DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: 2026

Saturday, April 18, 2026

Creativity tears at the straitjacket

Among those loudly critical of burgeoning Rock'n'Roll, were old guard musical rivals who watched resentfully as the upstart's popularity bloomed.

Author James Wierzbicki, in his 2016 Music In the Age of Anxiety, recorded that songwriter/orchestra leader/ASCAP member Billy Rose termed nascent Rock'n'Roll songs "obscene junk, pretty much on a level with dirty comic books."

Per Wierzbecki, other notable avowed foes of the new music included Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Bob Crosby, Mel Torme, and Paul Whiteman. Commendable talents, all. Just not terribly open-minded in music appreciation.

Ol' Blue Eyes, jacket slung over one shoulder, was caustic: “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd - in fact, plain dirty - lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth..."

Broadway composer Meredith Wilson (of Music Man renown) notoriously derided Rock'n'Roll as "utter garbage" that "should not be confused with anything related to music or verse."

Scolds were surely apprehensive about personal career sustainability, given the change in public preferences then unfolding. Too, they must have been embittered by success in their field accruing to those they regarded as inferiors, both musically and socially.

Their hidebound, rigid definition of musician -- someone able to read and reproduce on a moment's notice any notes in any style set before them -- was passing from common acceptance.

Skilled professions did have requirements, true, and not unreasonably so. Only someone knowledgeable of human anatomy, for instance, could be an effective surgeon. Likewise, no man ignorant of matters automotive could legitimately banner himself as a master mechanic.

But strict definition robbed music of its artful nature, its inherent capacity for individual and cultural expression. Musical notes were never red bricks, to be impersonally troweled into arrangement however befits utilitarian requisite.

By inflexible accounting, music was merely a profession of no more spiritual consequence than carpentry. In that view, musicians are interchangeable journeymen without individual perspective or worth. Machines, not men.

In honest and real folk musics -- whether Country, Blues, Rock'n'Roll, or any variant -- human expression not circumscribed by formula or regimentation was lifted up for salute.

Common people were and remain as entitled to creative outlet as anyone. The art they formed from personal experiences, in styles they found appropriate, were as valid as any issued from classroom lecturns.

This is not to depreciate technical proficiency. Some of the most enjoyable, worthwhile musicians, then and today, display breath-stealing abilities. We appreciate accomplished musicianship, and vigorously applaud its makers.

But virtuosity isn't necessary for someone to open up and pour their life into a song. Indeed, passion can sometimes be blocked by technical obsessiveness.

In Rock'n'Roll's embryonic seasons - also long before and since - music gave folks a way to make their own statements, in their own ways. Finger-wagging dogmatists urged straitjackets be respected. Damn them all.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

De La Rocka

"The Vampire" single

(Self-issued)

The dapper ebony attire sported in accompanying video by six-string savage Panu De La Rocka and volatile affilates - including voice-of-menace Dax Dragster - is bitingly apt, given the scarifying nature of the minstrelsy revealed. Darkness from the nethermost zone infuses ghastly proclaimings, whilst direful passages rocket in tower block ear-shatter.

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The Shake Bombs

Originals!!! digital album

(Self-issued)

The three sporting chrome-finned coolness, in 10 compiled razorings, evidently have zero regard for studio handstand trickery. And that's a very good feature. Eschewing audio counterfeiting leaves the roadway clear for rubbery tread scars, ones that mean nitro-powered Neo-Rockabilly's on the highway market for blond, brunette, and scarlet-tressed hitchhike dolls.

Recommended: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On," "My Big Foot Gal," "Tempe Town Blues," "Saturday Sale at the Goodwill Store," "New '35," "Pretty Baby Blue," "Smoking Hot Body"

Videos: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On" "New '35" "Pretty Baby Blue" (live)

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Joe Bombast

"Not Wild Enough" single

(Martone)

Municipal pencil jockeys may know him as Joe Martin, but Bombast is the descriptor preferred 'round these streets. To hear the one-cat-band let loose with febrile hoots and off-rocker hollers, you'd suspect the ghost of a legendary, tongue-tied hiccuper must've descended and inhabited. But Joe's plainly more intent on swinging like a gate in bash-down Rockabilly gusto, than seeking ghost-doctors' prognoses. Which is so much to the better, for us.

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The Sensational Second Cousins

Pepper and Salt digital and limited 10" vinyl

(Topsy Turvy Records)

Ravin' Jerk beats stuffing out of every drumhead in the house, as he and guitar throttler Hectic Henri swerve exultantly through rootsy landscapes whose soil is rich with Punk dynamism. Just when it seems probable that someone spiked Henri's mystery liquor with some experimental substance - given his eyes-popping vocal catwheels - the pair close the platter with slow-dance decorum of such refinement, chaperones return to their seats.

Recommended: "Pepper and Salt," "She's a Witch," "Friends with Benefits," "Just a Quickie," "You Only Live Once"

Videos: "Pepper and Salt" (live) "Friends with Benefits" "You Only Live Once"

Ronald / Fréquence Humaine

Said elsewhere to be reworking of a 1978 French novelty effort, the cut at hand burns past famed askew Tower with sparks shooting. Makes case that no tension encumbers relationship betwixt cranial-plumaged chord-uppercuts and courtliness.

Video: "Je Suis en Gentil Punk"

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Otoboke Beaver

These kittens have claws, and they don't hesitate using 'em to dispense what initially seems Punk shambolism. Upon additional scrutiny, though, one digs that while the Punk part is legit, clever construction is also afoot.

Video: "I Don't Need to Be in Your Strike Zone"

Colin Winski 1956 - 2007

Rebellion and the unheard grail

"A very special and fabled musical crossroad exists in America," I wrote in a Blue Suede News article, while Colin still breathed. "One that would defy cartographers' attempts at location. 'Rockabilly,' reads the signpost.

"Countless hopefuls journey in search of it, and some even produce wondrous works that capture its lightning between grooves. But few call it home. Colin Winski lives at that rural intersection."

I recall his self-reflection: "Throughout my life, as long as I could get up onstage and put on a wild, sweat-drenched show and was appreciated for it, then yes, I felt redeemed. Sort of like a baptism of sweat and a little of Janov's primal scream therapy."

The serpentine-hipped L.A. shouter didn't so much replicate fires that preceded, as vent a blaze independently within. Born of Ronny Weiser's legendary indie Rollin' Rock, in an otherwise ordinary, Van Nuys garage, he leapt to the fore of 1970s/1980s Neo-Rockabilly voices.

I first spoke with Colin in 2005, for that Blue Suede News piece. Following the article's publication, he and I maintained our telephone connection. He was both witty and clever. I'm proud to say we were friends.

He had recorded several 1970s singles for Rollin' Rock, and later performed globally as a member of Ray Campi's Rockabilly Rebels. He cut two albums with Ray, and also released solo discs. Wholly apropros Rockabilly Hall of Fame formal acknowledgement came to him in the 1990s.

Three solo albums captured his specialness.

1980's Rock Therapy (Takoma) loosed upon unsuspecting ears a wildman whose hiccuping, sonorous entreaties and dizzying-height shouts painted dangerous Neo-Rockabilly of mercurial quintessence.

Erstwhile Ray Campi bandmate Jerry Sikorski, his helter-skelter guitar wielded as incising banderilla, drove deeply and savagely into each unfolding arrangement. Notably, Colin here covered the Burnette Trio's "Rock Therapy," which was to become his signature selection.

Follow-up disc Helldorado (Fury) didn't appear until 1993. Colin had by that time relocated to Arizona and wrestled with demons familiar to aspiring creative souls: self-doubt, substance reliance, and a vocation-uncertainty sword of Damocles whose sinister shadow had already crossed his dirty-blond pompadour.

None of those negatives, though, dimmed Helldorado. Once again within Rock'n'Roll's mad clutch, Colin was restored. Shimmering with delirious ferment, he delivered up a testimony so reckless and bold as to render all about in spectacular wonderment.

And that leaves the last Colin Winski solo recording. It is, at the moment of this writing, doubtful most will ever hear the unmarketed Rockin' at the Calderon.

Among its perhaps forever-secret documents are mournful hillbilly laments, jumping and laughing bop, even songs leaving orthodox Rockabilly in swirling, take-off exhaust as they zoom upward.

I was fortunate enough to have been sent a cassette dub by the man himself.

Colin and I had agreed, earlier in what turned out to be his last year, to make efforts at securing label interest. I wrote promo copy that drew on vintage Lucky Strike advertising:

TAKE THE COLIN WINSKI CHALLENGE:

Does your Rockabilly sound different lately? Not as satisfying or thrilling as before?

Make the move smart cats and chicks do! Switch to Colin Winski! Colin blends the rich, good-time hillbilly and bluesy flavors you
crave with electrifying additive Psychobilly!

So, take the challenge! You'll agree:

CW/MFR -- COLIN WINSKI MEANS FINE ROCKABILLY!

We made a few tries, focusing on US and UK independent labels that catered to his style's market. Sadly, though, we found no interest.

Colin just stopped trying. He took his own life.

The world may never hear Rockin' at the Calderon.

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Warren Smith

Sun Records Originals: Rock'n'Roll Ruby

(Sun Label Group)

The geiger counter is going, going, gone - and not owing solely to "Uranium Rock." The flattop cats raving behind Warren (whose number, in moments, included a kid named Jerry Lee), threw out a hot-wired, hot rodded Country/Rockabilly amalgam that landed everlastingly in many-a chain-wallet compendium bearing Sam's smoking imprint. Even amidst slicked-back peers who in future years would live in high cotton, Warren put the size 10 into it like all get out.

Recommended: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby," "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache," "Do I Love You," "Uranium Rock," "I've Got Love if You Want It," "Ubangi Stomp," "I Fell in Love," "I'd Rather Be Safe than Sorry," "Who Took My Baby," "Stop the World (I'll Jump Off)," "Miss Froggie," "I Like Your Kind of Love," "Sweet, Sweet Girl," "So Long I'm Gone"

Videos: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby" "Do I Love You" "Who Took My Baby" "Sweet, Sweet Girl"

Howlin' Ramblers

Home of the Blues (Revisited)

(Sleazy Records)

The club door busted wide. In strutted Rock'n'Roll, bold and lookin' for all-night fun. (Which would entail dolls, brawls, and suds aplenty.)

Group-penned romps built from gut-bucket jukin' (including the titular number, "Stay the Fuck Home," and "Send Me Some Lovin'"), atop which sail harmonica serenades of the finest kind, clasp brotherhood hands with 1956 Big Walter Price classic "Pack Fair and Square" (covered by J. Geils on their 1972 Full House.) Sleazy's new reissue of the Howlin' ones' self-issued 2016 maiden disc can be captured only as limited-edition vinyl. Remixed and remastered, it now features two bonus cuts.

Hours later, when lights went up and the grizzled barkeep shouted "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!," Rock'n'Roll was still knockin' 'em back...

Recommended: "Home of the Blues," "I'm Ready if You're Willing," "Stay the Fuck Home," "Number Nine," "Pack Fair and Square," "Send Me Some Lovin'," "Takin' Care of My Home"

Videos: "Home of the Blues" "Stay the Fuck Home" "Pack Fair and Square" "Send Me Some Lovin'"

Eddie and the Afterburners

Cellar of Your Soul

(MechTocracy Records)

It's in eerie mid-range, that three malefactors ply their chord-fisted ominousness. Class this as clawed opera for evildoers. Punk and Psycho escapees from padded-wall snakepits creep amidst decaying foliage, a blood moon o'er head, as unsuspecting passersby whistle past the graveyard. Suddenly, hands seize from behind.

Recommended: "Cellar of Your Soul," "Familiar Phenomenon," "The Mausoleum." "Room 13," "Liminal Business Trip," "Demonic Invasion"

Videos: "Cellar of Your Soul" / "Familiar Phenomenon" (live "The Mausoleum" (live)

BK Backflip!

"'06 Rolla" single

(Self-issued)

Though deftly executed, tousled, roughshod Emo isn't the sole selling point for ears. Inside the music huffs an almost excruciating earnestness. One detects it in each guitar power-stroke and scratchy-throat exclamation.

An anonymous band member related online: "'06 Rolla' was first song I ever wrote. I remember specifically finishing it in the front seat of my Corolla (RIP) while on break at work, so I decided what better way to commemorate it than to put it as the song name!"

DIY AF. Consider that a curled-lip Seal of Approval.

The Neighborhood

Indonesian Oi! stomps loudly and proudly!

Video: "Pride Song"

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Lil' Mo & the Dynaflos

Fronted by a siren with angelic tones capacity, a trio of doo-woppers, straight from beneath some Bop Street lamp post, urge tender confederacy. Players with PHDs in hepness spin understated merriment - with saxophone piquancy - ensuring embrace.

Video: "Let's Fall in Love"

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Leroy Van Dyke: Walk On By, by chance

In the Summer of 2004, I worked just outside a fair near the Iowa/Illinois border.

I chose to take my lunch break inside the Fair, one afternoon. While contemplating a hot dog vendor's wares, I heard a very familiar singing voice cut through the milling crowd's hubbub:

"If I see you, tomorrow, on some street in town /

Pardon me, if I don't say hello..."

Well, perhaps that wasn't the exact passage I heard. But it was "Walk On By," the Leroy Van Dyke classic I'd first heard covered by Robert Gordon on his 1978 "Rock Billy Boogie" LP.

I entered a nearby large tent filled with rows of folding chairs and saw the legendary Leroy, himself. A consummate performer in fighting trim, he looked and sounded as comfortable onstage as if he were in his own living room. A broad smile creased his tanned face as he moved confidently about the stage. His band was steady and unerringly professional.

A chance brush with greatness at a fair in Iowa. What were the odds?

Never mind that that evening's arena performance by an unspectacular Nashville Pop-Country clown would probably draw many times the bodies. The trendy fools had no idea what they were missing.

Here was Leroy Van Dyke - a living connection to '60s country.

In his music, traditional backwoods airs were filtered through modern and cosmopolitan sensibilities, ones that on record incorporated lush strings and sweet background choruses, with steel guitar swipes and drawling fiddles.

Lyrics dealt in themes common to 1960s country music: Straying spouses ("Walk On By," "If A Woman Answers"), cuckolded husbands ("Anne Of A Thousand Days," "The Swing Of Things"), hard times faced by the working man ("Black Cloud").

"Touch Of The Master's Hand" offered a spoken, faith-based narrative similar to those sometimes indulged by Porter Wagoner on his television show of the same era. And, "Who's Gonna Run The Truck Stop In Tuba City" took a satirical look at marital friction.

"City-style Country music," was how the man typically described it to interviewers. And that summed it up pretty well. His original glory days fell between the late-1950s, smoothed-out Pop balladry that had followed raw rockin,' and the mid-1960s British Invasion.

Leroy, not only a singer but also a credentialed auctioneer, first saw chart success in 1956 with (aptly) "Auctioneer." In later years, "World's Most Famous Auctioneer" would become his title.

That auspicious entry brought additional reward. He was invited to become a regular on Red Foley's ABC show, Ozark Jubilee.

He again scaled the charts with 1961's "Walk On By." Together with "Auctioneer," it is today the song with which he is widely identified. It was his most commercially successful, too. It spent 19 weeks at number one.

Such was the regard with which he was hailed by fellow musicians, that he was slated to host the 1965 Country Music Association Awards Show. Ernest Tubb was that year inducted into the Association's Hall Of Fame.

After first stumbling onto Leroy's 2004 fairground performance, I made a point of taking subsequent days' work breaks inside, to watch him perform.

He was a master in the middle of nowhere. But his presence made nowhere a special place. And he was in his element, before an appreciative crowd that dug his specialness.

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

The Flowertones

"Side by Side" digital single

(Swelltune Records)

Vibrant Pop in happy bloom...poetry extolling ardor eternal...a kaleidoscopic collage of hues and textures in euphoric parade. Sunny harmonies and understatedly persuasive playing guide through sweetness and shine. Amid a sea of beaming teens, Dick Clark claps as if a kid himself. (A full-length Swelltune disc is planned for later this year.)

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Gum Bleed

"Unstoppable" b/w "Until the Day I Die" digital album

(Ring of Fire Records)

What fresh hell is this? Hurtling thunder run, before which all fall into hectic, bodies slamming dimension. Friedrich miscalculated: From this bellicose order comes cool chaos.

Videos: "Unstoppable" "Until the Day I Die"

Mr. Fab & his Bag O' Heads

Taste the Brides of Drac-enstein digital album

(Jungle Room Records)

We're in weird company, when a theremin's hanging around. But off-kilter sorts dig the spookiness. As the haunted house hullabaloo devolves into ghastly Go-Go groove, and life forms not-of-this-reality do dance sensations that are sweeping the nation, Mr. Fab unchains kooky 1960s Garage bash-rhythms that feature all manner of sideways instrumentation, single-and-choral voice manifestations, totally unforseen brass gesticulations, and percussive knickknocks. Archived from the last century's second-half decades, these uncanny novelty romps - sporadically punctuated by drive-in flick blurbs - would have teenage future-Luxes up all night, cranking GE transisters under sheets, when they're supposed to have turned over keys to the Sandman.

Recommended: "Skeleton Crew on the Graveyard Shift," "Ghost Zombie Goes to Town," "Cannibal Zombie Mom," "Casper the Friendly Queen," "I Want My Mummy," "Thereming"

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Back in the Day, 2009

Bone Rattlers

13 to Life

(Self-issued)

Historians recount that crazed Berserkers of the Olde Icelandic Age, once their battle foes had been brutally ripped to fleshy shreds and otherwise smashed from this coil, were given to turning on each other. And contemporarily popular suspicions are that the indiscriminately violent savages were likely hopped up on brain-wrenching, aggression-inducing henbane. Perhaps. So uncompromising are the song constructions and bash-with-200-pound-sledge performances on 13 to Life, it would have made fitting soundtrack for countryside carnage. This is the second of two discs (that I know of) released by the Australian knuckle-drivers. There should have been more. Berserkers would raise ales.

Recommended: "13 Nights," "Psychobilly Boogie," "12 Bar Bruise.," "Friday," "Nightmares," "Time to Kill," "Crazy," "Lock and Load," "Dead Men Rockin," "Dragstrip Queen," "Bone Rattlin'"

Videos: "12 Bar Bruise" "Crazy" "Dead Men Rockin;'" "Bone Rattlin'" (live Greazefest 2008)

Hillbilly Casino

Captured here is exactly why Hillbilly Casino is vital, in a world that can never have too many minstrels with roots musics tattooed on their souls.

Video: live at Hot Wheels Weekend (2025, 43:14)

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Yee Loi

The pairing of exuberant, crash-car swerving with delineation of generational struggles overcome works, exactly because neither steps on the other.

Facebook message: "Our first ever headline gig. We need you to be there! Northern Quarter, Huddersfield. 29th May 2026. For tickets." (See poster below.)

Video: "Poor Girl"

Nick Curran: The lipstick-smeared, skull-and-crossbones rocker who screamed into that good-time night

"My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --

It gives a lovely light!"

- Edna St, Vincent Millay

Sadly, Nick died in 2012.

I don't know whether he had any foes to speak of. I suspect not, save perhaps for lessers who envied his talents.

I never saw the man perform. I know I missed something very special, a five-alarm wildman in the raging tradition of sod-busting authentics.

Fortunately for us, audio and video documentation abound.

Like a rakish Rock'n'Roll predator, Nick constantly moved onstage. Manic. On fire. The man was possessed by wicked-fun forces - and he cast them all over ecstatic adherents.

Taut, his every sinewy muscle flexed, he thrashed his low-slung, weaponized Telecaster without quarter. Surely, no audience member protested the ear-shattering lashing; they were six fathoms deep into fracture, wallowing in dig-ification.

The raw music into which Nick breathed animation was a verdant and unashamed garden of under-the-table releases. It harked back to a primitive glory era, when stark, jaw-jutted Blues, jumpin' Rhythm and Blues, and barely out of the house Rock'n'Roll could be located in the same boisterous and bawdy joints -- patrons dressed to kill, liquored up, and more than ready for whatever and whoever midnight might visit upon them.

Little Richard, Etta James, Guitar Slim -- a host of storied worthies informed Nick's seething Rock'n'Roll. But he also packed in his own flashing, ripsaw personality.

His last disc, 2010's "Reform School Girl" (Electro Groove), offers rich testimony of his worthy roar. A blazing and house-shaking rave up, Etta James' "Tough Lover" opens the proceedings with slamming certainty. Nick's own "Baby You Crazy," "Lusty Lil Lucy," and "Rocker" follow suit: furiously fun, knock-down cuts, jammed wall-to-wall with hip swagger.

The teen-love-in-tragedy title-cut ballad recalls the Shangri-Las (always a pleasant thought). Rough-edged road romp "Flyin' Home" features guest Phil Alvin, who characteristically imprints the value. And storming original "Psycho" is simply of such savage, sing-along, mad life as to charge unbound into the ether, a forever torch.

Nick once said that "With the music I write, I try to breathe new life into the traditional styles that I really love, using a lot of different influences from different styles of music and different eras...I always want to, not necessarily sound like something that already happened in the 50s, but something that could have happened back then, but got lost in the vaults somewhere."

He was successful in that ambition. I regret missing him onstage. But digging his waxings offers as much redress as can be had.

Videos: "Tough Lover" and "Women and Cadillacs" (both live)

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