The Confusionaires!
Tomorrow Ain't What it Used to Be!
(Self-issued)
Road agentry in The Music Industry was already an aged truth when erstwhile Alice Cooper Band drummer Neal Smith quipped he'd thought of penning a book on 'ethics in the record business' - that would be filled with blank pages. "Radio Gods," is the freshest portrayal of suits' cruelty to honest-blooded believers in the power of the musical note. The fiercely elementary flings and hand-tooled inclinations rocking-up-a-storm here include jacking up Patsy into hot-rod robustness, uncoiling-rattler licks of Honky Tonk heritage, Punk swipes, and barstool-cuzzin singing that is not at all reticent to put everything on the table.
Recommended: "Radio Gods," "Walking After Midnight," "You'll Never Hear Me Complain," "Searching for the Promised Land"
Videos: "Radio Gods" "Walking After Midnight" "Searching for the Promised Land"
Mark Malibu and The Wasagas
Knock Me Out
(Sharawaji Records)
Big Kahuna Malibu heads up this Dawn Patrol w/tremolo bars, managing both the important business of illustrating sundry aspects of Surf-fretboard angling and the more essential matter of kicks all around, in which gaga go-goer's go native and completely dig the racing-striped, wigged-out moment.
This is the band's fifth full-length disc, all on the UK's Sharawaji. Members first shot curls from '79 - '82, split the scene temporarily, and resurfaced in 2014 (with all first go-around personnel). Their upsplash into the hodad-hating hullabaloo engendered beach-blanket shenanigans, foamy navigations, and hand-holding, swim-suited couples disappearing down the sand into setting Sol.
Recommended: "Knock Me Out," "Reef Break," "Love in Liverpool," "Night Stalker," "The Swerve," "Pepper Stomp," "Mini Chopper," "Jibbed Again," "Surfer's Cross," "Moonstone Surfer," "On the Way to Warrington"
Videos: "Love in Liverpool" (Official video) "Pepper Stomp!" (Official video) live (2:56 2024)
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The Angry Red Planet
Captain...The Klingons have surrounded URANUS!
(Sharawaji Records)
Snort derisively at the 2022 instrumental work's asinine title, and no counterargument will be registered from this quarter. Turning to the contents, though, one finds an entirely other story: Six-string pyrotechnics set off conflagratory spectacularness, adventuring at warp speed and scrambling down unforseen corkscrews. Sensationalistic manners of Psychobilly, Morricone musings, surf hullabalooings, New Delhi bazaars -- and something perhaps answering to descriptor 'RockaPsychedeliaBilly' -- bashthrash from within brainpans hopelessly hooked on Science Fiction stuntery, as 1960s one-lung auteurs force-fed it to drive-in backseat grapplers.
Even were title "Geosynchonous Orbituary" the sole feature that track had going for it, a crown would be merited. But so much more of intriguing consequence throbs within.
Recommended: "Captain...The Klingons Have Surrounded Uranus," "My Organ (Intro) Trailer Park Rendezvous," "The Crawling Eye," "Ghost Train," "Private Eye," "The Abyssal Ass Fish," "Desert Winds," "Geosynchonous Orbituary"
No video available
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Messer Chups
The Incredible Crocotiger (10-year anniversary)
(Hi-Tide Recordings)
Having dared tread every enshadowed room, both above and below stairs, of the old manse on the forlorn hill, the swinging evil ones of Messer Chups now unspool all the unspeakable facts -- let us condemn the guilty, let us reward the innocent -- in predominently six-string instrumental vernaculars as much of Saturnian deeds, four-color POW!, and legends of shifting sandscapes as the phantasmagoric lair they've infested.
Recommended: "Magneto," "Moon Race," "Flesh and Blood," "War Party," "Jokermobile," "Titi Caca Titi," "Insomnia of the Mummies," "Son of Chupacabra," "Crocotiger," "Curse of Stephen Kong"
Videos: "Magneto" "Moonrace" "Son of Chupacabra" "Curse of Stephen Kong" (official video)
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Full Moon Freaks
B-Movies for the Blind (The Maddest Story Ever Told)
(Wreckin' Bones)
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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"
Wreckin' Bones (site under construction)
The Cavaleros
Drop the needle to "Supersonic," and what races forth is the onrush of a Jazzmaster being ridden hard, tickin' past milemarkers, a 61 P bass and Rising Sun skins steadily maintaining headlong pace. "Slinky" exacts formidability at more measured tempo, though no less effectively. (Rumbleman lives.)
Video: "Slinky"
The Triplejacks
The Wan Chai Sessions Live digital EP
(Diablo)
Man About Mayhem Doyley weaponizes six steely strings and forcibly grafts splinter-genres wicked and wiggy into a wrecking creature hanging ten on a nitroglycerin crest.
Recommended: "Hong Kong Stomp," "Cockroach," "Frenzy," "Rumble"
Videos: "Hong Kong Stomp" "Frenzy" (live in Hong Kong)
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The Delstroyers
Bomboras dissipate when dropdown toms and bass-string anglings assure foundation for trebly articulations known well to Green Room habitués.
Videos: "Nightshade" & "Cannibal Car"
Doyley & the Twanglords
Reverbatron digital album
(Diablo Records)
Just as opening minutes flash walloping imagery of Venusian waves crashing green-sand shores -- while the Republic Robot shoots the single-digit salute to two-headed gremmies -- closer "Lost Soul" introduces Old Country accordian into fast-flung instro proceedings. Betwixt the two hurtle wordless wonders that explore just how far six-strings can go to unite Bikini Beach and Forbidden Planet.
Recommended: "Reverbatron," "MoonSurfer," "Il Monstro," "Badaboom," "Robostomp," "Lost Soul"
No related videos were available. But here's a fun interview from years ago.
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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"
Vampire Bats
Vampire's Delight
(Gollipop Records)
Recommended: "Witch Stomp," "Dr. Mad Daddy," "Full Moonlight," "Zombie in Love," "Batman Theme," "Red Apple Pie," "Please Give Me Something"
Videos: "Witch Stomp" (Official video) "Zombie in Love" "Red Apple Pie" "Please Give Me Something" (live)
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"
Facebook (Eddie Angel)
Screamin' Meemies
The Trap
(Self-issued)
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Shrewd production by chief Brain Rene De La Muerte allows every plugged-in deviser to be heard unto the extreme. And for his part, Marcel Bontempi fashioned startling cover art that, were it a movie house poster, would ensure swarming streams of bloodshot-eyed ticket-seizers.
Chord-swiped spectacles arisen are so dark, their poetry so lurid, one imagines Maila Nurmi getting up on the wrong side of the slab and seizing a quill. "Don't Tell Me No Lies," "All That She Wants," and "Motherfucker" stampede crazily into that bad night, busting clean through any impediments at ultra-volumes and without regard for anyone or anything.
Instrumental "Haunted Mountain" veers from bubbling electronics to gleeful brutality, six-string savagery and beats of locked-in purposefulness ushering listeners through what undead surely sounds like.
A Bandcamp advisory notes that conclusive slice "Something is Wrong" "officially closes this chapter and opens the door to what comes next." The song portends ebony desolation to which monsters will surely ransack labs' Strickfaden apparatuses and tear up moonshadowed countrysides.
The lid now closes. But know that it will again crack.
Recommended: "The Trap," "Drivin' Me Crazy," "Don't Tell Me No Lies," "Haunted Mountain," "All That She Wants," "Motherfucker," "Something is Wrong"
Videos: "All That She Wants" "Motherfucker" "Something is Wrong"
Hitchcocks
Tales of Hitchcocks 300-copy, 4-track 7" orange vinyl, or 13-cut CD
(Sunnyboy 66 / Latitude Zero Records)
For a bit of a notion as to the present circumstance, straddle a board atop cresting foams splashing through carnival funhouse mirrors, as beyond-Milky-Way tunery, charged by Don Post trick-or-treat mask-wearing outer space spooks with twang bars, reverbs through the Montgomery Ward transister radio you've pressed to an ear. Yeah, it's that good.
Recommended: "Halloween Night," "Interferencia UFO," "Passageiro do Futuro," "O Regresso," "Vampire Dancing," "Magma," "Spaceman," "A Noite do Besouro Verde"
Videos: promo clip live clip 2nd live clip
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Los Pontiaks
Hay un ojo en mi Martini! 12" vinyl LP
(Subterfuge Records)
"These three Prussian soldiers from the underworld emerge from their graves, when the occasion warrants, to invite us to a true hip-shattering Rock 'n' Roll bacchanal." intones their autobilling. Exotic and often instrumental rat rod treks through haunts of Surf, hacksaw rhythms, and Garage Mambo thrill without pause. Inventive songcraft dodges down unforseen novel night roads. The Lux & Ivy imprint (reflect upon title) has its way, certainly, though not with the Scumbag Alley banshee howl one might anticipate. Summoned forth are ten koo-koo treatises that, while hinting now and again at the storied CBGB's cryptkeepers, do so with the impeccable dash of 1940s John-Carradine-House-of-Dracula flowing cape. Silken finery and military helmets catch eyes, yes, but death-heads, dive-bombing chords, and final-mile drum sureness remind of cursed circumstance. (And whose hand is on your shoulder?)
Recommended: "Plato o Plomo," "Hay un ojo en mi Martini!," "Bailarina de seis brazos," "Chicas Zombies," "El Diablo," "El Atracto Perfecto," "El Indiano"
Videos: "Hay un ojo en mi Martini!" "Chicas Zombies" "El Atracto Perfecto"
The Monokids
s/t
(Self-issued)
Italy's Monokids are the whole package: a second skin, cat-style look; Neo-Rockabilly (plus sundry other bents) so tight and energetically tossed out that neophyte competitors likely grind molars enviously; and such apparent affection for the bop that drives cats and gators into lava-blooded paroxysms, that sound systems tremble at resultant roar.
Recommended: "Always Do the Bop," "Real Gone Daddy," "40 Days in a County Jail," "The Last Goodbye," "My Blues," "Blazing"
Videos: "Always Do the Bop" "Real Gone Daddy" (clip) "40 Days in a County Jail" (clip)
The 66ers
Have More Fun
(Rum Bar Records)
I call it the "Ramones formula" - the seamless union of chewy-chewy Pop that once blared from cheap transisters teens pressed to their ears while shooting sidewalk curls, and 'fun times for everyone' slam-bounce. It's difficult to pull off. The combo before us not only succeeds, but the originals (penned by guitarist/singer Steven Brookfield) turn listener musings to Boyce/Hart compositions or Freddy Cannon's shoot-the-chute, along with Dee Dee and Joey's beach-parties-idealized-from-tenement-fire-escape ones. Worth stressing is that heaping spoonfuls of personality lend piquance; exquisite harmonies fill blue skies, buoyed by knowing instrumental recreation. Beneath sunniness revs muscle. Fun is the word.
Recommended: "Holiday," "Southern Girls," "Malisandre," "Miss Summertime," "This Girl is Rude," "Veronika," "If I Could Surf," "Anything You Wanna Be"
Videos: "Holiday" "Southern Girls" "Miss Summertime" "If I Could Surf"
Los Straitjackets
Somos Los Straitjackets
(Yep Roc Records)
So conversant are they in disparate tongues, that the "Surf" adjective often cast upon them hardly suffices. The spring-heeled four are widely hailed for assurance that awes. Textbook dexterity enables them to deal out impressive constructions that are sophisticated, dashing, and, sporadically, introspective. Frankie, Annette, and Deadhead/Bonehead fell in with Wray rumblings, Montgomery Ward-transistor-to-ear musings, and movements serenely majestic, a wealth of sensuous jollities being the creation.
500 copies exist, per Yep Roc.
Recommended: "Bumper Car," "Polaris," "Genesee River Rock," "High Wire Act," "Numbskull," "Two Steps Ahead," "April Showers" (feat. guitarist Simon Heeran), "Cry For a Beatle," "Copy Cat," "Wicker Park," "Spinout"
Videos: "Polaris" (official video) "High Wire Act" (live) "Spinout" (official video)
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Black Valley Moon
We Sleep two-track digital release
(Songs From Oa)
Daring sorts who've pushed-wide oak doors of haunted Old Dark Houses during the Witching Hour, will dig the mood oozed by "We Sleep." It unfurls in creeping manner. Players collude with knowing acumen, their dark purpose to fulfill. Cobwebs are ubiquitous. "They're after me, but I ain't runnin'," intones a narrator for whom accursedness is as naught. A Danzig song, "Mother" also advances in ominous languorousness; skin-crawling essence spreads by the inch. Smiles will never gather in these shadows - at least, not innocent ones.
Videos: "We Sleep" "Mother"
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