J.C. Thomaz and the Missing Slippers

s/t

(Slovenly Recordings)

I know it'll be hard to believe, but I'm 96% positive I encountered these happily delirious stimulatons in a forbidden-substance 1978 hallucinogenic episode: Maila Nurmi was at the frying pan, Jimmy Carter was passed out on a bean-bag chair, and a composite party band including day-glo flamboyances from the Dolls, 13th Floor Elevators, Cramps -- and innumerable, determinedly insurgent 1967 middle-class neighborhood Garage bands no one ever heard of -- was swinging ga-ga chops omnidirectionally. Pheromones were running down paneled walls.

You hadda be there.

(When the guys with butterfly nets run bed check and discover this latex/fishnets menagerie absent, they're gonna be out looking.)

Recommended: "Cheat R Bad," "She's a Wave," "Kelly Lynn," "Over Me," "Unchained Insanity," "Walk the Streets," "Shit on the Street"

Videos: "Cheat R Bad"  "She's a Wave"   "Kelly Lynn" (live)   "Isadore's Peace of Mind" (live)

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Stompin' Riffraffs

Maybe it was a hush-hush Army atomic experiment that transmogrified Frankie, Annette, and other Go-Go beach teens into the Robot Monster, She-Creature, and miscellaneous misshapen products of drive-in screamers, now lurching in attempts to pull off dance sensations that are sweeping the nation. The world will never know.

Video: "Horror Show"

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Wild Records

OP ED

E.P. by OP ED

(Self-issued)

All thunderslaps are concise and race furiously, tuneful architecture stabbing gray matter.

Recommended: "Poetry About Narcotics," "Inept Pimps," "Subordinate," "Death Wish"

Video: live August 2025 (Four songs, two from above EP)

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Back in the Day, 1999

The Neanderthals

The Modern Stone-Age Family

(Sundazed)

"Mastodon's" measured distorto-chords and trenchant beat recall both the Kinks and Los Straitjackets' choreographed stomps. That last hardly surprises, given that Eddie Angel teamed with Johnny Rabb to perpetrate this wiggy beach bash. 

Straitjackets drummer Pete Curry is a sometime accomplice. And bassist Sam Bolle, whose resume includes Dick Dale, Fear, and Agent Orange, has hands in certain carbonated sensations, as well.

All tracks but one clock in under 3:00, which means outta sight bends and gasser shenanigans must make cases briskly. Eddie crafted Fun Gone Wild tunes with characteristic surf/garage erudition. 

High moments ride mondo waves to transister jollification: "Toe Rag Twitch" transmogrifies "The Bedrock Twitch," and has teens the scene 'round doing dance sensations that are sweeping the nation. "Remember the Twist" juices the juke with experimental octane. 

Were it not for Dippity-Do and Aqua Net, the ponytails and rat-tail-comb-teased bouffants of chicks shaking hips to "Flintstone Flop," "King of the Twist," and "Neanderthal Twist" would fast resemble peroxided shambles.

Select reinventions - with combo eyes ever toward shimmy-shimmy diversion - include Addams Family actor Ted Cassidy's 1965 "Lurch;" "I Go Ape" (a 1959 Neil Sedaka racer that England's Wee Willie Harris covered to riotous effect); novelty group The Martians' 1959 "Tarzan;" "Rockin' in the Jungle" (The Eternals' 1959 side); and "Shaggy Dog," waxed by Mickey Lee Lane in 1964. 

Sundazed reissued Modern Stone-Age Family in 2023, on white translucent vinyl. 

Recommended: "Mastodon," "Shaggy Dog," "I Go Ape," "Tarzan," "Toe Rag Twitch," "Remember the Twist," "Flintstone Flop," "Rockin' the Jungle," "King of the Twist," "Neanderthal Twist"

Videos: "Mastodon"   "I Go Ape" (live)   "Remember the Twist"   "King of the Twist"   "Neanderthal Twist"

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The Cramps

Smell of Female   CD or digital

(Big Beat Records / Ace)

Big Beat loosed anew several of the cellar-discotheque ghouls' back platters, 1983's Smell of Female being one twistedly alluring specimen. Kid Congo had by this juncture thrown in with caclcified cryptkeepers Lux, Ivy, and Nick Knox (scarred and gaunt Bryan Gregory having taken his axe beneath ground). Reverential reinventions of Roky Erickson, Hasil Adkins, and a notorious, curvy  cult flick invaded. Six tracks taken from a Peppermint Lounge spectacle the original release offered are here joined by bonus slices "Beautiful Gardens" and "She Said," recorded in the same witching hours. Additional extra song "Surfin' Dead" was the scare-cell's contribution to 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead. 

Recommended: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love," "You Got Good Taste," "Faster Pussycat," "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound," "Psychotic Reaction," "Beautiful Gardens," "She Said," "Surfin' Dead"

Videos: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" (live)   "Faster Pussycat"    "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound" (live)   "Surfin' Dead" (official video)

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GOONS!

Never Go Back

(Hi-Tide Recordings)

A cliche in crime entertainment is the "perp always returns to the scene of the crime" axiom; perhaps that prompted title Never Go Back. New York's rave-up Goons scheme in the same comic-book crook guises as do the Madrid-based Bank Robbers. Too, each cases seriously unserious Garage/Rockabilly joints, with Hullabaloo dance-off fun being the black-market haul - in bulging white bag with oversized dollar-sign emblem. 

Here, Farfisa abets Graham Tichy's treble-string-stinging, '60s partytime arousal. Hooks can be tracked to transister radios glued to the shaggy noggins of fastback-years teens taking sidewalk skateboards over home-built ramps. "Land of a Thousand Crimes" bespeaks Wicked Pickett emulation. 

"Crime just can't be beat!" crow the Goons. (Don't let Officer Dibble hear you say that.)

Recommended: "Never Go Back" "Parchman Farm," "Jailbird," "I've Waited So Long," "Driving Wheel," "Lockdown," "Roll Call," "Stick 'em Up," "Land of a Thousand Crimes," "Rob Cheat Steal"

Videos:   "Jailbird"   "I've Waited So Long"   "Stick 'em Up" (reel)   "Rob Cheat Steal"   

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Down in the Valley

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Automatic Lovers

s/t   12" vinyl and digital

(Wap Shoo Wap Records / FOLC Records)

Spring 1976: I tore shrink-wrap from the Ramones' world-rending debut Sire LP. And I didn't lift stylus from vinyl (except to flip the platter) until concluding "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World's" 2:09 had totally ebbed into ether.

Madrid's Automatic Lovers' maiden waxing recalls that pivotal episode. Not that the group is of identical rank - so, what band could claim that glue-sniffing distinction? - but because their record is equally solid. No tracks merit skipping.

Songs are grabbed up, shaken thoroughly, and booted into some future week. All are magnetic exercises in Punkishly frenzied, glad-to-be-young-and-kicking Rock'n'Roll, that is ardent enough to include guitar ferality amidst confederate raging, and sufficiently astute to maintain compositional brevity. 

1976 hype was that the debuting Ramones had blown out Plaza Sound Studios' speakers. I would not be flabbergasted to learn such had also been the case, here.

Recommended: "Wasting Time," "High Degree," "Pushin Too Hard," "Long Gone," "Out of Control," "Hardbeat," "WGTEYEO," "Shoot at Me," "What Do I Know," "Take My Hand," "Twist and Die"

Videos: "Wasting Time"   "Out of Control" (live)   "Pushin' Too Hard"   

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The Edwoods / A. Clementina

"Plan 9" / "Danger!"

(Headshrinker Records)

Two specimina of under-soil Garagery, with emphases on dire formulizing. Dense, harsh cacophony marks the former - a sort of crashes and bashes brutalizing - while Headshrinker Alaska (under sobriquet "A. Clementina") offers up startling pronouncements, as exclusively bass-and-drums desolation rivets.

Video: "Plan 9" / "Danger!"

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Horror Deluxe, A. Clementina

"Videodromo" & "I'm Just a Monster"   digital

(Headshrinker Records)

What fresh/cool madness is this? The he and she skronk-mongers* of HD, and sparseness shoveler Headshrinker Alaska, scatch across wax portraits unnerving. Instance the first? A twisted wreck of torn metalpunk tittilation. Flip "A. Clementina" entry? An insistent,  guitarless, stream-of-unhingedness. 

Video: promo clip

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* A term borrowed from late Creem scribe Rick Johnson.

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Angela Tini

Here Comes Trouble

(Rum Bar Records)

Downtown streets must have been calm; all the cool cats were makin' the studio scene to raise up this bonfire.

Their swingalong-matches rank included Carl Sonny Leland (piano/organ/production/arranger), Deke Dickerson (bass/sax/backing voice), Tommy Harkenreider (guitar), Zander Griffith (upright and electric basses), and Josh Collazo (drums). The ace Dynaflos happened by, too, and flipped tops on their own Ronsons.

Local fire-fighting boys were on standby.

Star Miss Angela wove her elegant witchcraft betwixt all the motivatin' Jazz and Rhythm & Blues airs. Hers is a magnificent fashion that punches across the cool-to-hot spectrum, with smoky glamour whispers, mellifluous sailings, and Ruth Brown-caliber beltings that could scorch holes through cement-brick walls.

Asbestos alligators are presently opening their wallets.

Recommended: "Can't Stop Me," "Too Many Secrets," "Honey Never Spoils," "Forty Cups of Coffee," "Tout Doucement," "Every Night," "Turn Me Loose," "Here Comes Trouble," "Don't Let Me Down," "Never No More," "Good Thing," "Confess," "Not Lonely for You"

Videos: "Can't Stop Me,"   "Too Many Secrets"   "Tout Doucement"   "Here Comes Trouble"

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Mr. Fab & his Bag O' Heads

Taste the Brides of Drac-enstein   digital album

(Jungle Room Records)

We're in weird company, when a theremin's hanging around. But off-kilter sorts dig the spookiness. As the haunted house hullabaloo devolves into ghastly Go-Go groove, and life forms not-of-this-reality do dance sensations that are sweeping the nation, Mr. Fab unchains kooky 1960s Garage bash-rhythms that feature all manner of sideways instrumentation, single-and-choral voice manifestations, totally unforseen brass gesticulations, and percussive knickknocks. Archived from the last century's second-half decades, these uncanny novelty romps - sporadically punctuated by drive-in flick blurbs - would have teenage future-Luxes up all night, cranking GE transisters under sheets, when they're supposed to have turned over keys to the Sandman.

Recommended: "Skeleton Crew on the Graveyard Shift," "Ghost Zombie Goes to Town," "Cannibal Zombie Mom," "Casper the Friendly Queen," "I Want My Mummy," "Thereming"

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Killer Tone Jones

Electric

(Planet X)

KTJ issues pronouncements in unnerving hush. Lyrics slash-paint grim tableaus, seemingly nightmared in some decaying, lightning-illuminated, hilltop mansion. And stoic accompanists represent the cream of unspeakable dimensions. Just as one is happily stunned by morbidity that snakes through tracks, so, too, does obvious creative intellect rise for recognition. Movements were constructed with bloodshot eyes ever to effect. Unclear is the manner in which this taboo document was smuggled from behind Monster World lines.

Recommended: "Sharknado Apocalypse (Redux 26)," "Crush the Bone (Redux 26)," "Godzilla Rock," "Dead Stick (Redux 26)," "Formaldehyde," "Bad Barbie," "Knuckle Muscle"

Videos: promo (:38)   "Sharknado Apocalypse (Redux 26)"   "Formaldehyde"   "Bad Barbie"   

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Burgers Gone Wild

Mystery Meat   Limited digital/vinyl/cassette

(Self-issued)

There was/is a Carbondale Punk assemblage called Pet Mosquito. Basement remnants now put boots to la-di-da, in ultra primitive lo-fi status. Unpolished concepts tossed hither and yon - very much to the advantage. (Gloss, after all, is incongruous to the fireworks presently in our meat hooks.) Punks gonna Punk.

Recommended: "Blasted," "One-Inch Punch," "Sluriform," "Sword Swallower," "Mystery Meat"

Videos: Entire release   "One Inch Punch"   Theme song (live, 2:26)   Tiny Desk Contest (live, 1:54)   

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Album of the Year (68 user score)

Feral Housecats

Go Feral Yourself!

(Hot Boots Records)

Rock'n'Roll has become a global, multi-billion-greenback corporate behemoth, with its own mega-luminaries tarted up in pricey, designer fashions and a 'money talks' Hall of Fame that excludes actually meritorious sorts of that specified genre in favor of made-to-order Hip Hop gagmen. 

Feral Housecats are an indispensible 'fuck you' to such overblown commodified/domesticated shenanigans, much as was the glorious Punk eruption of the 1970s. There are occasional, unsanded edges here. And that's entirely okay. Rock'n'Roll (as was first germinated, and remains in true believers' hearts) isn't supposed to cover its mouth when sneezing. 

These guys dig to death the cool dirtiness they do. And that truth-in-tuneful-demolition is one matter that separates authentics from counterfeits. Another is outsiderness of the sort that guarantees one's John Hancock never shows up on tea-luncheon invitation scrolls. 

These 11 ditties alternatively scream, lope, mesmerize, and spring forth unstoppably, with each player pounding out 110 percent. Far and away, most rock-'em-sock-'em tracks emanated from the hip pen of guitar/vocals man Greg McGill. (Rounding out this well-turned, no-garage-could-hold-'em ensemble are bassist David Evans, drummer Malcolm Bliss, and guitarist David Auden.) 

Now and again, gestures redolent of classical songs that once hummed from car dashboard radios while he's and she's got down to business find ways into arrangements, but always with idiosyncratic sways. Souls uncrating this thankfully ragged effort, during big-grin appraisals, will dig bits of Contours, Lux Interior and David Byrne (in vocal moments), The Forest Hills pinheads, and Fun Comes In Spurts curl-shooting that's led-wayward wigged-out kids since Roky Erickson first met the 13th Floor Elevators.

Rock'n'Roll should never be welcome in scrupulously polite environs. The humongous thing the calculator crowd has made of our music is of no interest to devotees of the real article. But never forget that all that garbage was built atop sounds rebellious, spirited, and that Feral Housecats heft high the torch.

Recommended: "Gee, I Wish I Could Paint," "I Hope," "Murder in the Basement," "Strong Bones and Sharp Teeth," "I Luv U But I Hate U2," "Something Good," "An FHc's Surfing Theme," "I Shoulda," "Sniper," "Don't Go Home with L. Cohen"

Videos: "Gee, I Wish I Could Paint"   "Strong Bones and Sharp Teeth"   "Sniper"

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The White Musk

Grubby Plum R'n'R   digital album

(Dying Art Productions)

As the 9 tracks here indicate, Guangzhou Province offers more than merely avant-garde architecture. The DIY "first—and last—full-length album of South China’s retro rock‘n’roll sound" stomps wherever the hell whims direct. The work is a crazy quilt of obstreperous Punk, anonymous thunderation, and purposefully unprocessed storminess cooked up in a Garage marked "Enter at your own risk." Blast this at 3AM; neighbors will thank you.

Recommended: "Billy Don't Puke on Your Suit," "2.55," "Leather Biker," "Welcome to the Freak Show," "Vintage Porn," "Wild Cat," "Rockabilly A-Go Go"

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Killer Tone Jones

The Resurection Doktor   vinyl

(Crazy Love)

16 tracks compiled from previous EPs. Neither medical science nor law enforcement offer explanation for this aberrant life essence. Even explorers combing darkened drive ins and ratty Punk dives are nonplussed. But mohawked monsters dig. When shards of Psycho and other mutant subgenres have coalesced within the confines of a taboo Garage, the creature produced has but one ambition: revelry of dark hallmark. Get in / make your point / get out dictates song construction - that's as should be. Strings that slither through eerie precincts, low-end bass negotiations, and appropriately uncomplicated drumwork provide fitting backdrop for throat pipes that seem scraped off paranormal floor stones.

Recommended: "Crush the Bone," "The Creeper," "The Girl from Planet X," "Death Cabaret," "Drums of the Dead," "Bad Barbie," "Knuckle Muscle"

Videos: "Crush the Bone" (live)   "The Girl from Planet X"   "Bad Barbie" (live audio)   "Knuckle Muscle"

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The Crabs 

RAW 2 - The Remixes   CD or cassette

(Self-issued)

UK sparkplugs who once stomped and swiped determinedly. Brusqueness, brevity, and kick-ass dispatch are necessary components of dyed-in-leather Punk, as are crudity and curled-lip contempt for polite-society strictures. All that comes from the heart - schlepping along three fingers of cheeky outlook. 

Preserved cuts are practice-session ones. "Recorded as a 3-piece by simply placing a 1980's consumer tape recorder with built-in mics at the front of the rehearsal room and letting rip - this lo-fi d.i.y. masterpiece has now been remixed for your listening pleasure," was the group's description on Get Music's site.

Recommended: "R.A.M.O.N.E.S.," "Celibate Blues," "Swampthing"

Video: "Swampthing" (live, penultimate gig, prior to early '90s disbanding)

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The Mighty Interceptors

scream if you wanna go faster   EP

(Self-issued)

Methinks singing guitar-slinger McKinley Chadwick is the Mighty Interceptors (at least on this waxing), insomuch as he alone crafted all tunery, played each insttrument, and undertook mixing/mastering toils. (Sidemen being enlisted for gig/touring obligations, no doubt.) 

Last October, a band Facebook missive hailed this disc as sounding "pretty darn evil," that high salute merited by the unveiled song sextet. "We're the Interceptors" kickstarts proceedings; besides foreshadowing rash energies ahead, it deftly acquits itself as one of the bygone safety-pin contingent's more obstreperous progeny. 

While Punk helter-skelteredness curls its lip throughout, it revels with co-conspirators of brusque Psycho and Garage tempers. The abruptly torn-off solo of the title cut, if heard on a car radio, might cause drivers to jerk upright and veer into oncomers.

Recommended: "We're the Interceptors," "Alien Rock'n'Roll," "Evil Woman," "Scream if You Wanna Go Faster"

No videos for the new disc are available. Previous live clips are here, here, and here.

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The Sparkles

The Complete Recordings

(El Vidocq)

These 1960s Levelland, Texas, Garage personages are prized by afficianados of that unique, gritty sound. They slouch in the rank of Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, and Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators; at least certain of the combo's cracking wax was produced by Norman Petty, he of Buddy Holly and Crickets renown. Employing two drummers, they put to vinyl some of that era's coolest racket, a truth known to owners of Pebbles, Nuggets, and other sub-genre compendiums. Included among somewhat obscure riches is "No Friend of Mine," the Sparkles' biggest triumph. (Occasional surface noise only accentuates vintage.) They are even said to have inspired the '80s Fuzztones. Indeed, that group covered several Sparkles numbers.

Previously a 2019 Jukebox Music Factory release. JMF is also the property of El Vidocq owner Laurent Laffargue.

Recommended: "The Hip," "He Can't Love You," "The U.T.," "Oh, Girls, Girls," "No Friend of Mine," "Hipsville 29 B.C. (I Need Help)," "I Want to be Free," "Something That You Said (Makes Me Cry," "Daddy Gonna Put the Hurt on You," "Jack and the Beanstalk"

Videos: "The Hip"   "No Friend of Mine"   "Hipsville 29 B.C. (I Need Help)"   "Jack and the Beanstalk"

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Black Valley Moon

We Sleep    two-track digital release

(Songs From Oa)

Daring sorts who've pushed-wide oak doors of haunted Old Dark Houses during the Witching Hour, will dig the mood oozed by "We Sleep." It unfurls in creeping manner. Players collude with knowing acumen, their dark purpose to fulfill. Cobwebs are ubiquitous. "They're after me, but I ain't runnin'," intones a narrator for whom accursedness is as naught. A Danzig song, "Mother" also advances in ominous languorousness; skin-crawling essence spreads by the inch. Smiles will never gather in these shadows - at least, not innocent ones.

Videos: "We Sleep"   "Mother"   

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