DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY

Capsule reviews by a jury of one: Iowa journalist/author DC Larson. Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Blues, Alternative, Western Swing, R and B, Punk, Swing, Hillbilly, Glam, Americana. DC Larson's retro science fiction writing blog, from which the Eddie Atomic Space Adventures are available, is RETRO RIFF BOOKS. And his political writings one is AMERICAN SCENE MAGAZINE. Both are also on Blogspot. All original content on these three blogs is under author copyright.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Drunken Prayer

Thy Burdens

(Dial Back Sound / Well-Kept Secret)

The enriching product of Appalachian-dwelling Morgan Geer's bended-knee, musical heritage and fertile imagination. The man's past, per legend, includes regaling bikers with hymns learned from a great-grandmother. Guided here by Drive-By Trucker Matt Patton and accompanied by unassumingly adroit companions to actualize his marvelous (and broadly accessible) musings, Morgan draws from rural wellsprings. His grained throat bespeaks worldly seasoning as it rises to proclaim Divine adoration and hopes for transcendence.

Recommended: "Selfishness of Man," "Just a Closer Walk with Thee," "When They Ring Them Golden Bells," "Rock of Ages," "Bedside of a Neighbor," "Tramp on the Street," "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel," "Soldier of the Cross," "Long Ago, Far Away," "Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine"

Videos: "When They Ring Them Golden Bells" "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel" "Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine"

John Lindberg Trio

Best Friend's Girlfriend

(Cosmos)

No hardwood-gliding Big Beat rascal worth his Ricky jacket will judge this at all resistable. John and crack compatriots know well how best to free Rockabilly from leash and press it to extreme raucouness - though they ensure melodic undergirding is an influential constant. Pop the top, and watch the night go frantic.

Recommended: "Best Friend's Girlfriend," "(There's) No Getting Over Me ," "Cry Cry Cry," "Rock'n'Roll Girl," "Stand By Me"

Video: "Best Friend's Girlfriend" "Cry Cry Cry"

Bloodshot Bill

So Fed Up!

(Goner)

One-wildcat-band Bill illustrates that hep hicks from back-country juke joints can tip jugs with their calloused left hands, flay every tune tool with their rights, and make hillbillies bop like fevered bone machines. Technical trickery can stay the hell away, 'cause inimitable Human Being stylings are in hot-blooded progress.

Recommended: "Talk To You," "Kissin' Underwater," "Rule Book," "Say What You Want To Say," "It Happens," "Emilina," "Please Don't Break My Heart," "The Very Thought of You," "What She Said"

Videos: "Talk to You" "Emilina"

Back in the Day, 1964

Scotty Moore

The Guitar That Changed the World vinyl

(Sony Epic)

Of course, truck-driving kid Elvis loomed highest on the earlier Sun was incarnations of these earthquake, but the late Scotty and his polished, back-country master picking also claimed abundant regard; indeed, so much so that the inspirational flames he ignited then will surely blaze into perpetuity. As the legendary string-maestro enjoys instrumental latitude in these reinterpretations, his soloing is of greater body, its poised pronouncements make idiosyncratic impacts, and consistently adventurous articulations - ones echoing hillbilly persuasions and youthful exuberance - knock cats seasoned and crisp off their feet.

The cover asserts lofty credit: "And at [Elvis's] right hand from the beginning - from ragged rehearsals in a boardinghouse room and first record sessions to barnstorming the flatbed truck circuit, from flat-broke to that historic first appearance with Tommy Dorsey, from roadhouse to the glittering spotlight in Las Vegas, from hillbilly honky-tonk to Hollywood - Scotty was there."

In later years, this 1964 LP was rereleased in CD format.

Recommended: "Hound Dog," "Loving You," "Money Honey," "My Baby Left Me," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Don't Be Cruel," "Love Me Tender," "Mean Woman Blues"

Videos: "Money Honey" "My Baby Left Me" "Heartbreak Hotel" "Mean Woman Blues"

Sunday, June 15, 2025

The Original Alice Cooper Group

"Black Mamba" "Wild Ones" singles

(earMUSIC)

On "The Return Album the World Was Afraid Of," storied rockers harkening from 1970s arena stages lean into the business of pounding out Rock'n'Roll of metallic massiveness. And it's as if intervening decades matter naught. The triumphantly reunited glitter-alums are arsonists as much as anything, building up and igniting conflagrationary spectacle both dazzling and life imperiling.

These singles were excerpted from forthcoming full-length "The Revenge of Alice Cooper." A team of greater thunderclap dynamism than bassist Dennis Dunaway, guitarist Michael Bruce, and drum master Neal Smith could not be solicited. The three would be justified in smirking down at adversaries. Alice's snarl is no less stentorian than when they and late lead guitarist Glen Buxton loomed on Don Kirshner's 1972 In Concert venue.

("What Happened to You?," another cut on the upcoming long-player, features Buxton via a previously unissued recording.)

Producer Bob Ezrin, long a collaborator, ensured the tempestuousness common to the band batters boldly. Through vivid and lofty musical architecture, the Alice Cooper Group was - and clearly remains - among the crop's cream.

Video: "Black Mamba"

Video: "Wild Ones"

The Brains

"Feel No Pain" single

(Cleopatra)

"An undead nation with my favorite ghouls, this song was a blast to write!!," enthused front man Rene De La Muerte, per a Cleopatra blurb. "Getting back to old school Brains songs...I feel no pain!"

Scowling mates Gui Kitty and Colin the Dead abet Rene in realizing to a fearsome metric the rampage he'd dared to conceptualize when putting pen to paper. Wreckers will collide in delirium when this shard from imminent exhaustive disc Crazy Monster carves jaggedly into surrounding ether.

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Reilly

What Else Ya Got? CD / digital

(Self-issued)

Laboratory slide-rule sharpies hypothesize that crafting sublime Rock'n'Roll both stalwart and mindful of its Poppish responsibilities is a matter of scientific calculation. This release illustrates their veracity. String-bending auteur Richard Reilly (erstwhile 1970s NYC Victim, a band whose whose Punk members included future Rockat Barry Ryan) has honed economical, trippingly fluid compositions that entrance with lissome lilts. Mannerly beat interpretation is of victory circle caliber. Visible here are twelve specimens of sideways-grin elegance that bound on limber legs.

Recommended: "The Cure," "What Else Ya Got?," "Linda Lee," "Girl on the Radio," "I Still Want You," "Memphis DQ," "So Mixed Up," "Boomerang," "Nothing of My Own," "You Won't Be Around," "Voice in My Heart," "Talk Too Much"

Videos: "What Else Ya Got?" "You Won't Be Around" "Voice in My Heart"

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51 Boneyard

6 Songs EP

(Self-issued)

The absence of frills communicates the stark validity of undiplomatic Punk. Fury bursts most alarmingly when surrounded by miles of empty airspace; chords, voices, and percussive wallops thunder violently. The agile aggression of all culpable renders this as glaring as ramming some yobbo's braincase through plate glass.

Recommended: "Golfcart Bobby," "Summertime Brain Surgeon," "Late For the Party," "Breakaway," "Behind the Black Curtain," "21st Century Vampire"

Video: "Golfcart Bobby" "Summertime Brain Surgeon"

Amazon (UK)

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Cliff Richard & the Drifters

Essential Classics Vol. 823

(Essential Classics)

In 2020, Cliff told Callum Crumlish, of England's Express: "God bless him, but John Lennon said: ‘Before Cliff Richard and Move It there was nothing worth listening to in England.’”

As represented on these two compact discs, crooner Cliff was more than as good as the task he'd selected: lending British bouyancy and his own rave-up flourish to American Rock'n'Roll hits by Elvis, Gene, Little Richard, and similarly rough-hewn luminaries. Add to those songs' number originals (like Ian Samwell's Move It) that possessed their own jump'n'jive hearts. Cliff's marquee features ensured sales figures would know no hindrance. And the deal was sealed by his spring-heeled stage manner and hiccuped dynamism. Too, Donna and Living Doll showed he knew how to render a gossamer melody with due gentility, a gift that proffered particular attraction.

Cliff is rightly regarded as in England's bygone vanguard of teen idols. Lennon was bang on.

(Listen to No Turning Back's narrative to know what surely inspired Jumpin' Jack Flash.)

Recommended, Disc One: "Move It," "Donna," "Reddy Teddy," "Be-Bop-A-Lula," "Apron Strings," "Baby I Don't Care," "Danny (Lonesome Blue Boy)"

Recommended, Disc Two: "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Down the Line," "I Got a Feeling," "Jet Black," "Don't Bug Me Baby," "Living Doll," "No Turning Back"

Videos: "Move It" "Living Doll" "No Turning Back"

zdigital.com.au

Songswave

anghami

Back In the Day, 2014

TV Tramps

Rip It Up!

(Little Dickman Records)

Among salient aspects (of which there are several - vivacity, brevity, and economy also being present) that this writer finds magnetic here is the gladsome absence of protracted commencements. Get in/make your point/get out is the superior teaching the Ramones schooled. The torn messengers here casting furiously veering chords waste zero moments on introductions, instead launching themselves (and us) on abrupt sound-sprees that end gloriously. All emergency rooms should pipe this for the tittilation of crimson-spraying basket cases.

Recommended: "Vampires," "Baby Girl," "Keep Your Mouth Shut," "No Ransom," "Rip You Up," "The Stuff," "Party Animal," "Whiplash"

Videos: "Vampires" (live) "Keep Your Mouth Shut" (live)

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Back In the Day, 1985

Breathless

Bad Bad Boys

(Big Beat)

Of course there's electricity in the moonlight. Of course you're in cool danger. This is Teds Alley, and the boys are havin' a night. You'll find the bop snaps tight here. The beat springs to the ready like a flick knife. No one prowling 'round here has patience for squares' tightly wound strictures. Guitar pounces, upright figures stalk, and collar-up sneers proclaim with violent cheek. 1-2-3-4.

Recommended: "Bad Bad Boy," "Waiting At the Station," "She Wasn't Listening," "Letting Off Steam," "She's Bad Company," "Do What You Want To Do," "Burning Up," "Cooking and Washing," "Jenny"

Video: "Bad Bad Boy" "Letting Off Steam"

Back In the Day, 2002

Backdoor Betty

Demo 2002

(Self-issued)

Crafty production reminds of Motörhead sentiment "Everything louder than Everyone Else." Slabs of Punk sinew were heaved here at perilous velocities; shrewd studio-knob manipulation (at Iowa City, Iowa's MAX studio) ensured each perpetrator could be heard to persuasive extreme.

Backdoor Betty's agitators are ravaging audiences to this day. Given that, it is hardly unthinkable that future releases might transpire.

Recommended: "Daddy Gave Me An F," "D.T.S.," "Alcoholic Hobo," "I Want You," "Stabbing Song"

(No video accessible)

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Sunday, June 1, 2025

Dead Jack and his Dry Bones

Dead Jack in the Box digital album

(Self-issued)

Previously, I interpreted "toy music" as an epithet; I'm now reassessing that judgement. All by his lonesome, Dead Jack (Bone Machine's Jack Cortese) wields a galaxy of gadgety gizmos - including toy snare, toy maracas, sheet metal, and toy wooden xylophone - in addition to more orthodox sound implements like guitar and banjo. His Bandcamp page advises recording was perpetrated "with a cheap Chinese smartphone without using microphones." The resultant Lo-fi carnival-mirror melange of twisted silhouettes at once turns one's conception of music feet-over-head whilst flinging to one side the curtain dividing normalcy from its freakish opposite. A buffet for trashmen, eggheads, and misshapen grotesqueries all.

Recommended: "Dead Jack is Back from the Grave," "Scary Night," "Dead Jack in the Box," "Dead Blues," "A Bottle Full of Broken Dreams," "Down in My Hell," "Bad Jack," "Dead Jazz," "I'm the Masked Man in Your Porn Movie," "The King of Twist (Ultra Lo-fi version)"

(No video accessible at presstime)

Angela Hoodoo

Outlaw Girls

(Sleazy Records)

Realizing that she had estimable gifts indigenous to barn land, Angela gathered players of equal disposition. Together, they carpentered a work of nothin'-hifalutin' splendor. There's enough Real Country underway here to knock flat every Pop-Country popinjay that ever primped his blow-dried locks.

Recommended: "I've Got Soul for My Enemies," "Snakes in My Head," "Fugitivo," "Don't Get Into Trouble," "Wild Horse"

Video: "I've Got Soul for My Enemies" / "Don't Get Into Trouble" (live) "Snakes in My Head" (live) "Fugitivo" (live)

Brioles

Voodoo Eyes 12" vinyl

(El Toro)

All the robust locomotion one would envision from veterans of stout capacity. The Rockabilly leaping from this wax learned well the teachings of modernity. While it retains classical outline - offering familiar and much-prized strut - it also features chain-swinging grit of crisper vintage. Three cats put shoulders to the task and raise a ruckus cracking.

Recommended: "Fly Face," "My Toys," "No Descansan En Paz." "Arriba," "Voodoo Eyes," "Downstairs," "Flyin' Tortillas"

Video: "Fly Face" "Voodoo Eyes"

The Spacewasters

The 7-Legged Groove Machine

(Trash Wax)

For some 25 years, these boulevard guerillas have been bashing in craniums, and they've picked up considerable instrumental know-how in the process. In no way does that detract from bombardments; in fact, such assume greater demolishment capacity for the skillfulness. Still additional merit owes to songcraft smarts.

Limited blue-vinyl edition of 300 copies.

Recommended: "Born to Die Old," "Roll Over," "Shadow Man," "Bad Bet," "Bone Music," "See Me Cry," "Twisted Nerve," "Dead Ringer"

Videos: "Bone Music" "Twisted Nerve"

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Marcel Riesco

Wild Kisses

(Sleazy)

Renowned as the Twinkletones' leader, Marcel can rightly be ranked in Rock'n'Roll vocalists' topmost station - alongside Robert Gordon, Dibbs Preston, and Levi Dexter. Others take inspiration from Mr. Presley. But in Marcel's majestic voicings - at times ascending to impossibly high planes - one detects a profound Wink Troubadour imprint. (Indeed, Marcel is also an esteemed Orbison authority.)

A voice of such distinction merits class-A material. And such is present in these grooves. Songs are crafted with executive finesse, their impacts assured by interpretive musicianship of suitably high caliber.

Here unfurl poised and polished sounds that offer finned vogue of the later 1950s, with sincerity of evergreen quality. None rush to announce import; such just indisputably is.

Recommended: "You Gotta Love Me Too," "Wild Kisses," "Pucker Paint," "Daydream," "Waitin'," "Why Can't We Just Make Up?," "She's OK"

Video: "You Gotta Love Me Too" "Wild Kisses" "She's OK"

Early James

Medium Raw

(Easy Eye Sound)

Producer and Easy Eye Records suzerain Dan Auerbach told Tinnitist in January that James recorded his third release in an olden Nashville manse dubbed Honky Chateau. Appointments were of dated quality. Vintage equipment was employed, and players operated from separate rooms (see videos below). That attention to primitivism yielded bounteous reward; ambient spaciousness facilitated starkness that rightly located Blues arrestingness at the center of everything. Battle-ribboned accompanists lodge directness born from real-world scarrings. Lacking their firepower, James wouldn't burst as effectively. And burst, he does - his plaintive, grained voicings and resonator strikes resound movingly. He has the faith.

Recommended: "Steely Knives," "Nothing Surprises Me Anymore," "Tinfoil Hat," "Gravy Train," "Rag Doll," "I Could Just Die Right Now," "Unspeakable Things," "Dig To China," "I Got This Problem"

Videos: "Tinfoil Hat" "Rag Doll" "I Could Just Die Right Now"

The Fat City Rockers

"Destination Love" single

(FCR Music)

Not being a songsmith myself, I can only speculate that composing an uncomplicated tune that eschews profundity, so that carefree and swinging fun can be exclusively served, is among the more trying tasks demanded of pickers who take up pens. Here romps success. Neo-Rockabilly deftly administered travels at a crisp pace, leaving upbeat, twanged kicks-aplenty strewn in its jovial wake.

Video

Monday, May 26, 2025

Insanity Later

"World of Seclusion" single

(Long Nap Records)

Blount's 1996 nitro-amped whiplash is resuscitated with negligible alteration, but spiritedness that sears impressively. One can never get too much alacritous ferocity, in this scribe's estimation. Of course it flies past; the sooner then that it can be replayed.

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Sunday, May 25, 2025

Demented Are Go

Welcome Back to Insanity Hall

(Rebellion Records)

Initially issued in 2012 by People Like You, the eighth full-length from DAG can now be got in smoke-vinyl form, sleeved in gatefold cover.

Behold as bug-eyed and bellowing lost souls forsaken by all that men hold holy lurch to blistering cacophonies. Some songs rocket into uncharted deliriums. Others lope as low-slung, sinister pulsations.

Faces streaked with garish ghastliness and bloody claw-tracings, group members jerk-dance like epileptic puppets in multi-technicolored, bombastic spectacle, vomiting lunatic gallows humor. They remain equally assured whether plundering final resting sanctuaries or wallowing in bawdy degradations.

This must forever remain locked away in criminally Psycho rank. May none of us ever know such abhorrence, save for relishing from safe remove.

Recommended: "Welcome Back to Insanity Hall," "Bodies In the Basement," "Retard Whore," "Engine Trouble," "Falling Up," "Epileptic Fit," "Devil Says Kill," "Gone," "Heads On Poles," "Out In the Dark," "Lucky Charm," "The Life I Live," "Dark Angel"

Videos: "Bodies In the Basement" live 2012 (7:17)

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Rebellion Records

Sonic Rendezvous

Sounds of Subterrania

Juno Records

Amazon

Seth Mulder & Midnight Run

Coming On Strong

(Rebel Records)

Come down where the grass is blue. Ain't it a wonder how plain string-pickin,' fiddle-wrasslin', and clod-kickers' throats raised in song can make he-and-she pairings whirl and heel-kick with the same joyousness their elders exulted in, way back when Hector was a pup. It's enough to rid visiting city-sorts of manicured manners and, loose laughter a-bubble, clap hands in celebration. This is how good-times sound when music opens wide.

Little David would surely be tickled by the brim-tip.

Recommended: "Heartbreak Express," "Bells of Every Chapel," "Coming On Strong," "Looking Past the Pain (The Cowboy Song)," "1916," "Rider on An Orphan Train," "I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me," "Church Hill Special," "Rock of Ages," "Mountain Bill," "Gilgarry's Glen," "Old Rueben No. 1"

Videos: "Church Hill Special" "Old Rueben No. 1"

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Greg Antista and the Lonely Streets

Bastards & Broken Hearts

(Rum Bar Records)

When I speak of "maturity," it's not meant in a negative sense - not at all. The songcraft here yields the passion aflame in a kid's heart, yeah, but with the enrichment brought by years of accrued experiential wisdom. Punks grow up, even if thrashing and squalling. But that's okay, because guitars retain their brawniness and rhythms their urgency. And cards well played produce strutting of which teens can but dream.

(Not all tracks were available for review at presstime.)

Recommended: "Bastards and Broken Hearts," "Black Stars and Cadillacs," "Damaged Goods," "Last Chance," "Black and Blue," "Run This Town"

Videos: "Black Stars and Cadillacs" "Run This Town"

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The Brainlets

"The Void" single

(Self-issued)

Immediately splitting apart the front door is a Punk-Blues harp/guitar/skins blast that sends furniture colliding. The onrush is augmented by lyrics fired off as projectiles. When the malcontent protagonist vows: "And I know I'm gonna do it again!," you accept him at his scarifying word.

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