Mental Shakedown

"Reno Neon Lights" / "Here Comes the Sound"

(Bop 'n' Destroy)

It's likely these firecrackers Bop the Blues in their sleep. Truer passions for the steadily moving, country/blues ripsnorter adherents hail as Rockabilly cannot be located. Dedicated to late drummer Burnout Bruno, these tunes teem with revered flashes and dynamite downbeats endemic to the style, as were first wrought by names now matters of lore. The single can be bought in any of six colors, 50 of each having been rendered.

By the moment your eyes scan these words, current drummer Stephan will have played his final Mental Shakedown show, in Berlin. Future days will tell who will terrorize skins in his stead. Fieriness will be a requisite.

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Bop 'n' Destroy

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BeBe's Records

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The Dusty 45s

Butterflies  EP

(Sleazy Records)

Regardless of the style they take up - comfortably settled Rockabilly, het-up hijinx remindful of baggy-pants Vaudevillian carryings on, Bert Weeden's ethereal 1960 excursion, or Jazzy geniality accustomed to high-toned niteries - combo members turn hands ably. Poise walks hard and trumpet skedaddles merrily.

Recommended: "Simple Thing," "Butterflies," "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women"

Videos: "Simple Thing"   "Butterflies"   "Apache"   "Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women"

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Raunchy!

"My Own Way of Rockin'"   single

Countrified Rhythm and Blues   full-length

(Sleazy Records)

In promotion of their approaching event, operators who engineer Spain's Screamin' Festival trumpet that Raunchy! offers "originals, sharp covers and a rhythm section that keeps strollers and shufflers locked in." To that sketch, I would add salt-of-earth vocals and guitar that knows well which foot-paths to take and how most entertainingly to navigate them. The Crazy Cavan cover shows precisely where members reside.

(Sharing the Screamin' bill will be the Delta Bombers, the Firebirds, Don Diego Trio, the Royal Flush, and numerous others. )

Recommended: "My Own Way of Rockin', "Big 5-0," "Flea Woman," "In Love," "Still as the Night," "I'm Walking," "Lulu"

Videos: "My Own Way of Rockin'"   "Big 5-0"   "Flea Woman"   "Lulu"

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Back in the Day, 2003

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

The Gospel of Blues

(Geffen)

Rock'n'Roll had no fixed starting point, gradually forming from disparate impulses. But resplendently enraptured Sister Rosetta was way back there: A guitar and voice so filled with Divine resonance as to shake away temporal trepidations, blending 1930s jazz, 1940s blues, and other rustic musical idioms into a new creature, delivering up a gospel-trimmed horn of plenty from which joyful belief spake. Only the faithful can rock like this.

Recommended: "This Train," "Sit Down," "Trouble in Mind," "Shout, Sister, Shout!," "God Don't Like It," "What is the Soul of Man?," "Singing in My Soul," "Strange Things Happening Every Day," "Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread," "Jonah," "Didn't It Rain," "The Natural Facts," "Down by the Riverside," "Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air"

Videos: "This Train"   "God Don't Like It"   "Strange Things Happening Every Day"   "Two Little Fishes and Five Loaves of Bread"   "Up Above My Head" (live)

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Rob Stoner

s/t

(Distributor: CDX Records)

Don McLean's 1971 radio staple "American Pie?" Rob was there. Later Robert Gordon and Bob Dylan recordings and road travels? Again, Rob was featured. Space constraints preclude exhaustive cataloging of many other high-visibility credits.

As this author's late guitarist brother Rick phrased it, Rob epitomizes music's backbone - players who don't adorn magazine spreads, but whose blue-ribbon capacities and indefatigable strivings make marquee personages sound so good.

This is Rob's third solo endeavor. (It follows 1980's Patriotic Duty and 1983's Sun Studios-waxed If You Want It Enough.) His personal compositions offer melodies and clever lyricism of executive bearing.

"Choo Choo Choo," "Let Daddy Drive," and "Your Own Heartbeat" were first glimpsed on Patriotic Duty. They rise as impressive, as do "Almost Like Being in Love," and "If I Get Home on Christmas Day."

Aside from individual smoothness, though, Rob has undertaken tony reiterations of American Pop's finest, the results being of sterling stock.

Microphone legends referenced include Ol' Blue Eyes, Guy Lombardo, Nat King Cole, Martini-swilling Deano, Vaughn Monroe, and Bing Crosby. (Nor are the King of Rock'n'Roll and the Wink Troubadour overlooked.) 

Unfurled are swinging tunes that, during post WWII evenings, were background for night-spot lotharios long-legging their ways toward victory-rolled pulchritude. Falling in beside are more crisp romps that acquit themselves just as rewardingly.

It goes without remark that top-drawer melody/poetry partnerships demand vocal gifts their equal. The starring maestro is suited to the calling, finding no strain elusive, no note beyond grasp. Lush instrumentation flows determinedly; boldly present are guitar pacings, rhythm enforcers, sublime strings, and brass elegance straight from the fridge. Production sensitivity portrays all in beribboned majesty.

Grand Big Band material resurrected include jolly airs ("Winter Wonderland," "Santa Claus is Coming To Town") and romantic intimacies that doubtlessly led elder generations to produce successive ones. ("Fly Me To the Moon" and "You Make Me Feel So Young" are but two of that fashion.)

Like the man said, everything old is new again.

Recommended: "Fly Me To the Moon," "Street of Dreams," "You Make Me Feel So Young, "Almost Like Being in Love," "Should I Ever Love Again," "Winter Wonderland," "Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me," "Let It Snow," "If I Get Home on Christmas Day," "Seven Days," "Choo Choo Choo," "Let Daddy Drive," "Your Own Heartbeat," "It's Now or Never," "Oh Pretty Woman," "Viva Las Vegas," "Surrender," "Hurt," "Follow That Dream"

Videos: "Fly Me To the Moon"   "Street of Dreams"   "You Make Me Feel So Young"   "Winter Wonderland"   "Let It Snow"   "If I Get Home on Christmas Day"   "Choo Choo Choo"   "Let Daddy Drive"

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The Troubled

"Hated"   single

(Self-issued)

Brace for bedlam: There comes a point where those beset by sustained abuse lose humanity's more pleasant aspects, and lash brutally against pretty much everyone and everything. (Such instinct also being inherent in our mortal condition.) "We're hated, and we don't give a fuck!" bellows the gutter-blast vocalist heading this snarled, Kyev-birthed Punk/Psychobilly smash-clap. 

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Freddy Velas and the Silvertones

"Oh Rose Marie"   single

(Vintjärn Records)

The present scribe reserves real estate in his heart for Doo Wop, the street-corner harmonizing that, in its halcyon phase, transported quotidian quartets to deserved renown. Italian Freddy Velas and pitch-perfect amicos are exactly the crew required to make present-day idioms draw back, that a vocal mode with enduring attraction can assume center spot. Their renderings are adroitness for the ears, populated by spot-on tones of pearly glow.

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