DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY

MITIK Records

Back In the Day, 1977

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes

This Time It's For Real

(Epic)

My 17th summer was underway when this New Jersey-spawned LP hit racks. My vinyl attentions were on the CBGB's class and burgeoning master Robert Gordon. But thanks to my older brother Rick, Southside Johnny's records frequently resounded through the party house I shared with a revolving cast of (slightly older) beery colluders.

The finger-popping R&B that bopped from those grooves was wonderfully reflective of time-honored genre inclinations. Songs were full-bodied and sprawling. Changes unspooled with the naturalness only humanity can conjure. Lush ivory sweeps, surging Miami Horns brass, and resplendent strings confederated with ever-decisive guitars and a rhythm section of knockout capabilty, producing sounds at once majestic and as real-world familiar as the blinking lights of a Seeburg. It strutted its pride.

Onto that grand hipness, Southside Johnny ladled characteristic imprint. His singing rang with confidence and a complexion that bespoke Jersey seasoning. He was in command each moment, despite given songs' various leanings. Bold attitude was tempered by street wisdom. No one else could have imbued these sparkling tracks with the same forceful-yet-sensitive manner.

His broke from customary boulevard-toughened stance in soulful slow-dance ballad "First Night," whose poignancy stuck home with anyone who had a pumping heart.

Magnificent harmonies lent by illustrious guests the Drifters, Clovers, and Satins were an embrace of genre classicism, a statement that this music respected no chronological stricture. Aside from a pair of covers, songs flowed from the pens of Bruce Springsteen and former Asbury juke Steve Van Zandt.

While I appreciated This Time It's For Real when it was crisp, it wasn't until further years had transpired that I fully recognized it for the masterwork it was - only partly because of my misty party house remembrances.

Recommended: "This Time It's For Real," "Without Love," "Check Mr. Popeye," "First Night," "She Got Me Where She Wants Me," "Little Girl So Fine," "Love On the Wrong Side Of Town"

Videos: "First Night" , "She Got Me Where She Wants Me"

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Big Joe Turner

My Gal's a Jockey 1946 - 1950

(Jasmine)

Jasmine is the latest label to exhume these pre-Elvis jewels for contemporary appraisal, and the embryonic Blues rockin' still rings as brassy. Tracks compiled were put to wax in days when orchestras of hep players schooled in all-important grooves blared from phonographs and just-a-nickel jukeboxes. Among luminaries with whom mighty vocalist Joe rubbed shoulders were Wynonie Harris, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons, and Fats Domino. A perusal of 2024 sales charts illustrates the regrettable reality that talent such as struts here is no longer thought requisite; to savor it, we generally must repair to bygone documents.

Recommended: "My Gal's a Jockey," "It's a Lowdown Dirty Shame (Playboy Blues)," "Sally Zu Zass," "I'm In Sharp When I Hit the Coast," "That's When It Really Hurts," "Battle Of the Blues (Part One"," "Battle Of the Blues (Part Two)," "Around the Clock" (Part One)," "I Don't Dig It," "Oo Ouch Stop," "Wine-O-Baby Boogie," "Mardi Gras Boogie," "Rainy Weather Blues," "Married Woman Blues," "Fuzzy Wuzzy Honey," "Adam Bit the Apple," "Life Is Just Like a Card Game," "I Want My Baby (When the Rooster Crows)," "Feelin' Happy," "Jumpin' At the Jubilee," "Jumpin' Tonight," "Love My Baby"

Video: "Feelin' Happy" (From 1956 film Shake, Rattle & Rock)

Jasmine

Rockin' Gina & the Sentinels

"You Can Expect the Worst"

(Self-issued)

Confronting us is stalker-paced neo-Rockabilly assured in both menacing intent and directness. Dramatic tension is so thick one can slice it open with a stilleto. Echo hangs heavily. A mean riff redolent of Perry Mason imprints ominousness, and Gina's adamance embellishes its persuasion. When the solo erupts, ripping into baleful ambiance, violent sparks flash against ebony evening.

Video

zdigital.com.au

B.O.K.A.

Fim da Linha

(Self-issued)

Ever in the fore of hard-whipped essays is bullish and distorted Les Paul chunk chordings, often fired at fast rates. Songcraft is of admirably robust character; in economical fashion and with consistent ferocity, it demands capitulation. The closing cut issues unanticipated reggae passages intercut with footpaced mettalic ones that forge onward unstoppably.

Recommended: "A Gente Vai Se Encontrar," "Sereia Perfeita," "Eu Sempre Soube," "O Caminho," "Tempos Dificeis," "Seguimos Lutando," "Panela," "Algum Lugar"

Video: "O Caminho"

se.7digital

Amazon.It

Soundcloud

Back In the Day, 1977

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

Rock Drill

(Mountain)

1970s S.A.H.B. concert spectacles were gaudy melanges of props, costumes, kilted bagpipers, choreography, shenanigans, and leggy showgirls cavorting to rock-ribbed dynamism. Soft-shoeing beneath rainbow stobes, flamboyant showman Alex waved high the Vaudevillian tradition. For fans unable to attend the group's shows (which found much more favor with Europeans than Americans), characteristically eccentric records provided fulfillment. Rock Drill was S.A.H.B. LP number eight and has seen numerous rereleases, including in CD format. Alex's wondrous storytelling and hoarse propoundings (not to mention waggishness) had earned the Scotsman legions of adherents and shone on the record, as did his fascination with Nessie. As was typical of his combo, its prog-rock propensities - visible in both compound constructions and synthesizer expansiveness - were not predominant as equal voice was granted orthodox hard-rock thrust. Mime-faced Zal Clemenson's fantastical guitar adventurings had their roots in Blues, but exploited those as springboards into licks that slashed through arty gestures with conventional potency.

Recommended: "The Dolphins," "Rock & Rool," "King Kong," "Who Murdered Sex?," "Nightmare City," "Mrs. Blackhouse"

Video: "Nightmare City"

Friday, February 23, 2024

Johnny Thunders

Finally Alone - The Sticks And Stones Tapes vinyl

(Cleopatra)

Together with Johnny Ramone, Mister Johnny Thunders carved a definitional Punk model for guitarists the world over. Imitators are legion, but none equal Thunders' lopsided musical style and "You talkin' to me?" stance. As crucial to his oeuvre as corkscrew turnarounds and nasal Noo Yawk drawlings was lifelong love of vintage Rock'n'Roll's hits, obscurities, and attendant audacious lifestyle. That bone-deep affinity revealed itself not only in his riveting solos, but also in mini-classics he penned and canon motivators he chose to interpret.

Numerous of these tracks were issued by Cleopatra in 2009 as "Sticks and Stones - The Lost Album." Besides a more elegant cover, the label's new limited edition includes a 3-song 7" record (on which the Courettes cover "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," plus a pair of B-sides). The 12" LP is available in various hues.

Recommended: "Help the Homeless," "Disappointed In You," "Nine Lives," "Glory, Glory," "Some Hearts," "A Lie On You," "Another Girl, Another Planet," "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," "Wild Horses," "Dead Flowers"

Video: "Help the Homeless"

Cleopatra

12 Step Rebels

Fall In Love With... 2-track cassingle

(Rebel Rock Reckords)

Love songs are distant from the trio's previous, more thematically ghastly efforts. But though refined and euphonic, these both are gassed by characteristic dynamism. Powerfulness intelligently channeled toward optimal efficacy.

Recommended: "I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way," "As I Leave My Heart Behind"

Video: "I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way"

The Preps

The Definition Of Insanity

(Self-issue)

Crisp testimony that fleet, brawny chords and songcraft regard for melody can victoriously crusade. Strapping and commanding in archetypal Punk manner - throngs surge to such ripsaw urgings - but in the same moment more considered than some genre agents.

Recommended: "Burn," "Pretty Sure We Partied," "Hereditary," "Boys In Blue," "History"

Video: "Burn"

se.7digital.com

Les Dynamites

"Uzi Kinrot" "Sea Gull"

(Batov Records)

Mediterranean surf instrumentals incorporating airs indigenous to their genesis region bear alluring exoticness to these Iowa ears. Arrangements are measured, lest nuance be lost in rapidity. And there is much of that to be savored, including nimbly navigated frets and upfront percussion. Handclaps add still more vigor to elastic presentation.

Video: "Uzi Kinrot"

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Dex Romweber 1966 - 2024 RIP

Last week carried the terrible tidings that Dex had passed at age 57. Music is poorer for the loss.

He first drew acclaim as the Flat Duo Jets' frontman. A hulking and stentorian-voiced guitar-basher who quivered and jittered in onstage paroxysms, he later issued numerous solo discs of rum aspect. Each slashed.

Below are reviews of several Dex recordings that appeared on this blog. They are ranked in reverse chronological order.

Dex Romweber

Good Thing Goin' 2023

(Propeller Sound Recordings)

Dex has lofty ambitions and all are within his hand. His writing is of monumental stature. We bear witness to the union of hound dog rhythms and high musical art, as beatdown guitar makes unlikely common cause with majestic passages and august symphonic movements. The contrast between angelic background choruses and his own thunderous exclamations is compelling. Dex is in a class alone.

Recommended: "Good Thing Goin'," "If You Love Me," "Andrieux Boogie," "For All We Know," "Shape Of Things To Come," "Tell Laura," "I Found My Love"

Video: "Good Thing Goin'"

Propeller

Dex Romweber

Carrboro 2016

(Bloodshot)

All about in Dex's works float ghosts lugubrious, stricken, and, at sudden moments, jaunty and piano-rolling. His is a booming voice summoning contemplative and flawed humanity. All of which strides and soars in confederation with authoritative guitar pummeling.

Recommended: "Nightride," "Taking My Baby Away," "Smile," "Midnight At Vic's," "Trouble of the World," "I Don't Know"

Video: "Trouble of the World"

Dex Romweber Duo

Is That You In the Blue? 2011

(Bloodshot)

Ethereal intonings, voodoo toms, "kitchenware" that rattle-clanks like skeletal percussion, and stark word-murals tear back the curtain hiding strange terrains. Dex and Sister Sara vent blusterings and guitar-rampages seized up from a familiar rock'n'roll cauldron. This is a shadowy, skewed funhouse zone. No one gets out. No one desires to.

Recommended: "Jungle Drums," "The Death of Me," "Midnight Sun," "Brazil," "Climb Down," "Is That You In the Blue?"

Video: "Jungle Drums"

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Los Crujidos

"Adiós Bye Bye" 3-track release

(MC Records)

The involvement of Mario Cobo may attract many, but they'll find his fellows distinguish themselves, as well, in this jaunty project. The three launch headlong with gusto, racing through efficient constructions that sparkle (None exceed 2:18.) For his part, Mario embroiders with meticulousness - you'll find your jaw on the floor.

Recommended: "Adiós Bye Bye," "Un minuto y medio," "El tren de Hazas Blancas"

Video

Spotify

DJORDJE

"Everything I Ever Wanted" single

(Ceklin Music)

"For you, I was just a little game / Without you, I'll never be the same," sighs Djordle Stijepovic in a new essay. His ruminations are portrayed majestically against loping neo-Rockabilly. Listeners will surely sympathize with the despondent narrator whose heart was cruelly cast to concrete, just as they will find the textured musical support mesmeric.

Video

Theo Lawrence

Pickin' and Singin'

(Tomika Records)

Composed Frenchman Theo brush-strokes vignettes so personal as to be, paradoxically, universally relatable. Mannerly country like this once hummed from wooden porches across America's South. Prodigious acoustic picking and gentle relatings resound in otherwise barren space, their impressions magnified by solitude. Theo gathers in the same home-folks batch as established traditionalists Wayne Hancock and Dale Watson.

Recommended: "Left Side Of My Chest," "You Never Can Tell," "Don't Cry Over No One (More Than 24 Hours)," "The World Keeps Reminding Me Of You," "Pretty Bird"

Video: "Pretty Bird"

Linktr.ee (Tomika Records)

Spotify

Apple

Sanford Clark

...Rocks

(Bear Family)

Ike-era jukeboxes quaked from such 45s. Possessed of magnetic smoothness, crooner Sanford was among upstarts who grabbed microphones in those years. He dispatched uptempo material with comfortableness. Even his forays into low-key Country territories featured everyman poise that perhaps should have drawn greater celebrity in their time. In later career years, he sought with limited artistic merit to conform to a modernized record market. (Some such instances are included here.) But it is for his output during Rock'n'Roll's primal age that he is rightly admired.

Recommended: "Ooo Baby," "Modern Romance," "Love Charms," "It's Nothing To Me," "Usta Be My Baby," "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," "Just Bluesin'," "Tennessee Walk," "Swanee River Rock," "Blackjack County Chain"

Video: "Modern Romance"

Bear Family

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Dave Crimmen

If You Said Yes! single

(Burning Tyger)

Long applauded for his buoyant way with vintage-inspired rompings, Dave has now punched in with this delightful repertoire addition. This is a new Valentine's Day version of a rollicking track from 1996 LP The Son Of Sun. 88s are pounded and confederate with other gleefully maneuvered gone tools (including barn-burning guitar) in what unspools as lively fracture. Ever at the apex, master Crimmen vents swinging delivery redolent of halcyon Union Avenue years.

Video

Site

Facebook (Fan page)

sedigital.com.au

Link Wray

Jack the Ripper vinyl

(Sundazed)

This reviewer refuses to squander ink recounting the decades of waxings that earned Link iconic status. Those, plus the savage guitar master's 1970s toils with vocalist nonpareil Robert Gordon, are already widely known. Suffice to say this crisp reissue of North Carolina's son's 1963 Swan LP reminds with definitude of the power-chord's earliest deploy.

Recommended: "Fat Back," "Steel Trap," "Mash Potato Party," "Run Chicken Run," "Deacon Jones"

Video: "Fat Back"

Sundazed

Voodoo Zombie

Maldita single

(Self-issued)

Personnel charged with promoting this single will not sweat, as Psycho so emphatic successfully markets itself. Growling guitar trajectory bursts mercilessly from speakers. It poisons innocent airwaves and lodges in mohawked skulls like a shard. Language barrier precludes lyrical grasp, compounding mystery. Nevertheless, the lingually unfit can luxuriate in the turbulent storm that carries aloft arousing vocal urgings.

Video

Various Artists

Slow Grind Fever Volume 11

(Stag-O-Lee)

Douse the lamp - there'll be belly-rubbin' in the house, tonight.

Predominantly pre-Rock'n'Roll Jazz and Blues orchestra passages unroll with assurance, their advances persuading nocturnal intimacies. Yearning hands know instinctively their destinations.

Presented are musicians of top-drawer caliber whose grand toils once painted glories. All the sensual while, distinctive vocalists croon and purr provocatively. Suggestively. Even tales of loves astray and independence are rendered in smoldering tones.

This is where we came from.

Recommended: "The Good Book" (Joe and Ursala with Joe Morris and his orchestra), "Losing Hand" (Harry Belafonte), "I Left My Baby" (Count Basie and his All-Stars feat. Jimmy Rushing), "I'm Cuttin' Out" (Ivory Joe Hunter), "Caravan" (Dinah Washington with Quincy Jones and his orchestra), "In My Black Lace" (Jeri Simpson feat. Barney Kessel), "Ooh Midnight" (Pete "Guitar" Lewis), "Gee Gee Baby" (Lenny Johnson) "Going Back Where I Belong" (Sugar Pie Desanto), "Eighteen" (Connie Francis), "Hurricane" (The Southcoasters), "Tough Chick" (The Rockbusters), "Rags and Old Iron" (Tennessee Ernie Ford), "Autumn Leaves" (The Everly Brothers)

Video: "In My Black Lace" (Jeri Simpson with Barney Kessel)

Stag-O-Lee

Quincy Jones and His Orchestra

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Mad Dog and the Smokin Js

American Rock & Roll

(Rumble Road Records)

Devastation is ripping the door off its hinges. Without exception, these 11 tracks illustrate the thrill-a-moment, knuckle-sandwich brutality of unapologetically strong-willed Rock'n'Roll. The three burly cats perpetrating this incursion lovingly incorporate Rockabilly and other roots-music elements into their deafening rambunctiousness. This has the swaggering manner of modern-day obstreperousness, though, and asserts itself audaciously. No ear is safe.

Recommended: "Half Crazy," "Turn Loose Jenetta," "Hank's Last Ride," "American Rock 'n' Roll," "School Bell Hell," "Drag Racing," "We Fell In Love," "Big Old Jeep," "Clock Of Rock," "Wanted Man," "Fast Track"

Video: "School Bell Hell"

Site

Facebook (Rumble Road)

The Panpanics

Punk Sounds Best On Crappy Speakers

(Fingered Productions)

Thrown in listeners' open-jawed faces are blasts seldom heard since the days of the Panpanics' claimed influences: acclaimed 1970s/80s predecessors from NYC, London, and Europe. As that implies, headlong demolition-chord charges rocket unrelentingly. There are no cessations in this turbulence - nor are their absences lamented.

Recommended: "Let's Start a Band," "Politician (I Might As Well Be a)," "Pervert In Disguise," "Razors In the Night," "On the Booze (Again)," "Dead Cities"

Video: "Let's Start a Band"

Facebook (Panpanics)

se.7digital.com

Facebook (Fingered Productions)

The Crappy Coyotes

Long Long Road

(Self-issued)

So profound is their hipness to American roots-musical motivators that these French rockers reference both Charlie Rich and Chuck Berry in their substantial endeavor. Strains of vintage stylizations rollicking and Bluesy figure prominently in laudable performances. All involved devote themselves with passion, and their dedication enriches beyond calculation. Among the more rightly reverential genre productions to recently present themselves.

Recommended: "Night and Day," "Tell Me," "Breakfast Blues," "Mohair Sam," "Boogey Man," "Go Your Way," "Yesterday Is Here," "See You In Hell"

Video: "Tell Me"