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.

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Copasetic Mailorder

BeBe's Records

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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"

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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"

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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)

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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"

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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. 

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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.

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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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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"

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Darkside Records

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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"   

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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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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"

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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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Mike Badger

Devils Ghosts & Firearms

(Nine x Nine)

Hours spent listening as mavens of the first order exercise merit are never squandered. 

To fully appreciate Mike's efforts, one does best by beginning with the final, title track. It's an expansive, Americana projection through churned intensity, one in which the La's co-creator holds forth with literate courage. Pop traces peek, and are of the ripened sort. Tracks like "Ghost in This Machine," "Growing Old So Gracefully," and "Dark Side of the Mountain" share the titular composition's mature voice and moving construction.

"Shoot Me in the Head" and "Cudda Wudda Shulda" ably illustrate Mike's higher-gear inclination. Both are Rockabilly rousers with pronounced Country swayings that endear. "Keep 'em Busy" is another raver; Perry Bradford's estate might enquire after credit. (Which isn't a knock; all traddish neo-rockers summon comparisons. And there's nothing illegitimate about adding one's own imprint to preceding forms.)

Accord this due respect by placing it on a high shelf.

Recommended: "Ghost in This Machine," "Wolfman," "Shoot Me in the Head," "How the Hell it Come to This," "Keep 'em Busy," "Dark Side of the Mountain," "Cudda Wudda Shudda," "Half Bottle of Whisky," "Devils Ghosts and Firearms"

Videos: "Ghost in This Machine"   "Wolfman"   "Shoot Me in the Head (If I Ever Become One of Them"    "Keep 'em Busy" 

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fornhorst

Verbiegen is' nicht! (Bending is Not)

(Self-issued)

As in "not an option." A 3:00 manifesto in which Deutschland pugilists aver determination to maintain posture, no matter the oppostional forces arrayed. Their stance is proclaimed against an unstoppable, bare-knuckled Punk barrage. Chorded militancy that scares off adversaries. What's the Rock'n'Roll equivalent of Hungry Man Dinners? This.

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Sidebürns

"Not What Used to Be"   single

(Self-issued)

“I didn’t want to sugarcoat it. It’s about emotional captivity – and the moment you finally get to breathe again,” was the portrait daubed by German-trio pathbreaker Ralf Sideburn. But do not assume observational profundity must be dismal. Whole cities are in very real peril of meltdown, when this jet-engined inferno befalls landscapes. Full-bodied rampage manifests lyrics' liberational embrace. These amps go to 11, at 600 mph. November 14 release date scheduled.

(And planned for March issuance is EP Beer-Fueled Bastards. A tour will commence soon after.)

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The Brains

Zombie Nation   red-marble vinyl reissue

(Cleopatra)

In addition to elating hedonistic wreckabouts everywhere, this 2010 Stomp Records release further credited Rene De La Muerte's vehicle as deserving of upswept stratum. (The group's rank having been established by three prior discs.) A digitally remastered incarnation has now been set loose by Cleopatra. Orange-and-blue flame-tongues rage toward night skies no less now than when initially kindled. Somewhere beneath soil exists a rumbustious club where the Brains are in neverending rotation.

Recommended: "We'll Rise," "We Gotta Go," "Screaming," "Apres Cette Nuit," "Sweeter than Wine," "As I Stand," "Zombie Nation," "Evil Never Dies," "Mexikaners," "Enjoy the Silence"

Videos: "We'll Rise"   "We Gotta Go"   "Screaming"   "Mexikaners"

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The Pterodactyl Hunters

Terror in Demoland

(Crazy Love Records)

Country legend Cliff Stone observed "You gotta be bad, before you can be good." That may generally be so, but primitivism can have peculiar charm. And potency waves in these embryonic renderings. Pterodactyl Hunters were a French damage force that assembled, dare-deviltry in hearts and musical armaments at hand, back in Psycho's germinal period. Some acounts hold they ultimately lunged in somewhat sterner manner. The band's life spanned a brief 1989 - 1992 term) But their initial energies were of have-a-go animation, rollicking tunery (that sometimes skirted waggish madcapism), heaved by lads without cares, save for fun. Nothing wrong in that.

50 copies, in black, green, and orange vinyl, have thusfar been crafted.

Recommended: "Pterodactyl Airways," "Don't You Let Me Down,"  "Bitch Omaha Beach," "shout baby!," "Space Cowboy,"  "George Hamilton's Back," "It's Moving Inside," "Lonesome Train (on a Lonesome Train"

Videos: "Pterodactyl Airways"   "Bitch Omaha Beach"   "Space Cowboy" (live 1989)   "Don't You Let Me Down"   "Lonesome Train (on a Lonesome Track)"

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