The Pistol Whippers

Four on the Floor Sneak Peak  EP

(Self-issued)

Punk of metallic dangerousness. Full-on bust-up "Roller Derby" might well heft the two-black-eyes trophy, were it not for the heady competition posed by preceding tracks. Barley hops and barre chords are a combustible combination. 

Accessible exclusively in digital form, just now. Physical discs ahead.

Recommended: "Siren Baby" "Canto Para Mi Fuego!," "Punani Tsunami," "Roller Derby" (live)

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Los Plantronics

¡Maximum Mexican R'n'B!   LP

(Jansen Records)

Someone phone Guiness: ¡Maximum! was officially released on Oct. 30, and its 100 'hot sauce' vinyl copies were classed as sold out by the following dawn. A walkabout both educational and lapel-seizing unfolds in 11 segments. Here looms tejano, there jumps up garage Rock'n'Roll agitation, a trumpet sounds at first light, and burly dynamics pounce, while trace elements of surf and R&B have their wonderful ways with the musical scale.

Recommended: "Stubborn Creek," "Diddy Western," "Riverboat Gambler," "El Pende," "El Último Adiós Del Mariachi," "Les Plantronique," "Cumbia Del Monte," "Mexicali Baby," "Than Garage"

Videos: "Riverboat Gambler" (Official video)   "El Ultimo Adios Del Mariaci"   "Les Plantronique" (Official video)   

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Roy Head

One More Time!

(Redeye)

Never to return are the days when Soul first rose and roared -- days when Roy was among those at the style's apex, live-wire steppers who twisted themselves all up into impossible contortions, while wrenching from their guts humanity blasts that put stank all over the place.

No, those times will never again be lived. But recordings preserved offer precious witness.

Recommended: "One More Time," "Live It Up," "Summertime Love," "Walking All Day," "Woe Woe," "Get Back," "You'll Never Make Me Blue," "Just a Little Bit," "Money," "The Feeling's Gone," "Convicted," "Night Train," "Boogie Down Sunset"

Videos: "Walking All Day"   "Get Back"   "You'll Never Make Me Blue"   "Convicted"   "Night Train"

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Back in the Day, 2010

Jimmi Accardi

Cry of the Wild Guitar

(Molehill)

Before diving into this all-instrumental picker's holiday, understand that there are no genre distinctions impervious to muse's beckonings. The career avenue Jimmi previously traveled included stopoffs with CBGB funufacturers The Laughing Dogs, C. Checker, and Davy Jones/Mickey Dolenz. That seasoning is evident. He roams expansively across ten slices, as naturally expressive within roots precincts as when stretching legs in more provocative ones. Such is our reward.

Recommended: "Garage Band Rock," "Funk Juice Part 1," "Cat Man Blues," "Hot Chili," "Knock 'em Dead," "Jump and Swing," "Blues Guitin'," "Rock Me," "Boogie With Me," "Funk Juice Part 2"

Videos: "Cat Man Blues"   "Jump and Swing"   "Rock Me"

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Jim Lowe

Released by Dot Records in August 1956, Jim's original version became a massive crossover hit, reportedly knocking Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" out of Billboard's number-one spot. It's likely present-day ears are familiar with Shakin' Stevens' 1980 reincarnation of this rollicking tale of frustration at being barred from an audible good time.

Video: "Green Door"

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The Pepper Moons

The tuxedoed doorman nods. The grand club's patrons, bedecked to the nines in gabardine and satin, swirl in glacial poetry. An array of Swingmen sense without words when to blow hot, and moments when smooth cool is appropriate. Resplendent at center mic, Eva Mikhailovna is on cordial terms with every note up, down, and around.

Video: "Everything's Been Done Before" (Bopflix video)

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Beach horror girls party surf monsters       

Cars, girls, surfin,' beer / Nothin' else matters here...

Except mystery creatures and blood spurtings.

Frankie and Annette took a bad sideroad off the family-fun freeway, and crashed their Bikini Beach woody wagon into Monster Murder drive in. 

These celluloid throwaways share much: college cookies shimmying flesh storms in all manner of scant swimwear; the transister blare of trebly, wipeout Rock'n'Roll; sandy/splashy revelers aging out of their teen phases and considering adulthood; clunky, PG-grade bon mots that flirt with ribaldry; and authorities -- baffled by mounting gruesome atrocities -- doggedly unraveling the perpetrator puzzle, with heavy-handed, melodramatic soundtrack. (Which contrasts sharply with the beach-blanket-bingo watusis.)

These flicks provided inspiration for Punk magazine's 1978 Mutant Monster Beach Party, a b&w photoplay that featured Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry, and a host of other CBGB's VIPs.

A word on the monster costumes: They are not without finned and scaly aesthetic positives. But each also seems overdone and kinda junior varsity. Perhaps producers couldn't afford Paul Blaisdell.

The Beach Girls and the Monster (1965)

The trailer's narrator gushes: "Beach-party lovers, making hey-hey in the moonlight, while the monster waits and watches!" Featured are "the glamourous watusi dancing girls from Hollywood's famed Whiskey A-Go-Go!"

Bunny is one of three bikini dolls scampering across burning sands with their surfboard boytoys. She leads her own summer flame on a run, losing him. 

Alone, she is vulnerable. A hulking fish-headed monstrosity -- with streamers dangling inexplicably from its torso -- staggers from a nearby cave. And poor Bunny is ripped all to past tense.

The investigating sheriff is struck by fishy crime-scene footsteps. He seeks the counsel of local marine biologist Dr. Otto Lindsay, whose home abuts the beach.

The professor (whose son Richard abandoned their shared research for swimmy hijinx) fumes that the beach partiers are only "loafers" and "little tramps," who "contribute nothing to decent society!" Privately, he laments his son's growing disinterest in their scientific studies and go-go preference.

Given that, only obtuse viewers could not intuit that the credentialed pater is complicit. 

Lacing matters are a runaround step-mother, life-direction agonizing by the professor's son, and the plight of an injured sculpter friend. (In one moment, the friend is toyed with/cast aside by the step-floozy. "I could kill her!" he seethes. The red-herring is both transparent and ineffectual.)

Also in the melange is an evening beach scene, in which hormones-surgent, surfside merrymakers clap in time to Frank Sinatra Jr song, "Monster In the Surf." The insipid ditty is voiced by a beatnik sort, via head-shakingly dumb hand puppet "Kingsley the Lion." 

The remainder of The Beach Girls and the Monster portrays more stalkings (by you-know-who), tune-packed beach wingdings, and savage killings of swivel-hipped subadults.

Lindsay is ultimately unmasked whilst committing yet more crimson-dripping devilment. The murderous fish doctor/counterfeit sea-carnivore leads police on a swervy, dark-of-night car chase. 

Dr. Linsay's car smashes through a mountain-road barrier, tumbles downward end-over-end, and explodes in flames.

Sorry Charlie.

The Horror of Party Beach (1966) 

Billed as the 'first monster-musical!' per the trailer, only theatergoers willing to sign a "Fright Release" -- a viewer agreement to assume all legal responsibility for resultant medical episodes - would be permitted to see film. (The gimmick is worthy of William Castle.)

Upon arriving at a sand-fest, defiant fun-chick Tina and "It's time to grow up" beau Hank verbally snarl. (We later learn he serves as assistant to area scientist Dr. Gavin.) 

A tide-splashed hullabaloo is in wild session. Kicks-crazed kids do dance sensations in joy-addled gymnastic frenzies. A constant in The Horror of Party Beach is the jangly, harmonic surf-rave blasted by New Jersey's Del-Aires.

After enjoying that gander at flirty frolic, viewers witness the dumping of university research-waste chemicals into murky ocean depths. Spreading over a skull (from a fishing boat accident cited later), the poisons also commingle with aquatic phenomena -- and a fishman takes form.

(Suspicions are that the sea creatures in The Horror of Party Beach were contrived by rogue employees of Oscar Meyer.)

Tina's ensuant frolicking with a cycle-gang leader exacerbates tensions. She flounces off alone. (Cue ominous background music.) Unseen by the defiant swing chick, the two-legged agua-beast lurches from a cave.

Gore. Screams. Death.

Police enlist Dr. Gavin in their investigation. While the scientist and Hank focus on practical angles, housekeeper Eulabelle is adamant that voodoo is involved -- to the point of carrying a crude poppet.

(A romantic subplot blooms, pairing Dr. Gavin's daughter Elaine and grieving Hank.)

In the aftermath of a graphically grisly slumber-party massacre -- as well as additional carnage -- it is understood the agua menace has multiplied. Attempts at discerning a manner to exterminate the horrors intensify.

Dr. Gavin, Hank, and others analyze a creature's severed hand. And when distraught Eulabelle accidentally spills metallic sodium onto it -- and it shrivels in dehydration -- all realize good ol' table salt is the weapon needed. (When it rains, it not only pours -- it annihilates.)

Hank is dispatched to New York to obtain sodium in vast quantities.  Returning to supply authorities with the required armament, he finds Elaine and Dr. Gavin under monster attack. 

The brutality is put down in short order, disproving medical consensus: Salt is good for humanity's health.

The Beach Girls and the Monster trailer

Monster scenes compilation

The Horror of Party Beach trailer

The Del-Aires "Zombie Stomp"