DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: June 2025

Friday, June 27, 2025

Hot Club of Cowtown

Limelight digital album

(Gold Strike Records)

A right wingding! Some cuts rally with the spiritedness of lanky hands and fetching home-gals ballin' it up, while others ruminate with gentility. But know that each springs from the wonderfully simplistic rustic culture in which plain folks turned hands to music-making that swelled hearts practically to bursting. Pearly guitar notes are buffed to glistening. The doghouse knows the way home with its headlamps shut. And no ankle will remain unbent when the fiddle kicks up dust. Sonorous voices from our back-country heritage are enough to make foreigners wish they called America home.

You just know Pat Buttram and Smiley Burnette would've dug this.

Recommended: "Red River Valley," "Amari Szi Amari," "Lily Dale," "Djangology," "I'm Feelin' Bad," "When the Cactus Is in Bloom," "Hoedown Lowdown," "Buffalo Gals"

Videos: "Djangology" (live) "I'm Feelin' Bad" (live) "Buffalo Gals" (live)

Amazon (IN)

Feral Housecats

An FHc's Advice 3-track digital album

(Hot Boots Records)

Robust recordings like this remind, thankfully, that six-string flamethrowing and fevered skins-pounding aren't the exclusive province of arena kahunas. Rather, they are blasted out in bars across America. Whether they constructed furnaces, packed meat, or piloted Lyfts, regular folks craving respite from workaday pressures throng to stage fronts and go wild on dance floors to passionately perpetrated Rock'n'Roll exactly like this.

Recommended: "Drop Out," "Don't Work, Be Happy" "I Shoulda Taken Drugs D.A."

Videos: "Don't Work, Be Happy" "I Shoulda Taken Drugs D.A." (live)

Back in the Day, 1990

Phantom Rockers

Kissed by a Werewolf vinyl

(Tombstone Records)

From day one, and with leader Mark Burke slashing their moonlit path, England's Phantom Rockers have flaunted macabre convictions at dangerous speeds. Quiffed cretins wallowed rabidly. To bear witness to the band's embryonic marble orchard cacophony is to be thrust into dizzying zones of fracture.

Bad Billy is now offering rare original copies recently exhumed from precincts mysterious.

Recommended: "Leather Zombie," "Killer Train," "Kissed by a Werewolf," "Valley of Kings" "Friday Night," "Living Dead," "Forget Him Baby"

Videos: "Leather Zombie" "Killer Train" "Kissed by a Werewolf" "Forget Him Baby"

Stevie Silver

Cruisin' feat. Duke Robillard

(Self-issued)

Boston's Stevie is one of us: a devotee of Sounds Cool (particularly those of Blues and vintage Rock'n'Roll classification) since way back. Here, at times hot-pickin' alone and elsewhere abetted by the storied Duke (in the Sun studio!), Stevie steamrolls through originals and chestnuts of cement-solid character. Smooth, though never to the excess that would strip tunes of crucial roughness, these interpretations skim with palpable oomph. Let every cat be aware that Rock'n'Roll runs this joint - and the house always wins.

Recommended: "Cruisin'," "Apache" (w/Duke), "Rip It Up," "Aces & Eights," "Gimmie, Gimmie," "Racing with the Devil" (w/Duke), "Sleepwalk" (w/Duke), "Wild Child" (w/Duke)

Video: "Cruisin'" "Racing with the Devil"

Stevie and Duke Robillard at Sun

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Quakes

Voice of America Red or blue vinyl reissue

(Orrexx)

Even early on, the infamy screamed. 1990 was when Paul Roman's gang waxed these idiosyncratic Psychobilly bombardments for Nervous, and this fresh reissue (which includes two additional tracks) shoots flames as if just out of the house. Muscle, smarts, and uncaring velocity in one volatile package. Felicitous collisions galore.

Included are lyrics, liner notes, and a 4x6 postcard. 500 copies now accessible - 250 red, 250 blue.

Recommended: "Puttin' Out the Flame," "One of a Kind," "Nuthin' Goin' Down," "Chick Hunt," "Stick to Your Guns," "All Messed Up," "Far Away," "Ice-Cold Baby," "Growin' Up Evil," "Strike-Out King"

Videos: Secret VOA warm-up show (June 2025) "All Messed Up" "Ice-Cold Baby" "Stick to Your Guns"

eBay (purchase page)

Kenyon Lockry

Laughrey

(Self-issued)

You've located treasure. Being in the mold of marquee Country luminaries, Kenyon presents listeners with a gladsome opportunity to whoop rejoicefully while wild-side ramblers kick like all-get-out ("Hold On," "Already Red," and "I Understand" snorting in that number). The man's possessed of a voice, a spirit, more real than any red-carpet autotuner tarted-up in funny fashion. Though major labels busy themselves contriving curiosities, the good stuff still can be found - right here.

Recommended: "Hold On," "Lawn Boy," "Please Leave," "Wrong Way," "Already Red," "Lonely, Crazy," "I Understand," "Nerve Rackin'," "Broken Heart," "Sugar Dress," "Everything," "Country Music Star," "No Reality to Arrange," "Bad Bye"

Videos: "Hold On" "Already Red" "I Understand"

The Brains

One More Time single

(Cleopatra)

Not unlike Chinese Water Torture of which we're gleeful victims, singles from forthcoming full-length Crazy Monster are being issued teasingly. Came first "Evil," a relentless promulgation of wickedness pledged amid spider-webbed dankness. Following in similarly nitro-jacked splendor was "Feel No Pain."

On newest single "One More Time," the splinters-flying Psycho for which Montreal's Brains are infamous remains no less fearsome than when the three stalked studio circumstance for those ghastly antecedents; the Category 5 bluster wreaks wreckhouse devastation. They've leapt from the "Evil" dungeon and now prowl evening city streets, hungering for rat-arsed hijinks.

Videos: "One More Time" Crazy Monster teaser

Roy Buchanan

Deluxe Edition digital album

(Alligator)

Scant fretboardists ascend to the heights conquered by Roy. Unlike friendly competitor and fellow cognescenti Danny Gatton -in whose dazzing oeuvre Rockabilly and Country negotiations romped free of tether - Roy's chosen hearth was the Blues. The tone he calculated was impeccable - half celestial harp and half earthy, wee-hours proclaimer. He was able to reach way down and communicate the aches and exultations of every man's soul.

In passages unhurried and lusty, Roy touched off stinging note-flurries none but overlords can produce. Many Buchanan LPs convey his gifts; this is emphatically among them.

A November 1980 newspaper account reported: "Roy Buchanan, in New York to record his new album, My Babe, met a mugger on his way back to his hotel room early in the morning. Apparently, the mugger didn't know that they don't call a guitar 'an ax' for nothing. He found out, however, after jumping Buchanan and being wacked a few times with the $5000 instrument. 'I've always known that the guitar can be used as a weapon,' Buchanan said. 'When that guy found out I wasn't afraid to use it as one, he split pretty fast. That old wood is pretty hard."

Recommended: "That Did It," "Chicago Smokeshop," "Blues for Jimmy Nolen," "Matthew," "Flash Chordin'," "Whiplash," "When a Guitar Plays the Blues," "Hawaiian Punch," "The Last Word"

Videos: "Chicago Smokeshop" "Matthew" "Flash Chordin'" "When a Guitar Plays the Blues" (live)

Facebook (Fan club)

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Gorgonis

Choice Paralysis digital and hot-pink cassette

(Fuzzed-Up and Astromoon Records)

Being intrepid, you've elected to venture athwart environs uncommon. A more fittingly variegated vehicle could not be located on the lot. All is motion. Tit-bits fly in all directions, scattered by gusts of creativity. That intellect grasps the whip is clear, even amidst swerving panoramas. Composer/guitarist Aaron Jay Myers assembled players of the first order to breathe animation into his productions electric.

Recommended: "Want, Need," "Choice Paralysis," "Doctor Robotnik," "Some Shit, You Just Can't Punch," "Coffee-A-Go-Go," "Arachnid"

Videos: "Want, Need" "Choice Paralysis"

Site (Aaron)

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Fuzzed-Up and Astromoon

King Drapes

You Got It 3 tracks

(Musakonttori)

Since these cuts were put to tape in February, 2024, new drummer Markku Mäikkä Tuomi doesn't appear. But considering that he received the approval of stalwart personnel Sami Savolainen (guitar/vocals) and Jani Kallila (slap bass), one can be assured of his prowess.

It's heartening that the Neo-Rockabilly Big Beat they've traditionally dispatched remains their specialty. No high-gear flamboyance will be located; instead, judicious restraint ensures points be etched emphatically. 2024's Hot Rock Teds smoked down the line and this crisp platter is no less bound to gratify discerning chain-swingers, so laden is it with twanged uppercuts and knucle-crack pulsations.

Recommended: "Good Ol' Gal," "You Got It," "Raggariveljet"

Videos: "Good Ol' Gal" "Raggariveljet"

New drummer Markku Mäikkä Tuomi (ex-Buck Jones)

Deadfallen

s/t EP

(Elliot Abbott)

Sophistication is afoot, but it's not of uppity bearing. Rather, it's the sort in which knowing artistry communicates its fancies with assurance born from just plain purposefulness. Dramatic moments push out artfully. Variety looms in guitar-charged eruptions. Vocals threaten. Book passage on this adventurous journey straightaway.

Recommended: "How the West Was Lost," "Deadfallen," "Nightshade," "Cold & Black," "Gone"

Videos: "Deadfallen" "Nightshade" "Cold & Black"

Back in the Day, 2016

Benny & the Flybyniters

The Many Sides of...

(Rhythm Bomb Records)

Come in from the alley to the dancehall. He and she couplings dressed to kill are whirling with cool aplomb. The combo arrayed onstage are aces, all, pumping out raw R&B in the manner of storied icons. Edges are appropriately unsanded, for this is honking, strutting human music that has soundtracked innumerable noctunal interactions, and it should be this real.

Here compiled are swing-out blasts from earlier issuances; if they are not already in your stack, lunge for this.

Recommended: "Straighten Up Mama," "Two-Dollar Woman," "The Way You Do," "Jet-Propelled Daddy," "Benny's Bounce," "Party Like Never Before," "She Knocks Me Out," "Huckle Boogie," "Hey Now," "Tell Me Pretty Baby," "Hammerhead," "Loosen Up"

Videos: "Two-Dollar Woman" "Benny's Bounce" "Party Like Never Before"

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Drunken Prayer

Thy Burdens

(Dial Back Sound / Well-Kept Secret)

The enriching product of Appalachian-dwelling Morgan Geer's bended-knee, musical heritage and fertile imagination. The man's past, per legend, includes regaling bikers with hymns learned from a great-grandmother. Guided here by Drive-By Trucker Matt Patton and accompanied by unassumingly adroit companions to actualize his marvelous (and broadly accessible) musings, Morgan draws from rural wellsprings. His grained throat bespeaks worldly seasoning as it rises to proclaim Divine adoration and hopes for transcendence.

Recommended: "Selfishness of Man," "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," "When They Ring Them Golden Bells," "Rock of Ages," "Bedside of a Neighbor," "Tramp on the Street," "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel," "Soldier of the Cross," "Long Ago, Far Away," "Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine"

Videos: "When They Ring Them Golden Bells" "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" "Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine"

John Lindberg Trio

Best Friend's Girlfriend

(Cosmos)

No hardwood-gliding Big Beat rascal worth his Ricky jacket will judge this at all resistable. John and crack compatriots know well how best to free Rockabilly from leash and press it to extreme raucouness - though they ensure melodic undergirding is an influential constant. Pop the top, and watch the night go frantic.

Recommended: "Best Friend's Girlfriend," "(There's) No Getting Over Me ," "Cry Cry Cry," "Rock'n'Roll Girl," "Stand By Me"

Video: "Best Friend's Girlfriend" "Cry Cry Cry"

Bloodshot Bill

So Fed Up!

(Goner)

One-wildcat-band Bill illustrates that hep hicks from back-country juke joints can tip jugs with their calloused left hands, flay every tune tool with their rights, and make hillbillies bop like fevered bone machines. Technical trickery can stay the hell away, 'cause inimitable Human Being stylings are in hot-blooded progress.

Recommended: "Talk To You," "Kissin' Underwater," "Rule Book," "Say What You Want To Say," "It Happens," "Emilina," "Please Don't Break My Heart," "The Very Thought of You," "What She Said"

Videos: "Talk to You" "Emilina"

Back in the Day, 1964

Scotty Moore

The Guitar That Changed the World vinyl

(Sony Epic)

Of course, truck-driving kid Elvis loomed highest on the earlier Sun was incarnations of these earthquake, but the late Scotty and his polished, back-country master picking also claimed abundant regard; indeed, so much so that the inspirational flames he ignited then will surely blaze into perpetuity. As the legendary string-maestro enjoys instrumental latitude in these reinterpretations, his soloing is of greater body, its poised pronouncements make idiosyncratic impacts, and consistently adventurous articulations - ones echoing hillbilly persuasions and youthful exuberance - knock cats seasoned and crisp off their feet.

The cover asserts lofty credit: "And at [Elvis's] right hand from the beginning - from ragged rehearsals in a boardinghouse room and first record sessions to barnstorming the flatbed truck circuit, from flat-broke to that historic first appearance with Tommy Dorsey, from roadhouse to the glittering spotlight in Las Vegas, from hillbilly honky-tonk to Hollywood - Scotty was there."

In later years, this 1964 LP was rereleased in CD format.

Recommended: "Hound Dog," "Loving You," "Money Honey," "My Baby Left Me," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Don't Be Cruel," "Love Me Tender," "Mean Woman Blues"

Videos: "Money Honey" "My Baby Left Me" "Heartbreak Hotel" "Mean Woman Blues"

Sunday, June 15, 2025

The Original Alice Cooper Group

"Black Mamba" "Wild Ones" singles

(earMUSIC)

On "The Return Album the World Was Afraid Of," storied rockers harkening from 1970s arena stages lean into the business of pounding out Rock'n'Roll of metallic massiveness. And it's as if intervening decades matter naught. The triumphantly reunited glitter-alums are arsonists as much as anything, building up and igniting conflagrationary spectacle both dazzling and life imperiling.

These singles were excerpted from forthcoming full-length "The Revenge of Alice Cooper." A team of greater thunderclap dynamism than bassist Dennis Dunaway, guitarist Michael Bruce, and drum master Neal Smith could not be solicited. The three would be justified in smirking down at adversaries. Alice's snarl is no less stentorian than when they and late lead guitarist Glen Buxton loomed on Don Kirshner's 1972 In Concert venue.

("What Happened to You?," another cut on the upcoming long-player, features Buxton via a previously unissued recording.)

Producer Bob Ezrin, long a collaborator, ensured the tempestuousness common to the band batters boldly. Through vivid and lofty musical architecture, the Alice Cooper Group was - and clearly remains - among the crop's cream.

Video: "Black Mamba"

Video: "Wild Ones"

The Brains

"Feel No Pain" single

(Cleopatra)

"An undead nation with my favorite ghouls, this song was a blast to write!!," enthused front man Rene De La Muerte, per a Cleopatra blurb. "Getting back to old school Brains songs...I feel no pain!"

Scowling mates Gui Kitty and Colin the Dead abet Rene in realizing to a fearsome metric the rampage he'd dared to conceptualize when putting pen to paper. Wreckers will collide in delirium when this shard from imminent exhaustive disc Crazy Monster carves jaggedly into surrounding ether.

Video

Reilly

What Else Ya Got? CD / digital

(Self-issued)

Laboratory slide-rule sharpies hypothesize that crafting sublime Rock'n'Roll both stalwart and mindful of its Poppish responsibilities is a matter of scientific calculation. This release illustrates their veracity. String-bending auteur Richard Reilly (erstwhile 1970s NYC Victim, a band whose whose Punk members included future Rockat Barry Ryan) has honed economical, trippingly fluid compositions that entrance with lissome lilts. Mannerly beat interpretation is of victory circle caliber. Visible here are twelve specimens of sideways-grin elegance that bound on limber legs.

Recommended: "The Cure," "What Else Ya Got?," "Linda Lee," "Girl on the Radio," "I Still Want You," "Memphis DQ," "So Mixed Up," "Boomerang," "Nothing of My Own," "You Won't Be Around," "Voice in My Heart," "Talk Too Much"

Videos: "What Else Ya Got?" "You Won't Be Around" "Voice in My Heart"

Amazon (IN)

51 Boneyard

6 Songs EP

(Self-issued)

The absence of frills communicates the stark validity of undiplomatic Punk. Fury bursts most alarmingly when surrounded by miles of empty airspace; chords, voices, and percussive wallops thunder violently. The agile aggression of all culpable renders this as glaring as ramming some yobbo's braincase through plate glass.

Recommended: "Golfcart Bobby," "Summertime Brain Surgeon," "Late For the Party," "Breakaway," "Behind the Black Curtain," "21st Century Vampire"

Video: "Golfcart Bobby" "Summertime Brain Surgeon"

Amazon (UK)

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Cliff Richard & the Drifters

Essential Classics Vol. 823

(Essential Classics)

In 2020, Cliff told Callum Crumlish, of England's Express: "God bless him, but John Lennon said: ‘Before Cliff Richard and Move It there was nothing worth listening to in England.’”

As represented on these two compact discs, crooner Cliff was more than as good as the task he'd selected: lending British bouyancy and his own rave-up flourish to American Rock'n'Roll hits by Elvis, Gene, Little Richard, and similarly rough-hewn luminaries. Add to those songs' number originals (like Ian Samwell's Move It) that possessed their own jump'n'jive hearts. Cliff's marquee features ensured sales figures would know no hindrance. And the deal was sealed by his spring-heeled stage manner and hiccuped dynamism. Too, Donna and Living Doll showed he knew how to render a gossamer melody with due gentility, a gift that proffered particular attraction.

Cliff is rightly regarded as in England's bygone vanguard of teen idols. Lennon was bang on.

(Listen to No Turning Back's narrative to know what surely inspired Jumpin' Jack Flash.)

Recommended, Disc One: "Move It," "Donna," "Reddy Teddy," "Be-Bop-A-Lula," "Apron Strings," "Baby I Don't Care," "Danny (Lonesome Blue Boy)"

Recommended, Disc Two: "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Down the Line," "I Got a Feeling," "Jet Black," "Don't Bug Me Baby," "Living Doll," "No Turning Back"

Videos: "Move It" "Living Doll" "No Turning Back"

zdigital.com.au

Songswave

anghami

Back In the Day, 2014

TV Tramps

Rip It Up!

(Little Dickman Records)

Among salient aspects (of which there are several - vivacity, brevity, and economy also being present) that this writer finds magnetic here is the gladsome absence of protracted commencements. Get in/make your point/get out is the superior teaching the Ramones schooled. The torn messengers here casting furiously veering chords waste zero moments on introductions, instead launching themselves (and us) on abrupt sound-sprees that end gloriously. All emergency rooms should pipe this for the tittilation of crimson-spraying basket cases.

Recommended: "Vampires," "Baby Girl," "Keep Your Mouth Shut," "No Ransom," "Rip You Up," "The Stuff," "Party Animal," "Whiplash"

Videos: "Vampires" (live) "Keep Your Mouth Shut" (live)

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Back In the Day, 1985

Breathless

Bad Bad Boys

(Big Beat)

Of course there's electricity in the moonlight. Of course you're in cool danger. This is Teds Alley, and the boys are havin' a night. You'll find the bop snaps tight here. The beat springs to the ready like a flick knife. No one prowling 'round here has patience for squares' tightly wound strictures. Guitar pounces, upright figures stalk, and collar-up sneers proclaim with violent cheek. 1-2-3-4.

Recommended: "Bad Bad Boy," "Waiting At the Station," "She Wasn't Listening," "Letting Off Steam," "She's Bad Company," "Do What You Want To Do," "Burning Up," "Cooking and Washing," "Jenny"

Video: "Bad Bad Boy" "Letting Off Steam"