Back In the Day, 2011

Jeff Beck

Rock'n'Roll Party Honoring Les Paul

(Atlantic Rhino)

In June 2010, Jeff (master of the guitar in sundry aspects) assembled stellar participants at NYC's Iridium Jazz club. Les had frequently played there in his autumnal years. Jeff reasoned it would be the ideal site for a concert honoring the inventor of the very electrified plank from which Jeff had wrought idiosyncratic charms since 1960s Yardbirds seasons. 

Flanked by a host of eminent personages -- themselves adept at riveting, jump-fly note-escapades --  Jeff laid into Rockabilly, Surf, and intriguing instrumental forays rapt witnesses surely found delightfully flabbergasting. Much six-string abracadabra transpired that night; Les deserved no less.

(Note: 27 songs are performed in the full video. Only 22, though, appear on the CD.)

Recommended: "Double Talkin' Baby," "Cruisin'," "Cry Me a River," "How High the Moon," "Sitting On Top of the World," "Vaya Con Dios," "Mockin' Bird Hill," "Peter Gunn," "Rockin' is Our Business," "Apache," "Sleep Walk," "New Orleans," "Walking in the Sand," "Twenty Flight Rock"

Videos: Entire 2010 concert (1:27:00)   "Cruisin'"   "Tiger Rag"   "Sitting On Top of the World"   "Peter Gunn" 

Discogs

Darkside Records

Josey Records

Amoeba

ImagineMystic

Collectors' Choice Music

Mercury Studios

Amazon

Walmart

OP ED

E.P. by OP ED

(Self-issued)

All thunderslaps are concise and race furiously, tuneful architecture stabbing gray matter.

Recommended: "Poetry About Narcotics," "Inept Pimps," "Subordinate," "Death Wish"

Video: live August 2025 (Four songs, two from above EP)

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se.7digital

Patsy Cline

American Country Legend

(Sun Label Group LLC)

Per the Country Hall of Fame site, Patsy was killed in the same tragic 1963 plane crash that took pilot Randy Hughes, as well as her fellow Opry stars Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas. She was without equal as a stylist, whether emoting sonorously in torch balladry or snapping her fringed cowgirl skirt with wink and beaming grin. Produced by Owen Bradley, "Lovesick Blues" is but one cut featuring Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, Grady Martin, and Buddy Harman rattling Nashville studio tiles.

It's both testament to Miss Patsy's lofty status and cursed injustice that in 2026, elevator speakers blare her immortal soundings in voiceless, annoying muzak manifestations.

Recommended: "Walkin' After Midnight," "Too Many Secrets," "Stop the World (I Want to Get Off)," "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye," "I'm Blue Again," "Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round," "I Cried All the Way to the Altar," "Lovesick Blues," "Cry Not for Me"

Videos: "Too Many Secrets"   "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye"   "I'm Blue Again"   "Lovesick Blues"

Sun Records

zdigital

Amazon

Apple

iHeart

SHAZAM

Spotify

Back In the Day 1957, 2010

Tennessee Ernie Ford

Ol' Rockin' Ern (Capitol)

Old Time Religion (Green Hill)

Ernie's rustic-life matriculation left him seasoned in manners that ensured he was first-hand familiar with both fence post and altar call. His back-country boogie kicked heels to the swiss-cheese moon and back down to grassland. But the man's honorings of the Divine promise of salvation were horses of different colors altogether.

The bass-baritone immensity of his voice -- rip-snorting and aw-shucks gleeful in secular circumstances -- assumed reverential tones indicative of heart-and-soul sincerity in the presence of celestial majesty. 

Both records compiled tracks Ernie had previously waxed. Cliffie Stone, Speedy West, and Jimmy Bryant played on Ol' Rockin' Ern's songs - the three dealt wizardry in Cliffie's Hometown Jamboree band. (And the pipe-puffing bass-string guru authored four songs featured.) Their respective flairs stand out like shoes on a cobra.

Some of Old Time Religion's 15 selections also included Cliffie and Speedy (though their talents were recalled as a bit muted). And harmonic nobility the Jordanaires imbued tracks with characteristically august intonations. As was illustrated by sacred numbers restored from 1956 forward, Ernie's standing-in-need-of- prayer renditions prompted introspection and awareness that the loving Supreme Creator's hand beckoned. 

Recommended Ol' Rockin' Ern: "Milk 'Em in the Mornin' Blues," "Catfish Boogie," "Anticipation Blues," "Country Junction," "Shot-Gun Boogie," "Blackberry Boogie," "Ain't Nobody's Business But My Own"

Recommended: Old Time Religion: "Just Over in the Gloryland," "Old Time Religion," "It Is Well With My Soul," "Just a Little Talk With Jesus," "I Love to Tell the Story," "Take My Hand, Precious Lord," "The Old Rugged Cross," "Whispering Hope," "I Need Thee Every Hour"

Videos: "Country Junction"   "Blackberry Boogie"   "Ain't Nobody's Business but My Own" (w/Kay Starr)   "Just Over in the Gloryland"   "I Love to Tell the Story"   "Whispering Hope"

Ol' Rockin' Ern:

Apple

Amazon

Spotify

Old Time Religion:

desertcart

Amazon

Discogs

With Randolph Scott on the set of 1951 film Man In the Saddle

Yee Loi

Amidst eight raging fire-piles, the truculent sisters and brother stoke much fiercer flames, as embodied in Rock'n'Roll that's gonna blaze millions bye bye.

Video: "Why Ask Why"

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Bobby/Billy Smith

Name debate rages, but I'll leave that to collectors of dust-blanketed 45s. (Original 1959 Fox vinyl bears name "Bobby." Factory printing goof? Temporal pseudonym?) Spare, twanged, Country bloodline unashamedly evident. In line of obscure-but-jumpin' gems put down in wake of revolutionary EAP and the Blue Moon Boys.

Video: "Bevy Mae"

All good cretins dwell near turntables

Future times will bring spectacular songs, in a number of styles and from sundry assemblages. But there will never again be tunes precisely of a sort with those wrought by the globally celebrated, glue-sniffing, bowl-cut, leather-enwrapped misfits from New Yorks' broken boulevards.

I call it the 'Ramones formula' - the seamless union of chewy-chewy Pop that once blared from cheap transisters that teens pressed to their ears while shooting sidewalk curls, and killer-chorded LOUD brutalities that separate skulls from spines and send grinning heads veering tiltedly into the Outsider Zone.

Lyrically, both the great unwashed of disposable drive-in subculture and agonized teen angels enjoyed portrayal:

"I'm just a comic-book boy / there's nothin' scary to enjoy / Freak admission, stroll inside / I was born on a roller-coaster ride"

"I kissed her and hugged her and I said good-bye, last thing I knew

she wouldn't make it alive / Oncoming car went out of control, it crushed my baby and it crushed my soul / Now all I've got is sorrow and pain, standing out here in the rain / The crash, shattering glass,
the sirens, and pain / It's driving me insane oh-yeah"

For their first several albums, the Forest Hills four credited all numbers to simply 'The Ramones.' It was in subsequent years that individual credits emerged.

Sources today differ as to which original member penned any given carbonated mini-classic. But among ones main tune-scribes Joey and Dee Dee -- bards of the Central Park Reservoir -- either authored solo or collaborated on, sometimes with Johnny and Tommy leaning in, are:

Blitzkrieg Bop / Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue / Glad to See You Go / Cretin Hop / I Wanna Be Sedated / Teenage Lobotomy /  Rockaway Beach / Pinhead / I Wanna Be Well / Sheena Is a Punk Rocker / Don't Come Close / Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio /  Rock'n'Roll High School / Tomorrow She Goes Away / Psycho Therapy / She's the One / Go Lil' Camaro Go / Life's a Gas / She Talks to Rainbows / Pet Semetary / Makin' Monsters With My Friends.

The tenement fire-escape, outsider commandos were a prolific (not always) happy family. But the catalog is far too extensive for remark here. (In years ahead, subsequent members Marky, Richie, and CJ also contributed material.)

Sneaker imprint of the Ramones Formula can be found in a wide swath of contemporary endeavors, so profound is the torn-jeans pogoers' enduring impact. Zombina and the Skeletones, Brad Marino, Yee Loi, the 66ers, Poison Boys, Hillbilly Casino, and Sour Mash Kats are but seven that currently honor the Ramones in songcraft, spirit, or both.

(Again, many others exist.)

Punk at its core being an alacritous swipe against prevailing mores -- both musical and cultural -- it's completely in tune with the rebellion instinct that present-day provocateurs reject traditions and stitch novel menaces.

Hence, what ripsaw tunes now crowd beneath the Punk

banner tend more toward surly cacophony than bubblegum- confection Bay City Rollers huffing carbona in the closet.

Still, there is abundant value in incorporating past sways and gestures into fresh works. Such has often been the way of Rock'n'Roll. Of art through the ages, when you consult some hushed museum geek.

Da Brudders drank heavily from the pool of 1960s bands both obscure and chart-topping. Those combos offered much, long after initial splashes. And their notions lived on, albeit in acromegalic aspect, in the Ramones' Formula.

And though decades have passed, I still keep Ramones LPs beside my turntable. All good cretins do.