Nick Curran: The lipstick-smeared, skull-and-crossbones rocker who screamed into that good-time night

"My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --

It gives a lovely light!"

- Edna St, Vincent Millay

Sadly, Nick died in 2012.

I don't know whether he had any foes to speak of. I suspect not, save perhaps for lessers who envied his talents.

I never saw the man perform. I know I missed something very special, a five-alarm wildman in the raging tradition of sod-busting authentics.

Fortunately for us, audio and video documentation abound.

Like a rakish Rock'n'Roll predator, Nick constantly moved onstage. Manic. On fire. The man was possessed by wicked-fun forces - and he cast them all over ecstatic adherents.

Taut, his every sinewy muscle flexed, he thrashed his low-slung, weaponized Telecaster without quarter. Surely, no audience member protested the ear-shattering lashing; they were six fathoms deep into fracture, wallowing in dig-ification.

The raw music into which Nick breathed animation was a verdant and unashamed garden of under-the-table releases. It harked back to a primitive glory era, when stark, jaw-jutted Blues, jumpin' Rhythm and Blues, and barely out of the house Rock'n'Roll could be located in the same boisterous and bawdy joints -- patrons dressed to kill, liquored up, and more than ready for whatever and whoever midnight might visit upon them.

Little Richard, Etta James, Guitar Slim -- a host of storied worthies informed Nick's seething Rock'n'Roll. But he also packed in his own flashing, ripsaw personality.   

His last disc, 2010's "Reform School Girl" (Electro Groove), offers rich testimony of his worthy roar. A blazing and house-shaking rave up, Etta James' "Tough Lover" opens the proceedings with slamming certainty. Nick's own "Baby You Crazy," "Lusty Lil Lucy," and "Rocker" follow suit: furiously fun, knock-down cuts, jammed wall-to-wall with hip swagger.

The teen-love-in-tragedy title-cut ballad recalls the Shangri-Las (always a pleasant thought). Rough-edged road romp "Flyin' Home" features guest Phil Alvin, who characteristically imprints the value. And storming original "Psycho" is simply of such savage, sing-along, mad life as to charge unbound into the ether, a forever torch.

Nick once said that "With the music I write, I try to breathe new life into the traditional styles that I really love, using a lot of different influences from different styles of music and different eras...I always want to, not necessarily sound like something that already happened in the 50s, but something that could have happened back then, but got lost in the vaults somewhere."

He was successful in that ambition. I regret missing him onstage. But digging his waxings offers as much redress as can be had.

Videos: "Tough Lover" and "Women and Cadillacs" (both live) 

The Blasters

Over There: Live At the Venue, London 1982 - The Complete Concert

(Slash/Warner Bros./Liberation Hall)

The early 1980s were heady times. Downey, California's Blasters, who had germinated at Ronny Weiser's Rollin' Rock, were at the fore of a roots-music rennaisance that, in the US, also included Robert Gordon, the Rockats, Ray Campi, and the Stray Cats. Brash reinventions of vintage modes were animated by the rumbustiousness of the CBGB's Class of '77, many of whose more significant alumni (like the Ramones and Heartbreakers) were yet on the loose.

The Blasters offered particularly Blues-based neo-Rockabilly, and may well have introduced genre stalwarts to fresh ears. (Big Joe Turner, Pete Johnson, and Otis Redding come to mind.) Phil Alvin threw himself body-and-soul into vocals that were (and still are) among the most distinctive in roots-music revivalism. Brother Dave's joyfully manic picking lent vibrance to already steamrolling projection; his gleeful tearing off of savage licks stole oxygen.

All players were equally vital to krackajack American Music. The fearsomely formidable John Bazz/Bill Bateman rhythm cell made for solid firmament from which feral cats pounced. Eminent keyboardist Gene Taylor proved himself a master of the ivories, never hitting a wrong note and augmenting matters with alive-out-loud eminence.

And the sax duo of stormer Steve Berlin and living legend Lee Allen made walls tumble down to the elation of all. Their wailing exertions lent hue and texture.

1982's Over There leapt up in it's birth year as marvelous testimony to the era's exhilaration. Now, Liberation Hall's expanded reissue reminds mightily.

Recommended: "This Is It," "No Other Girl," "Border Radio," "I Don't Want To," "Tag Along," "Walkin' With Mr. Lee," "I'm Shakin'" "Hollywood Bed," "Go! Go! Go!," "Stop the Clock," "Marie Marie," "American Music," "So Long Baby Goodbye," "Roll 'Em Pete," "High School Confidential," "These Arms of Mine," Keep A-Knockin'"

Videos: "Roll 'em Pete"   "I Don't Want To"

Liberation Hall

Bandcamp