Tuff Darts

s/t

(Sire / Music on CD)

Led by lead guitarist/primary tunesmith Jeff Salen (RIP), the Tuff Darts were among the more colorful and proficient of the 1970s CBGB class. That was amply evidenced in their three tracks on 1975's Live at CBGBs double LP. Robert Gordon was then the group's voice.

Tommy Frenzy, himself crackerjack at the mic, had by this 1978 Sire platter assumed the Darts' frontman position. The undersung colleagues of Big Apple brawlers the Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys, and Heartbreakers shone like streetlights amid a streetfight, and are recalled fondly by in-know survivors of bowery overnights.

Tuff Darts compositions were mini-classic episodes in which regulation Rock'n'Roll and Pop inclinations were strained through wiseass Punk attitude (that occasionally cruised the more deviant Red Light precincts), ending up as sleek missiles that satisfied. 

Some tracks cried 'Radio.' Others belonged in the back pages of under-counter periodicals. All, though, were front-of-the-underclass. 

Several reissues of this LP have occurred over decades, the most recent being a 2024 CD issuance by Music on CD.

Recommended: "Who's Been Sleeping Here," "(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste," "Here Comes Trouble," "Rats," "Fun City," "All For the Love of Rock'n'Roll," "Love and Trouble," "Head Over Heels," "Slash," "Phone Booth Man," "My Guiar Lies Bleeding in My Arms"

Videos: "Who's Been Sleeping Here"   "(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste"   "Here Comes Trouble"   "Rats"   "All For the Love of Rock'n'Roll"   "Head Over Heels"   "Slash"

Amoeba Records

Music on CD

Darkside Records

Amazon

With previous lead singer Robert Gotdon

Barry Ryan: Six-string statesman                

Minneapolis, 1980 -- A strippers-by-day, Rock'n'Roll-by-night club called Duffy's was showcasing Anglo-American group the Rockats during its Octemberfest. Only a year or so had passed since they'd split with Levi Dexter and realigned, having added several new members. 

Weeks before, they'd issued "Rockabilly Doll" b/w"Tanya Jean" (Kat Tale), giving early voice to the burgeoning US rockabilly movement. (I still own the 45 I purchased back then. Sadly, the accompanying brown/white/black mini-poster was lost to the ages.)

I was in that night's jam-packed audience. I was forever changed. The Rockats were everything a rank-and-file rebel could have hoped for. A formidable and precise, swinging Rock'n'Roll spectacle, they sported tailored cat style and showy, acrobatic professionalism. Under multi-colored strobes, the whole damn stage erupted.

And Barry Ryan was a major factor in their distinction. Having arrived from NYC Punk upstarts The Victims, he stalked the stage, reborn as the six-string statesman of a pomped subculture.

His onslaughts benefited beyond gauging from judicious dispatch. His styling drew on American popular music's Blues and Country roots, and crafted a glorious pastiche. 

(Scratch that past tense usage -- he remains among Rockabilly's premier pickers.)

Several years back, Barry reflected on the era that spawned the Rockats' first LP, a live explosion of creepered exuberance.

"Island Records head Chris Blackwell signed the Rockats on the advice of Grace Jones in late 1980. We went to London in December to start recording. For one reason or another, the sessions weren't matching up to our live shows. So the project was dumped and we came back to NY. 

"It was decided that the best thing to do was to do a live record. We recorded two consecutive nights at the Ritz, but I believe only the first night was used. Both nights were sold out and that's Billy Idol who introduces the band and also sang on the encore of Chuck Berry's "Around and Around," which wasn't included on the release."

Mr. Ryan performs a vital function, linking today and yesterday. The uproarious souls of gritty Blues and traditional Country step and whirl in gladsome union, spurred into fancy-footed Rock'n'Roll transmogrification. 

His hard-lived experience -- global touring, midnight stages, simultaneous uncertainty/exhilaration of Rock'n'Roll life -- resounds in each of his twanged, thrashed or elegantly touched-off notes.

Over decades, the Rockats counted various other remarkable guitarists as transient members. But to my mind, Barry always was the band's defining guitar voice. Others contributed especial piquance, but he was that group's constant. A Rockats without Barry's inimitable fretboard touches was inconceivable. 

The final release by the legendary group came in the form of 2021's Start Over Again.

Newly minted originals "Rock, Baby, Rock (All Night Long)," "Rockabilly Swamp," "Lucky Old Rockabilly (Walking Down the Pike),"and "Working Man" were apt complements to covers of Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, and others. 

1980 single "Rockabilly Doll" b/w "Tanya Jean" was remastered and reminded of the combo's initial promise. 

In short, the music was such a capstone as to render many competitors' toils superfluous. Enough good cannot be stated of the Rockats' cohesive deploy of rockin' mannerisms. They'd never sounded more committed to good times.

Barry had earned further global renown. He carved out a legend with New York zydeco ensemble Lucky 7, waxed volatile solo endeavors, was often tapped for live appearances by legend Robert Gordon, and recorded and gigged with Gary Setzer as Rockabilly X.

Such men, through impassioned devotion to Rock'n'Roll and the magical effect it can have to better average people's lives, accomplish something far larger and more significant than any isolated work. They give us all a finer world.

All of which seemed possible, if only hinted at, that bygone Minneapolis night.

Online examples of Barry's prowess seem ubiquitous: "Rite Time" (1981 w/Tim Scott McConnell)  "Make That Move" (1983 w/Danny B Harvey)  "Downtown Saturday Night" (1994)   "Rockabilly Barry Ryan!" (solo)  "Black Slacks / Red Hot" (live w/Robert Gordon)   "Joshua's Plea"  (2012 w/Rockabilly X - Barry on vocals + guitar)

2025

Back in the Day, 2016

Evan Johns

Somewhere Over the Skyline / Panoramic Life

(Alternative Tentacles)

Evan left us in 2017. His name never adorned top sales charts, nor was his visage captured on wall posters. But such commercial accolades are as nothing, when contrasted with his imprint on music.

Across his 2013 and 2016 albums, Evan laid down his roots bona fides. (Not that need existed; the multi-instrumentalist - spitfire guitar being his ace - had previously established himself as both H-Bombs chieftain and Robert Gordon accomplice.) Guttural delivery bore unmistakably Lone Star State countenance, which advanced his common-man lyrics. Mandolin and banjo peeped through the pane. Rumbustious stomps made themselves heard, as did Tex-Mex spice additives and acoustic Blues blood affinity.

By making these discs newly accessible, Alternative Tentacles adds valuable works to the grand American Musics repertoire.

Somewhere Over the Skyline:

Recommended: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll," "All Broke Down," "Souls with Broken Hearts," "Look Away," "Fun is Good," "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew," "Fess Up," "Thin Ice, Deep Water," "It's a Good Life"

Videos: "Guitars and Rock'n'Roll"   "Fun is Good"   "Coolest Girl I Ever Knew"   "It's a Good Life"

Alternative Tentacles

Bandcamp

Apple

Amazon

Spotify

Panoramic Life:

Recommended: "Shadows in the Snow," "Me and You, You and Me," "Highjacked," "All Alone," "Unfaithful Lies," "That Dog," "This Old Guitar and Me," "Goodbye Lonely Blues," "$75 Guitar"

Videos: "Shadows in the Snow"   "Highjacked"   "This Old Guitar and Me"   "$75 Guitar"

Alternative Tentacles

Bandcamp 

Amazon

Apple

Spotify

Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding: Pair nonpareil

Scandalously electric Rock'n'Roll was not the passing craze 1950s detractors hoped it would be. Of racially and experientially blended character, the defiantly upstart style was much more powerful than the milquetoastian societal strictures it flattened.

In its fecund youth, Rock'n'Roll spoke to and for entire swaths of under-celebrated America: the poor, blue collar workers, blacks, teenagers. Anyone who dwelt 'outside,' and intuited that the mannerly crooners blaring from 'Your Hit Parade' broadcasts weren't of them, and didn't care to be. Powdered songbirds would probably shrink from the egalitarian prospect.

During the 1970s, Punk savages essentially devised in kind. Springing up from the urban concrete, they noisily renounced the overblown and painstakingly placid rock product that relentlessly streamed from corporate radio of the day. 

Throwing off status quo bondage, they sifted through influences and admixed them with their own, newly coined rage. The fresh creature produced, turned out to reflect the same insouciant, rudely rebellious spirit previously voiced by Elvis, Jagger, et al.

Like the sounds Robert so loved -- embracing, as they did, jumping Rhythm and Blues and swinging Hillbilly Country -- he endured through flashy, annoying trends that had nothing to do with the bop that mattered to him. His music drew heavily from predecessors' patterns, but added serrated edges and interpreted them as forcibly high-spirited, in contemporary context.

Possessed of a deep baritone, he commanded both audience appreciation and, doubtless, peers' envy. A technically sublime vocalist, Robert easily located notes beyond limited fellows, sustaining them with rousing potency. His powerhouse pronouncements swelled with confident authority. 

The 1980s Rockabilly resurgence was, in considerable part, jump-started by Robert. He was and remains a top-most genre icon, of such impressive capacity as to merit mountaintop rank. 

Storied English guitar phenomenon Chris Spedding laced Robert's already outstanding offering with stylistically multifarious, sensitively nuanced six-string articulation. In his hands, songs could storm, fly, or cruise with settled serenity.

Chris cannily intercut Rockabilly, Blues, and Country enunciations with telescopically sliding Jazz chording and flabbergasting treble stings. One digs the instincts of a genuine artist, evident in every stroke.

Theirs was a remarkable, decades-long partnership that would take them to numerous recording studios and world stages. Legendary is their fuel-injected reinventing of roots-music treasures like "Red Hot," "The Way I Walk," "Rock Billy Boogie," and "Driving Wheel." They also granted new, bold being to "Hello Walls," "It's Now Or Never," "Stuck On You," "Look Who's Blue," and "Sweet Love On My Mind."

2022's Hellafied proved to be the duo's final studio collaboration. Cleopatra marketed it as both CD and blue/purple vinyl.

This was my contemporary assessment:

These tracks were put to tape in 1998 for a never-released album. Several songs did appear on Bear Family's The Lost Album Plus, issued that year.

Robert and Chris were decades beyond the need to prove themselves; the sound here is of men with much yet to offer. Material reveals a pair eager to trek beyond the confines of orthodox Rockabilly. That genre's swagger was retained, along with twangy flourishes, but set in a contemporary context.

Willingness to slip out of aesthetic constraint makes this release rewarding. As they are beyond probative burden, they are free to reap benefits from spirited arrangements.

Whether the steadily chugging "Have I the Right," the Country reclination in "Please Don't," stroller "I'll Make It Right," or the Bo Diddley-beat of "Don't Let Go," you're in the hands of masters. 

Over in the hot rod column, "Please Don't Touch," "Tell him No," and "Believe What You Say" barrel down roads like gassers. No cherry-topped cruiser has a prayer.

The energy level is so high as to seize listeners in paroxyms of happy fracture. The songcraft is solid, the execution masterful. One again marvels at the perfect pairing of Voice and Guitar. 

Robert's immense tone is richer and more sinewy than when he emerged. His presence is tremendous. And Chris flabbergasts, as always, with incomparable fretboard wizardry; he effortlessly blends airs and changes from the popular musics songbook. 

Together, the two were nonpareil.

"We were never a 50s act," Robert once told an interviewer. "We were always a contemporary band. It was never designed to be a retro act. We just played off that Rockabilly sound."

And, by the doing, created something of indispensable disposition. 

Robert Gordon and the Di Maggio Connection

s/t

(New Shot Records)

Never again will there ring out a voice so resonant, capacious, and packed with the joys of gut-level Rock'n'Roll, as was the late Robert's. His tones filled every hall. Name any storied veteran you care to, and RG - having long ago internalized their's and fellows' iconic persuasions, imbuing them with marvelous personal aspect - merits placement in identical lofty rank.

Among axe wielders with whom he crafted swing-from-rafters boppery through shook-up decades were Link Wray, Chris Spedding, and Danny Gatton. Royalty, all. Guitars were their sceptres. 

Just as Robert belongs in a relief with past masters, so Italian Marco Di Maggio could cut heads with storied predecessors. The man is that wickedly gifted, as all who've relished his own years' worth of recordings can jump up and testify. (It seems likely Marco never fudged a treble note in all his born days.)

Live album Robert Gordon and the DiMaggio Connection was recorded in 2006, at Crallo in Scandiano, Italy. Players assembled take each curve on two wheels. In addition to Marco, Connection associates included bassman Matteo Giannetti and drummer Marco Barsanti. A pair more suited to killer goneness simply doesn't draw oxygen.

No stylistic deviations appear on the songlist, which is entirely okay. Robert chose only the finest material. And one never tires of hearing his booming interpretations. Greater love for finned fracture hath no cat. Doubtlessly, his spirited exhortations cleaved pomps in back rows.

Let's all spill a bit of PBR.

Recommended: "The Way I Walk" "Lover Boy," "Look Who's Blue," "The Worryin' Kind," "Hello Walls," "Sea of Heartbreak," "I Just Found Out," "Drivin' Wheel," "Rockbilly Boogie," "Don't Be Cruel"

No videos from this gig were available, so here are others featuring Robert and Marco Di Maggio: "The Way I Walk"   "Lover Boy"   "I Just Found Out"   "Drivin' Wheel"   "Rock Billy Boogie"

Di Maggio Connection

New Shot Records

Joe's Records

grooves.land

MVD Shop

Bear Family

Hamilton Book

Discogs

Amazon

Robert Gordon (with Darrel Higham)

I Sure Miss You

(Victrola)

As was evident on what sadly proved to be Robert's final tour, The Voice boomed no less commandingly than when 1970s' CBGB spotlights had illuminated the Tuff Darts. This writer cannot conceive of any reader here being unfamiliar with the stentorian-piped finger-popper, so exhaustive description will go unwritten.

This 500-unit digipack preserves 22 tracks with which Robert delighted Finns and Danes in 2020. Wildly cracking tunes from throughout his career dashed past, hip-chains swinging and roach-killers buffed to high shine.

A talent of Robert's stature demands appropriately able guitarists. And, from Jeff Salen and Link Wray, to Chris Spedding and Danny Gatton - and here, bopping maestro Darrel Higham -  such have always taken Robert's side. Darrel accords each track the hot-rod treatment for which he's lauded. 

Free-footed songs are all kinds of alive, and occasional, smoldering torches make indisputable The Voice's preeminence.

(A bonus is appended: Robert, when but 16, crooned James Brown's "Try Me." To quote Dave Edmunds - "From small things Mama, big things one day come.") 

Recommended: "Some Day, Some Way," "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache," "I'm Coming Home," "The Fool," "Heart Full of Soul," "Drivin' Wheel," "Hello Walls," "Walk On By," "Suspicion," "Race With the Devil," "Rockbilly Boogie," "I Sure Miss You," "Move It," "Red Hot"

Videos: "Rockbilly Boogie"   "Heart Full of Soul"    "Sweet Love on My Mind" (all live in 2020 Finland)

Goofin Records

Crazy Times Music

jpc.de

Jungle Records

Bear Family

Amazon.de

Marcel Riesco

Wild Kisses

(Sleazy)

Renowned as the Twinkletones' leader, Marcel can rightly be ranked in Rock'n'Roll vocalists' topmost station - alongside Robert Gordon, Dibbs Preston, and Levi Dexter. Others take inspiration from Mr. Presley. But in Marcel's majestic voicings - at times ascending to impossibly high planes - one detects a profound Wink Troubadour imprint. (Indeed, Marcel is also an esteemed Orbison authority.)

A voice of such distinction merits class-A material. And such is present in these grooves. Songs are crafted with executive finesse, their impacts assured by interpretive musicianship of suitably high caliber.

Here unfurl poised and polished sounds that offer finned vogue of the later 1950s, with sincerity of evergreen quality. None rush to announce import; such just indisputably is.

Recommended: "You Gotta Love Me Too," "Wild Kisses," "Pucker Paint," "Daydream," "Waitin'," "Why Can't We Just Make Up?," "She's OK"

Video: "You Gotta Love Me Too"   "Wild Kisses"   "She's OK"

Facebook

Sleazy Records

zdigital.com.au

Get Hip Recordings

Apple

Spotify

Robert Gordon

...and the Di Maggio Connection

(New Shot Records)

Those hip to the tip dig that a new RG disc is cause for much revelry. His was a broad and fathoms-deep baritone in whose scope chestnuts and crisply-penned entries alike maintained venerable Rock'n'Roll/Country flames. In his hands, though, vintage stylings were supercharged, becoming vibrant to a degree they hadn't known since their salad days.

Robert had a worthy compatriot in Marco; the six-string phenomenon knew intimately the Roots songbook. He retold its glories, intercutting them with novel gestures and broadsides that left audience jaws across the floor.

Recommended: "Lover Boy," "Look Who's Blue," "A Mess of Blues,"  "Suspicion," "Playin' For Keeps," "Hello Walls," "Sea of Heartbreak," "Dreamin'," "Drivin' Wheel" 

Videos: "Drivin' Wheel"    "Dreamin'"   "Suspicion" (all are from another show with Di Maggio Connection)

Facebook 

Facebook (Marco Di Maggio)

New Shot

Rakuten

Amazon

Robert Gordon with Mick Hanson

"Jukebox"   "A Whole Lotta Christmas Boogie"  digital singles

(Self-issued)

New York's Mick penned both numbers, and in 2005 enlisted legend Robert to lay down vocals. ("A master in the studio, who always delivered to the best of his ability," the axeman recalls of The Voice.) Country lamentation "Jukebox" merits rank with Gordon's earlier readings of "The Fool" and "There Stands the Glass."  And it matters not that the tree-trimming season has passed; Mick's "Christmas Boogie" bears evergreen charms.

Fret sovereigns with whom Robert worked magic included Link Wray, Chris Spedding, Danny Gatton, and Barry Ryan. Mick assumes post in that number. (These tracks are two of seven on which Mick and Robert collaborated. One hopes the remaining five will soon feel sunlight.)

Videos: "Jukebox"    "A Whole Lotta Christmas Boogie"   

Facebook  (Mick)

Bandcamp