Simon Langhard

Alone   LP or CD

(Super Records)

Simon stepped from post as Peacocks' doghouse-negotiator, and his autonomy is revelatory: In addition to conversance in sundry stylings -- the gamut comprises Punk, Rockabilly, and Pop sparklings -- the songcraft pen he takes up is that of a master true.

Recommended: "Good Days Have Gone," "Last Day," "99 Percent," "The Girl with the Wandering Eye," "On the Outside Looking In," "I Always Thought If I Were You, I'd Love Me," "The Observer," "Rhythm Bound (Rousing)," "Silvery Moon"

Videos: "Good Days Have Gone"   "Last Day"   "Silvery Moon"

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CeDe (Switzerland)

Rockaway Beach (Bern)

Crazy Love (Germany)

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Cherie Currie

The Cleopatra Sessions

(Cleopatra)

As always, Cherie's brash assertiveness has you and grabs you, until you're sore. And studio cohorts named Ramone, Chrome, Kramer, and Derringer topple mountains. But absent -- unavoidably, though no less dispiritingly --  is the jabbing-tongue, dance-on-switchblade-edge rumbustiousness that made Runaways '76 a livewire proposition. (The fuck-you reinvention of "I Got You Babe" does sideswipe teen midnight memories.)

Recommended: "Cherry Bomb," "I Can See You," "Leader of the Pack," "I Got You Babe"

Videos: "I Can See You"   "I Got You Babe"   

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Cleopatra

Antone's Record Shop

Analog Vault

Tune Town

Rattleback Records

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Mad Martin Trio

Five Years Hot as Hell

(Sleazy Records)

A slap-bass/skin-poundings bottom so rocklike it shakes the joint; singing packed with the exuberance of dangerzone hot-rodding; guitar licks that rip clean through the cat-style songbook, carving new lessons as they flash...Factor in song-writing fermented in the ways of rebellious heroes.

Recommended: "Big Fight on Saturday Night," "Roads for Broken- Heated Times," "Black and White," "Get Rhythm," "Para Siempre," "Like a Rocket," "To Las Vegas," "Tell Me"

Videos: "Big Fight on Saturday Night" (live)   "Like a Rocket" (live)   "To Las Vegas"

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Back in the Day, 2008

Three Blue Teardrops

Heads Up! for '53...Here Comes - 

(Self-issued)

In the manner of a chrome-piped '55 Delray wheelin' down some gravel country road, the Teardrops aim their killer precision on the crazy horizon, never throwing eyes toward the rearview. Heads Up! first elbowed its way into bins in 1992. Eight cuts were rerecorded and released as 1993's One Part Fist. 

Still quite active (and preparing fresh product for Spring 2027), the trio lays down big bass-slappin' 'billy with nary a frill, but abiding faith in their Delray's firepower. 

Recommended: "Long Hard Night," "Rough and Tumble World," "West Texas Timebomb," "Comin' Home," "Shotgun Wedding," "Wished Upon a Star," "Go! She-Devil," "Another Doggone Satueday Night," "Ricochet Rhythm Rockabilly"

Video: "Long Hard Night" (Live 2016)   "Rough and Tumble World" (Live 2016)   "Ricochet Rhythm Rockabilly"

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Clem Anderson

Students of popular musics recognize that trains are a common metaphor for life changes. But they need to get their noses out of intellectual folderal, and dig that this flat drives.

Video: "Midnight Train"

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Quentin Scott Jones and QDK

From opening Batman theme tearoff, tinselly hijinx blare in chandelier-swinging merriment. Saxophone and 88s jump into wreath. "Do the twist with me!"

Video: "Twistin' on Christmas Eve"

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Cab, Corman co-features                                        

Hi De Ho (1947)

Hi-De-Ho was predated by a 1934 short film called Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho.

Both story and screenplay for this one were credited to Hal Seeger. As a teen, he'd ghost-written the Betty Boop newspaper comic strip, and later wrote films for Moms Mabley (Boarding House Blues) and Dusty Fletcher (Killer Diller). He produced 1960s Saturday morning cartoon show Milton the Monster. 

Even as a developing talent, Cab's bandleader character radiates big-time potential -- a hummer straight down the alley. He's enlisted shrewd manager Nettie -- whose know-how elevates him into a regular club gig -- but apprehension about their closeness inspires saltiness in his fine-dinner main-queen Minnie.

Minnie's resentment leads her to employment as a singer. The club owner who's retained her is also something of a crime boss. His joint is just down the street from Cab's frolic pad, and he's eager to assist Minnie since Cab's increasing popularity has cut into his profit margin.

Glide in his stride, outlandish hepster suits, Tommy-gun scat hyperventilations -- pencil-mustachioed Swing-Jazz ringleader Cab simply was stylin' personified. Solid murder.

Numerous Cab songs were featured, including "Zah-Zuh-Zah," "The Hi-De-Ho Man, and "Don't Falter at the Altar" (Seeger had a hand in crafting the lyrics of that last).

Cab's character is eventually confronted by gangsters hefting heaters on orders from Minnie's crime-bigwig employer. And it is the canary who takes a bullet meant for Cab.

As her life-spark ebbs, and upon her request, he croons "Minnie's a Hepcat Now." This dramatic portrayal seems a logical ending point - the singer consoling Minnie in her last moments, assuring her of his solicitude and faithfulness.

But what could have been a powerful conclusion proves only a gateway into further plotting. We see Cab's professional ascension, as depicted through shifting images of streamliners' big wheels clackin' around, marquee lights piercing night blackness, Nettie and Cab's business collusions, and Variety editions.

Hi-De-Ho's concluding half-hour finds in-the-gravy Cab togged to the bricks, really mezz, and at professional acme: Feet a-blur, eyes laughing, hair tousled and flung wildly -- and deploying barrelhouse, motor-mouth staccatoes -- he flourishes a baton erratically, as if he's swatting juiced-up flies, and leads crackerjack Swing cats through madjack gangbusters.

As slush-pumps, licorice sticks, and the hide-slapper beat it out,  elegant, bubble-water-guzzling patrons of the Art Deco frolic pad fall out and go native.

A slew of rug cutters then laid iron, and the sumptious (and unanticipated) wedding of Cab and Nettie closes both the early black's entertainment and film. 

When gum-beaters ponder matters of heptitude, the wise evoke Mr. Cab. Anyone who doesn't know should shut their yaps and dig the learning experience.

(Some slang above was derived from Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, published in 1939.)

Hi De Ho trailer

Cab song clips: "Zah-Zuh-Zah"   "At Dawn Time"   "Minnie's a Hepcat Now"

Rock All Night (1957)

We turn now to consider exploitation films' grimmer aspect.

Crime mini-drama (just 61 minutes in duration) Rock All Night was inspired by a Jane Wyman Show TV episode. Produced by drive-in disposables czar Roger Corman, it was filmed in one week, on just two sets. 

At the opening, serenades are bestowed by the impeccable Platters, strangely on the low-rent dive's stage. Their pacific toneology proves but momentary ease.

Singer Julie (Abby Dalton) auditions for the proprietors; beret-topped, goateed manager Sir Bop had arranged her tryout. Dick Miller  -- later Walter Paisley in Corman's 1959 Bucket of Blood -- is among slouched patrons. 

The bar becomes a hideout for two hoods, on the lam after sticking up a grocery store. The dominant ne'er-do-well of the pair is Russell Johnson -- in future years Gilligan's Island's Professor. Among other gentilities, he shoots a young man in the back.

"We'll each grab one'a these dames, we'll stick a gun in their ribs, and walk outta here like they're our dates!," snarls Johnson-the-hooligan at a later point, finger on the trigger of a gat he'd perhaps contrived from a coconut.

Police move in. Crime doesn't pay. 

The Platters reportedly had only a single day open for filming, which acounts for the combo's scant screen time. Also appearing was group the Blockbusters. Their three songs included "Rock'n'Roll Guitar," and were considerably wilder. Given that, they were perhaps more credible as attractions in the seamy tavern than the urbane Platters.

American International Pictures distributed Rock All Night to grindhouses across America, where it was likely paid only cursory attention by smooching sophmores.

Rock All Night: Trailer   Compilation clip (13: 27 - Two Platters songs, Three Blockbusters ones)

Don Diego Trio

Too Many Miles

(Mule Train Rec)

The trio's high repute is common wisdom in roots enclaves globe-wide. And it's the ease with which Don and pals bend strings and phrases into real-world pictographs -- viscerally familiar to common men who pull rigs, get hands calloused in a million other ways, and close down bar after bar -- that distinguishes them as note-dealers of top rank.

Recommended: "Too Many Miles," "A Place to Hide," "Spell," "Big Fish," "Silver Hair," "Dr. Fuzz," "The Time We're Apart," "DD Train," "Kentuky Means Paradise"

Videos: "Too Many Miles"   "Big Fish"   "Dr. Fuzz"   

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Big Art Peters

Quit Horsing Around

(Self-issued / Rhythm Bomb Records)

Now available as digital download is this 2010 Rhythm Bomb release. (Physical copies can still be purchased.) Hard-lashed bopification (that slurred lyrics with snake-pit wristband accent) sprang all swinging arms and galloping legs from Lurker Arturo Bassick. (Perpetually in-pocket accomplices included Tex Morton, Holly Burnette, and Andy Laaf.) Hillfolk swayings common to rough-hewn cabins two miles from one another -- ones that don't bear street numbers -- buckdance till who laid the chunk. Big Art even salutes Porter and Ray.

Recommended: "Hootin' and Howlin'," "Rubber Room," "Grown Up Evil," "Hoppin' Mad," "Cold Hard Facts of Life," "On the Trail," "God and Chips," "I Don't Wanna Get Thin," "Punk Rock Brought Us Together (But Country Tore Us Apart)," "Girl from Hell," "Corrina Corrina"

Videos: "Rubber Room" (Live)   "Hoppin' Mad"   "God and Chips" (Live)

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Back in the Day, 2015

The Detonators

Monster in a Box

(Self-issued)

When this was crisp, one reviewer noted it was recorded live in two days, with each song visited but twice. Professionals know how to nail it.

But they don't let acumen render them inaccessible -- far distant. Imagine four hale and well-met elbow-benders down the bar from you, clambering onto the bandstand. A cascade of everyman, Blues-soaked Rock'n'Roll floods the place, impelling grins in all corners.

IsraBox quoted one Detonator as laughing: "We hope you enjoy our new CD as much as we enjoyed making it. We had a ball and lots of laughs doing it, we’ll see you at a gig or a festival somewhere, come up and say hello. We’ll be at the bar probably!”

Recommended: "Monster in a Box," "Tough Stickers," "Sober and Straight," "Best Band in the Land," "She Detonates My Rocket," "Health Cigarettes," "Bump Bump Bump," "Line and Tackle"

Videos: "Monster in a Box" (Live)   "She Detonates My Rocket" (Live)   "Line and Tackle"

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Back in the Day, 2004

Paul Galaxy and the Galactix

Slingshot

(Rollin' Rock)

Airtight Rock Billy Boogie. Denver denizen Paul withdrew from scene view sometime following Slingshot's issuance. (It was the third disc produced by the combo.) Word was that the devastating picker with pipes of chrome had tired of the genre grind. One must honor one's own druthers, I suppose. But the players ("Mad Dog" Mike Minnick and Chris "Chopper" Cordoba) were thoroughly fit, and these 14 stacked tracks -- possessed of obstreperousness derived, surely, from Gene Summer's alma mater -- made for a straight-from-fridge headstone.

Recommended: "White Train," "Slingshot," "Firecracker," "On a Mission," "Piranha," "Lunar Swing," "Don't Push Your Luck," "All I Want," "Model A," "Solar Flare," "Round the World"

Videos: "White Train"   "Firecracker"   "Lunar Swing"   "Model A"

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Goofin' Records

Schmin

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CLASS

Somewhere between this song's recording and today, the three became four (see photos below). In Pop-Punk, perhaps, the more the merrier. Nothin' wrong be being happy all over.

Video: "Are You Feeling Okay?"

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Jimmi Accardi

Jimmi voices the ache suffered by admirers who intuit their devotion-from-afar would go unrequited. It's identical to that articulated in classic "The Girl from Ipanema," with Pop gentility that cushions (somewhat) delicious agony.

Video: "That Little Girl"

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Six-String Samurai and Wild Zero inject indie voltage     

These unusual contenders hot-wired both niche cinema and popular music. Each brought much that fans of nonconformity could relish. Neither garnered stauettes from Hollywoodland high-hats, a reality that only further recommends them.

Six-String Samurai (1998)

Were Sonny Chiba and Alan Freed to collaborate on a screenplay, after huffing Carbona and telephoning L. Frank Baum...

In a 1957 America that had been devastated by Russian nuclear bombing, one DJ sounds a siren for musicians to travel to Lost Vegas and seek the title new king of Rock'n'Roll. 

Guitarist and swordsman Buddy heeds the call. The name, and the black-frame eyeglasses he wears, communicate symbolization of Buddy Holly. The character is animated by Jeffrey Falcon, a martial-arts phenom who'd previously made Hong Kong fight films. 

Buddy is a soul of scant verbiage; when he does speak, it's generally with deadpan cynicism. Words are bitten off.

Among the film's action sequences are his acrobatic leaps, mid-air revolvings, and flying fist-and-foot-forward defenses. Plentiful are the battles that erupt throughout his sometimes motorcycled quest.

Note: When challenged, Buddy draws a sword strapped behind his guitar. This calls to mind the rifle barrel that extended from the acoustic guitar Roy Orbison's protagonist carried in 1967's The Fastest Guitar in the West. A similar concept was that of Robert Rodriguez's1990s El Mariachi / Desperado main figure routinely carrying a guitar case packed with weaponry.

The landscape across which Buddy treks is predominantly empty -- save for the wreckage of commercial civilization -- swept by sweltering gusts, and sporadically populated by murderous, ragtag bandits.

Igor and the Red Elvises play 14 songs. Included: "United States of Russia," "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Love Pipe," and "Boogie On the Beach." (Also pivotal to soundtrack construction was composer Brian Tyler.)

 The former real-life buskers seem somehow apt in the dystopian circumstance. As can no others, they roll out kaleidoscopic and technicolor Rock and Roll, Funk, Polka, Surf, Reggae, and Disco. 

Traditional Folk airs, too, clap hands, throw back laughing heads, and jitter bop into hysterical fracture. 

Buddy and an unnamed "Kid" he's rescued persist across unforgiving terrains. Along their way to Lost Vegas, they encounter a bowling bandits gang. A Slash-like Death challenges Buddy to guitar battle, pitting his Heavy Metal against Buddy's style.

When Death goes down to ignominious defeat, the villain lord's followers attack with guns and archer's bows. (Buddy turns aside incoming arrows with his sword. The gambit is not unlike Wonder Woman deflecting bullets via wristlets.)

Though Buddy rallies after taking a bullet protecting the Kid, he ultimately succumbs. The Kid dons the deceased adventurer's attire and glasses. He transmogrifies into Buddy.

And Rock'n'Roll forges ahead.

Six-String Samurai trailer

Igor and the Red Elvises: "Love Pipe"   "Boogie on the Beach"

Wild Zero (1999)

Wild Zero's extensive footage of Punk bunker-buster Guitar Wolf's onstage blow-ups alone is sufficient to warrant acquisition. But the narrative featuring the trio as enigmatic, superpowered saviors -- not bound by time and space constraints -- in a time when zombies have risen, also merits regard. 

During opening credits, director George Romero is acknowledged as an inspiration. As was so in Romero's Dawn of the Dead series, gore of such cartoonish quality as to be shrugged away crosses the Wild Zero screen in vomitous explicitness. 

Similarly acknowledged are NYC legends the Ramones. That foursome's influence -- both trenchant and Pop-aware -- is apparent in Guitar Wolf's hyper-detonations.

The invasion of lurching zombie legions is preceded by a meteor strike, and was seemingly engineered by a mysterious fleet of sky-hurtling saucers. 

While the doings of would-be King of Cool Ace are uninteresting, one bit is noteworthy: After an early zombie onslaught, Guitar Wolf gives Ace a whistle, advising him that tooting it when danger looms will summon the trio.

Fans of vintage Japanese sci fi flicks will recall 1964's Prince of Space. The titular hero gave one youngster a handheld device. "If you ever need me again, just turn the dial," the masked starman counseled. Wild Zero's producers surely remembered.

The splatterings of zombie conflicts and neat shots of swooping UFOs excite, but it's the Guitar Wolf performances that inject electric adrenaline. Camera angles tilt and zoom, and multi-colored lights flash, as the sunglassed agressors lean 110% into ear-battering thunderation.

Remarkably, no accounts attributing third-degree burns to the pyro-provocateurs have populated headlines. Theirs has always been a shatteringly loud and vehement Punk onrush that bombards with Link Wray and (again) Ramones-provoked bellicosity. 

Gang-leader Seiji snarls and jackhammers with uni-dimensional purposefulness; his shaded and leather-wrapped accomplices detonate precision furiousness.

(I have it on reliable imaginary authority that jagged-toothed Rock'n'Roll of incalculable velocity is the audio equivalent of Ponce de León's diving pool.)

In 2024, Guitarwolf Records announced a sequel was planned. Wild Zero 2: The Strongest Blood of Humanity was to be crowd-funded.  To date, though, it has not been marketed.

Wild Zero trailer

Guitar Wolf: "Hoshizora Jet"   "Jet Generation"