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!
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