DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: July 2026

Monday, July 20, 2026

Pat Capocci

Echoes from the Asphalt Jungle vinyl or CD

(Sleazy Records)

Mr. Capocci evinces offhand vocal trenchancy and plank hip-dipping, all in the service of Bopification. The world already knows as much. (Straight from the fridge.) But the conclusion that fresh waxings from him aren't, then, of pressing interest is a far piece from this truth: digging his every new disc is of most-ut imperativeness.

(Also scissors-operator of Harbord Road barbering emporium Flying Tiger, Pat has tonsorial adeptitude in common with Rockat Smutty Smith and Hillbilly Casino's Nic R.)

Recommended: "Lucia," "Day by Day," "Barnitos Bounce," "Trance," "The Puzzle," "Enzos Outing"

Videos: "Day by Day" "Trance" "The Puzzle"

Jake Calypso

Give Yourself a Present

(Around the Shack Records)

Even were "I Don't Want to Sing Bop Bop" the disc's solitary selection, the asking price would be reasonable -- so aburst is that finger-snap track with hiccups, guitar swerve, and big beat slamdowns. But there are 11 other cuts demanding similar recognition. Should you hear anyone wonder 'Where's a prime location to find quintessential Rock'n'Roll to which kittens and gators can go crazy and get into cool diversions?,' produce for them a map depicting this release.

Recommended: "I Don't Want to Sing Bop Bop," "Who is BB," "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," "I Wanna Go to Heaven," "I Was Dancing to Tom Jones," "Laura Palmer," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

Video: preview (6:08)

Germán Alvarez

Rockabilly Session digital

Bad Report Card Blues digital

(L&L Records)

German turns his hands to multiple playing implements, and the jumpin' jive that issues from his Suavecito-pomaded labors shakes the entire place -- especially the hardwood that he/she pairings stomp into next Thursday. The Buenos Aires cat-afire seems so jammed-up, jelly-tight with the rolling sounds Ike-era legends put to wax, he has to grab up guitar or piano, lest he be turned inside out with purely Gone intoxication.

(Per research: German also runs L&L, which he founded in 2020, and works in sundry musical idioms. One source notes that in daylight hours, he's a physical education teacher, therapeutic companion, and psychomotricity assistant.)

Rockabilly Session, Recommended: "Saturday Night Blues," "Baby Don't Tease Me," "Bop Shakin' Baby," "Gone Tonight," "Don't Touch My Rockin' Shoes," "Everybody Wants to Be My Girl, "Dance With Me"

Bad report card..., Recommended: "The King of the Wild Piano," "Crazy Little Heartbreak," "Duckwalk," "It Happened in Louisiana," "Bad Report Card Blues," "Ooby in My Shoes," "Return it Back to Me"

Videos: "Saturday Night Blues" "Don't Touch My Rockin' Shoes" "Everybody Wants to Be My Girl" "The King of the Wild Piano" "Bad Report Card Blues" "Return it Back to Me"

Back in the Day, 2018

Sparkle Moore

Wild and Exciting, Here's...Sparkle limited 10" vinyl EP

(Vip Vop)

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes,and

oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!

The poetess penned those words long before Miss Sparkle -- PR of the time labeled her the 'female Elvis' -- barnstormed through Cincinnati's Fraternity Records (1956/7). But the deathless prose captures the singer's scant career. Sparkle issued just two singles and split the scene. (Word is the stork swooped soon thereafter.)

Recommended: "Rock a Bop," "Skull and Crossbones," "Killer," "Tiger"

Videos: "Rock a Bop" "Skull and Crossbones"

Amazon (Netherlands)

Chuck Willis

Chuck was but 32 in 1958, when peritonitis claimed him from a Chicago hospital bed. His final disc, "Hang Up My Rock'n'Roll Shoes" b/w "Why Am I Alive?," was still warm and remains thoroughly solid. Erstwhile Doll Syl Sylvain later lifted a verse; teenage lamenting is evergreen.

Video: "Hang Up My Rock'n'Roll Shoes"

Apple

Amazon

Dorian Rock'n'Roll

Tire-scorching down Hepcat Highway is further tattooed by Dorian's Cedrone-informed solo spree.

Video: "Hot Rod"

Facebook

Ghoultown: Death ain't nothin' but a thing

Tidings that recently emanated from BadlandsBeyond revealed Ghoultown -- a Texas Count Lyle production that last perpetrated wax some six years ago -- is again stalking studio passageways.

"We are in the process of recording our new album titled TOO BAD TO DIE," read a June 2 Facebook message. "This will be our 6th full-length studio release and 13th overall release.

"We are working hard to bring you the best collection of Ghoultown songs yet, offering a familiar yet amped-up group of songs that take you on a dusty and dangerous journey into our strange landscape of gunslinging Rock'n'Roll. No release date has been set, but rest assured it will be worth the wait!"

The group features on Facebook numerous behind-curtain photos of their studio activities, disclosing to all how sausage is made in spurred-monster kitchen.

During such time as will transpire until new grooves-of-the-macabre materialize, consideration is appropriate.

Few bands have accomplished that which distinguishes Ghoultown: the formulation of a truly singular persona. In the group's slap-leather milieu populated by shambling and hollow-eyed hombres from below, no string goes un-thrashed, and all poundings are doomsday ones.

Ghoultown's thunderous Tales of the Crypt transmogrification of Zane Grey's dusty-stampede world has never assumed deserved position in chart highlands. But that only illustrates Legs McNeil's dictum that cool music seldom enjoys mass popularity.

In the group's darkside rowdiness, guitars gallop like wild stallions with tone settings. Poundings-times-ten collude, lending animation against which spectral host Count Lyle's dead-man's drawl scrawls jaggedly.

Eyes wide and ears a-ring, slack-jawed townsfolk marvel at the spectacle: Sinister invocations so resolute as to force all bearing stunned witness into tonic-clonic floorshows.

Even Wyatt and Doc fall to their knees in sybaritic paroxysms.

It's been years since I stopped puzzling how the men who comprise Ghoultown developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and lead-slingers from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments.

Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorseless metal and zombie-caballero airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly swinging-saloon-doors-in-Twilight-Zone sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

Mesa-looming wraiths etch Ghoultown's hard-lashed menace, Bone-cold determination is a core surrounded by echo-clad desolateness.

"We have 11 new tunes polished up and ready to record," reveals a Facebook Ghoultown message. "We can say the recording is coming along very well!"

Whispered words telling of Ghoultown's impending disc are no doubt passed down the bar from gunhand to apparition to saddle tramp to bloodsucker.

The barkeep polishes a glass, hoping to see sunrise.

Facebook

Bandcamp (All Ghoultown discs available here.)

Videos: "Bullets Don't Argue" "I Am the Night" "Drink With the Living Dead" (live)

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Doyley & the Twanglords

Reverbatron digital album

(Diablo Records)

Just as opening minutes flash walloping imagery of Venusian waves crashing green-sand shores -- while the Republic Robot shoots the single-digit salute to two-headed gremmies -- closer "Lost Soul" introduces Old Country accordian into fast-flung instro proceedings. Betwixt the two hurtle wordless wonders that explore just how far six-strings can go to unite Bikini Beach and Forbidden Planet.

Recommended: "Reverbatron," "MoonSurfer," "Il Monstro," "Badaboom," "Robostomp," "Lost Soul"

No related videos were available. But here's a fun interview from years ago.

Diablo Records

Bandcamp

The Psychodelics

Small But Mighty EP

(Psychodelic Records)

Rising from the lab tilt-table is a creature stitched from outsider stylings. Punk, Psycho, and Rockabilly flesh are joined in crazy-quilt calculations that couldn't seem more torpedo-savory to quiffed wrecking-pit grapplers who have mail delivered to all-night monster-movie marathons.

Recommended: "Small but Mighty," "We'll Never Die," "Talk To the Dead," "Shut Up and Drive," "Good Kitty"

Videos: "Small but Mighty" "We'll Never Die" "Good Kitty"

Site

Facebook

Instagram

X (Erik Hinderer, lead guitarist/songwriter)

Atomic Leopards

Hypnogogic Hellucinations

(Atomic)

Spanish brothers Santi and David Lluch learned thoroughly lessons imparted by past Blues, Rockabilly, and Country masters (including as Hellbilly Club founders). Now, the axe-swinging throatist and his bass-slinging sibling pool knacks with ex-HC drum demon Marc Illas to contrive fuzz-dripping spike-jive that laces its projectiles with kool venomousness that gyrates on the wild side.

Recommended: "Devil Car," "Hello Mr. Bates," "Ready for the Blackout," "One More Battle," "I Wanna Be a Punk," "Everybody's Movin'"

Videos: "Hello Mr. Bates" (Official video) "Ready for the Blackout" (Videoclip) "I Wanna Be a Punk"

Back in the Day, 2009

Ella Mae Morse

Best of the Rockabilly Rockin' Years

(Rockabilly Records)

Don Raye: Well, what you say, baby? You look ready as Mr. Freddy, this black. How 'bout you 'n' me goin' spinnin' at the track?

Ella: What's that, homey? If you think I'm goin' dancin' on a dime, your clock is tickin' on the wrong time!

Don: Well, what's your pleasure, treasure? You call the plays, I'll dig the ways.

Ella: Hey Daddio, I'm not so crude as to drop my mood on a square from way back. I'm in there, and have to dig life with Father, and I mean Father Snack.

Don: Well, baby, your play is my way to solid flip! You snap the whip, I'll make the trip!

As is surely past knowledge to dusty-vinyl connoisseurs en masse, sterling siren Ella raised hepster hullabaloos, as she fronted '40s and '50s big bands with a wink, cascading ebony tresses, and a voice so delightful it seemed straight from zoot elysium. Her swank readings of immortal tracks well familiar (and granted fresh animation by everyone from Jerry Lee to Alex Harvey to the Funboy Three to Matchbox to Levi Dexter) were brassy ballyhoos that made no promises of refined decorum.

(Especial credit belongs to Ella's longtime bandleader Freddie Slack; he knew exactly how to fashion swing of executive order.)

"I ain't got no time to waste, workin' hard just to make me a lotta dough / Work's OK but not for me, it interferes with my fun so it's gotta go!...I'm livin' the life I love, and lovin' the life that I live!"

Recommended: "Rockin' & Rollin'," "Tennessee Saturday Night," "Forty Cups of Coffee," "Money Honey," "Livin' Livin' Livin'," "Jump Back Honey," "House of Blue Lights," "How Can You Leave a Man Like This," "Razzle Dazzle," "Organ Grinder Swing," "Piddly Patter Patter," "A Little Further Down the Road Apiece," "Get Off It and Go," "Oakie Boogie," "Rock Me All Night Long," "Smack Dab in the Middle," "Seventeen," "Give Me Love"

Videos: "Tennessee Saturday Night" "Livin' Livin' Livin'" "T'ain't Whatcha Do" "Jump Back Honey" "House of Blue Lights" "Seventeen"

Kyle Eldridge

Chief doubleneck-wrangler Kyle wrote this one hisself, a bouncing stepper 'cross Western-Boogie backroads. Featured are the flutter-fingered exploits for which the man gets howdie's the world over. (Kyle's TNM custom doubleneck was constructed for him special by ace-high luthier Terry McArthur.)

Video: "Catawaba Boogie"

Facebook

Instagram

Swelltune Records

Billy Barton

Billy's from-up-in-the-hills compositions were waxed by Opry-caliber personages, including Ferlin Husky, Red Sovine, Rose Maddox, and Ernest Tubb. But much of that transpired later; first came this jitter-howl number that probably sideswiped jukes into alleys.

Video: "Crazy Lover"

Apple

13 Cats: Too cool for planet Earth

Tim Polecat. Smutty Smith. Slim Jim Phantom. Danny B Harvey. (Plus sometime auxillary bassman Jonny Bowler.)

As formidable as that gallery might appear in print, it devastated when behind mics.

A felicitously aberrant rascal mission whose storied big beat-ministers hailed from glory-scribed walks the Polecats, Rockats, and Stray Cats, 13 Cats flickered brilliantly, albeit shortly.

They crafted stunningly novel admixtures of literate, fantastic lyricism and burly roots musics jetted up into tomorrow. Much-loved Rockabilly nuggets, newly drunk on adrenaline joy juice, were catapulted through flick-knife Punk and Psycho back alleys. And self-penned, splintered reflector tableaus reeled crazily amidst jubilant uproar.

One brief lyrical citation illustrates sufficiently:

She walks the Information Highway, he's on vine from Monday to Friday. They get together when the weekend comes. She digs Sinatra, he beats his drums.

Jungle Man and Robot Girl, victims of the modern world.

Sadly, waxings are sparse. 2001's in the beginning (Revel Yell Music) preserved studio reanimations of Charlie Feathers, the Rockin' R's, and Bill Allen and the Backbeats' shout/jump standards, as well as band originals (including "Teddy Boy Kung Fu Weapon" and "Flesh for Andy Warhol") captured on radio and at live spectacles.

2003's full-length 13 Tracks (Raucous) presented nearly all freshly-coined jaunts -- like "Leather Straitjacket," "Jungle Man, Robot Girl," and "Snap, Crackle, and Hiss" -- the sole exception being 13 Cats' conflagratory take on Bill Allen and the Backbeats' 1958 "Please Give Me Something."

The swaggering supergroup's irregular brainstorming was further typified by originals "Poison Candy," "Chanting for Cadillacs," "Sex Hex," and "Hell Bop." In each, raceway rocketing that likely stole committed witnesses' oxygen proved the equal of message uncanniness.

(Two other selections, "13 Cats" and "Teddy Boy Kung Fu Weapon," had turned up in 1999 film The Rage: Carrie 2.)

Subsequent years brought two or three repackagings, rarities compendiums, and a performance DVD. But by that time, members had dispersed and discovered crisp attractions. New individual glories were mined.

But, oh -- what was!

Eruptive, scintillating guitar-led Neo-Rockabilly that spanned Blues, Country, and primal Rock'n'Roll. Flamboyantly idiosyncratic gestures colluded with flabbergasting instrumentation, in rave-up flammables of adventurous mien.

Modern-day Sci-Fi/ fantasy was grafted onto vintage rompings to father a bloodshot-eyed creation full of verve, strut and cat-styled swell.

We had 13 Cats for what seemed but a twinkling. One tilted moment. They'd rocked headfirst into a topsy-turvy and taboo delirium dear to senses-fevered apostles. Perhaps from blueprinting, theirs had been envisioned as a fleeting escapade.

Whatever the case, recorded portraits and gray-matter snapshots are all we have left of the wonder that was.

Videos: "Sex Hex" "Snap, Crackle, and Hiss" "Teddy Boy Kung Fu Weapon" live in Vegas (36:27)

Bandcamp (in the beginning)

Bandcamp (13 Tracks)

Sunday, July 12, 2026

The Jets

50 Years of Rockin'

(Krypton)

Having issued several 'best of' and commemorative compendiums previously, the Cottons three might be assumed to now be scraping barrel's bottom. They are - but it's one crackerjack of a barrel, and each song contained merits recollection. Harmonizing and rock-around-the-malt-shop-clock hot-rods clean through Gonesville's town square.

Recommended: "Don't Knock Upon My Door," "My Pigeon's Gone," "Movie Star," "Pretty Pretty Baby," "Bye Bye Love," "Perfect Love," "In Love With You," "Wildest Cat in Town," "Why Don't You"

Videos: "Don't Knock Upon My Door" (live 2025) "My Pigeon's Gone" (live 2007) "Pretty Pretty Baby" (live)

Pencet Dadi Pelem

Harapan

(SoundPOV)

Confronting us are five kamikaze swoops bearing chordal armament. This formidable fist-unit was birthed in 2011, and songs presented here have seen previous releases in varied packages. None of which ameliorates the savagery. Hospital beds await.

Recommended: "We Are Street Punk," "Do You Remember Me," "Singosari," "The New Generation"

Videos: "We Are Street Punk" "Do You Remember Me" "The New Generation" live (21:17 2023)

The Termites

Square Go

(13 Deluxe)

A live-gig portrait that fucking roars. It's as if these Scotland skull-grinders have spent years since their 1985 genesis in cryogenic suspension, with additional aggro piped intravenously. Droogs include Kenny "The Duke" Mitchell, Scott "Bally" Ballantine, Ewin, Johnny, and Dougie. The five loose upon cheering rabble razored ricochets of ear-melting astoundment. Somebody stole the tires off an ambulance parked out front.

Recommended: "Overload," "Crazy Mama," "Kicked in the Teeth," "FTW," "Bad Man," "Devils," "Somebody's Gonna Pay," "Rockin' All Night"

Only dated videos are available: "Crazy Mama" "Kicked in the Teeth" "Rockin' All Night" (live)