DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: 2026

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Slim & the Gems

MotorV8or

(Rumble Road Records)

Cookin' with premium. Given sounds by which to gauge, Monroe Slim, Zen, and Rob seem not only to have a crusade before them - that being, to heft high the jukin' bop that has led generations of kicks-hunters to wildside manna - but are exactly the chromed lowriders to pull off that noble pursuit. All instruments seem set to 'Tear up' - fracture-perpetrators thrash 'em like they stole somethin'. Boss wailin', all the way to the passion pit on the outskirts of town.

Recommended: "King of the Streets," "Too Old to Fight," "Ethyl," "Hillbilly Pimp," "Detroit Steel," "Weak in the Knees," "Baby Please Don't Go," "Locomotive," "Pocket Full of Smoke"

Videos: "King of the Streets" (live) "Too Old to Fight" "Ethyl" (live) "Detroit Steel"

Aaron Burnham and the Brushfires

smoke & mirrors

(Self-issued)

Four Bakersfieldian Jacks is a winning hand, according to Opry Hoyley. Sharp in Country gentleman attire, pasteboards two-step across the table. Pulling in winnings ("Come to Papa") and squiring home-and-hearth dollies - livin' the low life ain't so bad, a'tall.

Recommended: "High Life," "Runaround," "Crazy for My Daisy," "Alleycattin'," "Gussy Up," "Smoke and Mirrors," "In With the New" (album version), "I Only Smoke When I Drink," "Lonely Bottle Blues," "Salinas," "Dynamite"

Videos: "High Life" "Crazy for My Daisy" "I Only Smoke When I Drink" "Dynamite"

Back in the Day, 1988

Mad Sin

Chills and Thrills in a Drama of Mad Sin and Mystery

(Maybe Crazy / Concrete Jungle)

In days scarcely recalled, Koefte, Stein, and Holly (as "Sinners Mad") began torching flames amid the kneecaps-and-elbows rabble that composed the WWW. Their initial recording not only foretold monstrous magnetism yet to unfold, but was itself a hatchet-mark above more $-accruing, contemporaneous waxings (Primitivism having pull all its own). Appreciate this, then, as a rudely crude invitation/warning from the neon crypt.

Recommended: "Brainstorm," "Buddy's Riot," "Planet Paradise," "Mad Rumble," "2,3,4," "Shake the Thing," "Gonna Get Her," "Whirl Girl"

Videos: "Buddy's Riot" "Mad Rumble" "Whirl Girl"

Concrete Jungle Records

Back in the Day, 2016

Evan Johns

Somewhere Over the Skyline / Panoramic Life

(Alternative Tentacles)

Evan left us in 2017. His name never adorned top sales charts, nor was his visage captured on wall posters. But such commercial accolades are as nothing, when contrasted with his imprint on music.

Across his 2013 and 2016 albums, Evan laid down his roots bona fides. (Not that need existed; the multi-instrumentalist - spitfire guitar being his ace - had previously established himself as both H-Bombs chieftain and Robert Gordon accomplice.) Guttural delivery bore unmistakably Lone Star State countenance, which advanced his common-man lyrics. Mandolin and banjo peeped through the pane. Rumbustious stomps made themselves heard, as did Tex-Mex spice additives and acoustic Blues blood affinity.

By making these discs newly accessible, Alternative Tentacles adds valuable works to the grand American Musics repertoire.

Somewhere Over the Skyline:

Recommended: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll," "All Broke Down," "Souls with Broken Hearts," "Look Away," "Fun is Good," "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew," "Fess Up," "Thin Ice, Deep Water," "It's a Good Life"

Videos: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll" "Fun is Good" "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew" "It's a Good Life"

Alternative Tentacles

Panoramic Life:

Recommended: "Shadows in the Snow," "Me and You, You and Me," "Highjacked," "All Alone," "Unfaithful Lies," "That Dog," "This Old Guitar and Me," "Goodbye Lonely Blues," "$75 Guitar"

Videos: "Shadows in the Snow" "Highjacked" "This Old Guitar and Me" "$75 Guitar"

Alternative Tentacles

Cash O'Riley

An account of life's beat-downs, buoyed across the honky tonk angel's face on the barroom floor by kick-pumped Country. Piano-pounding, dangerous drums, and truly cutthroat guitar have the back of weathered drawlings.

First issued in 2012 by American Wax Records. Rumble Road has wisely put it on 2026 shelves.

Video: "Jackson County Jail"

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Hayley and the Crushers

It may well be that the "headcase" spangled Hayley castigates in explosive tones is kin to Heidi of Ramones infamy. (Though lyric "With the white lines all over your jewel case" suggests that illicit medication factors in prominently.) Headbanging animation bursts up and out, like party-fun confetti with incisors.

Video: "Jewel Case"

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Jerry Sikorski and American Patrol: Rockin' 'round the Juke Machine

Golden State jump maestro Jerry Sikorski founded American Patrol in the early 1980s. He'd lifted the name from a tune Glenn Miller made famous as a WWII-era USO club skirt-snapper.

Jerry's earlier credits included time in Ray Campi and the Rockabilly Rebels, in the U.S. and overseas; backing Colin Winski on his 1980 Rock Therapy; and, two years on, recording with Jimmy and the Mustangs on Hey Little Girl.

Already applauded for his six-string Rockabilly talent by both U.S. and overseas fans, Jerry cast back to the '40s for further inspiration. He studied the volatile teachings put to wax by masters like Louis Jordan.

By joining bounce-stepped Boogie Woogie to wildcat Sun methodologies, he and the Patrol fashioned a high-spirited and magnetic whole. Their jive-time concoction of Swing, Rockabilly, and Jump Blues inspired dancefloor denizens to abandonment, long before such genre admixtures became profitable.

An intended 1980 demo, cut in a single day, was ultimately issued independently as the 1000-copy Prowler LP. Even on that primitive effort, potential was manifest: jubilant material swung. The hep-to-it players nimbly alternated hot and cool passages, always keeping the solid proceedings trucking around the totem pole.

The inadvertent debut was strong on covers. Noteworthy were the blast-off readings of Jimmy Preston's 1949 "Rock the Joint," 1956 Rover Boys malt shop-hop ditty "16 Teens," and a smoldering take on the Tiny Bradshaw's "Train Kept A-Rollin'."

Also given raucous reinterpretations were numbers by Louis Jordan ("That Chick's Too Young To Fry," "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens") and Sonny Burgess (Red-Headed Mama"), as was Chris "Big T" Tyler's 1957 "King Kong."

The ominous, pulsing title track, a Sikorski original, offered the disc's most contemporary nod.

Jerry and realigned troops recorded album Backseat Boogie for Berverly Hills' Vanity Records. The new record was every ampere as electrically dashing as had been its predecessor. Plus, it boasted great poise.

Arrangements were direct, that edges not be obscured, and songs were brisk. Hurtling Swingtime finger-snappers were jazzed up by a winkingly fluidic guitar/sax cooperative that was, as needed, supportive and assertive. The sometime inclusion of rollicking, good-time ivories lent piquant Jazz accent. Chairs remained unoccupied all night.

This time, originals predominated. Jerry's "Shake the Roof" was a freewheeling dance-party anthem. "Give It All You Got" erupts with clever dynamics, including a lullingly cool breakdown that bubbled its fervor.

"Wildcat Shakeout" was a holdover from Jerry's days with Ray Campi. Co-written by Jerry and Campi drummer Steve Clark, it simply rocked like nobody's damned business.

Extra points were deserved for fine, obscure cover choices. Roy Hall's juke joint tale "Three Alley Cats" sped with knowing delight. And Louis Jordan's "Texas and Pacific" was a leisurely train song that afforded soloists capacious legroom.

In 2013, Jerry hoisted the American Patrol banner anew, with the invaluable allegiance of Jim Leslie. Their version, as infectiously swinging as was before the case, leaned more heavily on western guitar voicings.

"Truth, justice, and liberty, good folks stand by what they say," reads the liner, articulating the general traditional values-vibe. That this uplifting, Western Swing 'billy is true to early rockers' patriotic spirit - and that twang-committed co-captains Jerry Sikorski and Jim Leslie number Ray Campi and Stevie Ray Vaughn among previous colleagues -- are blue-ribbon selling factors.

The fresh and unique coolness of harnessing traditional values sensibilities with unerring, old-school rockin' - sporting cowboy carriage - sends one reeling down familiar Bop Street.

Today, Jerry's patrolling continues. The imminent release of a brand new American Patrol CD was recently broadcast. The foregoing, then, is but the story thusfar.

The train keeps a-rollin'...

Videos: "Shake the Roof" "The American Way" (live 2010, w/James Leslie) "Tears Are Falling" (live clip)

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Sunday, May 3, 2026

Don Cavalli

Sounds of Faith and Sorrow vinyl

(Doghouse and Bone Records)

A man in a bar contemplated his despair. Later, the same man knelt in a pew, begging his Supreme Creator for salvation. Country music souls Jimmy Skinner and old-timey fellows understood such men. And voice-of-hard-scrabble Don Cavalli understands Country music.

This simple, acoustic work is limited to 300 LPs.

Recommended: "Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler," "The Old Crossroad," "With Body and Soul," "Memories of You," "Morning Light," "The Drunkard's Hell"

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Asturtralla

Fame Sidre y Rockangaita

(Self-issued / Musicasturiana)

"Hunger, Cider, and Rock-Gaita" is a rough English approximation of the disc's Asturian-language title. In Spain's northern region, one smilingly learns, time-honored folk airs and head-through-window, rip'n'stitch maraudings stand tall in shoulder-to-shoulder posture. ("Rockangaita" being a mash-up whose last five letters are Asturian bagpipes' label. Add in anarchic Steve Jones swipes, and the total is impressively singular.) Pretty melodies entrance, only to be followed by grafitti chording gone ga-ga. This is the first time I've heard equilibrium erupt.

Recommended: "Kutxo," "Fame, Sidra y Rockangaita," "Asturtralla 2.0," "Les 6 de La Suiza," "Asturies Insumisa," "Nun somos nada," "Ye un crimen," "Utopia," "Zona Muerta"

Videos: "Kutxo" "Fame, Sidre y Rockangaita" "Asturies Insumisa" "Ye un crimen"

Dwight "Whitey" Pullen

Sunglasses After Dark

(Cleopatra)

Whitey's "Sunglasses After Dark," the greased anthem of hep wolves everywhere, has been revisited by a wicked roster that numbers the Cramps, Meteors, and Japan's 5.6.7.8s. This fresh Cleopatra remarketing of the erstwhile Blue Cap plank-packer's killer 7"s reminds (as if any afficianado had forgotten) that not all top-drawer, first-generation Rockabilly is credited to marquee personalities.

(Note: Alabama-birthed Whitey resurfaced in the 1970s. He cut sides for Californian Ronny Weiser's Rollin' Rock, as did other Golden Agers like Charlie Feathers, Ray Campi, Johnny Carroll, and Mac Curtis.)

Recommended: "Everybody's Rockin'," "Sunglasses After Dark," "Moonshine Liquor," "Crazy in Love," "Walk My Way Back Home," "Let's All Go Wild," "Tuscaloosa Lucy," "Drinkin' Wine Spo Dee O Dee," "Teen Age Bug"

Videos: "Sunglasses After Dark" "Crazy in Love" "Let's All Go Wild" "Teen Age Bug"

Back in the Day, 2002

The Ink Spots

The Golden Age of the Ink Spots - The Best of Everything

(Jasmine)

Sweetly majestic and conducive to lights-low romance, Ink Spots oeuvre was also possessed of demanding urgency. Members' crucial output, compiled on these four discs, predated Rock'n'Roll. But much of that subsequent, cross-stitched form's earthiness, titillated impulse, and optimism stepped lively in these impeccably tasteful grooves.

Personnel changed over the historic combo's duration. One account explained why many Ink Spots' songs open with the same guitar figure: Because early DJs infrequently identified bands aired, that device so advised listeners. Clever.

(A commenter on this disc's Youtube page wrote: "I'm 16, soon to be 17 years old and born in 2006. I can assure you this music will never die!")

Recommended, disc one: "Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat," "Christopher Columbus," "I'm Beginning to See the Light" (with Ella Fitzgerald), "Shout, Brother, Shout," "Swing High, Swing Low," "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire," "Slap that Bass," "Who Wouldn't Love You?," "Keep Away From My Doorstep," "Information Please"

Recommended, disc two: "I'll Never Smile Again (Until I Smile at You," "'Taint Nobody's Bizness if I Do," "This is Worth Fighting For," "What Can I Do," "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie," "Stompin' at the Savoy," "Old Joe's Hittin' the Jug," "Java Jive," "Your Feet's Too Big," "Brown Gal"

Recommended, disc three: "Foo-Gee," "With Plenty of Money and You," "I Still Feel the Same About You" (with Ella Fitzgerald), "Don't Get Around Much Any More," "Whoa Babe!," "Oh! Red," "You Were Only Fooling (While I Was Falling in Love)," "Cow-Cow Boogie" (with Ella Fitzgerald)," "If I Didn't Care," "Alabama Barbecue"

Recommended, disc four: "Mine, All Mine, My Way," "That's the Way It Is," "Nothin'," "Knock-Kneed Sal (on the Mourner's Bench)," "My Prayer," "That Cat is High," "Yes Suh!," "Pork Chops 'n Gravy," "That's Where I Came In," "I've Got a Bone to Pick with You"

Video: "I've Got a Bone to Pick with You"

The Prairie Moons

Patsy Montana's 1934 wish-upon-a-star signature, a straw-on-floor romp now geared (at times) to the melody of 1933 hit "You Gotta Be a Football Hero" (Ben Bernie & All the Lads). The combination of ace pickers and Eva's yodel-hollerin' par excellence corrals any notion hillbilly gals can't pour water out of a boot.

Video: "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart"

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Black Kat Boppers

Four wild ones, their very souls ablaze with good ol' Rockabilly orange-and-blue tongues, taught Rave attendees a lesson that bears repitition ad infinitum: Bop + heart casts children into the promised land of Gone.

Video: "Ask him"

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North Carolina's Tremors: Primitive Plan 9 Bop

Jimmy Tremor (né Gardner), leader of North Carolina's sigogglin hillbilly rockers the Tremors, ensured that they varied little over the course of 5 CDs. And the concept stalks yet.

The feral cats howl at the blood moon, from the red clay tobacco roads of America's lost-hick reality. They pitch runaway ruckus like gun-totin' revenuers are sneakin' through the sourwoods.

The string-tied booger men's credibility is beyond dispute. The three have torn up stages with illustrious fellow sons of the soil, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Hasil Adkins, and storied mountain dancer Jesco White.

They've knocked back audiences in both clubs and festivals, the Oneida Rockin' 50s Fest, Nashville Boogie, and Heavy Rebel Weekender numbered among the latter.

The trio was even inducted into the Hillbilly Hall Of Fame. An introductory HHoF post described them as "Hillbilly rock stars" whose "back story includes both zombiefication and alien abduction."

Jimmy now relates that the combo is working up fresh compositions. Before those loom for appreciation, appraisal of previous years' successes is appropriate.

1 - SCOURGE OF THE SOUTH

The debut disc doesn't wipe its feet or cover its coughs. It aptly portrays their helter-skelter personality, and is a rumbustious howdy-hi to Big Beat disciples who hunger for crudely crazed Rebel Sounds.

Jimmy's manic picking is unerring. It summons a spasmodically jerking regiment of vintage Americana melodies, at once familiar and freshly inebriating.

Besides being gotta-buy wax, Scourge of the South blasted defiant notice that the South was rising again - this time, from beneath soil.

2 - URANIUM ROCK ep

Venerated sides that Warren Smith and Mack Vickery set loose in days when Sam conspired on Union Ave., came in for cattywampus reanimations amongst Jimmy's own calcium-rattling screeds.

Too, while his hiccuped yowlings remind of Hasil Adkins and Pat Buttram, they are possessed by singular strains. Jimmy's jittery stumpjumper implorings, punctuated now and again by strangled yelps and white lightning-speed treble note guitar squallings, buckdance athwart plateaus of backwoods psychosis.

The tunes veer twixt marble-orchard mausoleums and mad-doctor Strickfadenery, with insane-in-the-brain vigor. Risen Maila Nurmi and her grieving, old man husband hunt Inspector Clay, while taking care not to bump cardboard plot markers.

3 - INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN

The trio's riveting creature-bop was by this juncture loved by legions of the finger-popping undead. Sparks-shooting fervor from the B-movie beyond transmogrified backwoods hidey holes into hardwood juke joints. Rotted ghouls, already drunk as Cooter Brown, were in there like June bugs.

Drummer Stretch Armstrong and doghouse dancer Slim Perkins contrive some of the most frenetically rollicking rhythms on offer. They are crucial to the band's schizzing rocketship.

Jimmy's skewed sermons were punctuated now and again by strangled hoots, and reached dizzying heights of blood-freezing tiltedness.

4 - DEMON BOOGIE FEVER

Demon Boogie Fever careened through swerve 'n' stitch territories not found on conventional maps. The basic sound was more pronouncedly hillbilly than before. But what they did with that -- players twisted and contorted it into a strange new entity of unspeakable visage -- accounted for its wonder.

Here resounded stark and freakish hills terror. The slapped-up/stripped-down trio reveled in hectic and gruesomely-technicolored fracture, quaffing B-monster homebrew like they didn't care if it riled the Devil.

"When I was calling around to get the mechanical rights for the cover songs, I called Knox Publishing concerning 'Rock Boppin Baby," Jimmy once recalled. "The man who answered the phone said they didn't handle it there, but was curious about which song I was interested in. When I told him, he said, "That's an old song. I played on that.

"It turns out that I was talking with Roland Janes - I couldn't believe it! He seemed like a very nice, humble guy who had no idea of how extremely important his music really is."

5 - OLD FASHIONED HILLBILLY FEUD

This marks the studio debut of bassman Lowbrow Luke. He charges menu items with double bass navigations that manifest barndance bedlam. The good-time midnight special just barely stays on steel; songs never quite fly from the track, testament to the band's prowess amidst mad tempest.

The title cut and "Cabin Fever" are trademark Tremors: good-timey rampages that flip, flop, and fly off the chicken coop roof. Stretch and Lowbrow wreak assuredly frenetic rhythms that'll knock a mud hole in you and walk it dry.

(And when Jimmy dashes all 'round the fretboard during the fevered cover of "Wreck of the Old '97," you'll swear that he's lost his religion.)

Given the 5 discs considered above, the in-progress material to which Jimmy alluded needs to be in a very special class of reckless crazy. Smart money lets out with a big ol' Yee Haw!

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Brad Marino

Agent of Chaos

(Spaghetty Town Records/Beluga/Ghost Highway Recordings)

Classic Rock'n'Roll fashionings with a bit of an edge, throughout which elates Power Pop hookery that instills warm sensations. Should requests for beaming music with serious teeth ring out - and they so often do - Brad and compadres will meet the demand. See, brightly colorful and anthemic merriment is their specialty.

Recommended: "Blowing Smoke," "Voodoo," "Murder and Violence," "Calling Your Bluff," "Lost Without You," "Devil May Care," "Sick of You," "Reason or Rhyme," "Make This Last"

Videos: "Voodoo" "Murder and Violence" "Calling Your Bluff" "Devil May Care" "

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The Edwoods / A. Clementina

"Plan 9" / "Danger!"

(Headshrinker Records)

Two specimina of under-soil Garagery, with emphases on dire formulizing. Dense, harsh cacophony marks the former - a sort of crashes and bashes brutalizing - while Headshrinker Alaska (under sobriquet "A. Clementina") offers up startling pronouncements, as exclusively bass-and-drums desolation rivets.

Video: "Plan 9" / "Danger!"

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Horror Deluxe, A. Clementina

"Videodromo" & "I'm Just a Monster" digital

(Headshrinker Records)

What fresh/cool madness is this? The he and she skronk-mongers* of HD, and sparseness shoveler Headshrinker Alaska, scatch across wax portraits unnerving. Instance the first? A twisted wreck of torn metalpunk tittilation. Flip "A. Clementina" entry? An insistent, guitarless, stream-of-unhingedness.

Video: promo clip

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* A term borrowed from late Creem scribe Rick Johnson.

Horror Deluxe

Headshrinker Alaska

El Vidocq (compiler)

Strip-O-Rama vol 3

(Jukebox Music Factory)

Before your mind's gutter-eye slink undraped pulchritude - mascaraed baby blues barely open and curvy pins, pillars of provocation - while the blinking Seeburg in the runway's shadow gives out with sax honks, visceral beats, and inspirations to wantonness. Sequins. Fishnets. Tassels. Pasties. Busty St. Claire shows the boys what mamas have, since time immemorial, warned them against being led astray by. Musicians across the sounds spectrum, worshipped by collectors of dusty wax on labels few recall, shout the joys of silk-sheet misbehavior. Here's to the doll parade.

Recommended: "Hardhead" (Louis Jordan), "Lookout Mountain" (Chuck Miller), "Not Much of a Future, But Man What a Past" (Bob Roubian)," "So Young" (Clyde Stacy), "Why Don't You Do Right" (Joanie Sommers), "The Coo" (Wayne Cochran), "Morgus the Magnificent" (Morgus & the Ghouls), "Well Do It" (Ella Johnson)

Videos: "Not Much of a Future, But Man What a Past" "So Young" "Morgus the Magnificent" "Well Do It"