DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: December 2025

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Koffin Kats

s/t reissue

(Ring of Fire / Koffin Kats Records)

Might there yet breathe persons ignorant of the Kats' habitation on Psychobilly's storm-ravaged, topmost plateau? It is a land where mis-spirited and noisome blasties roam, snorting disdain at normalcy's staidness. Koffin Kats' free-for-all spectacles - be they grooved or atop performative floorboards - are ones from which recovery is both unobtainable and undesired.

Their 2006 debut waxing has been re-released in two versions. One was issued by the feral ones, themselves. Ring of Fire dispensed a European limited edition. 500 copies of Ring's were cobbled, with random vinyl colorations and a four-color insert cast into the bargain.

Recommended: "Graveyard Tree," "Red Alert," "V8 Nightmare," "Koffin Kat Rock," "Sleep"

Videos: "Graveyard Tree" (live 2013) "V8 Nightmare" (live 2012) "Sleep" (live 2006)

Yee Loi

"Poor Girl" single

(Modern Sky UK)

What are three nice English siblings doing in a Ramonesified proposition? Drop-kicking it all over the club, is what. Rose channels I Don't Care callousness through wildside barre chord pandemonium and exploding throatery. Lead voice Tilda seems hostile toward her drum heads; she pounds at them as if they stole her cash. And bass monster Don Don does things to bass strings that likely violate statutes. Good things come in threes.

Video

Manos Wild

For Rockabillies Only

(Rebel Music Records)

Manos Katsampoukas and the bop ministers at his side agitate gravels found in both select covers and originals that flip off road rules. "Just be careful not to blow yourself up, because this is Rockabilly dynamite!!," the Deutschland wild one declared, without a fraction of a shred of hyperbole. Formerly of Breathless, and with stacks of solo platters in his rear view, Manos has again carpentered Rebel tunes fit for any self-respecting Seeburg.

Recommended: "Rockabilly Earthquake," "A Little Bit of Lovin'," "Put the Blame on Me," "Blue Swingin' Mama," "Call Me Blue," "Leave My Woman Alone," "Rock Therapy," "Rebel Walk," "Girl on My Mind"

Videos: "Rockabilly Earthquake" "Put the Blame on Me" "Blue Swingin' Mama" "Rebel Walk" "Leave My Woman Alone"

Back in the Day, 1967

Jimmy Gateley

"Don't Come Cryin' to Me" b/w "It Tears My Heart Out"

(Decca)

Exhaustive enumeration of fiddler/singer/guitarist/songsmith Jimmy's big name, Classic Country credits would defy present space constraints. Red Foley, Harold Morrison, and Connie Smith are three. Bill Anderson is four. Gateley joined with the Nudie-spangled "Whisperer," appearing on hits like "Bright Lights and Country Music" (which Gateley co-wrote with Anderson), and also leading the star's band on the Opry stage for 13 years.

Jimmy and Bill perform "Bright Lights" in 1966 budget film "Las Vegas Hillbillys," which starred Ferlin Husky, Mamie Van Doren, and Don Bowman. Other performers shown included Roy Drusky, Sonny James, Del Reeves, and Wilma Burgess.

"Jimmy was the only band member I ever hired who was older than me, and I learned so much from him," Anderson wrote on the Ask Bill page of his website, in 2021. "He had been a cast member on the Red Foley Ozark Jubilee TV shows before moving to Nashville, and he was so much wiser about the ins-and-outs of the music business than I was. I wore him out asking questions, but in his calm, understated way he graciously (and often humorously) answered them all."

"Don't Come Cryin' to Me" offers the steel-fueled bounce, impeccable background harmonies, and hard-knocks testimony that has long endeared Classic Country to millions the world over. Its sadder-but-wiser protagonist is one with whom real folks can identify. In its brevity, its spartanness, the song imprints soundly.

Flip "It Tears My Heart Out" downshifts, favoring lowercase demonstrativeness. Players assembled accomodate with tuneful tastefulness. Foamy suds assume distinctiveness, when salty tears take swims.

Among songs Gateleyy penned for others was "The Minute You're Gone From Me," which landed Sonny James on charts.

In later years, Jimmy turned eyes upward, became Deacon of a Tennessee church, and recorded Gospel. A heart condition claimed him in 1985. He was but 53.

"He was a great guy, extremely talented, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember something he said or did and it always makes me smile," Bill wrote.

Videos: "Don't Come Cryin' to Me" "It Tears My Heart Out"

Discogs

Country Music Hall of Fame

The Rock and Country Encyclopedia and Discography

Sunday, December 28, 2025

Testors

Prime Primitive 1976 - 1977

(Green Noise Records)

It was Criminal (and I don't mean Syl's band) that Sonny's surly cell was lost in the late-1970s rush, during which labels large and small scrambled to sign anyone growling counter to rock-product orthodoxy. The NYC-prowling Testors' from-the-shoulder wallops peeled paper from walls of CBGB's, Max's, and sundry other loveable pits. Chords left contusions. If they didn't threaten eral top-billed attractions, Testors certainly ran in the same pack. Green Noise has carpentered both silver and black vinyl variations.

Recommended: "Primitive," "You Don't Break My Heart," "Hey You," "Let's Get Zooed Out" (live), "I See," "Don't Tell Me," "Remembrance," "Madra's Prison"

Videos: "Hey You" "Let's Get Zooed Out" "I See" "Remembrance"

Hillbilly Rick

"Dancing My Way to Heaven" "Hillbilly Moonshine" singles

(Richard B. Meyers / CDX)

Fresh diversions from the prolific stump-hopper who, in 2022, saw over 12,000 Japanese set a Guinness record by dancing en masse to his cover of The Tractors' "Baby Likes to Rock It." "Dancing My Way to Heaven" jumps from tent-bench, whirling in the Spirit and throwing hands and feet in every direction at once. Only the enraptured will fully dig. But glad tidings: an endless supply of applications awaits. Circling jig "Hillbilly Moonshine" exemplifies the simple joys inherent in banjo/fiddle/backwater harmonizing. Gimme a swaller and I'll pay you back someday.

Videos: "Dancing My Way to Heaven" "Hillbilly Moonshine"

Colonoscopia con Maquina de Coser

Demo 2025 digital album

(Self-issued)

All participants gnash. In quintessential Punk manner, miniature bombardments hurtle over finish lines nearly before starting flag has dropped. Panama Affair. "Junk music for trashy people," says them.

Recommended: "Mono Con Pistola," "Ke Vida," "Marginal," "Colonoscopia (con Maquina de Coser)"

Videos: "Mono Con Pistola" "Marginal"

Instagram

Bandcamp

Art Gallery

The Opportunist (demo)

(Self-issued)

Fine ambition, these Lancaster fantasts have cross-haired: "To give Goth rock a good kick up the arse.” Toward that end, the three merge that eldritch subgenre with stern dollops of Punk, Metallism, and foot-plantings onto experimental acreage. The imperious, booming pronouncments recall every megalomaniac mad-doctor in every moldering castle in every drive-in scare celluloid grappling teens never saw. (On Bandcamp, Art Gallery claim ignorance as to backing cut "Filth 1's" backstory and even sireship.) Atop all that sits proof Snidely's still afoot.

Video: "The Opportunist" (live audio)

Wednesday, December 24, 2025

Carolina Chocolate Drops

Genuine Negro Jig

(Nonesuch)

"The mission of the Carolina Chocolate Drops was always to preserve the music of our mentor Joe Thompson and to honor the Black string band traditions that helped create American roots music," multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons wrote recently, on Facebook.

First issued in 2010, Genuine Negro Jig won that year's "Best Traditional Folk album" Grammy. Nonesuch has announced plans to re-release it next January. Clap hands, bend knees, and know that it's good to breathe. Raise dust 'round the porch to these upturned, string-band souls. Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson anthemize jump-down, turn-around people -- and that's all of us, this being a chunk of America's heart. Yesterday/today seamlessness locates actualization via banjos, fiddles, leg percussion, and "computer hard drive 'triangle.'" Humanity steps it down.

“There’s magic in the excitement and drama and the wealth of culture that is translated through a live performance,” Flemons told PineStrawMag, last March.. “It’s something beyond just music. It’s a feeling as well and, if you’re deep in the culture, you understand the nuances of that feeling. In the ’50s, they talked about old-time music and analyzed it a certain way. So, when you read books about it, you can understand it to a degree. But once you’re in it, that’s when you can take on a whole other quality.”

Recommended: "Peace Behind the Bridge," "Trouble in Your Mind," "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine," "Cornbread and Butterbeans," "Snowden's Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)," "Why Don't You Do Right?," "Cindy Gal," "Sandy Boys," "Reynadine," "Trampled Rose," "

Videos: "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine" "Cornbread and Butterbeans" (live) "Snowden's Jig (Genuine Negro Jig" (live) "Reynadine"

The Exotic Ones and Cha Cha Heels!

"Cha Cha Heels (for Christmas)" b/w "Female Trouble" digital tracks

(Self-issued)

These tributes to trash auteur John Waters were likely birthed in some dingy midnight movie house, one wherein congregate trench-coated headcases with googly eyes and rap sheets as long as Dawn Davenport is wanton. The A-side's jangly Pop confection is offset by the flip's enshadowed noirishness. Ornamented trees tumble.

(Trivia collectors note: Director Waters penned Female Trouble's theme lyrics, which were set to Jazzman Cookie Thomas's "Black Velvet Soul.")

Videos: "Cha Cha Heels (for Christmas)" "Female Trouble"

The Western Distributors

"Chasing Chickens" "Let the Compass Decide" digital tracks

(Self-issued)

Stringin' instruments' clod-kickin', of the sort that lit many barndances, shivarees, and town-limits joints in fondly recalled eras. Swing-yer-partner inspiration spry-foots from each plucked passage. Refreshingly plain reels high-step athwart straw-strewn hardwood, raising up a hoo-rah the likes of which city folks can't touch.

No videos available

Prison of Blues

Born to be Killers

(Greenland Indonesia)

In the face of such unstoppable force, there can be no immovable objects. Lost souls who relish confederation in ill-motives, lean hard into airs malicious. Iniquitous onrush is the soundtrack to garish spectacle. Wreckers, their razored heads thoroughly battered, will shout for more. An adage holds that greatest merit lies not in reaching the destination, but rather, the journey. Thrills thrive when keeping pace.

Recommended: "Nice to Meet You (Hope to See You Again," "Born to Be Killers," "Zombie Di Ruang Tamu," "Bloodsuckers," "Ghoul Rumble," "Pocong (Disantet Mertua)," "Painkiller," "Tersesat"

Videos: "Nice to Meet You (Hope to See You Again" (live) "Zombie Di Ruang Tamu" (feat. Dellu Uyee)" "Pocong (Disantet Mertua)"

Facebook

Instagram

Psychobilly Earthquake

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Ben Cooper

"A Rockin' Christmas" digital single

(Self-issued)

It's probable that, in eras yet to pass, Neo-Rockabilly historians will dwell on Ben's days behind the Restless kit. And that's understandable; the Mark Harman-led trio acquited itself winningly. But this seasonal romp, too, deserves mention. Ben carries the day on every instrument. The cut he penned and produced is economical, light on its snow boots, and abubble with brandified nog.

Video: abbreviated clip

Facebook

Bandcamp

Zombina and the Skeletones

"Scary Christmas" "Mister Jingle-Horse" digital tracks

(Self-issued)

"Suck blood and destroy, but always wash your hands," is the counsel proffered by these jolly ghouls. Their singasong Yuletide ditties splatter happy crimson all over newly fallen, white mush. True, Zombina and hideous hangers-on historically tend most often toward unrelieved themes of grotesquerie, ones to which forsaken wraiths surely pirouette under lunar rays. Here, though, twisted notions are bedecked in festive fineries. That merry glaze almost obscures diabolism. Almost.

Karaoke Videos: "Scary Christmas" "Mister Jingle-Horse"

The Stray Cats

"Stampede" b/w "Teenage Heaven"

(Surfdog Records)

Both booming "Stampede" and flip "Teenage Heaven" (a frontline Eddie cover) give proof of the Cats' enduring tenacity. (Dig the A-side's Bo-inflected chorus.) Such is the true-to-roots pomped essence w/modern-day verve, it's as if years between the descending-riffed "Runaway Boys" and today's calendar page were as nothing. The lean roustabouts who carved lofty 1980-and-beyond status, then took separate paths and realized solo acclaims, reunite to show the singular bop of the Strays ain't goin' nowhere.

(One sends up prayers for Brian Setzer, whose serious illness forced him to regrettably cancel the trio's latest tour.)

Videos: "Stampede" "Teenage Heaven"

Killer Tone Jones

The Resurection Doktor vinyl

(Crazy Love)

16 tracks compiled from previous EPs. Neither medical science nor law enforcement offer explanation for this aberrant life essence. Even explorers combing darkened drive ins and ratty Punk dives are nonplussed. But mohawked monsters dig. When shards of Psycho and other mutant subgenres have coalesced within the confines of a taboo Garage, the creature produced has but one ambition: revelry of dark hallmark. Get in / make your point / get out dictates song construction - that's as should be. Strings that slither through eerie precincts, low-end bass negotiations, and appropriately uncomplicated drumwork provide fitting backdrop for throat pipes that seem scraped off paranormal floor stones.

Recommended: "Crush the Bone," "The Creeper," "The Girl from Planet X," "Death Cabaret," "Drums of the Dead," "Bad Barbie," "Knuckle Muscle"

Videos: "Crush the Bone" (live) "The Girl from Planet X" "Bad Barbie" (live audio) "Knuckle Muscle"

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Stormtroopers of Love

Go Go Graveyard

(Love Ghoul Records)

Fresh word holds that SOL are auditioning new voices, as Dr. Harder has stepped (amicably). (The outgoing lyric blaster is featured here.) Whoever is settled upon will have to bring unquenchable fires of uncanny origin; the Danes specialize in monstrous Psycho too distant from humanity to concern itself with any dystopic aftermath of universal storm.

Recommended: "Making Love in the Crematory," "Demon Lover," "All Bad," "Straitjacket Stomp," "Resurrection," "Don't Leave Me (in This Coffin)," "A Monster Like U," "Mutant Lover"

Videos: "Making Love in the Crematory" "All Bad" "Don't Leave Me (in This Coffin)" "Mutant Love"

Zombina and the Skeletones

A Chainsaw for Christmas digital EP

(Self-issued)

Initially materializing online in 2006, and now re-emergent, A Chainsaw for Christmas lends kicky unsettlingness to reigning snowball vibe. "The band under your bed" perpetrates a Pop/Psycho/Garage/Goth four-way, with tittilating spookiness being the infectiously aberrant issue. One fantasizes ornaments dangling from Dr. Frankenstein's towering creation.

Recommended: "A Chainsaw for Christmas," "Come On," "Evil Science," "Dead Alive"

Videos: "A Chainsawfor Christmas" "Come On" "Dead Alive"

V/A

Cornstars: Rube Music in Swing Time

(Dick C. Land Records)

Novelty Jazz teemed with cornball characters. Remember to heroically huff nitrous oxide, prior to scrambling into position atop this tilted sideshow ride. Melodious madcapism romps. Swarming are ocarinas, clarinets, washboards (festooned with bells and differently-pitched bulb horns), slide trombones, and trumpets - abetted in seemingly slapdash lunacy by pianos, doghouses, trap drum kits, and all manner of frivolous gadgets pressed into sound effect service. Of course, only supremely talented players could carry on so wackily whilst musicalizing with airtight preciseness. Spot-on instrumentalism and comically exaggerated gesticulations scoot on mismatched wheels toward common knee-slapping cause. Corn wasn't just a rib-feathering genre, it was also no place for gloomy Gusses. Scratchy surface noise attests to these tracks' dust-blanketed vinyl origins.

Recommended: "Some of these Days," "Colonel Corn," "Tiger Rag," "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy," "Wabash Blues," "Everything is Hotsy Totsy Now," "At the Moving Picture Ball" (Freddy Fisher and His Scnickelfritz Band), "Write to Them Korn Kobblers," "The Barnyard Band," "When the Snow Begins to Fall Next Summer," "Chopsticks," "Twenty-Five Chickens, Thirty-Five Cows," "Fuzzy Wuzzy" (Stan Fritts and the Korn Kobblers), "Toy Town Band," "Pop Corn Man" (The Kidoodlers), "Listen to the Mocking Bird," "Turkey in the Straw" (Darrell Fisher and His Log Jammers), "Guitar Rag" (The Crazy Tooters), "Brazen Little Raisin" (Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers)

Videos: "Colonel Corn" "Tiger Rag" "Write to them Korn Kobblers" "Twenty-Five Chickens, Thirty-Five Cows"

Freddy Fisher

Back in the Day, 2001

The Swing Cats

...Presents A Rock-A-Billy Christmas

(Cleopatra Records)

The present writer makes it a rule to avoid holiday themed rock'n'roll. (Such efforts tend to muffle vital oomph, groping instead for accessibility.) In this instance, though, an exception is eagerly made.

Players include Danny. B. Harvey, Lee Rocker, Gary Twinn, and Slim Jim Phantom. Though already objects of celebrity when arriving at this point, they strove as if hungry and delivered themselves of hot-rodded interpretations of chestnuts, whose airs and poetry are universally embraced. (Fun for the whole family, with implied flick-knife brio, one might observe.)

Shelved between standards are self-penned romps combining apt themes with Neo-Rockabilly so snapped-to-attention as to put wings on every foot in the place. And if sporadic instrumental renderings were pressed into Muzak service, there could be no guarantee the elevator car wouldn't jitter-bop straight through the roof.

First issued by Cleopatra in 2001, this has since seen reissue from various imprints, with different covers and in diverse formats.

Recommended: "Jingle Bells" (Honeydippers), "Rock, Santa, Rock" (Gary Twinn), "Jingle Bell Rock" (Swing Cats), "I'll Be Home For Christmas" (Gary Twinn), "Christmas Tree Boogie" (Swing Cats), "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" (Gary Twinn), "Hoy Hoy Hoy (Rockin' On Christmas Eve)" (Honeydippers), "My Favorite Things" (Swing Cats), "Three Kings" (Danny B. Harvey)

Videos: "Jingle Bells" "I'll Be Home for Christmas" "Christmas Tree Boogie" "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" "Three Kings"