Billy Lee Riley
Alternatively (El Toro)
4-song, 7-inch 45
Alternate takes of long-beloved Sun tracks. Colored vinyl. El Toro has similar Alternatively discs available of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Gene Summers, and Warren Smith.
This is gold.
Recommended: "Rock With Me Baby," "Trouble Bound," "Red Hot," "Flying Saucers Rock 'n' Roll."
Lara Hope and the Ark-Tones
Here To Tell the Tale
(Orchard Enterprises)
Rockabilly issued from Country music and owes much character to it. This fine release underscores that truth. Each player counts, and does so remarkably.
Recommended: "Let's Go," "Stop, Drop, and Roll," "Here To Tell the Tale," "Some Advice," "Whoa Is Me," "Knocked Out," "I Drink To Your Health."
Video: "Let's Go"
Thee Flanders
Neverending Story (Halb 7 Records)
After some 10 years away, Thee Flanders have again darkened studio doors, now with vim and vigor beyond earlier efforts. Put simply: a storm formidable.
Recommended: "Shut Up World" "Blind Date Killer," "Psychocats," "Ghost Of the Dead," "Potsdam West."
Video: CD Teaser
Frank Jacket
You Say Adios (Mula)
Black Hole Sun single (Mula)
Amiability and downright winsomeness, in hand-tooled styles indigenous to the U.S. southern border region. And then you read the fine print: these sprang from Chile.
Recommended (You Say Adios): "You Say Adios" (Alt version), "Two Bottles Of Cheap Beer," "When Will You Decide?," "One Last and True Goodbye," "I'm Blue and Alone," "Release Me," "Dices Adios."
Video: You Say Adios sampler
Bandcamp (Black Hole Sun)
The Shut Ins
3 Ring Circus (self)
Guitar-afficionados album that yields riches aplenty for all. Labrynthine, rapturous.
Recommended: "It's Time For the Show," "Whittlin'," "Lazy Stephen," "Begat the Pigat," "Ol' Stumpy Mix," "Merle's House," "Nothing But Time," "Dancing For Bobo."
Facebook (Paul Pigat)
The Honky Tonk Pounders
Dead End Road (PART)
Recommended: "Dead End Road," "It Must Be Love," "Straight From the Heart," "Out Of Control," "Handsome Hanna," "Walking the Floor."
Video: "Dead End Road"
The Tin Cans
Back For More (PART)
Even in its more charged passages, there's an agreeableness to this CD. Country and blues in sublime union. A solid beat hies them along.
Recommended: "The Time Is Right," "Boppin' On," "Lost In Swamp," "Illusive Love," "Ship Of Lost Souls," "I Need To Know," "The Girl Next Door," "Please, Mr. Postman."
Wenzdaze
Brainwashed (Wild)
Only youth could produce garage punk so guileless.
Recommended: "Brainwashed," "Without You," "My Love," "Introverted Misfit," "Creeper Stomp," "You're Dead."
Video: Live (1 hr)
Annie Marie Lewis and Danny B. Harvey
Americana Songbook Vol. 1 (self)
Revered treasures from our nation's cultural heritage receive majestic interpretation, from two who are at once faithful to source material and capable of unique voicing. It's impossible to envision a more elegant pairing.
Recommended: "Only A Paper Moon," "What'll I Do," "One For My Baby," "That Old Black Magic," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Blues In the Night."
Hillbilly Casino
Red, White, and Bruised (Hobolight Records)
A favorite of average working folks, who swarm honky tonk dance floors and throw off real-world cares. Like Hillbilly Casino, they grasp that there are only two kinds of songs - good ones and bad ones.
Recommended: "She's Got Tricks," "How Do You Think," "Knockin' At Your Door," "Jibber Jabber," "More Blues Than Green, "Dog On A Chain," "Toss Turn and Roll," "Troubles."
Video: "She's Got Tricks"
Paul Pigat
The Game (Little Pig)
Acoustic country-blues guitar, accompanied only by Paul's wonderfully unvarnished vocalizing. His instrumental prowess is unhurriedly showcased. Reminds in moments of Phil Alvin's Unsung Stories.
Recommended: "Roll All Night," "The Game," "Some People's Children," "Piece Of Work," "Treat Your Papa Right," "You Gotta Use."
Danny's Favorites
There Still Punk (Tetryon Tapes)
Phone Jerks
Out The Gate (Resurrection Records)
It was also a hell of a lot of fun. An episode in which old rules were smashed, brash, red-eyed street warriors drafted new ones live on club stages, and the primeval rock'n'roll spirit was remembered. The prototypical reeled, adorned in new and thrill-laced raiment.
Danny's Favorites and the Phone Jerks are fully in the character of that era. They're exuberant, wonderfully rough. Frenetically demolition-chorded, urgently tossed off.
The DIY aura accentuates economical arrangements. Like the finest old-school Punk, each scant track careens past and skids into its successor.
Though they're too esoteric for the masses, these discs kick wide the door for a vintage Punk visitation. The hip will dig.
Recommended (Danny's Favorites): "Public Figure," "The Future Is Here," "Storage Unit," "Danny's Favorite," "One Potato, Two Potato," "The Mormon Song," "I Got A Feeling For A Feeling," "No Driver's License For the Elderly."
Recommended (Phone Jerks): "Out Of the Gate," "Back To Bootcamp," "Kill Kill," "Gospel," "Rubberhead"
V/A
Virus Psycho Compilation Vol. 1 Side A
Multifarious incarnations and apparitions of the monster genre. Often Spanish language, always bracingly stitched.
Recommended bands: Fantastamatic, Asteroides Trio, Wild Boys, RO and the Skull Boys, Los 3 Cavalera, 13 Bats, Cadaver Army, Tres Muertes, Rotten Maniacs, Screamers and Sinners, Straight From the Grave, Evil Devil.
The Damned
Punk Oddities and Rare Tracks 1977 - 1982
(Cleopatra)
Punk of the '70s was DIY superior to the inevitable corporate domestication/commodification of it as tepid "New Wave." England's Damned were of the primordial specimen. And they've survived beyond cohorts Sex Pistols and Clash.
Recommended: "Love Song" (Demo) "Do the Blitz," "You Know" (live '77), "Idiot Box" (live '77) "Smash It Up" (live) "Thanks For the Night," "Nasty."
The Autopsies
Post-Mortem Follies (Lycans Den)
Much rapid psycho leaps from the grooves, with nary a care for the bedlam it wreaks. Among the more auspicious of young breed.
Recommended: "Hot As Hell," "One Big Smile," "Dr. Philly P. Morgue," "Twilight On Lullaby Lane," "Small Town Murder."
Video: "Hot As Hell"
The Graveyard Bashers
Wreck 'em Dead (Lycans Den)
"Morally or otherwise, there ain't no boundaries," ("Mean Motherfucker") serves as an apt depiction of this relentlessly lurid CD. Psycho so brutish it slashes oozing gashes.
Recommended: "Psychobilly Sleazebags," "66 Cuts," "Graveyard Brothel," "Mean Motherfucker," "Mystery," "Set You On Fire."
Dave Del Monte and
the Cross Country Boys
Well!! single (self)
"It was my first collaboration with Crash, who is an awesome guitar player," Dave emailed me. "The song was a blast to put together. The video with the record labels was my wife's idea."
Romping and stomping seem in the blood of Dave and the Cross Country Boys. We reap the finger-popping reward.
Video: "Well!!"
Lee Rocker
Gather Round (Upright Records)
The moving fingers navigate and, by the doing, send all into happy orbit.
Recommended: "Gather Round," "When Nothing's Going Right" "A Dirty Martini," "Graceland Auction," "Dog House Shuffle," "Everybody Wants To Be A Cat."
Video: "A Dirty Martini"
The '77 safety-pin contingent didn't start the fire. In the early 1970s, with Mott the Hoople and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Slade maintained anthemic UK glam roar before that punk explosion.
Recommended: "Come On Feel the Noize," "Get Down And Get With It," "Take Me Back 'ome," "How Does It Feel," "Look Wot You Dun."
Videos: "Come On Feel the Noize"
