Robert Gordon and the Di Maggio Connection

s/t

(New Shot Records)

Never again will there ring out a voice so resonant, capacious, and packed with the joys of gut-level Rock'n'Roll, as was the late Robert's. His tones filled every hall. Name any storied veteran you care to, and RG - having long ago internalized their's and fellows' iconic persuasions, imbuing them with marvelous personal aspect - merits placement in identical lofty rank.

Among axe wielders with whom he crafted swing-from-rafters boppery through shook-up decades were Link Wray, Chris Spedding, and Danny Gatton. Royalty, all. Guitars were their sceptres. 

Just as Robert belongs in a relief with past masters, so Italian Marco Di Maggio could cut heads with storied predecessors. The man is that wickedly gifted, as all who've relished his own years' worth of recordings can jump up and testify. (It seems likely Marco never fudged a treble note in all his born days.)

Live album Robert Gordon and the DiMaggio Connection was recorded in 2006, at Crallo in Scandiano, Italy. Players assembled take each curve on two wheels. In addition to Marco, Connection associates included bassman Matteo Giannetti and drummer Marco Barsanti. A pair more suited to killer goneness simply doesn't draw oxygen.

No stylistic deviations appear on the songlist, which is entirely okay. Robert chose only the finest material. And one never tires of hearing his booming interpretations. Greater love for finned fracture hath no cat. Doubtlessly, his spirited exhortations cleaved pomps in back rows.

Let's all spill a bit of PBR.

Recommended: "The Way I Walk" "Lover Boy," "Look Who's Blue," "The Worryin' Kind," "Hello Walls," "Sea of Heartbreak," "I Just Found Out," "Drivin' Wheel," "Rockbilly Boogie," "Don't Be Cruel"

No videos from this gig were available, so here are others featuring Robert and Marco Di Maggio: "The Way I Walk"   "Lover Boy"   "I Just Found Out"   "Drivin' Wheel"   "Rock Billy Boogie"

Di Maggio Connection

New Shot Records

Joe's Records

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Bear Family

Hamilton Book

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Marley Bone

"Vampire Orgy"   digital track

(Marleybone Records)

No one returns to the land of the living from this revelry. Intonations adorning low-gear, chunka-chunka Rockabilly nonchalance articulate a doomful scenario. Unsuspecting, flat-gone merrymakers will soon join legions of the blood-thirsting undead, like it or not. Axe strings pounce, here and again. Were instrumentation less precise in its practice - in such leanness, every note must be vital, and herein is - effectiveness would not be so utter. Beats are agile and poised. All is sinister substance. Some 3 minutes in, players shift into a Jazz-accented breakdown during which tasteful turns enchant. Bass steps nimbly. "Then he ruffles her hair, and his fangs are bare / And it's way too late to scream..." A laugh echoes, thunder rumbles, and lids are sealed against rising sun.

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Guitar Wolf

More Jet

(Guitar Wolf Records)

As your eyes sweep across these letters, Seiji and curled-lip collaborators Takura and Gotz are deluging New Zealand and Australia with mega-voltage thunderations of twisted Punk metal. Sparks are surely spattering that besieged landscape. Official alarms scream. Spotlights criss-cross ebony nights. Masses of tittilated adherants will be happily deaf for days.

Seven years have transpired since the leathery trio last detonated within studio confines. Those are as nothing. Personnel permutated, but one satisfiedly savors familiar blast/gash/smashes fired off with febrile relish. I have it on reliable imaginary authority that jagged-toothed Rock'n'Roll of incalculable velocity is the audio equivalent of Ponce de León's diving pool.

Recommended: "More Jet," "100m Girl," "Long Tall Sally," "Coelacanth Galaxy," "9AM Pornomag Planet," "Kung Fu Bikini," "Super Sonic ihatov"

Videos: promo :23 "Long Tall Sally"    live 10:21 (New Zealand, 2025)

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Strange World Records

Rocking Horse Records

Sorcerer Records

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Little Til and the Gangbusters

In a Peculiar Way

(Rocketman Records)

Attilio Malambri, aka "Little Til," responded to a recent Facebook user's lament that seemingly few 20-somethings presently populate the sideburn sect. 25 year-old Little Til - now pursuing novel adventures in Parisian climes - threw in his own perspective. He noted that at festival performances with band The Gangbusters, he's observed numerous under-30s deploying crazy feet. (Still, Attilio did concede musicians of draft age seldom embrace cool cat soundings.)

Below is consideration of Little Til and the Gangbusters' 2024 release, In a Peculiar Way:

It was with sharp discernment that Italy's Attilio Malambri selected which standards to revisit. Featured songs are cream, and these reinterpretations crackle as if the material were newly minted. In ballads, Little Til's urbanity enjoys bolstering by grand harmonies. And when stormers roll out, he pounds daylights out of ivories and exhorts insistently in fevered manner. At every turn, the formidable Gangbusters tear it up without looking back. Rocking is their business, as the Treniers once declared, and the band's virtues cannot be extolled too loudly.

Recommended: "Fools Fall In Love," "Money (That's What I Want)," "Lonely Weekends," "Lovin' Up a Storm," "Rockin' My Life Away"

Video: "Lonely Weekends"

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The Bullets

Go Crazy! Get Wild!

(Western Star Recording Co)

Having mastered the slicked-back genre in which they specialize, Western Star's wildmen are possessed of natural feeling for it; so greatly, that their nods to Land of Dixie super-pickers Burlison and Moore are organic complements to their own flair, not sterile mimicry. 

Jitter boppers schooled in Rockabilly's embryonic period will recognize various twangs, patterns, and six-stringed orations. But also awaiting appreciation in grooves is a treasure most precious: that being, the free-for-allism that explodes in the heart, the head, and the feet, whenever chords of agitation take wing. 

("With This Song," the chaser to above het-up insigation, cools heels to Countrified and steel-guitared serenity. "There's a whole, wild world a-waitin,' startin' tonight" pledges a swain to his hourglassy she.)

Recommended: "The Shaker," "Back Off Baby," "Go Crazy! Go Wild!," "The Girl's on Fire," "Chicago Blue," "Breakin' All the Rules," "With This Song"

Videos: "The Shaker"   "Go Crazy! Get Wild!"   "The Girl's on Fire"   "With This Song"

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Rough Trade

Proper Music

Sonic Rendezvous

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Savage Beat

Bright Lights, Tall Shadows

(Wap Shoo Wap Records)

Savage Beat are the storming sons of every bygone, cherished Rock'n'Roll / Punk / Glam / Oi! outfit that tore all hell out of popular music when it became boring (as it so often does). Snarling guitar, basslines that mean business, and monster-muscled drum demolition rip the brakes out of this substance-abusing locomotive. Shouted exclamations leap aboard that streamlined anger and spew jump-for-jawbreaking defiance of whatever strictures society might contrive. Incredulously, all that is packed into oxygen-free song missiles.

1970s Creem magazine crits sometimes groped the descriptor "high energy." Set for March 6 release (pre-orders are now underway), this 10-track, 12" vinyl argument for exhuming that accolade may well set turntables aflame.

Get it anyway. The world needs Savage Beat.

Recommended: "Street Boogie Confidential," "Cut to the Chase," "Unhinged," "Killer Inside," "Blood on the Knees," "Bright Lights, Tall Shadows," "The  Side Hustle," "Worse for Wear," "Three Chord Disciple," "Tomorrow (Might Never Come)"

Videos: "Unhinged"   "The Side Hustle"    "Three Chord Disciple" (tour video)

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Season of Mist Shop

Longshot Music

Piranha Records

Strictly Discs 

Down In the Valley

The Shutdowners

"(You Called Me a) Dreamer"   "I'm on My Way"   digital tracks

(Self-issued)

The lockdown duration produced a gladsome wonderment: Four wranglers from far-flung German locations connected, then recorded long-distance via computers. 

I'm told drummer Lutti first proposed the collaboration. Amenable to 'joining right in there' were guitarist TinCan Semmel, singer/rhythm guitarist Smalltown Felix (who assembled distinct instrumentations into digital wholes), and bass-string negotiator Midge Van Geldern.

It was some two years later that the musicians met and clasped hands. Several live appearances ensued, and crowds dug in tower block font.

Of the online songs for which members cut their contributions remotely, the two freshest are here considered:

"The night is quiet, the stars are few / I walk the streets that we once knew," begins "(You Call Me a) Dreamer." The unhurried, plain-spoken narrator relates familiar forlornness, gently ushered forward by pleasant Country ambling. By the conclusion, though - "You call me a dreamer, but now I see / This dream was never meant for you and me" - he's resigned himself to bleak truth. For listeners, though, tuneful vivacity counters melancholy.

Issued shortly before the foregoing, "I'm on My Way" is noticeably brisker. A Luther Perkins-type, bass guitar strings, timepiece reliability maintains momentum. The heart-on-sleeve protagonist, inspired by night-before initimations, drives optimistically toward his lady love, hope of rekindling passion's flame fueling as only it can.

One nearly hopes for another lockdown.

Videos: "(You Called Me a) Dreamer"   "I'm on My Way"   "She Will Come Back" (live, 2025)

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