Tami Neilson
Songs from the Motion Picture "Holy Days" EP
(Outside Music)
Recommended: "Are You Sure," "Sister Mavis" "Queenie, Queenie"
Video: "Are You Sure" "Sister Mavis" "Queenie, Queenie" (official video)
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Hearthill
Rockin' in the Graveyard live
(Bluelight)
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"Graveyard Party Blues," revisited here from the group's 1990 studio effort, is the initial single from this 2023 Tavastia tour recording. And a wise selection it was. The brashness, headlong dive (featuring six strings afire), and blunt dispatch are emblematic of an all-players-leaning-in enterprise that may well leave stage boards in splinters.
Recommended: "Graveyard Party Blues," "Lost Paradise," "Gas Station," "I'm Moving," "He's Alright," "Blue Fool," "Shake It Up," "Rock-a-Billy Guy"
Videos: "Graveyard Party Blues" "He's Alright" "Shake It Up"
Nil
Wildflower
(afro skull records)
Bashing hurtles at rates beyond the reckoning of mph calculators, and at volumes that leave eardrums violated and in shreds on tiles below. Cords leap out on necks, sweat is flung wildly, eyes bug, and blood vessels ripple across foreheads. Immaculate trauma.
Recommended: "Godspeed," "Tax Baby," "Perfect Piece," "Unhappy Number"
Videos: "Godspeed" "Tax Baby" "Unhappy Number"
Demented Are Go
Hellbilly Storm limited reissue vinyl
(Rebellion Records)
2026 reissue of 2005 People Like You disc, by Rebellion (Netherlands). Razored hooks, cockeyed melodicism, open-throttle arrangements, and hardcore up-amp guitars. Throwing in with Sparky were formidable roustabouts including Lex Luther, Doyley, Strangy, and Criss Damage. Metal and 'billy collided in technicolor spectacle. New version has deluxe gatefold packaging and comes in various colorations. For the embittered sociopath who has everything and demands more.
Recommended: "Pedigree Scum," "The Noose (That Snapped)," "Hellbilly Storm," "Skating in the Rain," "Out of Control," "Block Up," "Hotrod Vampires," "Demon Seed," "Jogging Machine," "Someone's Out to Get Me," "When Death Rides a Horse"
Videos: "The Noose (That Snapped)" (live 2019) "Block Up" "Jogging Machine" "Someone's Out to Get Me"
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John Lewis & His Trio
While high-hat fashionistas schedule ridiculously pricey appointments with credentialed mug-rearrangers, John Lewis and a Spanish good-time festival throng have a big ol' guffaw at the foolish phenomenon, their boisterousness urged on by traditional Countrified Rockbilly Boogie.
Video: "Botox Boogie" (live Spain 2025)
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The Boys
Surely, England has an AARP equivalent, but it can save postage by crossing The Boys off its solicitation list. No sale for these rumbustious peers of the '76 Damned, Pistols and Bromley Contingent -- they're eluding that good night with cheek and towerblock amplification.
Videos: "Damn Those Eyes" "Never Mind the Botox"
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Cab Calloway - real George!
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Glide in his stride, outlandish hepster suits, motor-mouthed scat hyperventilations -- pencil-mustachioed Swing-Jazz ringleader Cab simply was stylin' personified, for 1930s Cotton Club/Savoy/Apollo patrons. And everlastingly, too, in the delirious consciousness of those hip to the tip.
Only persons ignorant (somehow) of Cab Calloway's larger-than-life persona and imprint on popular culture could dismiss him.
Successive decades saw performers modeling divergent glad rags, in manners unlike predecessors. But even in those, trace elements of the Hi Di Ho bandleader's hotshot airs hovered.
Cab was the first black musician to sell a million records. Among Calloway-penned-or-interpreted classics that reside in the Great American Songbook are "Minnie the Moocher," "Are You Hep to the Jive," and "St. James Infirmary." Also in that rank are "We the Cats Shall Hep You," "The Old Man of the Mountain," "Are You All Reet?," and "What's Buzzin', Cousin?"
Adoring audiences at 'black and tan' spots went wild over the golden-tongued jester with tails and tousled hair a-fling. And of course, every man in his Swing orchestra spoke jive like a treasured second tongue. (At times, Dizzy Gillespie and Illinois Jacquet were among those making walls come tumbling down.)
Nor was Cab's contribution to our world solely musical. Of cultural significance was his ingress into white entertainment, a reality that advanced necessary racial unity. Just as the scat-master and associated players purveyed hot-and-cold ankle-benders to Savoy and Apollo throngs, so, too, did they loom impressively in more general milieus.
Cab turned up in films Stormy Weather, Porgy and Bess, International House, The Singing Kid (which also featured Al Jolson), The Cincinatti Kid, and Hello Dolly.
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Lena Horne made her film debut in 1935 short Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party. It was one of several the slick impresario lensed.
Not only did he appear on radio programs with Bing Crosby and Walter Winchell, but Cab went on to host his own -- the first black man to do so.
He assumed Billboard chart status some half-dozen times through the years, also having injected reet magic in three Betty Boop cartoons: Minnie the Moocher, Snow White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. His impeccable musicality gilded the animated flickers.
Decades later, he illustrated his enduring coolness in 1980's Blues Brothers movie. The dashing Hi Di Ho cat with the whirling feet, laughing eyes, and crackerjack motor-mouthisms remained as George as when the '30s stepped out.
So, when subjects of heptitude are broached, the wise evoke Cab Calloway. And anyone who doesn't know should shut their yaps and pay attention.
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