The Big Marteen's

Record Addict

(Sleazy Records)

Everything seizes attention at once: six strings erupting, high-and-mighty brass proudly abloom, skins slammed adamantly, and keys kicking up heels with massive exhileration. Comes brashly the voice, full of itself in the finest of manners; nary a note slighted, as tuneful bends unfurl. "Love and Compagny" conjures mesmerism with lower-case urbanity. A soothful moment amidst rumbustious schmozzle. As for "Good Rockin' Time" -- everyone's throwing wild on every instrument -- anyone who remembers the scene clearly wasn't really there. 

Recommended: "Big Lake," "Claudio," "Good Rockin' Time," "Record Addict," "Love and Compagny," "Bang Bang," "You Gave Your All to Rock'n'Roll"

Videos: "Big Lake"   "Claudio"   "Bang Bang"   "You Gave Your All to Rock'n'Roll"   

Facebook (Vince Bassou, guitar and vocals)

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Beast Records

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Sasham Disques

Sweet Grooves Records

grooves.land

Crazy Times Music

Juno

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)   

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Wild Karma

Ride for a Fall

(Crazy Wild Records)

As readers present will soon find, there's more to the Wild Karma story than rockin' stylizations that seem propelled from some straight-from-the-fridge, chrome-finned Seeburg.

June's Eight Ball Day #13 festival was to be hosted by the Teddy Cruisers, on their 20th anniversary, in Thise, France. But it was suddenly canceled by meddlesome, po-faced, government snoot-suits (despite considerable preparations, advertising, and band/fan arrangements), who were het up over a red heatwave alert (vigilance rouge canicule) and feared attendees might not possess the sense to seek healthful hydration.

Wild Karma's Facebook response: "Thanks to our dear elected officials for thinking of our place. We could have made the tragic mistake of drinking a cold beer at the counter in full autonomy. All this prep work wasted because we're treated like preschoolers who forgot their caps. Long live general infantilization!"

Wild Karma, then, are to be admired not just for sounds impressive, but also for exemplifying Rockabilly's sharp-stick-in-officialdom's-eye spirit.

Recommended: "Sparkle in Your Eyes," "I'm Not Comin' Home," "Ramblin' Down the Line," "Remember My Name," "The Train Has Never Passed," "Life is Beautiful, World is Rotten," "About the Story of You and Me," "Ride for a Fall," "When I'm Gone," "Let You Go Away"

Videos: "Sparkle in Your Eyes"   "Ramblin' Down the Line" (filmed video)   "Life is Beautiful World is Rotten" (filmed video)   "Ride for a Fall"

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The Black Prints

Short Stories

(Self-issued)

Assembled land of Macron bop merchants cite but one ambition: to play the Rebel Sound loved by millions of chain-swingers, and to do so eminently. That they succeed can be affirmed by fractured Blues de Traverse festival acolytes, as well as by lucky attendees at other national gonegonegone gatherings. Tracks present ring out whoppingly big and bold.

Recommended: "King Cadillac," "Blue Lady" (players stretch impressively), "Deathrace"

Video: No related clips were available at presstime. live (2023)

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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)

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Back in the Day, 2010

Wild Boogie Combo

Music for Females   bootleg 

(Chickens Records)

Hervé "Jake Calypso" Loison was one of the two pseudonymous, ex-Hot Chickens members who mongered proudly feral, give'em-the-sock thunderations in nights not distant. (Somewhere in regions uncharted, Hasil and Lux paused quaffing Frankenstein 'shine, and waved salutes.) Mr. Calypso and dirty business partner Theirry "Terry Reilles" Sellier  (under aliases Billy Cock and Willy Ass) accomplished two fine deeds: 1) ramping up enthusiasms in the creepered contingent, and 2) provoking staid neighbors to pound fruitlessly on shared apartment walls.

Reputedly of bootleg nature.

Recommended: "She's Mine," "Bip Bop Boom," "High School Confidential," "Roll Roll Train," "Bonie Maronie," "Baby Won't Come Out Tonight," "Rave On," "Woodpecker Rock," "Chicken Walk," "Tore Up"

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Don Cavalli

Sounds of Faith and Sorrow   vinyl

(Doghouse and Bone Records)

A man in a bar contemplated his despair. Later, the same man knelt in a pew, begging his Supreme Creator for salvation. Country music souls Jimmy Skinner and old-timey fellows understood such men. And voice-of-hard-scrabble Don Cavalli understands Country music.

This simple, acoustic work is limited to 300 LPs. 

Recommended: "Don't Give Your Heart to a Rambler," "The Old Crossroad," "With Body and Soul," "Memories of You," "Morning Light," "The Drunkard's Hell"

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Ronald / Fréquence Humaine

Said elsewhere to be reworking of a 1978 French novelty effort, the cut at hand burns past famed askew Tower with sparks shooting. Makes case that no tension encumbers relationship betwixt cranial-plumaged chord-uppercuts and courtliness. 

Video: "Je Suis en Gentil Punk"

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Dead Men Ride

Demo   digital

(Self-issued)

Hard-lashing out of Pau, three phantom riders guzzle homemade Tarantula Juice, ardency in their upraised voices. "Django Gazolina" calls to thought every spaghetti western Sergio Leone and his imitators lensed, with rudimentary Neo-Rockabilly substance laced into proceedings. (And pleasingly, similar double bass rattling - spider fingers acrawl - is upfront in each track.) Successive cuts "Tulsa" and "Abilene" gallop across saddle-slapping territories as if posses are hot upon their hoofprints.

Recommended: "Django Gazolina," "Tulsa," "Abilene"

Videos: "Django Gazolina"   "Abilene"

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Astro Zombies

Pre-Early Years   10"

(JANGR)

A gnarled finger hits Rewind. Speakers spew bare-boned 1996  cacophony, amid which are melded scraps of young Presley, Lawrence Talbot, and spiky, upstart, torn t-shirt legions. Two unissued slices lurk. The sound of street youth at liberty, rash yarns in their craws. To the degree demos can foreshadow celebrated cheeky curiosities, such is the matter in these 7 specimena. (Limited to 200 numbered discs.)

Recommended: "Astro Zombies Are Coming," "Vampire," "Magnetic Man," "The Mega Wave"

Video: promo

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Copasetic Mailorder

BeBe's Records

Crazy Love Records

Bad Billy Records

Jungle

Bear Family

The Pterodactyl Hunters

Terror in Demoland

(Crazy Love Records)

Country legend Cliff Stone observed "You gotta be bad, before you can be good." That may generally be so, but primitivism can have peculiar charm. And potency waves in these embryonic renderings. Pterodactyl Hunters were a French damage force that assembled, dare-deviltry in hearts and musical armaments at hand, back in Psycho's germinal period. Some acounts hold they ultimately lunged in somewhat sterner manner. The band's life spanned a brief 1989 - 1992 term) But their initial energies were of have-a-go animation, rollicking tunery (that sometimes skirted waggish madcapism), heaved by lads without cares, save for fun. Nothing wrong in that.

50 copies, in black, green, and orange vinyl, have thusfar been crafted.

Recommended: "Pterodactyl Airways," "Don't You Let Me Down,"  "Bitch Omaha Beach," "shout baby!," "Space Cowboy,"  "George Hamilton's Back," "It's Moving Inside," "Lonesome Train (on a Lonesome Train"

Videos: "Pterodactyl Airways"   "Bitch Omaha Beach"   "Space Cowboy" (live 1989)   "Don't You Let Me Down"   "Lonesome Train (on a Lonesome Track)"

Crazy Love

Bad Billy

diskunion

T*Becker Combo

four

(Records Freight)

Bordeaux and Roquefort are not the only piquant exports issuing from Macron's countryside; this proudly hayseed bop also merits regard. The T Becker Combo mirror the magical moment Hillbilly and spring-heeled exercises fused in America's Eisenhower-era South. They render good-times with a rollicking backbeat identical to the one that induced calloused regular folks to make juke-joint floors creak as they picked 'em up and put 'em down.

Recommended: "Bop A Billy Bop," "Would You Be Mine," "Don't Kiss Me Goodbye," "Sweet Heart of Mine," "I'm Back," "Let Me Sleep," "I Miss You Baby," "Let's Have a Good Time," "Why Do I Fall in Love"

Videos: promo   "Boogie Beat" (live, Béthune Rétro 2022)

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Spunyboys

Destination Unknown

(Ba Zique)

It's with good cause that France's Spunyboys enjoy international applause, a truth their latest waxing exemplifies. The rocking is appropriately stern. Polished harmonies stream (and, in moments, are redolent of early Lennon/McCartney). "Good Man, Deep Down" gestures at Dylan's "Don't Think Twice," but smoothly pursues fresh ambitions with gladsome consequence. Can be purchased in either CD or 12" vinyl incarnations.

Recommended: "Fame In Vain," "Good Man, Deep Down," "Blowin' In the Howlin' Wind," "Coffee Tox," "Destination Unknown," "In Dreams," "Dang Me"

Videos: "Fame In Vain"   "Good Man, Deep Down" (live session)

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Breakout

"No Time to Rest"   single

(Self-issued)

Their self-description ("Punk as fuck from Paris, France") blares the essential data, but the critical pen demands autonomous vent: Here handstands the out-loud exuberance that has always impelled important Rock'n'Roll, from Sun to CBGBs to a 15 year-old learning to bash an E chord at blinding velocity. Sneering guerillas of the avenues.

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