DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: March 2025

Sunday, March 30, 2025

Ali and the Hilljack Stompers

Made In Exile

(Exile East)

Ali and the Hilljack Stompers have recently enjoyed airwaves spin alongside the Chop Tops, Hot Rod Walt & the Psycho Devilles, and the Whiskey Daredevils. To rank in that fast company, a group must themselves be of eminent mettle. Ali and friends easily meet the rock-ribbed measure, but the three also embark on an intriguing trek across landscapes whose hues, textures, depths, and plateaus provoke unceasing wonderment. Creativity breathes, here.

Recommended: "The Barker At Carnivale," "Spin," "Love Song," "We Got the Beat," "Cheddar," "Sick," "Tags," "Burn," "Itsy Bitsy," "This Time"

Videos: "Spin" "Cheddar" "Burn"

Mojo Men From Mars

Seventh Son three-track EP

(Martin's Garage Records)

Officials who monitor global threats need be apprised of this Croation agitation. Given the breadth of its percussive impact, and the magnetic capacity of its metal-being-shredded-at-savage velocities guitars, countries are advised to prepare for onslaught - one their disorderly denizens will dig the most.

Recommended: "Seventh Son," "Who I Am," "Sex'n'Drugz'n'Rock'n'Roll'"

Video: "Seventh Son" "Sex'n'Drugz'n'Rock'n'Roll"

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Grippers

The Singles

(Potencial Hardcore)

"Headlong," "combative," and "menace" were my descriptions of Grippers' 2024 Complicity Is a Weapon. Those terms certainly apply to their new release, though I would now add "belligerent," "airtight," and "dizzyingly alacritous." The volcanic vocals would themselves be sufficient to knock walls flat, but they are eagerly abetted by musicians so fierce as to prompt 911 calls.

Recommended: "Spit In Your Face," "Red Wine and Roses," "Uncle Stu"

Video: "Spit In Your Face"

Patrick the Gathering

"Don't Deny" b/w "I'm On the Floor"

(Gravel Beach)

Potential for distinction is evident, but present merit bears appreciation. When working folks crowd weekend barrooms, it's music like this that they seek; hand-crafted, everyman Rock vigorous enough to satisfy visceral urges, though possessed of creative ambition and deftness at each turn. Conversational vocals remind of Lou Reed. All can find connection.

Recommended: "Don't Deny," "I'm On the Floor"

Video: "Don't Deny"

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Ramones

The 1975 Sire Demos vinyl

(Rhino)

Some kvetch songs are slower, and perhaps less emphatic, than subsequent LP incarnations. So fucking what? The moment captured was pivotal. In uncultured bursts lies portent of a then-looming Rock'n'Roll revolution of the sort sporadically needed. More than signaling the return of popular music brevity and elementary song-structuring, the demos conveyed an amphetemine bubblegum (with skewed outlook) that inspired global multitudes. And that inspiration, to say nothing of the foursomes' mayonnaise tidal wave then in its embryonic hour, led innumerable outsiders to grab up instruments and blueprint their own attacks. There will never be another Ramones.

(These tracks have seen issuance by other labels.)

Recommended: every single song

Video: l ive in Arturo Vega's loft, 1975

Discogs

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The Meteors

Only the Meteors Are Pure Psychobilly

(Wreckin' Bones)

One online commentator asserts these 1981-1988 Meteors' pit-bombardments were re-waxed by P. Paul and henchmen for Anagram's initial 1988 issuance. Vintage has not mitigated monstrousness; snarled malignity and towerblock volume fling back their cloaks. As timid masses flee, the disc-title's validity is affirmed. (Never make eye contact with P. Paul.)

Recommended: "Graveyard Stomp," "Wreckin' Crew," "Sick Things," "Mutant Rock," "The Hills Have Eyes," "Fire, Fire," "Power of Steel," "Eat the Baby," "Go Buddy Go"

Videos: "Graveyard Stomp" (live) "The Hills Have Eyes" "Go Buddy Go"

Bullet Biters

Napalm Over the Rainbow

(Bad Billy Records)

This intrepid skulls'n'creepers triad hot-wired a nitro-rocket and crashed on the spot where no one cares about anything, save for the killer-juke sounds that compel leg-shaking. Once dug into that most-prized honey-spot, who the hell would desire exit?

Limited copies in three colorations: Slime Green (80), Black (60), and napalm-red/yellow (80).

Recommended: "Reaping the Harvest," "Serial Drowner," "Napalm Over the Rainbow," "Teenage Grave Digger," "Signs of the End," "Dead Planets," "Brain Back"

Video: "Dead Planets" "Serial Drowner"

The Sinister Six

Rise of the Sinisteros

(Pigmé Records)

Emerging from shadows is ? and the Mysterians from a bad planet. (Bad, as in spurning squares' rules of propriety, and digging every single second.) While fuzzed guitar gyrates on the precipice, organ swirls majestically, and Where the Action Is hipness undulates, listeners will find themselves compelled to crack open the door marked "kicks," behind which ankle-booted Thunderbird-drivers sporting wraparound Ray-Bans do dance sensations that are sweeping the nation.

This is available as both a digital album and 12" vinyl version, limited to 500 copies.

Recommended: "Vodou Queen," "R.A.T.S.," "Frankenstein vs. Machine Gun Joe," "Blue For Number 6," "The Sorceress of Neburu," "Declaration of Incompetence," "Pretending To Be High Class," "Ode To Surf Rock," "A Message From Beyond the Walls of Time"

Video: (No video accessible)

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Sunday, March 23, 2025

Demented Are Go

"Black Valium" b/w "Spoonful" single

(Bad Billy)

Sinister "Black Valium" unfurls in slow-motion. The darkness is oppressive. Wah-wah is omnipresent, and each beat plunges into earth. Sparky of the towering quiff and his grotesquely greasepainted mates lurch in teasing psycho-method, only to suddenly tear into hastened dive formation.

DAG's reading of Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" is also the stuff of dark dreams. The Blues opus is recast as a stalking claw-wielder. Its pace is accelerated a bit from "Black Valium," but identical menace is projected.

It seems likely no one culpable savors sunshine.

Videos: "Black Valium" "Spoonful" (live, 2022) interview

Hired Gun Trio

"Oh No Not Again..." digital single

(Self-issued)

Four cats do not a trio make, but arithmetic is dismissed once melodious merriment commences. Gracing airwaves for 3:49 is unpretentious pleasantness likely to uplift spirits and send he-and-she pairs racing hand-in-hand toward hardwood. Gently rendered harmonies glide into sublimity.

Suck

"Gimme Gabba Gabba" EP

(La Pochette Surprise Records)

This thrill-ride-straight-to-demolishment Punk vehemence was built without brakes. Indeed, such is the neck-snapping velocity of each blazing projectile, that attempts at pause would prove futile. The group's own cheek is laced through blitzkrieg maneuvers of the class that once ricocheted between CBGB's graffitied drywalls.

Recommended: "Gimme Gabba Gabba," "Medusa," "Runnin' (Til I Die)," "Motörhead"

Videos: "Gimme Gabba Gabba" "Medusa"

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La Pochette Surprise Records

Dead Jack and his Dry Bones

E' La Dose Che Fa Il Veleno digital album

(Self-issued)

Having again donned his Dead Jack guise, the Bone Machine's Jack Cortese portrays this effort as a "soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist." Were it corporeal, that flicker would be splashed upon the screen of a spectral drive-in, one populated by rubber-masked bugbears and pie-tin saucers. The architect's employ of suspenseful tension is clever. And, as is typical of soundtracks, mood is wholly imparted by instrumental contraptions: Clanks, rattlings, uncanny kerrangs, and percussive pulsations jump from around corners. The kaleidoscopic unsettlingness is magnetic.

(The present reviewer reflects on director Ray Dennis Steckler's 1964 cult-epic: "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.")

Recommended: "Ombre Near Sull'Asfalto," "Omicidio Al Camposanto," "La Notte Dei Serpenti," "Stati Di Allucinazione," "La Folia Ha Gli Occhi Di Vetro," "Fuga Dalla Morte," "E' La Dose Che Fa II Veleno," "L'Inferno Non Ha Fretta," "Sangue Sulla Pista Da Ballo," "Il Ritorno Del Prof. Bad Trip"

Video (none available)

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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Marky Ramone's Blitzkrieg

Punkin' Out the Classics EP

(Dog Snout Inc)

Marky's reinterpreting classics is not unlike actors desiring to play Shakespearean protagonists. Wanting to share in something special is natural. And Marky has his own specialness to add. As if his own résumé weren't impressive enough (Dust, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the storied Bowery brudders), factor in his Energizer Bunny capacity for breath-snatching skin smashing. While it's true that material here is rather more involved than what one finds on Marky's familiar menu, he's allied himself with busting-walls players of prowess more than sufficient to the TNT task.

Recommended: "It's Not Unusual," "Keep On Dancing," "New York, New York," "Everybody Loves Somebody," "Octopus's Garden"

Video: "It's Not Unusual" "Keep On Dancing" "New York, New York"

P. Paul Fenech

"Crazy Alice" b/w "Highway Demon"

(Mutant Rock Records)

When P. Paul is not prowling stages as sordid captain of the Meteors, shrewd speculation asserts he can be located below stairs. Far below. Venturing here under his own name, the Psycho Master vents vileness while tearing from six strings lovely tones of diabolism. While only the creeping "Crazy Alice" is accessible for appraisal at this pre-April 11 release writing, it conveys cursedness in such abundance, and with such determination, as to warrant chase.

Video: "Crazy Alice"

Angry Cougars - and - Howling Commandos

Twelve Bone-Rattling Tales of Terror

(Columbus Blood Records)

Would only that I had attended the just-passed release party for this shared work, at Columbus' Rumba Cafe. Still, listening conjures imagery of wicked bacchanalia betwixt Punk groundbursts. Headlong bar-chording, abetted by equally determined fellows, rips into ears and slices cerebra. Having endured molestation, they are forever bettered.

Recommended: "So Fucking What," "Freak Show," "Casualties," "Tower" (Angry Cougars), "Last of the V8s," "East Side Scum," "O.B.T.," "Closed Casket" (Howling Commandos)

Videos: "Freak Show" (live) "East Side Scum" (live)

Site Facebook Instagram (Angry Cougars)

Facebook Instagram (Howling Commandos)

ColumbusBloodLLC@gmail.com

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Discogs

Angry Cougars

Howling Commandos

Grippers

Complicity Is a Weapon

(Potencial Hardcore)

Initially granted ink here upon its 2024 issuance, Complicity merits fresh regard. Pugilistic guitar lashes out. Verve is ubiquitous. The line-up is skeletal and sports a skewed tiara of adamant vocals. Scorched-earth strafing from which feebletons will scamper, but that will compel tattooed shavelings to bellow amidst the mayhem.

Recommended: "Defiance," "Keep On Rollin'," "Suburban Rats," "The Fool," "Never Surrender," "The Flame," "Black Tears," "The Void," "The Squad," "Broken Boots"

Videos: "Keep On Rollin'" "The Fool" "Broken Boots"

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Whiskey Daredevils

Fast and Furious

(Self-issued)

"We are America's finest Country-Punk band left standing," is their jaw-jutted proposition. Lofty claim, that; several other combos qualify for similar esteem. But Whiskey Daredevils can't reasonably be accused of over-selling themselves. Because, like a barrel bursting slats, the raucous sounds they hand tool fly in all directions, old-ways and crisp ones blurring as they sail, motivating many-a limber-limbed shit-kicker to hurl his hat skyward.

Recommended: "(Didn't Get) High With Willie Nelson," "A Forest," "Detroit Over Houston," "Further Down the Line," "California," "Nicky Done Got a Secret," "Slip Into Heaven"

Video: "(Didn't Get) High With Willie Nelson" (live) "Nicky Done Got a Secret"

The Velveteen Flowers

Cadillac Desert EP

(Newsboy Cap Records)

A Fleetwood swung to the cracked curb. From it exited a hawkshaw whose hard-knocks backstory determined his moves. Shades. Sharkskin. Roach killers. Neon flashings flickered in wee-hours puddles. And this was his chosen music: a percolated amalgam of Rock'n'Roll flares and cool-Jazz contemplations, wrought by men driven to answer the timeless call of the Hip.

Recommended: "Sleek Cat Slippy," "Bebop Baby," "Baby Goodbye," "Swing Kitten (Bad Bad Girl)," "Shoulda Stayed In"

Video: "Sleek Cat Slippy" "Baby Goodbye"

Amazon (UK)

Ghoultown

Rare and Unreleased

(Wreckin' Bones Records / Black Angel Promotions)

Ghoultown's thunderous Tales of the Crypt transmogrification of Zane Grey's slap-leather milieu has never assumed deserved position in chart highlands, illustrating again Legs McNeil's dictum that cool music seldom enjoys mass popularity. In the group's darkside rowdiness, guitars gallop and ascendant trumpet strains resound. They collude with poundings-times-ten, lending animation against which spectral host Count Lyle's dead-man's drawl etches jaggedly. Lurking here are demo and in-concert tracks from 1999 - 2008, as well as the 2012 Killer In Texas EP - long unavailable.

Recommended:"Ballad of Clarence Heckles," "Skeleton Cowboys," "Southern Witch," "After 2," "Killin's a Bitch," "Fistful of Demons," "Wicked Man," "Ten Seconds To Blood," "Death of Jonah Hex" (Alt.), "Killer In Texas," "Bury the Hatchet"

Video: "Skeleton Cowboys" "Death of Jonah Hex"

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Black Angel Promotions

The Brian Setzer Orchestra

VAVOOM!

(Deko Entertainment)

Weeks ago, Brian disclosed saddening news: “I just wanted to check in with you all,” he wrote online. “Towards the end of the last Stray Cats tour I noticed that my hands were cramping up. I’ve since discovered that I have an autoimmune disease. I cannot play guitar."

Of course, so widely (and rightly) appreciated are his masterclass adroitness and contributions to music that they require no retelling. Instead, spinning any discs that bear his name impresses satisfactorily.

2000's Vavoom! (Interscope) was the Brian Setzer Orchestra's fourth effort. Now, for the first time since that issuance, it graces shelves in limited, variously colored vinyl incarnations. From its grooves leap great-big-and-sassy sounds redolent of champagne ballrooms of Rooseveltian vintage.

Brass merriment is writ large, shoulder-to-pinstriped shoulder with fractued guitar on the footloose. Dressed to the nines, Jacks and Jills knock it out. More fun can't be had. (At least, not within statutes.)

Fashions, auto designs, and popular musics of yesteryear were superior to most contemporary strivings. Brian understands that. For, just as he'd punched-up traditional Rockabilly gestures with muscular, post-Punk ripping, the guitar maestro restores killer-diller Big Band stylings with brazen rumbustiousness.

Swinging airs long forgotten bounded back to the fore. And new generations of jits swung wings. Brian untethered hands-in-air jollification.

Prayers are advised, that he rebound and continue preaching the gospel of those straight-from-the-fridge.

Recommended: "Jumpin' East of Java," "If You Can't Rock Me," "Gettin' In the Mood," "Drive Like Lightnin' (Crash Like Thunder), "Mack the Knife," "Caravan," "The Footloose Doll," "From Here To Eternity," "That's the Kinda Sugar Papa Likes," "Jukebox," "Gloria"

Video: "If You Can't Rock Me" "Caravan" (live) "That's the Kinda Sugar Papa Likes"

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Willie Barry

This Is How We Duet

(Barryfied)

In days long past, regional crackerbox radio outlets piped similar musicalizing of plain-folks' fortunes to listeners weary after the day's toils. Simple instrumentation and harmonies that gladdened befit commonplace circumstances. Real Country was authentic expression of the world in which average men and women loved and lived.

Willie is celebrated as the Rock-A-Sonics' bop-heeled singer. Joined here by a slew of visiting talents, he revisits vintage jewels whose back-country fashion has enough spiritedness to set woods on fire.

It's like discovering a time machine with a speaker.

Recommended: "Love Me To Pieces" (feat. Dave Stuckey), "You've Got Everything" (with Deke Dickerson), "My Honey" (feat. Big Sandy), "Draggin' the River" (with Grey Delisle), "Why Don't You Love Me" (feat. Dave Stuckey), "That's All I Want From You" (with Dani Colace), "Tired and Sleepy" (feat. Eddie Clendening), "Two Hearts, Two Kisses" (with Dani Colace), "Warm Love" (feat. Big Sandy)

Videos: "Tired and Sleepy" "Two Hearts, Two Kisses" (both live, at Viva Las Vegas 2023)

The Cramps

Fiends of Dope Island 2025 reissue

(Planet Records)

By the 2003 date of Fiends' initial issuance, blood-moon brace Lux and Ivy had thoroughly stropped their grisly-kicks spectacle: the morbid schlock of Al Adamson with John Waters' depravity, carved onto a garage-Punk soundtrack. Some components spurted crimson, while other maleficent curiosities flung sparks. Lux heaved an abundance of maniacal ejaculations, whoops, and stream-of-monstrousness intonations. But "Taboo" revealed him as a more technically adroit singer than those customary vocal-gymnastics suggested. Vampy vedette Poison Ivy - long known to be of homicidal capacity whilst molesting metallic strings - acquitted herself with all the pointed poise of a mercenary assassin. And the teasingly creeping "Color Me Black" may be the most bare-faced Link homage they ever put to tape.

This Swedish rerelease was limited to 300 red-vinyl units.

Recommended: "Big Black Witchcraft Rock," "Hang Up," "Dr. Fucker M.D. (Musical Deviant)," "Dopefiend Boogie," "Taboo," "She's Got Balls," "Oowee Baby," "Mojo Man from Mars," "Color Me Black"

Videos: "Dopefiend Boogie" "Taboo" "She's Got Balls" "Color Me Black"

Ripmen

Ready For Lobotomy? EP

(Beagle Sound)

Morbidness lunges headlong into demolition-chorded furiousness. Guttural spittings splatter across clamor, acids corroding violent noise. But those culpable evince impressive resourcefulness in the coda: Banjo romps along in a sportive Country-Rockabilly ditty likely to prompt jigs.

"In the heart of sweet Dixie, where the whiskey is strong" is the introduction drawled to down home merriment.

Recommended: "Dark Carriage," "Night Terror," "Nightwatch," "Torn Hearts & Twisted Souls"

Videos: "Night Terror" "Torn Hearts & Twisted Souls"