DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: February 2026

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Robert Gordon and the Di Maggio Connection

s/t

(New Shot Records)

Never again will there ring out a voice so resonant, capacious, and packed with the joys of gut-level Rock'n'Roll, as was the late Robert's. His tones filled every hall. Name any storied veteran you care to, and RG - having long ago internalized their's and fellows' iconic persuasions, imbuing them with marvelous personal aspect - merits placement in identical lofty rank.

Among axe wielders with whom he crafted swing-from-rafters boppery through shook-up decades were Link Wray, Chris Spedding, and Danny Gatton. Royalty, all. Guitars were their sceptres.

Just as Robert belongs in a relief with past masters, so Italian Marco Di Maggio could cut heads with storied predecessors. The man is that wickedly gifted, as all who've relished his own years' worth of recordings can jump up and testify. (It seems likely Marco never fudged a treble note in all his born days.)

Live album Robert Gordon and the DiMaggio Connection was recorded in 2006, at Crallo in Scandiano, Italy. Players assembled take each curve on two wheels. In addition to Marco, Connection associates included bassman Matteo Giannetti and drummer Marco Barsanti. A pair more suited to killer goneness simply doesn't draw oxygen.

No stylistic deviations appear on the songlist, which is entirely okay. Robert chose only the finest material. And one never tires of hearing his booming interpretations. Greater love for finned fracture hath no cat. Doubtlessly, his spirited exhortations cleaved pomps in back rows.

Let's all spill a bit of PBR.

Recommended: "The Way I Walk" "Lover Boy," "Look Who's Blue," "The Worryin' Kind," "Hello Walls," "Sea of Heartbreak," "I Just Found Out," "Drivin' Wheel," "Rockbilly Boogie," "Don't Be Cruel"

No videos from this gig were available, so here are others featuring Robert and Marco Di Maggio: "The Way I Walk" "Lover Boy" "I Just Found Out" "Drivin' Wheel" "Rock Billy Boogie"

Marley Bone

"Vampire Orgy" digital track

(Marleybone Records)

No one returns to the land of the living from this revelry. Intonations adorning low-gear, chunka-chunka Rockabilly nonchalance articulate a doomful scenario. Unsuspecting, flat-gone merrymakers will soon join legions of the blood-thirsting undead, like it or not. Axe strings pounce, here and again. Were instrumentation less precise in its practice - in such leanness, every note must be vital, and herein is - effectiveness would not be so utter. Beats are agile and poised. All is sinister substance. Some 3 minutes in, players shift into a Jazz-accented breakdown during which tasteful turns enchant. Bass steps nimbly. "Then he ruffles her hair, and his fangs are bare / And it's way too late to scream..." A laugh echoes, thunder rumbles, and lids are sealed against rising sun.

Video

Guitar Wolf

More Jet

(Guitar Wolf Records)

As your eyes sweep across these letters, Seiji and curled-lip collaborators Takura and Gotz are deluging New Zealand and Australia with mega-voltage thunderations of twisted Punk metal. Sparks are surely spattering that besieged landscape. Official alarms scream. Spotlights criss-cross ebony nights. Masses of tittilated adherants will be happily deaf for days.

Seven years have transpired since the leathery trio last detonated within studio confines. Those are as nothing. Personnel permutated, but one satisfiedly savors familiar blast/gash/smashes fired off with febrile relish. I have it on reliable imaginary authority that jagged-toothed Rock'n'Roll of incalculable velocity is the audio equivalent of Ponce de León's diving pool.

Recommended: "More Jet," "100m Girl," "Long Tall Sally," "Coelacanth Galaxy," "9AM Pornomag Planet," "Kung Fu Bikini," "Super Sonic ihatov"

Videos: promo :23 "Long Tall Sally" live 10:21 (New Zealand, 2025)

Site

Facebook

Instagram

Strange World Records

Rocking Horse Records

Sorcerer Records

Apple

Little Til and the Gangbusters

In a Peculiar Way

(Rocketman Records)

Attilio Malambri, aka "Little Til," responded to a recent Facebook user's lament that seemingly few 20-somethings presently populate the sideburn sect. 25 year-old Little Til - now pursuing novel adventures in Parisian climes - threw in his own perspective. He noted that at festival performances with band The Gangbusters, he's observed numerous under-30s deploying crazy feet. (Still, Attilio did concede musicians of draft age seldom embrace cool cat soundings.)

Below is consideration of Little Til and the Gangbusters' 2024 release, In a Peculiar Way:

It was with sharp discernment that Italy's Attilio Malambri selected which standards to revisit. Featured songs are cream, and these reinterpretations crackle as if the material were newly minted. In ballads, Little Til's urbanity enjoys bolstering by grand harmonies. And when stormers roll out, he pounds daylights out of ivories and exhorts insistently in fevered manner. At every turn, the formidable Gangbusters tear it up without looking back. Rocking is their business, as the Treniers once declared, and the band's virtues cannot be extolled too loudly.

Recommended: "Fools Fall In Love," "Money (That's What I Want)," "Lonely Weekends," "Lovin' Up a Storm," "Rockin' My Life Away"

Video: "Lonely Weekends"

Apple

zdigital.com.au

Sunday, February 22, 2026

The Bullets

Go Crazy! Get Wild!

(Western Star Recording Co)

Having mastered the slicked-back genre in which they specialize, Western Star's wildmen are possessed of natural feeling for it; so greatly, that their nods to Land of Dixie super-pickers Burlison and Moore are organic complements to their own flair, not sterile mimicry.

Jitter boppers schooled in Rockabilly's embryonic period will recognize various twangs, patterns, and six-stringed orations. But also awaiting appreciation in grooves is a treasure most precious: that being, the free-for-allism that explodes in the heart, the head, and the feet, whenever chords of agitation take wing.

("With This Song," the chaser to above het-up insigation, cools heels to Countrified and steel-guitared serenity. "There's a whole, wild world a-waitin,' startin' tonight" pledges a swain to his hourglassy she.)

Recommended: "The Shaker," "Back Off Baby," "Go Crazy! Go Wild!," "The Girl's on Fire," "Chicago Blue," "Breakin' All the Rules," "With This Song"

Videos: "The Shaker" "Go Crazy! Get Wild!" "The Girl's on Fire" "With This Song"

Savage Beat

Bright Lights, Tall Shadows

(Wap Shoo Wap Records)

Savage Beat are the storming sons of every bygone, cherished Rock'n'Roll / Punk / Glam / Oi! outfit that tore all hell out of popular music when it became boring (as it so often does). Snarling guitar, basslines that mean business, and monster-muscled drum demolition rip the brakes out of this substance-abusing locomotive. Shouted exclamations leap aboard that streamlined anger and spew jump-for-jawbreaking defiance of whatever strictures society might contrive. Incredulously, all that is packed into oxygen-free song missiles.

1970s Creem magazine crits sometimes groped the descriptor "high energy." Set for March 6 release (pre-orders are now underway), this 10-track, 12" vinyl argument for exhuming that accolade may well set turntables aflame.

Get it anyway. The world needs Savage Beat.

Recommended: "Street Boogie Confidential," "Cut to the Chase," "Unhinged," "Killer Inside," "Blood on the Knees," "Bright Lights, Tall Shadows," "The Side Hustle," "Worse for Wear," "Three Chord Disciple," "Tomorrow (Might Never Come)"

Videos: "Unhinged" "The Side Hustle" "Three Chord Disciple" (tour video)

The Shutdowners

"(You Called Me a) Dreamer" "I'm on My Way" digital tracks

(Self-issued)

The lockdown duration produced a gladsome wonderment: Four wranglers from far-flung German locations connected, then recorded long-distance via computers.

I'm told drummer Lutti first proposed the collaboration. Amenable to 'joining right in there' were guitarist TinCan Semmel, singer/rhythm guitarist Smalltown Felix (who assembled distinct instrumentations into digital wholes), and bass-string negotiator Midge Van Geldern.

It was some two years later that the musicians met and clasped hands. Several live appearances ensued, and crowds dug in tower block font.

Of the online songs for which members cut their contributions remotely, the two freshest are here considered:

"The night is quiet, the stars are few / I walk the streets that we once knew," begins "(You Call Me a) Dreamer." The unhurried, plain-spoken narrator relates familiar forlornness, gently ushered forward by pleasant Country ambling. By the conclusion, though - "You call me a dreamer, but now I see / This dream was never meant for you and me" - he's resigned himself to bleak truth. For listeners, though, tuneful vivacity counters melancholy.

Issued shortly before the foregoing, "I'm on My Way" is noticeably brisker. A Luther Perkins-type, bass guitar strings, timepiece reliability maintains momentum. The heart-on-sleeve protagonist, inspired by night-before initimations, drives optimistically toward his lady love, hope of rekindling passion's flame fueling as only it can.

One nearly hopes for another lockdown.

Videos: "(You Called Me a) Dreamer" "I'm on My Way" "She Will Come Back" (live, 2025)

Facebook

Bandcamp

Youtube channel

The Blasters

s/t, Non Fiction, Hard Line

(Slash / Liberation Hall)

The Blasters' three Slash LPs, now thankfully reissued by Liberation Hall, represent some of the 1980s Neo-Rockabilly crusade's finest exponents.

Solid grounding in Blues truths was every bit as hardwired into their muscular exertions as were dirt-road joints' bucolic animations.

Dave Alvin threw flashing fires packed with twangs from his Strat. He also evidenced himself as a song-craftsman with one alligator shoe in vintage Americana tune idioms, and the other in a many-shelved library.

Bill Bateman, Gene Taylor, and John Bazz acquited themselves with such passions (all the while confidently showing their respective instruments who was boss) that kids beholding them doubtless caught the bug. (That's how Rock'n'Roll works.)

Adding their own sax magics to all three discs were OG Lee Allen (whose majestry exists into perpetuity in scores of vital vintage waxings) and Steve Berlin, himself a cut-above brass actionist. Better bopping through honking.

Brother Phil crooned every melody and touched all notes with enviable mastery. As if it were easy. But his bulging temple veins, and the perspiration rivulets demarcating facial features like interstates on an unfolded map, let the cat escape the bag.

They were the real article, while all around were flamboyant money-machine contrivances. Flock of Seagulls, Eurythmics, Madonna, and a slew of interchangeable MTV manikens had limited shelf life.

The Blasters offered desperately craved, rocked-to-the-nth-degree celebration, in an otherwise airless and formulaic music environment. Genuine humanity was in scant supply. They brought it. Oh, brother, did they.

Plus, with each chord, note, and downbeat, they kept in glorious dynamism stylings crafted by elders like Rudy Toombs, Jimmy Rodgers, Little Willie Johns, and Big Joe Turner. (Afore-cited, stalwart originals from the pen of Dave boosted the worth.)

I'll scrutinize one track from each record.

"American Music" (first waxed by Ronny Weiser's Rollin' Rock indie label) was a rousing calling card whose union of rambunctiousness and legitimate Old Gloryism underscores blood shared by common-man musics birthed in New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, the Delta, and anywhere folks earned calluses and burned candles 'til wee hours.

"Look Out It Must Be Love." Dave once told an interviewer that the more personal a lyric, paradoxically, the more universal its relatability. In no example is that truer than this song. While idiosyncrasies like "she works all night at a joint on the highway" and making a "date at the city hall" don't figure in everyone's wedlock accounts, the 'lavender haze' experience is common. For 2:59, Dave and Phil, Gene Taylor, and the Johns Bateman and Bazz bounce like to happify all hearts from Lovers' Lane to Saturn's rings.

"Rock and Roll Will Stand" Embodied here is a quality typical of Blasters' ouput: Raging momentum of old-ways Rock'n'Roll in fresh glad rags, ridden by substantial lyricism that speaks of mankind's undersurface. Hard to discern is whether its honest criticisms of shady managers, fickle audiences ("dedicated followers of fashion," went a bygone verse), and the hapless protagonist himself were intended as industry condemnations or forewarning advisories. Probably both.

I'll land the plane here: Then and today, the group deserves acclaim by the Mason jar-full. In 2026, a somewhat altered lineup hefts the group's standard admirably. Between their efforts and Dave's solo ones, "the house'll be shakin' from the bare feet slappin' on the floor," as a man once said.

Recommended, s/t: "Marie Marie," "I'm Shakin'," "Border Radio," "American Music," "So Long Baby Goodbye," "This is It," "I Love You So," "Stop the Clock"

Recommended, Non Fiction: "Red Rose," "No Other Girl," "Bus Station," "One More Dance," "It Must Be Love," "Jubilee Train," "Long White Cadillac," "Fool's Paradise," "Leaving"

Recommended, Hard Line: "Trouble Bound" (feat. the Jordanaires), "Little Honey," "Samson and Delilah," "Hey Girl," "Samson and Delilah," "Rock and Roll Will Stand"

Videos: "Stop the Clock" (live, 1982) "Fool's Paradise" "Trouble Bound"

Site

Facebook (band)

Instagram

Facebook (Dave Alvin)

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

The Brains

"Vampire Zombies from Space" digital single

(Cleopatra)

Theodore Bezaire wrote, directed, and produced the 2025, mock '50s drive-in antic of this name. "What a cool and unexpected piece inspired by our film," began Theodore's appraisal of the night-prowling Brains' crispest. " When we were making the film, we never imagined that there would be a song and music video created for it. And it's even cooler that Rene is a fellow Canadian. Amazing work!"

As Brains' label Cleopatra also markets the film, it's not implausible that label execs suggested Rene and cohorts craft a commercial lure. But, even should that be the case, Rene may already have been no less a fan of Poverty Row monster flickers as any amongst us. (Whilst in formative phase, he may have spent numerous late nights awash in television-beamed monster rallies. This writer did.) Best to cast down cynical suspicions and appreciate the song for what it is: A union of saucer antics native to the Plan 9 niche, and undeniably disarming Psycho that makes acolytes of listeners from planets both familiar and uncharted.

PS. The endearingly schlocky B&W film's Dracula reminds a tad of Zandor Vorkov. Those who know, know that's a plus.

Video (Not to be missed)

Facebook

Instagram

Cleopatra

Atomic Music Group (agents)

Apple

Shazam

Spotify

Cleopatra film ordering site

Kit Major

"Not as Witty as I Used to Be" single

(Futureless)

London sparkplug Kit not only draws influence from the safety-pinned Class of '77 and its successive roustabouts - her 'wanna make somethin' of it?' attitude and full-throated declarations qualify her as a member in good slouching, herself. At her back are electrified agitators, themselves of wicked potency. Numbered among them are AJ Peacox (guitar), Kamber Fishbein (bass), and Tom Fitzgibbon (drums). With forces combined, they crusade as a juggernaut of slashing gusto. "Not as Witty" was culled from forthcoming EP Miss Ego, scheduled for June 12 issuance.

Video

Sick Shooters

Super Sonic Rock Saga

(Wap Shoo Wap Records)

Cut the first, "Heartbreaker Soulshaker," comprises all the elements that make successive tracks blaze incandescently: youthful, kick-out-the-jams feverishness; vocals from the coolest Garage in town; hooks so tunefully efficacious they must've come down from the clouds; and Seven Day Weekend Rock'n'Roll firepower. Scuse me, while I "mess around with the Mokum sound."

Recommended: "Heartbreaker Soulshaker," "Evacuation," "Sick Shooters," "Daisy," "Sweet Telephone," "Supersonic Lovin'," "Never Comin' Home," "In Between," "Holding On," "Gambling Girl," "Great Escape (On the Run)"

Videos: "Heartbreaker Soulshaker" "Supersonic Lovin'"

Instagram

Facebook (Wap Shoo Wap)

The Strike Kings

demos

(unsigned)

Whether booted or stiletto-heeled, every foot flew. The men treading the boards poured every ounce of vinegar into raising up and throwing earward the wailing Rebel Music that had, for generations, meant Release! in every sense of the noun. Walls quaked.

Absent from this scenario are label reps - for the moment.

Demos: "Bound to Die," "Under Vultures," "No More Reason to Cry," "Folsom Prison," "That's Right"

Videos: "Under Vultures" (live) promo (1:47)

Site (demos posted here)

Facebook

Instagram

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Guitar Slingers

Invasion

(Diablo Records)

Were a roundtable gathering of the world's most fleet string molesters convened, buzz cut bomb shot Doyley might well assume the head chair. Eruptive Psychobilly deviance and science fiction fantasies make Rabelais's "beast with two backs." So gaudy is the spectacle of an amphetemine, late-night Creature Feature on Saturn, as to conjure spirits of wreckers fallen, bashing their elbows into faces of more freshy misbegotten. The meeting will come to disorder.

Recommended: "Invasion," "Atomic Shock," "Let's Go," "Ska Trek Krew," "Alien Hooligans," "Martian Stomp," "Plasma Sting," "Rip Roarin' Rocketship," "Planet of the Drapes," "Earth vs Psycho"

No new videos available, so here's one from 2024: "Twangster"

Zombina and the Skeletones

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, B-sides and rarities 2008 - 2024

(Ectoplastic Records)

Advisory: '80s and '90s synthy endeavorings in the New Wave styling popular in those eras are best put behind later Psycho flamethrowers. The latter are the wonderfully ankle-twisting consequences of Alternative Cryptland cavorters, eccentricism mongers, and a gang of jackhammers hopped up on speed, meeting up in a cauldron (with Whit Bissell and Robert Vaughn), and conspiring to wreck the joint. So frantic are the thunderings, so compelling to utter fracture TheBeatTheBeat that, should walls crack wide and flooring crash in, none but the strictly cubic would notice.

(Though presently on break, Mistress Zombina and her morbid accomplices will play a summer show with the March Violets.)

Recommended: "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein," "Touch Me and Die," "Love Like Blood," "Teenage Caveman vs Gargantua," "Zombie Crush," "Sea of Heartbreak," "Last Chance Dance"

Videos: "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" "Touch Me and Die" "Sea of Heartbreak"

Kieron McDonald

Because of You 45 rpm EP

(Sleazy)

Easy-drawling Kieron is as comfortable bobbing to melodies as a crooner can be. (A manner he doubtless absorbed while a youth, listening to his dad's old Country waxings.) He presents affability with understated, black-and-white, pointed-shoe heptitude that puts wise every jukebox-jonesing he and she on deck. The former mic swinger for Melbourne Rockabillies the Flatfoot Shakers, Kieron gains immeasurably from sharp assist lent by ace players, including highly-reputed guitar dab hand Kid James.

Recommended: "Because of You," "All She Wants to Hear is Dean Martin," "Exotic Woman," "At the Bop Hop"

Videos: "Because of You" "All She Wants to Hear is Dean Martin"

The Gasölines

Helldorado

(Speed Club Records)

A reviewer at Germany's Zepher's Odem wrote: "As the band themselves announced, they hadn't intended to create anything innovative. They simply plugged in, cranked up the amps, and played Rock'n'Roll. Loud, dirty, and exhilarating." Nowhere is it scrawled that music must turn virgin sod in order to merit moon-bathed bacchanalia. New wrinkles can certainly be intriguing. But much can be said for knowing what lies ahead. Health care personnel do not recommend this Norwegian Punk-packed Metal for the timid - one reason is that it may well blow innocent ears to shrapnel. Were the PMRC yet in operation, they'd have contrived a warning label by now. Comes in digital, CD, and variously-hued vinyl formats.

Recommended: "Riding Shotgun," "Dead Man's Hand," "Bucking the Tiger," "Ace in the Hole," "Death Rider," "A-Bomb Pinup," "Speed Trap"

Videos: "Riding Shotgun" "Ace in the Hole" "A-Bomb Pinup" "Speed Trap"

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

The Mean Devils

"Make Up for Lost Time" b/w "Pack 'em up, Stack 'em Up, Rack 'em Up"

(Discos Dinamite)

Now and again, one detects a Mickey and Sylvia "Love is Strange" imprint in "Make Up for Lost Time." Not nearly enough to locate the blissed-out track on copycat real estate, just enough to signal true believer literacy. Flipside "Pack" scorches treads on the Rockabilly lost highway haunted by the Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow. Calendar years are as nothing, 'cause fearsome wildcatism ain't goin' nowhere.

Videos: "Pack 'm Up, Stack 'em Up, Rack 'em Up" "Make Up for Lost Time" Live at Hemsby 2025 (9:08)

Milwaukee Wildmen

Blood Fear and Evil digital ep

(Self-issued)

Vicious liquid foams over the lunar-lit monster chalice's rim, pooling about its base. The three Milwaukee Wildmen thrash in ear-splitting, other-side-of-midnight rampageousness, as they long have to the delight of cursed misfits everywhere. Wreckage surrounds. Cold fingers curl about the goblet. Lips gape.

Recommended: "Don't Get Killed," "Unfriendly Visitor," "In My Blood," "Out on My Own" (1992 alternate version)

Videos: "Don't Get Killed" "Unfriendly Visitor" "In My Blood" Live in Spain, 2025 (20:08)

Hipshot Nic

"Rattle Me" b/w "Did You Throw My Letter Away" 7" vinyl

(Wild Records Europe)

Though by now a cliche, descriptive "flat gone" applies to this Aussie wax as soundly as it once did to genre pathfinders' thick PVC platters. No one's checking characters at the 2026 door, the result being a crazy dance floor teeming with sideburned JDs, Eisenhower-endorsing first-generation tear ups, and mohawked wreckers who've belly-flopped into the Murray's Pomade deep end.

Video: "Rattle Me" (live)

ebay (Bear Family)