DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY

Capsule reviews by a jury of one: Iowa journalist/author DC Larson. Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Blues, Alternative, Western Swing, R and B, Punk, Swing, Hillbilly, Glam, Americana. DC Larson's retro science fiction writing blog, from which the Eddie Atomic Space Adventures are available, is RETRO RIFF BOOKS. And his political writings one is AMERICAN SCENE MAGAZINE. Both are also on Blogspot. All original content on these three blogs is under author copyright.

Sunday, June 14, 2026

The Rhythm Aces

ATEDtude four-track EP

(RA Records)

Impeccably rendered martial music for boulevard straight-razor yobs, whose uniform is drape and crepe (sideburns a frequent feature.) Rough and roundhousing Teds helped keep real Rock'n'Roll alive, while many dumbly dogpaddled in the hippie maelstrom. This veteran have-a-go trio roars in the same swingers-stomp militia as do Graham Fenton, Cavan Grogan, Tom Powder, and Furious. Look sharp, boys. 1 2 3 4...

Recommended: "ATEDtude," "Pickup," "Me and the Boys," "Downtown Rockin'"

Videos: "A TEDtude" "Pick Up" "Me and the Boys" "Downtown Rockin'"

Nurse's Dead Bodies

Roll a Die digital album

(Self-issued)

Understand that I'm being complimentary when I aver the singer seems to have downed a heaping spoonful of crunched windshield glass. And that observation holds equally true for the players. This is among the most brutal and velocitous Psycho-Punk to have shredded auctorial ears in seasons. And that, too, is high praise.

Recommended: "We'll Be Dead," "Ignorance," "Back," "Scarecrows," "Fight," "La Partida"

Videos: promo clip "We'll Be Dead" live (France 2025, 43:15)

Mickey Keller & the Spitfires

We're Gonna Ride!

(Tessy Records)

There're sound reasons one digging this might feel they've happened upon a bygone wood-cabinet Philco broadcast: Mickey, Matze, and the 'Stompin' Wolfman' are as in-their-grains nifty purveyors of Honky Tonk serenading (sans drums, natch) as one can locate in this internet age.

Then, too, there's their insistence on using only vintage fiddleyboos at Black Shack Recording. Original material of genial home-folks disposition settles in snugly with classics of yore penned by Stan Kesler and Charlie Feathers, Ben Hall, Roy Hall, and future Louisiana Governor Jimmy Davis (who also wrote "You Are My Sunshine.")

Steve Stick contributes vocals on a pair of tracks. And cover art by man of many gifts Marcel Bontempi gilds further. Turn up that radio dial.

Recommended: "Heartbreaking Love," "Mom & Pop," "Cold Dark Night," "I Forgot to Remember," "Hot Rod Baby," "Blue Days, Black Nights," "Tropicana Breeze," "Honky Tonk," "Pepperhot Baby," "Sweethearts or Strangers," "Let's Fall in Love," "I'm Gonna Ride," "Three Alley Cats"

Videos: promo clip "Heartbreaking Love" (live) "Hot Rod Baby" (live) "Pepperhot Baby" "I'm Gonna Ride" (rehearsal room recording)

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Tessy Records (scroll down)

Care Free

7 Songs

(Masterplan)

Instrumental refinements may one day come, but they are unneeded at this point - in fact, they would probably detract from the raw rage that bursts omnidirectionally. Vehemence as virtue.

"We just hope we can inspire people from smaller scenes to help grow their community and have fun," the four told Straight Edge Worldwide.

Recommended: "Are You Serious?," "Exist," "Care Free Jam," "Piece it Together," "You Don't Think," "Crushed"

Videos: "Are You Serious?" "Care Free Jam" "Crushed"

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2025 demo

The Unkool Hillbillies

A carbonated ankle-bopper and a (somewhat) more leisurely jaunt, these cuts were issued as the Swedes' 2021 The Corona Sessions, Vol. 1. 88s fancy-foot, vocals sail, guitar swoops, and the rest aid stoutly in good-time uppdrag.

Videos: "Flat Top Boogie" "So Long Mole"

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Kim Lenz

"I'm gonna Rock'n'Roll 'til I break my neck!" is the exultant declaration of a substantially ginchy hepjill who just shoved the work-week into the rearview. For moments like hers, fireball juke fervor is the finest game afoot.

Video: "Saturday Jump"

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Danny B Harvey: Fingertips combustible

There are legions of able guitar slingers, all of whose efforts help stoke important flames. Kentucky-born Danny, though, ranks way high.

Swing, Rockabilly, Jazz, Blues, Classical, Country - Danny interprets each with ease and the posture of an erudite academic (who's swung a chain or two, in his time). Indeed, listening raptly as he fashions wondrous works simultaneously indebted to American roots argots and accelerative of them as heady, reinvented creatures, one feels like a fortunate pupil.

Danny's features generally remain placid as he swipes at his Telecaster under multi-colored and strobing stage lights, tearing from it lick upon astounding lick. He occasionally shoots audiences a slight smile as if to ask, "See how easy this is?"

For him, perhaps.

An assiduous showman, he freely indulges both US cat and UK Teddy Boy styles. Black leather jackets are alternated with vivid and elegant drape ones. Motorcycle boots, vivid creepers, two-tone bowling shirts, solid-hued tees -- all report to his closet.

Danny has through decades of applied heart earned industry respect as a first-chair player guaranteed to add class to anyone's cause. His fretboard wizardry has advanced missions mounted by Levi Dexter, Wanda Jackson, Lee Rocker, and Bow Wow Wow.

Also on the list are groups including The Rockats, Honeydrippers, Swing Cats, Lonesome Spurs, 13 Cats, 69 Cats, Devil's Daughters, and Headcat (with Lemmy Kilmeister, Slim Jim Phantom, David Vincent, Jonny Bowler, and Alan Davey).

His most recent recording, at this writing, is Headcat Plays Buddy Holly. The disc reflects Harvey's capacity for animation of pure Rock'n'Roll, its Blues and Country facets at high luster.

When renowned titans Danny, Slim Jim, and Lemmy cast fortunes into one jackpot, a supergroup of planetary capacity assumed configuration. Meat-and-potatoes, crasharound rocking was zested by the piquancy of gods.

Early on, Danny told Blabbermouth.net: "I'm so excited this album is coming out, showing how important Buddy Holly was to Lemmy, Slim Jim, and I. We all love Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee and Little Richard, but as Lemmy said in his book White Line Fever, 'Buddy Holly never did a bad track, as far as I could hear.' I'm sure that's why our first album was mainly Buddy Holly songs."

There exist no previous DBH discs one shouldn't obtain. Here are two that merit acknowledgement:

Having by the early 2000s already done movie soundtrack endeavoring, Danny was solicited by Cult Films for its 2004 Dark Angel: Bettie Page, which starred Paige Richards.

"I played all the instruments on those recordings, as I do on a lot of my recordings," Danny told me in a 2005 interview for Rockabilly magazine. "I always record the drums using a combination of sample loops and real drums. Of course, the guitars, keyboards, and bass are all me."

For Dark Angel, he composed and performed smart backing for vintage Bettie stills and film loops. Titles included "Whip Dance," "Fighting Girls," "Bound and Gagged," and "Whatever Happened To?"

Characteristically, his soloing enunciated a panoply of emotions and inclinations, from ecstasy to aggressiveness to pensive, introspective articulation.

"Bettie Page's influence over men and women alike is off the Richter Scale, as far as I'm concerned," he told me. "Girls all over the world dress like her, walk like her, and cut their hair like her. Her look is timeless and will always be in style."

For his 2005 solo, all-instrumental CD Rockabilly Jazz (Raucous 2005), Danny again played everything. Filled nearly to bursting with buoyant runs, bends, trills, and twangs, the disc was manna. He revisited classic modes and airs, charging them with fresh elan.

It was what a happy guitar turned loose sounds like.

"My finger-picking style is a direct derivative of Chet Atkins's and Merle Travis's picking style," Danny explained to me at the time. "I love to play loud and fast, but playing like Chet Atkins is very challenging."

Merle Travis tribute "The Travis Rag" is a carbonated, finger-picked romp over high-spirits clay. "Cattlesburg Express" rolls and rollicks merrily down driven-steel tracks in headlong ramble. "Dixie Doodle Dandy," splices traditional Southern and Northern melodies, recalling Link Wray's 1959 "Dixie Doodle."

In Jazz aspect, "Misty" unfurls sumptuous atmospherics. An exhumation of the Benny Goodman/Charlie Christian chestnut "Seven Come Eleven" gambols with uptown carriage. And the stately "Gee Baby, Ain't I Good To You?" ambles serenely, chin high.

An instinctive hybridizer, Danny is that rarest and most meritorious of players -- a heart-wired, creatively inquisitive, adventurous artist whose encyclopedic knowledge and expressive abilities awe riveted listeners and envious colleagues, alike.

His best work may well lie ahead. But Headcat Plays Buddy Holly and looking further back offer unique rewards.

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Videos: "Whiskey Hollar Blues" (solo w/Bettie reel) "Crazy Baby" (13 Cats) "Hammerhead" (solo) "Whip Dance" (Paige Richards) "Not Fade Away" / "Fool's Paradise" (Headcat, live) "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" (Headcat alternate mix)

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Ghoultown

Double set: Life After Sundown and Ghost of the Southern Son

(Zoviet / Angry Planet Enterprises)

It's been long years since I stopped puzzling how these men developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and gun-hands from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments. Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorselessly lashed metal and arched Morricone airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly Old-West-in-twilight-zones sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

(This double-disc set is available directly from Blackburn's Monstro Merch, which is linked below.)

Recommended from Life: "Dead Outlaw," "Against a Crooked Sky," "Werewolves on Wheels," "I Spit on Your Grave," "Thunder over El Paso," "Find a Good Horse," "Drink With the Living Dead," "Under the Phantom Moon"

Videos: "Dead Outlaw" "Against a Crooked Sky" "Find a Good Horse" "Drink With the Living Dead" (visualizer) "Under the Phantom Moon"

Recommended from Ghost: "Southern Son," "Ghost of the Past," "I Am the Night," "Black on Black," "Blood, Bullets, and Whiskey," "Stick to Your Guns," "Tombstone," "Vanishing Riders"

Videos: "Southern Son" "Ghost of the Past" (lyric video) "I Am the Night" "Stick to Your Guns" "Vanishing Riders" (animated video)

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Blackburn's Monstro Merch

The Blue Velvets

Anymore four-track EP

(Enviken)

Unhurried bop buffed to high sparkle with 18-karat Jazz chamois. Alastair, Ralph, and Mario recently played France's Festival Rockin' Berry. (That triple-day event's bill also included Jack Baymoore, Miss Mary Ann, and Arsen Roulette.) One report enthused that the roster "kept the dance floor packed until the early hours of the morning." This EP, produced by the spring-loaded trio, gives testimony as to the vintage vibe that had shoe leather in tatters by festival closing.

Recommended: "Anymore," "Candy Shop," "Midnight Hour (when I bop)," "In Years"

Videos: "Anymore" "Candy Shop" "Midnight Hour (when I bop)" (live) "In Years"

Fantasmatic

Perpetuum

(Self-issued)

Every urging element shouts from first notes: ardor-charged detonations that hurtle unmindful of resultant ruinations; rope-burned vocals, seemingly on loan from some forbidden guarida; and almost cinematic tableau dressing in which ominous entities, bereft of souls, crawl, lurch, and race toward unlighted wrecking floors.

Recommended: "Oscuro Recuerdo," "En Las Tinieblas," "La balada del loco," "Criminal," "Bye Bye Girl"

Videos: "Oscuro Recuerdo" (live) "La balada del loco" (live) "Criminal" (official video) "Bye Bye Girl"

Back in the Day, 1999

The Neanderthals

The Modern Stone-Age Family

(Sundazed)

"Mastodon's" measured distorto-chords and trenchant beat recall both the Kinks and Los Straitjackets' choreographed stomps. That last hardly surprises, given that Eddie Angel teamed with Johnny Rabb to perpetrate this wiggy beach bash.

Straitjackets drummer Pete Curry is a sometime accomplice. And bassist Sam Bolle, whose resume includes Dick Dale, Fear, and Agent Orange, has hands in certain carbonated sensations, as well.

All tracks but one clock in under 3:00, which means outta sight bends and gasser shenanigans must make cases briskly. Eddie crafted Fun Gone Wild tunes with characteristic surf/garage erudition.

High moments ride mondo waves to transister jollification: "Toe Rag Twitch" transmogrifies "The Bedrock Twitch," and has teens the scene 'round doing dance sensations that are sweeping the nation. "Remember the Twist" juices the juke with experimental octane.

Were it not for Dippity-Do and Aqua Net, the ponytails and rat-tail-comb-teased bouffants of chicks shaking hips to "Flintstone Flop," "King of the Twist," and "Neanderthal Twist" would fast resemble peroxided shambles.

Select reinventions - with combo eyes ever toward shimmy-shimmy diversion - include Addams Family actor Ted Cassidy's 1965 "Lurch;" "I Go Ape" (a 1959 Neil Sedaka racer that England's Wee Willie Harris covered to riotous effect); novelty group The Martians' 1959 "Tarzan;" "Rockin' in the Jungle" (The Eternals' 1959 side); and "Shaggy Dog," waxed by Mickey Lee Lane in 1964.

Sundazed reissued Modern Stone-Age Family in 2023, on white translucent vinyl.

Recommended: "Mastodon," "Shaggy Dog," "I Go Ape," "Tarzan," "Toe Rag Twitch," "Remember the Twist," "Flintstone Flop," "Rockin' the Jungle," "King of the Twist," "Neanderthal Twist"

Videos: "Mastodon" "I Go Ape" (live) "Remember the Twist" "King of the Twist" "Neanderthal Twist"

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Kebunku

Harmonic Pop-Punk "Dia" shimmers, but exposes teeth via Oi! shouts. "Hey" favors storm clouds over sunbeams. Both owe much to group members' passions.

Videos: "Dia Lewat Lagi" "Hey Aku Belum Mati"

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rodoaqui

Punk being a surly tongue of internationally comprehended tone, the spirit grabs regardless of familiarity with espanol. Even when no one wants you, aggression uplifts.

Video: "Nadie Quiere"

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Jinx Jones: Fire forever

Californian Jinx Jones's status as fretboard royalty is beyond dispute. Last March, he issued his 7th disc, Under the Neon Moon.

In reviewing it at the time, I wrote: "Bow low when entering the palace chamber. Jinx pulls up a pillowed seat at the same roundtable as Barry Ryan, Chris Spedding, George Benson, and Danny B. Harvey. (From yon wall, gilded portraits of lamented heroes like Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Matt Murphy, Jimmy Bryant, Danny Cedrone, Charlie Christian, Danny Gatton, and Franny Beecher peer down on proceedings.)"

Globally famed as a breath-stealing picker both encyclopedic and devastating, he's on first-name terms with outer planets of bop nonpareil. Whereas others might have left the Rockabilly / Country trail he's ridden to fame -- to assay styles more sanctified by clef-note gray-beards -- Jinx stayed put and unburdened himself of serrated thunderbolts that parted pomps and frizzed Bettie bangs.

His journey to current renown was paved with experiences that both seasoned and informed him.

Beginning in 1976, he backed legends Solomon Burke and Howard Bomar. He then worked in one of Chuck Berry's regional touring bands. During the mid-1980s, Jinx backed Roy Buchanan in concert.

Subsequent studio session toils led to Jinx playing both guitar and bass on the 1992 En Vogue hit "Free Your Mind."

Over these years, he developed a musical voice inclusive of the finest of Americana past, his own novel articulations lending piquance.

With seeming ease, he divines the blood fraternity of Rockabilly, Western Swing, Blues, Jazz, and Honky Tonk, dazzling with furious note-bursts one moment and in the next, spinning glorious strands of wondrous and untethered imaginings.

Imagine an advanced fretboard textbook on 10. Listeners are surely thunderstruck by Jinx's authoritative command of labyrinthine note aggregates, lightning-fleet navigations, and esoteric chordal modes. One intuits they are in the twang-upholstered, Jazzy Court of a flat-gone monarch, one for whom fair Aoede is a favored midnight-hour ship.

Jinx's Under the Neon Moon holds gripping wonders for both his established audience and untouched ears. Ecstatic notes are bent, jabbed, and fired off at jet velocity. Fierce and wooly barn-dancin' bop drops by the bale, but gentler moments also croon.

"Hittin' the Hard Stuff," "Cadillac Love Machine," and "Million Dollar Fool" point up his flair with spring-heeled rambles and wry (sometimes self-effacing) wit. Instrumental odysseys like "Prelude Noir," "Duane's Train," and "Neon Moonlight" allow Jinx the elbow room to expand at length upon artful musings.

Honky Tonk expressiveness and rumbustious Rockabilly exhortations were colorfully integrated with ebullient bursts of Jazz-inflected phrasings. .

Now, it's not uncommon for artists to cool down once they're a few discs into recording careers. Perhaps they lose something of their initial creative fire.

But not Jinx. Never Jinx. I don't believe he'll ever lose the fire.

Videos: "License To Twang" "Redneck Barbie" "Cadillac Love Machine" "Neon Moonlight"

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Sunday, June 7, 2026

The Cramps

Smell of Female CD or digital

(Big Beat Records / Ace)

Big Beat loosed anew several of the cellar-discotheque ghouls' back platters, 1983's Smell of Female being one twistedly alluring specimen. Kid Congo had by this juncture thrown in with caclcified cryptkeepers Lux, Ivy, and Nick Knox (scarred and gaunt Bryan Gregory having taken his axe beneath ground). Reverential reinventions of Roky Erickson, Hasil Adkins, and a notorious, curvy cult flick invaded. Six tracks taken from a Peppermint Lounge spectacle the original release offered are here joined by bonus slices "Beautiful Gardens" and "She Said," recorded in the same witching hours. Additional extra song "Surfin' Dead" was the scare-cell's contribution to 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead.

Recommended: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love," "You Got Good Taste," "Faster Pussycat," "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound," "Psychotic Reaction," "Beautiful Gardens," "She Said," "Surfin' Dead"

Videos: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" (live) "Faster Pussycat" "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound" (live) "Surfin' Dead" (official video)

Pike & Delta

Rockin' Bomb

(Sleazy Records)

Spanish Rockabillies Pike Calavera and El Niño Delta rip through headlong essays. Devotees of Lee Allen and Red Tyler's sax turns on Roy Montell's 1956 Specialty side (later exhumed by the S. Cats) will find treasure aplenty, albeit in striking vines. Fun wrecks without aplologies.

Recommended: "Rockin' Bomb #3," "(Cada vez que escucho) Ese dulce saxofón," "Ven, que estoy hirviendo" "Tri-Tri-Tristeza"

Videos: "Rockin' Bomb #3" "(Cada vez que escucho) Ese dulce saxofón" "Tri-Tri-Tristeza" (live)

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The Trash Vultures

Makin' Moonshine

(Self-issued)

Australia's T. Vultures have been active on both live gig and radio circuits, promoting their 'Death Western.' Cold soil turned is thematically similar to that shoveled by Ghoultown -- leather-slapping milieus where the guy next to you at the bar may have only holes from which eyeballs once sized up dusty trails. But whereas Count Lyle's Lone Star bunch sometimes hurtle metallically, these Tasmanians maintain crawl-pace whilst elucidating unpleasantries.

Recommended: "Tarantula," "Hatchet Face," "Swingin' in the Gallows," "Taint'd Lurve," "Makin' Moonshine"

No directly related Videos were available at presstime. But here's a non-LP song: "Diggin' a Hole" (live)

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Back in the Day, 1982

Various artists

Rarest Rockabilly & Hillbilly Boogie

(Ace)

In 1971, at 12 years old, I spent a weekend with a paternal uncle and his family. They lived in one of Iowa's tiny rural towns.

I was from a city. So for me, country life was a different reality. Sunday meant all-day fundamentalist church, punctuated at noon by a houseful gathering. A table was loaded down with hot dogs, cold meats, breads, pop and potato salad. A spirited throng gathered, still dressed in church-going finery.

Roaming the rooms, I found a black-and-white 8x10 stashed on a bookshelf. It was a posed publicity shot that depicted a Country Western-type combo complete with stand up bass, acoustic, electric and steel guitars. They sported de rigueur cowboy attire: big hats, neckerchiefs, boots.

I didn't know the photo's vintage, nor did I recognize anyone featured. (Some distant family members, perhaps -- ones who'd once dreamed vainly of celebrity - or regional somebodies long forgotten?)

In future years, I came to understand that real Country and Rock'n'Roll sprang from the same real-folks well.

Names of men whose rustic rollickings are here anthologized may be similarly unfamiliar, but their contributions to then-emergent Rockabilly were full of skedaddle. They came down from hills, left country whistle-stops, and rose from bustling burgs to 'sing into a can.' Billboard charts and big-city radio paid them no mind. But so what? The shit-kickin' romps they committed to vinyl not only fired up future crops of leg-shakers, but will shout simple joys into slickered-up perpetuity.

Recommended: "Nuthin' but a Nuthin'" (Jimmy Stewart and his Night Hawks), "Baby Doll" (Jimmy Dale), "Don't Sweep That Dirt On Me" (Buddy Shaw), "Henpecked Daddy" (Ralph Johnson and the Hillbilly Show Boys), "Stoney Mountain Boogie" (Stoney Mountain Playboys), "My Blackbirds Are Bluebirds Now," (Sleepy Jeffers & the Davis Twins), "No More" (Buddy Shaw), "Big Black Cat" (RD Hendon & the Western Jamboree Cowboys), "It's Saturday Night" (Bill Mack)

Videos: "Nuthin' but a Nuthin'" (Jimmy Stewart and his Nighthawks) "Don't Sweep That Dirt On Me" (Buddy Shaw) "Stoney Mountain Boogie" (Stoney Mountain Playboys) "It's Saturday Night" (Bill Mack)

Buddy Shaw

Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, and Bill Mack.