The Rhythm Aces

ATEDtude   four-track EP

(RA Records)

Impeccably rendered martial music for boulevard straight-razor yobs, whose uniform is drape and crepe (sideburns a frequent feature.) Rough and roundhousing Teds helped keep real Rock'n'Roll alive, while many dumbly dogpaddled in the hippie maelstrom. This veteran have-a-go trio roars in the same swingers-stomp militia as do Graham Fenton, Cavan Grogan, Tom Powder, and Furious. Look sharp, boys. 1 2 3 4...

Recommended: "ATEDtude," "Pickup," "Me and the Boys," "Downtown Rockin'"

Videos: "A TEDtude"   "Pick Up"   "Me and the Boys"   "Downtown Rockin'"

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Nurse's Dead Bodies

Roll a Die   digital album

(Self-issued)

Understand that I'm being complimentary when I aver the singer seems to have downed a heaping spoonful of crunched windshield glass. And that observation holds equally true for the players. This is among the most brutal and velocitous Psycho-Punk to have shredded auctorial ears in seasons. And that, too, is high praise.

Recommended: "We'll Be Dead," "Ignorance," "Back," "Scarecrows," "Fight," "La Partida"

Videos: promo clip   "We'll Be Dead"   live (France 2025, 43:15)

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Mickey Keller & the Spitfires

We're Gonna Ride!

(Tessy Records)

There're sound reasons one digging this might feel they've happened upon a bygone wood-cabinet Philco broadcast: Mickey, Matze, and the 'Stompin' Wolfman' are as in-their-grains nifty purveyors of Honky Tonk serenading (sans drums, natch) as one can locate in this internet age. 

Then, too, there's their insistence on using only vintage fiddleyboos at Black Shack Recording. Original material of genial home-folks disposition settles in snugly with classics of yore penned by Stan Kesler and Charlie Feathers, Ben Hall, Roy Hall, and future Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis (who also wrote "You Are My Sunshine.") 

Steve Stick contributes vocals on a pair of tracks. And cover art by man of many gifts Marcel Bontempi gilds further. Turn up that radio dial.

Recommended: "Heartbreaking Love," "Mom & Pop," "Cold Dark Night," "I Forgot to Remember," "Hot Rod Baby," "Blue Days, Black Nights," "Tropicana Breeze," "Honky Tonk," "Pepperhot Baby," "Sweethearts or Strangers," "Let's Fall in Love," "I'm Gonna Ride," "Three Alley Cats"

Videos: promo clip   "Heartbreaking Love" (live)   "Hot Rod Baby" (live)   "Pepperhot Baby"   "I'm Gonna Ride" (rehearsal room recording)  

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Care Free

7 Songs

(Masterplan)

Instrumental refinements may one day come, but they are unneeded at this point - in fact, they would probably detract from the raw rage that bursts omnidirectionally. Vehemence as virtue.

"We just hope we can inspire people from smaller scenes to help grow their community and have fun," the four told Straight Edge Worldwide.

Recommended: "Are You Serious?," "Exist," "Care Free Jam," "Piece it Together," "You Don't Think," "Crushed"

Videos: "Are You Serious?"   "Care Free Jam"   "Crushed"

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2025 demo

The Unkool Hillbillies

A carbonated ankle-bopper and a (somewhat) more leisurely jaunt, these cuts were issued as the Swedes' 2021 The Corona Sessions, Vol. 1. 88s fancy-foot, vocals sail, guitar swoops, and the rest aid stoutly in good-time uppdrag.

Videos: "Flat Top Boogie"   "So Long Mole"

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Kim Lenz

"I'm gonna Rock'n'Roll 'til I break my neck!" is the exultant declaration of a substantially ginchy hepjill who just shoved the work-week into the rearview. For moments like hers, fireball juke fervor is the finest game afoot.

Video: "Saturday Jump"

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Danny B Harvey: Fingertips combustible 

There are legions of able guitar slingers, all of whose efforts help stoke important flames. Kentucky-born Danny, though, ranks way high. 

Swing, Rockabilly, Jazz, Blues, Classical, Country - Danny interprets each with ease and the posture of an erudite academic (who's swung a chain or two, in his time). Indeed, listening raptly as he fashions wondrous works simultaneously indebted to American roots argots and accelerative of them as heady, reinvented creatures, one feels like a fortunate pupil.

Danny's features generally remain placid as he swipes at his Telecaster under multi-colored and strobing stage lights, tearing from it lick upon astounding lick. He occasionally shoots audiences a slight smile as if to ask, "See how easy this is?"

For him, perhaps.

An assiduous showman, he freely indulges both US cat and UK Teddy Boy styles. Black leather jackets are alternated with vivid and elegant drape ones. Motorcycle boots, vivid creepers, two-tone bowling shirts, solid-hued tees -- all report to his closet.

Danny has through decades of applied heart earned industry respect as a first-chair player guaranteed to add class to anyone's cause. His fretboard wizardry has advanced missions mounted by Levi Dexter, Wanda Jackson, Lee Rocker, and Bow Wow Wow. 

Also on the list are groups including The Rockats, Honeydrippers, Swing Cats, Lonesome Spurs, 13 Cats, 69 Cats, Devil's Daughters, and Headcat (with Lemmy Kilmeister, Slim Jim Phantom, David Vincent, Jonny Bowler, and Alan Davey).

His most recent recording, at this writing, is Headcat Plays Buddy Holly. The disc reflects Harvey's capacity for animation of pure Rock'n'Roll, its Blues and Country facets at high luster.

When renowned titans Danny, Slim Jim, and Lemmy cast fortunes into one jackpot, a supergroup of planetary capacity assumed configuration. Meat-and-potatoes, crasharound rocking was zested by the piquancy of gods.

Early on, Danny told Blabbermouth.net: "I'm so excited this album is coming out, showing how important Buddy Holly was to Lemmy, Slim Jim, and I. We all love Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Little Richard, but as Lemmy said in his book White Line Fever, 'Buddy Holly never did a bad track, as far as I could hear.' I'm sure that's why our first album was mainly Buddy Holly songs."

There exist no previous DBH discs one shouldn't obtain. Here are two that merit acknowledgement:

Having by the early 2000s already done movie soundtrack endeavoring, Danny was solicited by Cult Films for its 2004 Dark Angel: Bettie Page, which starred Paige Richards.

"I played all the instruments on those recordings, as I do on a lot of my recordings," Danny told me in a 2005 interview for Rockabilly magazine. "I always record the drums using a combination of sample loops and real drums. Of course, the guitars, keyboards, and bass are all me."

For Dark Angel, he composed and performed smart backing for vintage Bettie stills and film loops. Titles included "Whip Dance," "Fighting Girls," "Bound and Gagged," and "Whatever Happened To?"

Characteristically, his soloing enunciated a panoply of emotions and inclinations, from ecstasy to aggressiveness to pensive, introspective articulation.

"Bettie Page's influence over men and women alike is off the Richter Scale, as far as I'm concerned," he told me. "Girls all over the world dress like her, walk like her, and cut their hair like her. Her look is timeless and will always be in style."

For his 2005 solo, all-instrumental CD Rockabilly Jazz (Raucous 2005), Danny again played everything. Filled nearly to bursting with buoyant runs, bends, trills, and twangs, the disc was manna. He revisited classic modes and airs, charging them with fresh elan.

It was what a happy guitar turned loose sounds like.

"My finger-picking style is a direct derivative of Chet Atkins's and Merle Travis's picking style," Danny explained to me at the time. "I love to play loud and fast, but playing like Chet Atkins is very challenging."

Merle Travis tribute "The Travis Rag" is a carbonated, finger-picked romp over high-spirits clay. "Cattlesburg Express" rolls and rollicks merrily down driven-steel tracks in headlong ramble. "Dixie Doodle Dandy," splices traditional Southern and Northern melodies, recalling Link Wray's 1959 "Dixie Doodle."

In Jazz aspect, "Misty" unfurls sumptuous atmospherics. An exhumation of the Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian chestnut "Seven Come Eleven" gambols with uptown carriage. And the stately "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You?" ambles serenely, chin high.

An instinctive hybridizer, Danny is that rarest and most meritorious of players -- a heart-wired, creatively inquisitive, adventurous artist whose encyclopedic knowledge and expressive abilities awe riveted listeners and envious colleagues, alike.

His best work may well lie ahead. But Headcat Plays Buddy Holly and looking further back offer unique rewards.

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Videos: "Whiskey Hollar Blues" (solo w/Bettie reel)   "Crazy Baby" (13 Cats)   "Hammerhead" (solo)   "Whip Dance" (Paige Richards) "Not Fade Away" / "Fool's Paradise" (Headcat, live)   "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (Headcat alternate mix)