Pontus J Back

Gospel Express

(Talking Music)

"I had such great fun recording that album!" Pontus recently messaged me. The Rockpastor's name does adorn the cover, but the Supreme Creator is the true star. (Pontus would surely voice agreement.) "God Loves Rock'n'Roll" encapsulates the good Mr. Back's dual merits: an internationally roving spreader of The Word all must hear, and a seriously gifted throat/gittar artisan whose road to present devotion was paved with Metallic road-doggery and wild-side excess. "I'm still here," he testifies. 

Recommended: "Gospel Express," "All of God," "I Want to Be a Better Son," "My Godly Woman," "I'm Still Here," "Justified by Grace," "Talk is Cheap," "The Flame that Burns Forever," "Many Will See," "It's OK to Have a Bad Day," "Renew My Mind," "Ordinary Man," "Alcohol is Dangerous"

Videos: "Gospel Express"   "All of God"   "It's OK to Have a Bad Day"   

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Zombina and the Skeletones

Horror Shorts   digital

(Self-issued)

Whimsical - in a creaking-stairs, swinging-bare-bulb sort of manner - 'Bat Face' is the fifth entry in the group's fright flicks spree. As if their cracked-mirror approach to musicalizing (the result being Horror Punk that digs rubber masks) weren't sufficiently magnetic, the videos compiled here encompass graphic art, footage sliced from drive-in trash epics, and band members' own thespian stabs.

The above is madcap monsterism on substances unknown. Beneath toil musicians whose work suggests Ramones energy, Hammer-soundtrack knowingness, and Go Gos-gone-ga ga Pop mesmeric knack.

Videos "Fiend Without a Face"   "2 Scoops of Brain"   "Nightmare Castle"   "Do You Want to Be My Death"   "Bat Face" 

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GOONS!

Never Go Back

(Hi-Tide Recordings)

A cliche in crime entertainment is the "perp always returns to the scene of the crime" axiom; perhaps that prompted title Never Go Back. New York's rave-up Goons scheme in the same comic-book crook guises as do the Madrid-based Bank Robbers. Too, each cases seriously unserious Garage/Rockabilly joints, with Hullabaloo dance-off fun being the black-market haul - in bulging white bag with oversized dollar-sign emblem. 

Here, Farfisa abets Graham Tichy's treble-string-stinging, '60s partytime arousal. Hooks can be tracked to transister radios glued to the shaggy noggins of fastback-years teens taking sidewalk skateboards over home-built ramps. "Land of a Thousand Crimes" bespeaks Wicked Pickett emulation. 

"Crime just can't be beat!" crow the Goons. (Don't let Officer Dibble hear you say that.)

Recommended: "Never Go Back" "Parchman Farm," "Jailbird," "I've Waited So Long," "Driving Wheel," "Lockdown," "Roll Call," "Stick 'em Up," "Land of a Thousand Crimes," "Rob Cheat Steal"

Videos:   "Jailbird"   "I've Waited So Long"   "Stick 'em Up" (reel)   "Rob Cheat Steal"   

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Back In the Day, 1976

Various artists

Live At CBGB's DBL LP

(Atlantic)

This subcultural period document hit shelves in 1976. Also that year, the Ramones issued their maiden wax on Sire.  (Epic had released Bronx metallic proto-Punks the Dictators' debut LP in March of the previous year, which helped trigger the DIY onslaught.) 

The burgeoning New York City Punk uprising featured groups of diverse natures, their sole shared trait being defiant reaction against the tedium of the era's mainstream Rock product. That stylistic dissimilarity distinguishes Live At CBGB's, though with sometimes worthwhile/other instances dismissable result.

But the LP contained no Dead Boys, Blondie, or Richard Hell and the Voidoids -- acts that gained considerable notice and were identified with the momentous scene. All would shortly release discs of their own.

The major plus is the inclusion of three Tuff Darts mini-classics that portray the band when Robert Gordon was its singer. As the Darts would demonstrate on their 1978 Sire album (recorded after Gordon had begun a successful solo career and Tommy Frenzy had assumed lead vocal duties), it was among the more colorful and proficient of the CBGB class.

Other Big Apple combos that contributed significant entries include Mink DeVille, Laughing Dogs, and the Miamis. Their roles in that storied time merit recognition. (The Miamis' "We Deliver" could easily be a sitcom theme.) 

Reissued by Atlantic in CD format, in 2007, Live At CBGB's certainly has recommendable factors, both as a snapshot of that New York epoch and time-capsule preserving important works. But it is hardly free of shortcomings. Know that going in.

Recommended: "All For the Love Of Rock'n'Roll" (Tuff Darts), "I Need a Million" (Laughing Dogs), "Let Me Dream If I Want To" (Mink DeVille), "Head Over Heels" (Tuff Darts), "We Deliver" (The Miamis), "It Feels Alright Tonight" (Laughing Dogs), "Slash" (Tuff Darts)

Videos: "All for the Love of Rock'n'Roll"   "Head Over Heels"   "Slash" (Tuff Darts)   "Let Me Dream If I Want To"   "I Need a Million"   "It Feels Alright Tonight" (The Laughing Dogs)   "We Deliver" (The Miamis)

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The 'power trio' concept, once rallied 'round by scribes and audience ears alike, returned in 1995 as the Peter Head-fronted PM. Riff-equipped warriors clad in Punk/Country/Blues/Hard Rock armor, they thankfully crusade to this day. 

Video: "Whole Damn Farm" (live 2025)

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Investigation turned up that these Richmond flame-huffers prefer zero online presence. (Ahem.) They engineer no site or social media activity, instead relying for reputation on word of mouth. Punk is as Punk destroys.

Video: "Damaged Forever"

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Hillbilly Casino: World's toughest bar band                                       

"I defy you to find five other bands in the U.S. that can play Hank Sr. back-to-back with Motorhead, back-to-back with Ernest Tubb, back-to-back with Tex Ritter, back-to-back with the Ramones," first-era slap-bassist Geoff Firebaugh declared.

The amalgam of crunch-blast dynamism and individualist tunecraft locates the group miles over the headset mics of choreographed in-fashion video mannequins. Profoundly American roots-music stylings old and new, raved forth unaffectedly and with devotion a-burnin' rollick, sway, and reel until time and space lose significance and all around is bacchanalian abandon. 

Currently in this barnstorming, Honky Tonk-hearted confederacy are six-string assassin Ronnie Crutcher, straight-out skins-attacker Sam Clay, double-bass wrestler Colin Taylor, and windmilling frontman Nic Roulette. 

Roulette's manically howled sermons ricochet from neon beer-signs to scuffed hardwood and from shoulder-to-shoulder blue-collar brethren to sudsily euphoric dimensions not locatable by eggheaded NASA star-charters. 

Hillbilly Casino's is a diversely splendored Rock'n'Roll of feverish honesty. And it is possible that they are the most important, most eminently grounded in Americana, and most knockabout agitative band in the land.

Hillbilly Casino's maiden wax was 2006's Sucker Punched. As was made manifest, the group was never blueprinted as hidebound. (Members then included bassman Geoff Firebaugh and drummer Andrew Dickson, who today fills in on occasion.) 

During 2008's Buy In DVD, hip-chained tumbler/mic guru Nic Roulette spelled out the combo's ethos: While roots musics gush through members' circulatory systems and have spattered innumerable of the group's stage boards, innovation, too, has formative pull. Syd Nathan and Norman Petty didn't use Rudy Vallee-era technology, after all. 

Reverence for both Ernest Tubb commoness and Johnny R. chordal blitzkrieg were etched with bold-font bravado. Billybo-butcher Ronnie Crutcher pared deftly and slammed out broadsides that evidenced forward-and-backward knowledge of the Americana repertoire. 

Videos: "Plain to See" (live)   "Shoe Leather" (live)   "Way Past Gone"    "Mimes of the Old West"   "Blanche's Song" (backstage)

Disc #4, Tennessee Stomp (Hobolight), portrayed self-made sideburned rovers. HC's anti-Industry bootstrapism -- entailing self-recording / booking / everything -- had grown organically from the band's above-all calling: taking Rock'n'Roll (in all of its sundry aspects, including Country and Punk) to barrooms full of hoarse-throated, mug-waving true believers. 

Unanticipated permutations, rendered with brawn nobody better've looked at funny, posted notice that a uniquely multi-faceted proposition had maintained its jaw-jutting residence beneath spotlights.

The band's rambunctious oeuvre towered as testament to its consequence. Every outing featured, in vigorous exercise, slap-bass navigations, Ronnie's bent-string exclamations, and percussive insistence. One hears why Hillbilly Casino is indispensible for fans the world over.

Videos: "Tennessee Stomp" (live)   "Heartburn and Heartbreak" (live)   "The Doctor" (live)   "Psycho"   "Violets in May"

Platter the sixth was Red, White, and Bruised (Hobolight).

HC had by this moment become a favorite of average working folks in Nashville and all hep points beyond. Like HC, swarm honky tonk dance floors and throw off real-world cares. Like Hillbilly Casino, folks that swarm joint dance floors and throw away real-life concerns grasp that there are only two kinds of songs - good ones and bad ones.

Each portion of Red, White, and Bruised huffed with limber-limbed freshness and an audacity possible only for dynamite-in-every-paw roustabouts. One was knocked flat by the economical storminess. 

Add in frontman Nic Roullette's irrepressible vocal declarations and onstage gymnastics, and one perceived the stuff of legends -- in their own time.

Videos: "Knockin' at Your Door" (official video)   "She's Got Tricks" (official video)   "It's Not Me It's You"   "Jibber Jabber" (live)   "Troubles"

Come now the crispest: Singles "Tow Truck" and "Red on the Line" - initially issued as 2024 digital-only efforts - landed in bins last October, having been paired on 7" Swelltune vinyl.

The ecstatic squad remained in the first rank. Founders Nic and Billy-Bo suzerain Ronnie were abetted by fresh accomplices Sam Clay and Colin Taylor in storming through characteristic Americana genre-grafting that here pulls fresh oxygen. 

In a Facebook post, balletic energy crisis Nic disclosed: "Replacing 2 members of Hillbilly Casino has been quite a challenge. The fact that these two talented young men live 7 hours away from Ronnie and I make the entire project a different animal, altogether. We are doing our best, though, and I personally feel like the band has taken strides toward cultivating a great sound that is better than I could have imagined."

Videos: "Tow Truck" (live)   "Red On the Line" 

Rock'n'Roll this unaffected, cleverly folding populist lilts and barroom stomp into forcibly guitar-mastered celebration, may never realize the corporate success that demands numbing, processed music product for the ringtone legions. 

Remember, though, that that is not the only mark of distinction. For truly, no music scene can have too many sheerly devout, crazy-from-the-heart back-alley minstrels.