rockin', "Big 5-0," "Flea Woman," "In Love," "Still as the Night," "I'm Walking," "Lulu"

Videos: "My Own Way of Rockin'" "Big 5-0" "Flea Woman" "Lulu"

Back in the Day, 2003

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

The Gospel of Blues

(Geffen)

Rock'n'Roll had no fixed starting point, gradually forming from disparate impulses. But resplendently enraptured Sister Rosetta was way back there: A guitar and voice so filled with Divine resonance as to shake away temporal trepidations, blending 1930s jazz, 1940s blues, and other rustic musical idioms into a new creature, delivering up a gospel-trimmed horn of plenty from which joyful belief spake. Only the faithful can rock like this.

Recommended: "This Train," "Sit Down," "Trouble in Mind," "Shout, Sister, Shout!," "God Don't Like It," "What is the Soul of Man?," "Singing in My Soul," "Strange Things Happening Every Day," "Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread," "Jonah," "Didn't It Rain," "The Natural Facts," "Down by the Riverside," "Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air"

Videos: "This Train" "God Don't Like It" "Strange Things Happening Every Day" "Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread" "Up Above My Head" (live)

Sunday, November 23, 2025

Rob Stoner

s/t

(Distributor: CDX Records)

Don McLean's 1971 radio staple "American Pie?" Rob was there. Later Robert Gordon and Bob Dylan recordings and road travels? Again, Rob was featured. Space constraints preclude exhaustive cataloging of many other high-visibility credits.

As this author's late guitarist brother Rick phrased it, Rob epitomizes music's backbone - players who don't adorn magazine spreads, but whose blue-ribbon capacities and indefatigable strivings make marquee personages sound so good.

This is Rob's third solo endeavor. (It follows 1980's Patriotic Duty and 1983's Sun Studios-waxed If You Want It Enough.) His personal compositions offer melodies and clever lyricism of executive bearing.

"Choo Choo Choo," "Let Daddy Drive," and "Your Own Heartbeat" were first glimpsed on Patriotic Duty. They rise as impressive, as do "Almost Like Being in Love," and "If I Get Home on Christmas Day."

Aside from individual smoothness, though, Rob has undertaken tony reiterations of American Pop's finest, the results being of sterling stock.

Microphone legends referenced include Ol' Blue Eyes, Guy Lombardo, Nat King Cole, Martini-swilling Deano, Vaughn Monroe, and Bing Crosby. (Nor are the King of Rock'n'Roll and the Wink Troubadour overlooked.)

Unfurled are swinging tunes that, during post WWII evenings, were background for night-spot lotharios long-legging their ways toward victory-rolled pulchritude. Falling in beside are more crisp romps that acquit themselves just as rewardingly.

It goes without remark that top-drawer melody/poetry partnerships demand vocal gifts their equal. The starring maestro is suited to the calling, finding no strain elusive, no note beyond grasp. Lush instrumentation flows determinedly; boldly present are guitar pacings, rhythm enforcers, sublime strings, and brass elegance straight from the fridge. Production sensitivity portrays all in beribboned majesty.

Grand Big Band material resurrected include jolly airs ("Winter Wonderland," "Santa Claus is Coming To Town") and romantic intimacies that doubtlessly led elder generations to produce successive ones. ("Fly Me To the Moon" and "You Make Me Feel So Young" are but two of that fashion.)

Like the man said, everything old is new again.

Recommended: "Fly Me To the Moon," "Street of Dreams," "You Make Me Feel So Young, "Almost Like Being in Love," "Should I Ever Love Again," "Winter Wonderland," "Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me," "Let It Snow," "If I Get Home on Christmas Day," "Seven Days," "Choo Choo Choo," "Let Daddy Drive," "Your Own Heartbeat," "It's Now or Never," "Oh Pretty Woman," "Viva Las Vegas," "Surrender," "Hurt," "Follow That Dream"

Videos: "Fly Me To the Moon" "Street of Dreams" "You Make Me Feel So Young" "Winter Wonderland" "Let It Snow" "If I Get Home on Christmas Day" "Choo Choo Choo" "Let Daddy Drive"

The Troubled

"Hated" single

(Self-issued)

Brace for bedlam: There comes a point where those beset by sustained abuse lose humanity's more pleasant aspects, and lash brutally against pretty much everyone and everything. (Such instinct also being inherent in our mortal condition.) "We're hated, and we don't give a fuck!" bellows the gutter-blast vocalist heading this snarled, Kyev-birthed Punk/Psychobilly smash-clap.

Video

Freddy Velas and the Silvertones

"Oh Rose Marie" single

(Vintjärn Records)

The present scribe reserves real estate in his heart for Doo Wop, the street-corner harmonizing that, in its halcyon phase, transported quotidian quartets to deserved renown. Italian Freddy Velas and pitch-perfect amicos are exactly the crew required to make present-day idioms draw back, that a vocal mode with enduring attraction can assume center spot. Their renderings are adroitness for the ears, populated by spot-on tones of pearly glow.

Video (live)

The Blasters

American Music

(Liberation Hall)

Among qualities shared between California's Blasters and inspirations like Rudy Toombs, Big Joe Turner, and Sonny Burgess is timelessness; matters so enriching never really fade. So widely and profusely ladled has been praise for the roots-rocking machine instigated by Alvin brothers Phil and Dave, that no laudatory adjectives have been neglected.

American Music was first marketed in 1980 by Rollin' Rock's shrewd impressario Ronny Weiser. (Hightone and Floating World reissues ensued.) The Alvins were joined by a rugged bass/drums unit membered by John Bazz and Bill Bateman. (Later personnel were piano man Gene Taylor, and saxophonists Lee Allen and Steve Berlin.)

The four wrought some of the New Wave moment's most true-blooded roots exertions. Within the richness of American Music howled common-folk declarations birthed in jukes, honky tonks, mountain regions, neon-lighted cities, and pastoral climes whose residents' hardscrabble realities were disclosed by the callouses on their hands.

Song crafter Dave Alvin once observed that, "paradoxically," the more personal a narrative be, the more universal its resonance. His five-star architectures rose upon territories where regular folks' musicalizing and perspectives lamented travails and made merry in ways peculiar to them.

The yet-thriving Blasters iteration boasts originals Phil, John, and Bill. Now lending six-string masteries is Keith Wyatt, whose deft demolitions have over years graced stagefronts, studios, and even esteemed instructional environs.

Recommended: "American Music," "Real Rock Drive," "I Don't Want To," "Marie Marie," "Flat Top Joint," "Never No More Blues," "Buzz Buzz Buzz"

Videos: "Real Rock Drive" "Flat Top Joint" "Buzz Buzz Buzz"

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Then

Now

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Carl Perkins

Some Things Never Change

(Sun Records)

Some 70 years have transpired since unpolished picker Carl staggered all creation with a sound too sprawling for bucolic containment. Before us spins fresh wax whose geniality, calloused-hands character, and unpretentious, good-times fruition affirm the title's aptness.

Spirited originals recall idiosyncratic persuasions; numbering among those are six-string flourishes that bespeak a Country/Blues amalgam that must be lived, and a comfortably grained voice as winkingly home-styled as the sharecropper in the next row, but possessed of singular tunefulness.

(Carl and associates also dispense wonderment via interpretations of others' works. Carl's erstwhile Sun confederate, the Man in Black, and John Hiatt turn up in varied garments.)

The determinate stomp of "Don'tcha Know I Love You" registers what could be considered a happy update of 1957 Perkins song "Movie Magg." The giddy suitor grew up, and his ardor swelled. (We were all pulling for him.)

I won't for one moment dispute the validity of Carl's recognition by numerous Halls of Fame, nor his Grammy statuary. He deserved official praise.

But of far more significance are the blazes he kindled in the hearts of kids who, though dirt-poor as he had once been, grabbed up guitars and became members of the Rockabilly culture: a go-getter sect drunk with ambition. Its missionaries danced in the streets over Carl's '90s reemergence, and the Rebel subculture will endure so long as folks dig fun.

"When I was a young lad, about all that I had, was an old guitar and rhythm in my soul," Carl sang. Purpose transcended hard luck life.

(Available digitally, on CD, and "blue-suede splatter" translucent vinyl.)

Recommended: "Baby, Bye Bye," "Don'tcha Know I Love You," "Memphis in the Meantime," "Messin' Around with Rock'n'Roll," "Some Things Never Change," "Miss Muddy," "Where Does Love Go," "Get Rhythm," "Heart of My Heart," "Baby, Bye Bye" (Jackson Demo)

Videos: "Baby, Bye Bye" "Don'tcha Know I Love You" "Messin' Around with Rock'n'Roll" "Where Does Love Go" "Heart of My Heart"

Stomper 98

s/t

(598 Records)

Righteous indignation swings knuckles. Mobs of shop-floor yobs, heads shaved and boots laced tightly, storm down boulevards as impassioned, anthemic Oi! pounds out its proclamations. This is the good fight, the crusade of the average man whose labors build things and turn economic gears. And barre chords bruise

(Misapprehensions fester in benighted quarters. This statement from the band's website slices away shit: "Stomper 98 see themselves as a working-class Skinhead band and sing about what's happening around them. We don't care about your skin color or your background. There's no room for racists or fascists here.")

Recommended: "Der Stachel im Arsch," "Erkennst Du dich Weider," "Auf Die Stimmen Einer Generation," "Deutschland im Chaos," "Alle Gegen Alle, Jeder Gagen Jeden," "25 Jahre," "Alex - Schatten der Nacht," "So Lange Her," "Achtundneunzig Nächte"

Videos: "Der Stachel im Arsch" "Erkennst Du dich Weider" "Alle Gegen Alle, Jeder Gagen Jeden" "Schatten der Nacht"

Pirates Press Records

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The Mighty Interceptors

scream if you wanna go faster EP

(Self-issued)

Methinks singing guitar-slinger McKinley Chadwick is the Mighty Interceptors (at least on this waxing), insomuch as he alone crafted all tunery, played each insttrument, and undertook mixing/mastering toils. (Sidemen being enlisted for gig/touring obligations, no doubt.)

Last October, a band Facebook missive hailed this disc as sounding "pretty darn evil," that high salute merited by the unveiled song sextet. "We're the Interceptors" kickstarts proceedings; besides foreshadowing rash energies ahead, it deftly acquits itself as one of the bygone safety-pin contingent's more obstreperous progeny.

While Punk helter-skelteredness curls its lip throughout, it revels with co-conspirators of brusque Psycho and Garage tempers. The abruptly torn-off solo of the title cut, if heard on a car radio, might cause drivers to jerk upright and veer into oncomers.

Recommended: "We're the Interceptors," "Alien Rock'n'Roll," "Evil Woman," "Scream if You Wanna Go Faster"

No videos for the new disc are available. Previous live clips are here, here, and here.

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Korpiklaani

Rankarumpu

(Nuclear Blast Records)

To virginal speculators, Folk Metal may seem a curious entity. But its magnetism overwhelms all qualms. Hard-crunching bombardments meld with fetching airs of Euro vintage, seeking - and securing - ears weary of stasis and attentive to fresh ambitions. Peculiar spice, tittilating to wayfarers, all. (My wife's ruling: "They're on it!")

Recommended: "Kotomaa," "Aita," "Saunaan," "Mettään," "Kalmisto," "No perkele," "Nouse," "Orrakkelit"

Videos: "Kotomaa" (live) "Aita" "Mettään" "Orrakkelit"

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Nuclear Blast Records (Finland)

Nuclear Blast Records (US)

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Angela Hoodoo

Outlaw Girls

(Sleazy Records)

Hats sported by Angela include introspective truth-teller and gladsome dust-kicker. She models each stylishly, as engaging Country players of fine measure do their genre forebears proud. (Nicolás Huguenin, Carlos Jiménez, Frank Mora, Nahum Canoura, and Raúl Bernal are in the kitchen.) As is of paramount significance for ensemble denim minstrels, they mesh without apparent seams and raise up sounds sterling. The starring lady's singing, all the while, traverses the passion spectrum, beflowering the project with unique disposition.

(Somewhere far o'er head, Loretta nods.)

Recommended: "Outlaw Girls," "I've Got Soul for My Enemies," "Snakes in My Head," "Don't Get Into Trouble," "Wild Horse," "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven"

Videos: "Outlaw Girls" "Snakes in My Head" (live) "Wild Horse"

Dee Dee and the Bel Airs

Moonshine Recording Session

(Hydra Records)

Jive is giggle juice that motorizes.

Per Original Product, Dee Dee and his audacious ensemble's 1980s animation included tearing into Rockabilly festivals alongside Gene, Carl, Haley's Comets, Tommy Sands, Wanda, and Frankie Ford.

The following decade, the combo heeded Curly's exhortation to "Swing it!" (Mama didn't allow no scat 'round there, but the galluses-snapping slickers succumbed to hot'n'cold temptation.)

Today, they're wringing every possible excitement drop from Jump Blues fabric. Risque finger-curls, strapping sounds bolstered by brass and ivory struttings, and scarlet 'tudes splay up, across, and all around the ballroom. Hepification gonna get you.

Dee Dee's vocal-chord perpetrations - sometimes laid-back, in other moments, jumpin' for joyfulness - bring to mind marvelous sides of yore waxed at Syd Nathan's Ohio King label. And the Harmony Five are just plain homicidal, in the finest of all possible fashions.

Smoke pours from dancing shoes sported by slick cats who squire frails before the rostrum, to the flabbergastation of absolutely no one.

Recommended: "Do You Wanna Be My Baby," "Beauty Parlor Gossip," "Hot Pot Boogie," "Hot'n'Cold Seek," "Don't Know Where She Went," "Sway," "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie," "Mellow Saxophone," "Sh-Boom"

Videos: "Do You Wanna Be My Baby" (live) "Beauty Parlor Gossip" (1/2) "Hot Pot Boogie" (live 1:13 excerpt) "Sh-Boom"

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