The Flowertones

"Side by Side"   digital single

(Swelltune Records)

Vibrant Pop in happy bloom...poetry extolling ardor eternal...a kaleidoscopic collage of hues and textures in euphoric parade. Sunny harmonies and understatedly persuasive playing guide through sweetness and shine. Amid a sea of beaming teens, Dick Clark claps as if a kid himself. (A full-length Swelltune disc is planned for later this year.)

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Gum Bleed

"Unstoppable" b/w "Until the Day I Die"    digital album

(Ring of Fire Records)

What fresh hell is this? Hurtling thunder run, before which all fall into hectic, bodies slamming dimension. Friedrich miscalculated: From this bellicose order comes cool chaos.

Videos: "Unstoppable"   "Until the Day I Die"

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Mr. Fab & his Bag O' Heads

Taste the Brides of Drac-enstein   digital album

(Jungle Room Records)

We're in weird company, when a theremin's hanging around. But off-kilter sorts dig the spookiness. As the haunted house hullabaloo devolves into ghastly Go-Go groove, and life forms not-of-this-reality do dance sensations that are sweeping the nation, Mr. Fab unchains kooky 1960s Garage bash-rhythms that feature all manner of sideways instrumentation, single-and-choral voice manifestations, totally unforseen brass gesticulations, and percussive knickknocks. Archived from the last century's second-half decades, these uncanny novelty romps - sporadically punctuated by drive-in flick blurbs - would have teenage future-Luxes up all night, cranking GE transisters under sheets, when they're supposed to have turned over keys to the Sandman.

Recommended: "Skeleton Crew on the Graveyard Shift," "Ghost Zombie Goes to Town," "Cannibal Zombie Mom," "Casper the Friendly Queen," "I Want My Mummy," "Thereming"

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Back in the Day, 2009

Bone Rattlers

13 to Life

(Self-issued)

Historians recount that crazed Berserkers of the Olde Icelandic Age, once their battle foes had been brutally ripped to fleshy shreds and otherwise smashed from this coil, were given to turning on each other. And contemporarily popular suspicions are that the indiscriminately violent savages were likely hopped up on brain-wrenching, aggression-inducing henbane. Perhaps. So uncompromising are the song constructions and bash-with-200-pound-sledge performances on 13 to Life, it would have made fitting soundtrack for countryside carnage. This is the second of two discs (that I know of) released by the Australian knuckle-drivers. There should have been more. Berserkers would raise ales.

Recommended: "13 Nights," "Psychobilly Boogie," "12 Bar Bruise.," "Friday," "Nightmares," "Time to Kill," "Crazy," "Lock and Load," "Dead Men Rockin," "Dragstrip Queen," "Bone Rattlin'"

Videos: "12 Bar Bruise"   "Crazy"   "Dead Men Rockin;'"   "Bone Rattlin'" (live Greazefest 2008)

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Hillbilly Casino

Captured here is exactly why Hillbilly Casino is vital, in a world that can never have too many minstrels with roots musics tattooed on their souls. 

Video: live at Hot Wheels Weekend  (2025, 43:14)

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Yee Loi

The pairing of exuberant, crash-car swerving with delineation of generational struggles overcome works, exactly because neither steps on the other.

Facebook message: "Our first ever headline gig. We need you to be there! Northern Quarter, Huddersfield. 29th May 2026. For tickets." (See poster below.)

Video: "Poor Girl"

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Nick Curran: The lipstick-smeared, skull-and-crossbones rocker who screamed into that good-time night

"My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --

It gives a lovely light!"

- Edna St, Vincent Millay

Sadly, Nick died in 2012.

I don't know whether he had any foes to speak of. I suspect not, save perhaps for lessers who envied his talents.

I never saw the man perform. I know I missed something very special, a five-alarm wildman in the raging tradition of sod-busting authentics.

Fortunately for us, audio and video documentation abound.

Like a rakish Rock'n'Roll predator, Nick constantly moved onstage. Manic. On fire. The man was possessed by wicked-fun forces - and he cast them all over ecstatic adherents.

Taut, his every sinewy muscle flexed, he thrashed his low-slung, weaponized Telecaster without quarter. Surely, no audience member protested the ear-shattering lashing; they were six fathoms deep into fracture, wallowing in dig-ification.

The raw music into which Nick breathed animation was a verdant and unashamed garden of under-the-table releases. It harked back to a primitive glory era, when stark, jaw-jutted Blues, jumpin' Rhythm and Blues, and barely out of the house Rock'n'Roll could be located in the same boisterous and bawdy joints -- patrons dressed to kill, liquored up, and more than ready for whatever and whoever midnight might visit upon them.

Little Richard, Etta James, Guitar Slim -- a host of storied worthies informed Nick's seething Rock'n'Roll. But he also packed in his own flashing, ripsaw personality.   

His last disc, 2010's "Reform School Girl" (Electro Groove), offers rich testimony of his worthy roar. A blazing and house-shaking rave up, Etta James' "Tough Lover" opens the proceedings with slamming certainty. Nick's own "Baby You Crazy," "Lusty Lil Lucy," and "Rocker" follow suit: furiously fun, knock-down cuts, jammed wall-to-wall with hip swagger.

The teen-love-in-tragedy title-cut ballad recalls the Shangri-Las (always a pleasant thought). Rough-edged road romp "Flyin' Home" features guest Phil Alvin, who characteristically imprints the value. And storming original "Psycho" is simply of such savage, sing-along, mad life as to charge unbound into the ether, a forever torch.

Nick once said that "With the music I write, I try to breathe new life into the traditional styles that I really love, using a lot of different influences from different styles of music and different eras...I always want to, not necessarily sound like something that already happened in the 50s, but something that could have happened back then, but got lost in the vaults somewhere."

He was successful in that ambition. I regret missing him onstage. But digging his waxings offers as much redress as can be had.

Videos: "Tough Lover" and "Women and Cadillacs" (both live)