Marty Wilde

Let's Rock This Place   CD, vinyl, digital

(Cherry Red Records)

The '50s/'60s Parnes registry from which Marty's star ascended also numbered Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Vince Eager, and Dickie Pride. He now gives 2026 circumstances a thorough shake-up. Marty's stern mettle is bolstered by Mr. Darrel Higham and his Enforcers action squad. Top-drawer songcraft parades 12 times. Great, big Rock'n'Roll rejoicement ignites the moment needle touches wax. (And in a turn, ballad "How I Cry" wrenches hearts.) 

Recommended: "Let's Rock This Place," "Your Loving Touch," "The Boogie Was King," "How I Cried," "Can't Stand Losing You," "Back On the Road," "Lonely Weekends," "Remember Me (The Girl in the Wood)," "Words Fall Down"

Videos: "Let's Rock This Place" (official video)   "Your Loving Touch"   "The Boogie Was King"   "How I Cried"   "Can't Stand Losing You"

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Yellow Stitches

Back With a Gang

(Friends Family Forever Records)

Oi!'s anthemic, working man bellicosity thundered athwart each square cube of the stage, at last December's FTC Day #2 show in Boston. ("Whoa-oh-oh!," every crowd throat roared along.) The have-a-go heroes of Yellow Stitches showed what shiny pates swarming before them doubtlessly already grasped: That the kick-over, smash-past hardies were perfect complements to other fest attractions like Haywire, Skinhead, and Conservative Military Image. 1980s-fashion Streetpunk will kick your ass, should you think it ever ghosted the scene.

Recommended: "Sugar Oi!," "Can't Catch Me," "First Time," "Lazy Dog," "I Want Em Dead," "Rolex Skins," "Yellow Stitches Christmas"

Videos: "Sugar Oi!"   "Can't Catch Me"   "I Want Em Dead"   FTC 2025 live (23:43)

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Nothing Thrives

Demo   three-cut disc

(Headshrinker Records)

Metal mongering Nothing Thrives brutes have produced three efforts - two singles and full-length Tales of Disgrace - since these just-issued Molotov cocktails were put to wax in 2022. Even in this youthful document, the band's fondness/adeptness at barre-chord bombardments slams jagged paths into cerebella. And not one recipient complains.

Recommended: "New Beginning," "Medicine," "Trouble Maker Shooting"

Video: "New Beginning"   "Trouble Maker Shooting"

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The Promdates & Long Lasting Train

Jugend Punx   two-track single

(Fucking North Pole Records)

A stomping-good pair of bedlamic onrushes, in coarse, bellowed manners that recall nights when stagefront swarms of spikey-topped battlers bashed gleefully. Chords can kill, you know.

(First issued as a physical single in 2015, a digital version is now most accessible.)

Videos: "Nightmare" (The Promdates)   "SPIT II (mun)" (Long Lasting Train)

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OtyKen

The dimly-lit Yantar banquet hall's gilded appointments silently beheld grandiosty: Attired elegantly in ancestral garb, the ladies raised up sounds dynamic, from eras winds of time had ushered away. There were, that night, horsehead violins, drums of diverse descriptions, and electric bass. A male throat singer dwelled toward the rear. All undulated, like puppets on the rhythm's strings. Jazz dancers stepped impossibly. 

Video: "Tundra"

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Nathan & Jesse

Joined on gig occasions by fellow Jazz-Folk souls, the entwined twosome labor smilingly to perpetuate frolicsome airs forbears bequeathed us. Raven-tressed Ilonka whirls before mind's eye, tasseled peasant skirt billowing. Accordian, banjo, and resonator hues sing out. Earringed men in the caravan clap and townspeople scatter coins at her tanned feet.

Video: "I'm Gonna Ride"

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Curled lip and world betterment

1950s Rock'n'roll represented a social unity that voices of divisiveness, including Jim Crow-allegiant political, educational, and religious officials, viewed as threatening to an illusory order made possible by strictly enforced segregation.

Young men and women who would help birth the new communal music drew upon airs of rural America that were rooted in European forms, as well as the Blues and Jazz idioms that enlivened the nation.

Over time, and as ecstatic admixtures emerged in countless juke joints, honky tonks, and shoestring recording endeavors, Rock'n'Roll came into brash being.

But that unplanned nascency was only possible because of musicians' and audiences' wide cultural appreciation and openness to natural creative cross-pollination.

The climate in the days of Rock'n'Roll's youth was cold and conformist. So, joining cultures challenged a status quo not at all receptive to integration and permutation.

Among other boons the style brought the world was sorely needed cultural defrosting. And the world was forever bettered.