Dr. Ex & the Break-Ups

Moon Motel

(Headshrinker Records)

An astral-carnival sideshow, in upside-down orbit around lucky stars, contrives riotous carryings-on in the key of helium. Funhouse organ swirlings bedeck double-time rockery (wah-wah guitar bows in), as creatures great and small giggle-slide around Saturnian rings. Vocals indicating laughing gas soar and swoop in madcap elation. Perpetrators even go so far as to spray paint boffo Kihn spin. All that to the positive? Absotively! Only three of five cuts exceed two minutes, with none surpassing three, because time flies when you're up to kicks.

Recommended: "Bigfoot Boogie," "99 Breakups," "Red-Eyed Whiskey Girl," "Det. Jack Gavin," "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'em)"

Videos: "Bigfoot Boogie"   "Red-Eyed Whiskey Girl"   "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'em)"

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PIG BOYS

Living in the Future   EP

(Self-issued)

By the moment your eyes find these words, Michigan may have fallen. Rock'n'Roll in quintessence -- shredding and piledriving, as can only be blasted by ten-times-alive provocateurs (in this instance, of Garage Punk blood) who hold indulgence and studio frippery in merited, massive contempt -- erupts omnidirectionally. That they accomplish velocitous ferocity using common means illustrates the powerfulness possible in sidewalk circumstance. Wolverine State, R.I.P.

Recommended: "SUV," "Don't Ya Wanna?," "Make Me a Man"  "Living in the Future," "Lovesick"

Videos: "SUV"   "Don't Ya Wanna?"   "Lovesick"

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The Shower Puffs

Powerpuff Twist   digital EP

(Headshrinker Records)

"A sonic punch to the jaw," advised Add to Wantlist's Dennis, utterly without hyperbolic intent. Illustrated anew is that rudimentary instrumentation is all Rock'n'Roll ever needed. (Well, that and loads of danger-zone attitude.) Understated audio has the salutary function of leaving stark and bristly material/performances to leap undraped. Appreciation foams over.

Recommended: "Until the Light," "AI- Angry," "Tobacco On the Rocks," "C4 Psychiatric Disorder"

Video: Full four-track EP

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The Horny Wackers and the epileptic reaction

Top of the Garbage   vinyl and digital

(Self-issued)

From behind the tricolore door of a garage beat-laboratory/boudoir flood jungle percussives, unbalanced intimacies, guitar brickbats maddened with fuzz, Gone-and-staying-there Rockabilly, and more Crampsian curiosities than you can shake a furry handcuff at (if that's your idea of a good time). The best sort of fun is where not all are guaranteed return.

Recommended: "Get Down," "The Big Green Cock Monster," "She's Cruel," "Wackin' the Dark," "My Rendezvous Under the Moon," "Sexual Ghost," "Happy Flesh," "Strum Strum Strum Again," "Cold Sweat"

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Full Moon Freaks

B-Movies for the Blind (The Maddest Story Ever Told)

(Wreckin' Bones)

From every cattycorner angle stride manic manueverings in the old-school, loony, quiff-cat style -- which is to be anticipated from recordings waxed between 1986 and 1993. (The band remains active.) But partakers need also be aware that outer-space audio shards and assorted uncanny vibes also emerge from darkness. Issued in 2021 as a limited-edition vinyl unit by Wreckin' Bones, and today also accessible in digital form. B Movies for the Blind (among cleverest of titles) includes the two cuts FMF contributed to 1999 compilation Psycho Tendencies, as well as 2020 single "Spider Baby (Mayhem!)."

Recommended: "Martian Men," "King Cobra Snake," "Strontium Dogs," "Full Moon Rising," "Tequila Frenzy," "Spider Baby," "Prey," "Surfboard Song," "Rip Tide," "Crazy House"

Video: promo clip (1:25)   "Martian Men" (official video)   "Surfboard Song"   "Rip Tide"

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HHV Records

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Lil' Lisa & the Finks

Introducing...

(Work Whorse / Wavy Gravy)

If it weren't so that these four road-burning mean-kick celebrations of absolutely unhindered hedonism (with mindbending groove accentings) arose as a side project of Chicago punk band The Dyes' Lisa Louise, greasy greenbacks would bolster supposition that they'd swung onto the scene from the soundtracks of a late-60s American International drive-in biker flick, one whose lurid banner cried Wild, Mama, Far-out, Stompers, and Savages.

Recommended: "Chopper," "Have Love Will Travel," "Henrietta," "No Good to Cry"

Videos: "Chopper"   "Have Love Will Travel"   "No Good to Cry"

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The Coffin Fits

There's a Snake in My Boot(leg)   Digital 

(Self-issued)

Cooked up in an Enzed Garage, spookiness rides the wild surf. Triple-time snare hustles, while ominous acoustic negotiations explore long-desolate and spider-webbed manses. Voices suddenly pounce; the lead is surly, the chorus ones, spectral. 

Recommended: "Crankenstein," "Baby I've Changed," "Werewolf Island," "Poltergassed," "Mortal Acoustic"

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The Hel-Gators

Black Lipstick and Other Tinseltown Stories

(Bluelight Records)

Miss Maila on the cover with Jussie may catch eyeballs, but ears will insist on remaining once they've beheld the gnashing, schizzing cacophonies of Insanity Hall. Chords of delirium with ill-temper ally themselves with bashes and pit-of-throat declarations in demolition spree. The Crampsian royal couple would dig what they've engendered -- including off-ramps and idiosyncratic modifications.

Recommended: "Black Lipstick," "Twilight Dance," "Hollow Joe," "Into Shreds," "Duel at the Dawn," "Tinseltown"

Videos: "Black Lipstick"   "Hollow Joe"   "Into Shreds"

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J.C. Thomaz and the Missing Slippers

s/t

(Slovenly Recordings)

I know it'll be hard to believe, but I'm 96% positive I encountered these happily delirious stimulatons in a forbidden-substance 1978 hallucinogenic episode: Maila Nurmi was at the frying pan, Jimmy Carter was passed out on a bean-bag chair, and a composite party band including day-glo flamboyances from the Dolls, 13th Floor Elevators, Cramps -- and innumerable, determinedly insurgent 1967 middle-class neighborhood Garage bands no one ever heard of -- was swinging ga-ga chops omnidirectionally. Pheromones were running down paneled walls.

You hadda be there.

(When the guys with butterfly nets run bed check and discover this latex/fishnets menagerie absent, they're gonna be out looking.)

Recommended: "Cheat R Bad," "She's a Wave," "Kelly Lynn," "Over Me," "Unchained Insanity," "Walk the Streets," "Shit on the Street"

Videos: "Cheat R Bad"  "She's a Wave"   "Kelly Lynn" (live)   "Isadore's Peace of Mind" (live)

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Strange World Records

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Stompin' Riffraffs

Maybe it was a hush-hush Army atomic experiment that transmogrified Frankie, Annette, and other Go-Go beach teens into the Robot Monster, She-Creature, and miscellaneous misshapen products of drive-in screamers, now lurching in attempts to pull off dance sensations that are sweeping the nation. The world will never know.

Video: "Horror Show"

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Wild Records

OP ED

E.P. by OP ED

(Self-issued)

All thunderslaps are concise and race furiously, tuneful architecture stabbing gray matter.

Recommended: "Poetry About Narcotics," "Inept Pimps," "Subordinate," "Death Wish"

Video: live August 2025 (Four songs, two from above EP)

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Back in the Day, 1999

The Neanderthals

The Modern Stone-Age Family

(Sundazed)

"Mastodon's" measured distorto-chords and trenchant beat recall both the Kinks and Los Straitjackets' choreographed stomps. That last hardly surprises, given that Eddie Angel teamed with Johnny Rabb to perpetrate this wiggy beach bash. 

Straitjackets drummer Pete Curry is a sometime accomplice. And bassist Sam Bolle, whose resume includes Dick Dale, Fear, and Agent Orange, has hands in certain carbonated sensations, as well.

All tracks but one clock in under 3:00, which means outta sight bends and gasser shenanigans must make cases briskly. Eddie crafted Fun Gone Wild tunes with characteristic surf/garage erudition. 

High moments ride mondo waves to transister jollification: "Toe Rag Twitch" transmogrifies "The Bedrock Twitch," and has teens the scene 'round doing dance sensations that are sweeping the nation. "Remember the Twist" juices the juke with experimental octane. 

Were it not for Dippity-Do and Aqua Net, the ponytails and rat-tail-comb-teased bouffants of chicks shaking hips to "Flintstone Flop," "King of the Twist," and "Neanderthal Twist" would fast resemble peroxided shambles.

Select reinventions - with combo eyes ever toward shimmy-shimmy diversion - include Addams Family actor Ted Cassidy's 1965 "Lurch;" "I Go Ape" (a 1959 Neil Sedaka racer that England's Wee Willie Harris covered to riotous effect); novelty group The Martians' 1959 "Tarzan;" "Rockin' in the Jungle" (The Eternals' 1959 side); and "Shaggy Dog," waxed by Mickey Lee Lane in 1964. 

Sundazed reissued Modern Stone-Age Family in 2023, on white translucent vinyl. 

Recommended: "Mastodon," "Shaggy Dog," "I Go Ape," "Tarzan," "Toe Rag Twitch," "Remember the Twist," "Flintstone Flop," "Rockin' the Jungle," "King of the Twist," "Neanderthal Twist"

Videos: "Mastodon"   "I Go Ape" (live)   "Remember the Twist"   "King of the Twist"   "Neanderthal Twist"

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The Cramps

Smell of Female   CD or digital

(Big Beat Records / Ace)

Big Beat loosed anew several of the cellar-discotheque ghouls' back platters, 1983's Smell of Female being one twistedly alluring specimen. Kid Congo had by this juncture thrown in with caclcified cryptkeepers Lux, Ivy, and Nick Knox (scarred and gaunt Bryan Gregory having taken his axe beneath ground). Reverential reinventions of Roky Erickson, Hasil Adkins, and a notorious, curvy  cult flick invaded. Six tracks taken from a Peppermint Lounge spectacle the original release offered are here joined by bonus slices "Beautiful Gardens" and "She Said," recorded in the same witching hours. Additional extra song "Surfin' Dead" was the scare-cell's contribution to 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead. 

Recommended: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love," "You Got Good Taste," "Faster Pussycat," "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound," "Psychotic Reaction," "Beautiful Gardens," "She Said," "Surfin' Dead"

Videos: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" (live)   "Faster Pussycat"    "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound" (live)   "Surfin' Dead" (official video)

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GOONS!

Never Go Back

(Hi-Tide Recordings)

A cliche in crime entertainment is the "perp always returns to the scene of the crime" axiom; perhaps that prompted title Never Go Back. New York's rave-up Goons scheme in the same comic-book crook guises as do the Madrid-based Bank Robbers. Too, each cases seriously unserious Garage/Rockabilly joints, with Hullabaloo dance-off fun being the black-market haul - in bulging white bag with oversized dollar-sign emblem. 

Here, Farfisa abets Graham Tichy's treble-string-stinging, '60s partytime arousal. Hooks can be tracked to transister radios glued to the shaggy noggins of fastback-years teens taking sidewalk skateboards over home-built ramps. "Land of a Thousand Crimes" bespeaks Wicked Pickett emulation. 

"Crime just can't be beat!" crow the Goons. (Don't let Officer Dibble hear you say that.)

Recommended: "Never Go Back" "Parchman Farm," "Jailbird," "I've Waited So Long," "Driving Wheel," "Lockdown," "Roll Call," "Stick 'em Up," "Land of a Thousand Crimes," "Rob Cheat Steal"

Videos:   "Jailbird"   "I've Waited So Long"   "Stick 'em Up" (reel)   "Rob Cheat Steal"   

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Down in the Valley

Record Store Day

Rough Trade

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Automatic Lovers

s/t   12" vinyl and digital

(Wap Shoo Wap Records / FOLC Records)

Spring 1976: I tore shrink-wrap from the Ramones' world-rending debut Sire LP. And I didn't lift stylus from vinyl (except to flip the platter) until concluding "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World's" 2:09 had totally ebbed into ether.

Madrid's Automatic Lovers' maiden waxing recalls that pivotal episode. Not that the group is of identical rank - so, what band could claim that glue-sniffing distinction? - but because their record is equally solid. No tracks merit skipping.

Songs are grabbed up, shaken thoroughly, and booted into some future week. All are magnetic exercises in Punkishly frenzied, glad-to-be-young-and-kicking Rock'n'Roll, that is ardent enough to include guitar ferality amidst confederate raging, and sufficiently astute to maintain compositional brevity. 

1976 hype was that the debuting Ramones had blown out Plaza Sound Studios' speakers. I would not be flabbergasted to learn such had also been the case, here.

Recommended: "Wasting Time," "High Degree," "Pushin Too Hard," "Long Gone," "Out of Control," "Hardbeat," "WGTEYEO," "Shoot at Me," "What Do I Know," "Take My Hand," "Twist and Die"

Videos: "Wasting Time"   "Out of Control" (live)   "Pushin' Too Hard"   

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The Edwoods / A. Clementina

"Plan 9" / "Danger!"

(Headshrinker Records)

Two specimina of under-soil Garagery, with emphases on dire formulizing. Dense, harsh cacophony marks the former - a sort of crashes and bashes brutalizing - while Headshrinker Alaska (under sobriquet "A. Clementina") offers up startling pronouncements, as exclusively bass-and-drums desolation rivets.

Video: "Plan 9" / "Danger!"

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Horror Deluxe, A. Clementina

"Videodromo" & "I'm Just a Monster"   digital

(Headshrinker Records)

What fresh/cool madness is this? The he and she skronk-mongers* of HD, and sparseness shoveler Headshrinker Alaska, scatch across wax portraits unnerving. Instance the first? A twisted wreck of torn metalpunk tittilation. Flip "A. Clementina" entry? An insistent,  guitarless, stream-of-unhingedness. 

Video: promo clip

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* A term borrowed from late Creem scribe Rick Johnson.

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Angela Tini

Here Comes Trouble

(Rum Bar Records)

Downtown streets must have been calm; all the cool cats were makin' the studio scene to raise up this bonfire.

Their swingalong-matches rank included Carl Sonny Leland (piano/organ/production/arranger), Deke Dickerson (bass/sax/backing voice), Tommy Harkenreider (guitar), Zander Griffith (upright and electric basses), and Josh Collazo (drums). The ace Dynaflos happened by, too, and flipped tops on their own Ronsons.

Local fire-fighting boys were on standby.

Star Miss Angela wove her elegant witchcraft betwixt all the motivatin' Jazz and Rhythm & Blues airs. Hers is a magnificent fashion that punches across the cool-to-hot spectrum, with smoky glamour whispers, mellifluous sailings, and Ruth Brown-caliber beltings that could scorch holes through cement-brick walls.

Asbestos alligators are presently opening their wallets.

Recommended: "Can't Stop Me," "Too Many Secrets," "Honey Never Spoils," "Forty Cups of Coffee," "Tout Doucement," "Every Night," "Turn Me Loose," "Here Comes Trouble," "Don't Let Me Down," "Never No More," "Good Thing," "Confess," "Not Lonely for You"

Videos: "Can't Stop Me,"   "Too Many Secrets"   "Tout Doucement"   "Here Comes Trouble"

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Mr. Fab & his Bag O' Heads

Taste the Brides of Drac-enstein   digital album

(Jungle Room Records)

We're in weird company, when a theremin's hanging around. But off-kilter sorts dig the spookiness. As the haunted house hullabaloo devolves into ghastly Go-Go groove, and life forms not-of-this-reality do dance sensations that are sweeping the nation, Mr. Fab unchains kooky 1960s Garage bash-rhythms that feature all manner of sideways instrumentation, single-and-choral voice manifestations, totally unforseen brass gesticulations, and percussive knickknocks. Archived from the last century's second-half decades, these uncanny novelty romps - sporadically punctuated by drive-in flick blurbs - would have teenage future-Luxes up all night, cranking GE transisters under sheets, when they're supposed to have turned over keys to the Sandman.

Recommended: "Skeleton Crew on the Graveyard Shift," "Ghost Zombie Goes to Town," "Cannibal Zombie Mom," "Casper the Friendly Queen," "I Want My Mummy," "Thereming"

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