V2  

Stan's Guest List

(Still Unbeatable Records)

Manchester safety-pin vets summon renewed belligerence. Every man jack pounces, as is required by chord-and-riff, fists-forward attacks whose brick-wall jubilance and flashy treble swipes tend at times to recall David Jo and the Babylon boys.

Recommended: "Breakdown!," "I Don't Know," "Media Control," "On Fire," "All for Nothing," "Fast, Loud, Dirty Rock'n'Roll"

Videos: "Breakdown!"   "Media Control"   "On Fire"   "Fast, Loud, Dirty Rock'n'Roll"

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Teenage Bottlerocket

The Invisible Man   7" EP

(Pirates Press Records)

When several tune-scribes wax eloquent, fashion diversity is to be anticipated. Such is the matter here. Strains of aggression are intercut with studiously accessible constructions. But even when moderate melodiousness carries the day, attentive listeners will detect firepower.

(All four songs were recorded during sessions that produced 2025's Ready to Roll.)

Recommended: "Invisible Man," "You Made Me Get Called a Poser," "Pembrey's Face," "City at Night" 

Videos: "Pembrey's Face"   "City at Night"

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Pirates Press Records

GRINDPROMOTION Records

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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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Colnect

Back in the Day, 1979

Tony Conn

Total Insanity

(Rollin' Rock)

The notorious Wildman's jittering zealotry comes over most emphatically during "Hard Knocks and Tough Rocks," though it certainly rages elsewhere. All one need know about the full-steam band that tears the nighttime a new ashtray is that it includes Ray Campi. 

"I'm gonna kick those big walls down!"

Recommended: "Goin' Back to Boston Town," "Mighty Mighty Dora," "Bonnie," "I Wanna Hold You," "It Shouldn't Happen," "Hard Knocks and Tough Rocks," "Ramblin' Ray"

Videos: "Goin' Back to Boston Town"   "Mighty Mighty Dora"   "Hard Knocks and Tough Rocks"   

Plaid Room Records

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The  Brains

An amphetaminized and kalaidoscopic corkscrew updating of sailor Sinatra and mates On the Town, awash in intoxicants and with frenzied Psycho sans brakes. 

Video: "One More Time"

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Cleopatra Records

Paul Ansell and Smokestack Lightnin'

Between Paul's grained drawl and the robust encouragement of Nuremberg roots-mavens SL -- particularly guitarists Axel Brückner and André Langer -- a pair of hand-tooled ditties kick like home folks in high cotton.

Videos: "Stuck in a Rut"   "Rawhide"  (Yes, the beloved TV theme.)

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Sleazy Records

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Rock'n'Roll is as American as apple pie  

                                  
When some contemporary Rockabillies talk politics; they sound like Wavy Gravy in Haight Ashbury during the Psychedelic Mistake of the 1960s. 

Pretenders in today's scene comb their hair like Elvis, but vote like Jerry Garcia. They play populist American music while despising the patriotic ethos in the genre's marrow.

They've mastered the mechanics, but don't for a moment dig what it's all about. It can sound similar to the music we love, but without sincerity...it's far less than 100%

Rock'n'Roll historians recall that, when 15, Gene Vincent lied about his age to join the U.S. Navy during the Korean conflict. Like Vincent, Elvis served this country. 

So did many of their contemporaries. They were proud to be from the greatest country on Earth. Determined to defend her.

Gene named his landmark band, the Bluecaps, after Ike Eisenhower's favored golfing brim. Can you feature a present-day Rockabilly band adopting a moniker inspired by anything President Trump wears?

Of course you can't. Anti-Americanism thrives as lustily among some current roots bands as it did when Country Joe McDonald burned his thumb on a roach backstage at Woodstock.

Early Rock'n'Roll, before grasping executives with skyscraper offices domesticated and commodified it, was a swinging manifestation of real American values. Even if they didn't vocalize it, pioneers and fans understood the prevalent culture had drifted a far piece from our nation's foundational ideals. 

Like individual liberty, even when free expression discomfits others. Like tearing down bonds of stifling orthodoxy. Like going one's own way. And digging equality, with the understanding that there's just one race -- the human one.

From its inception in 'unrespectable' mileaus, Rock'n'Roll was a joyous, shattering, unapologetic 'fuck you' to a repressive status quo. Its progenitors were proud Americans. The form they forged was of the common American man. They neither indulged pernicious foreign fancies nor flirted with unpatriotic sloganeering.

Rockabilly is a rebel music -- or, at least, once was. There is nothing remotely counter-culture about catering to social pressures and 'progressive' dictates.

Healthy rebellion challenges unfairness and suffocation. It differs profoundly from kneejerk contrarianism. Opposing absolutely everything is puerile. 

To play honest Rock'n'Roll is to affirm pride in our country's character, opportunities, and paramount world status.

Those who play Rockabilly without believing in it are like someone speaking a foreign language. Anyone doing so, anyone who would quarrel with the reality that Rock'n'Roll is defiantly American (as it's classically defined), should retire the Bigsby Gretches and pegged pants. You ain't foolin' nobody who digs the real deal.