When Rollin' Rock took blue cruise
Let's dispense straightaway with bluenoses' caterwauls against sex; it's always been among Rock'n'Roll's basic subject-matter food groups. Besides, were it not for the base instinct, I wouldn't have penned these words and you wouldn't be reading them.
It was in the mid-'80s, while browsing through an Iowa Co-Op Records cut-out bin, that I discovered Teenage Cruisers. I was already a fan of indie Rollin' Rock's dedication to preserving the Big Beat, but didn't expected to find the label's output amid Rundgren, Savoy Brown, and Toby Beau LPs.
An immediate purchase, the platter remains in my stacks.
Ronny Weiser's Van Nuys, California, Rollin' Rock Records produced indispensable Rockabilly beginning in the 1970s. Recording sessions were convened in his living room on consumer-grade reel-to-reel. (Taping eventually moved to Ronny's garage.) Significant new vinyl was marketed through mail orders.
The indie linked original Rockabillies such as Charlie Feathers, Mac Curtis, and Ray Campi -- who reemerged to record once more -- to a crisp crop of twanging rebels like Jerry Sikorski, Jimmie Lee Maslon, and Billy Zoom.
(Too, Ronny and Rollin' Rock recorded the Blasters prior to the group's move to Slash/Warner Brothers.)
Rollin' Rock offerings in those times typified emergent Neo-Rockabilly, in that material generated by its roster folded somewhat contemporary flavorings into the vintage brew. Perhaps that was attributable to players' contemporary inclinations and awareness of pop-culture flux.
1977's Teenage Cruisers was billed as the first filmic union of pornography and Rockabilly (a not illogical mating). It was alternately billed as Young Hot n' Nasty Teenage Cruisers. Though of meager production standards and featuring actors of far less than stellar abilities (albeit dutifully exhibitionistic), it is today a fun oddity.
IMDB's discreet summary withholds ridicule: "Fast-paced, almost plotless Rock'n'Roll adult film musical set during a crazy night in the lives of a dozen or more teenagers, and other people during a night out on the town." (Inanity never kept trenchcoats away from grindhouses.)
But the music is of paramount worth. Rollin' Rock stars who imbued the soundtrack with slicked-back rollicks included Campi, Sikorski, the Blasters, Feathers, and Zoom. Their savage, jumping-from-loudspeakers input lifted high an otherwise lackluster enterprise.
Rollin' Rock's usual-suspects house band in '77 included Ray, Jerry, Jimmie Lee Maslon, Poppa Jim Durbin, Mike Henderson, Jay Phillips, Rip Masters, and Ronny himself.
All songs impress to varying degrees, but five merit especial note:
"Are You Hep to It?" Johnny Legend
A cult-famed dab hand, ever behind cheaters (who co-wrote and directed TC), Martin Margulies passed mere months ago. His three Teenage Cruisers tracks ankled down GV's Bop Street like they'd huffed Murray's Superior. Bunny Hop bonanza "Are You" was emblematic of TC's tunery: buoyantly skittish, straight from the fridge, and powered by seriously able dispatch that urged on giddiness, the selection "put some meat on the bread!"
"Bad Boy" Billy Zoom
Perhaps many gash-and-slash delinquents throwing gran mal floorshows to X's serrated serenadings had no idea guitarist Billy had Etta James, Gene V., Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Rollin' Rock on his blotter. Notable in this 1:47 kicky jaunt are steroidal braggadocio and economical jive-bombing responsible for innumerable footwear scuffs on red-light lane black-and-white tiles.
(Research indicates that Billy played all instruments.)
"The Newest Wave" Ray Campi
Ray's romp aligns smoothly with tunes sharing vinyl real estate, in that merriment carpentered by swinging jukesters punches in most solidly. "Rockabilly's knockin', ya better open up your door," proclaims the neckerchiefed former blackboard jungle pedagogue. "Disco? Zounds! Don't wanna hear that sound no more! The Newest Wave, fillin' up your record store." Overly optimistic? Yes. Of course, on a cooler planet...
"Hard Knocks and Tough Rocks" Wildman Tony Conn
At the introductory drum smashes, squares flee the floor as heedless cats and gators perform a multitude of gymnastics flabbergasted eyewitnesses would previously have thought beyond physical possibilities. Yes, it's the storied Wildman -- and the frenzied, tornadic Rock'n'Roll sweep upon which he defies time/space confines -- that leads assemblages of tilted funatics in going so far out, they're back in.
"That Certain Female" Charlie Feathers
Ronny's living room reel-to-reel captured the raw rascalry of glottal-stop legend Charlie. Here, the histrionic hiccuppist not only sings the first-hand testimony of an obsessed everyman hunting "that little, bitty woman," but administers rhythm guitar and doghouse, on top. Lead guitar by Charlie's son, Bubba (who is yet out there) and Ronny's own percussive additive pump go juice.
It'd be hyperbole to term this soundtrack vital to Rockabilly libraries. But it is a document of the thoroughly ecstatic carrys-on at Rollin' Rock -- ones in which Catmen of all seasons pooled ammunition -- and the glorious validity of tech primitivism to the genre's loci classici.
Flicker Teenage Cruisers was pretty much a failed endeavor. But the soundtrack attests that Rock'n'Roll doesn't require elaborate gadgeteering; just a feeling and a guitar. Buy the soundtrack, but skip the movie. (Unless, y'know...)
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