DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY: rock'n'roll

Showing posts with label rock'n'roll. Show all posts

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Johnny Law and the Pistol Packin' Daddies: Tearin' it up down under

"Australia has an incredibly dedicated Rockabilly, roots and traditional Country audience," Johnny emailed me. "The distances between cities can make touring expensive and complicated, particularly for an independent artist based in Perth, but the people who support this music are extremely loyal."

Johnny Law and the Pistol Packin' Daddies have a reputation for kicking up sparks -- they're in-the-marrow devotees to just-plain-folks sounds spectacular.

He-and-she duos are compelled to whirl across hardwood beneath colored lights. Solid songs throw one up, down, and all around; the material is part and parcel of the roots scene -- and adherants sporting cat clothes wouldn't dig it any other way.

Shortly prior to the drafting of this piece, Johnny and the Pistol Packin' Daddies released Guilty On All Counts (Apache Productions Australia). It's their fourth full-length in an impressive order.

"The tracks were recorded in Perth by Mark Turner and mastered by Alex Hall at Hi-Style Records in Chicago, Illinois," Johnny related of the new record. "The same studio where The Bellfuries recorded their Workingman’s Bellfuries album."

While the eight cuts on Guilty On All Charges all merit attention, of especial note are “Lovin’ You,” “Biggest Mistake,” “Relationshit,” “Samantha” and “You’re The Reason Why.” (The singer noted that copies can be ordered through Elastic Stage. See link below.)

Johnny is based in Perth, Western Australia. "My music draws heavily from 1950s Rock ’n’ Roll, Rockabilly, traditional Country and Americana, with influences including Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Dwight Yoakam."

He articulated a rich history, one filled with triumphs.

"I formed Johnny Law & The Pistol Packin’ Daddies in 2001. Since then, we’ve released several albums, toured Europe and the United States, and played festivals and venues around Australia.

"More recently, we’ve headlined the Crank It Up Festival in Batemans Bay, NSW and the Rock ’n’ Roll Jamboree in Sydney, as well as performing four shows at Cooly Rocks On in Queensland."

Last May, Johnny and the Pistol Packin' Daddies reinvented Tammy Wynette's 1978 "Standing Tall." I commented that their take (not included on Guilty) has all the marks of genuineness, from warm, rich vocals to snapped-tight musicianship of comfortable character.

"Thank you -- I’m really pleased that the recording came across that way. It actually began as a student project through the School of Audio Engineering in Perth. The students were asked to find bands that could take 'Standing Tall' and reinterpret it in their own style, and one of the students approached me about being involved.

"Rather than trying to reproduce Tammy Wynette’s recording, I reworked the song in the style of Johnny Law & The Pistol Packin’ Daddies. The arrangement and overall approach were what I came up with for the project, and the recording was completed as part of the student’s audio-engineering work."

I asked after reactions it has received.

"The track has never been officially released," he explained. "So there hasn’t been a wider public reaction to it as a digital release. We’ve also never performed it live at one of our shows, which is why there isn’t any live footage or an official video. At this stage, no video is planned, although the interest in the recording has made me think it may deserve a proper release at some point."

The Pistol Packin’ Daddies remain Johnny's main band. But only one outfit just isn't sufficient for creative exercise. "I also perform in different formats depending on the show, including the Johnny Law Trio and Johnny Law & The Wandering Stars when I’m working with musicians on Australia’s east coast. Whatever the lineup, the aim is always the same: honest, energetic music with strong roots in Country and early Rock ’n’ Roll."

In recent days, the busy singer debuted yet another endeavor: Antsville. Johnny advised it is "a gritty trio (sometimes a 4-piece), delivering Rock’n’Roll, Country, and trucker songs built for the open road, late nights, and loud crowds.

"Between Antsville, the Pistol Packin’ Daddies and the different interstate lineups, there is plenty happening," he added.

"On the live front, I’ll be taking the east-coast version of the band, Johnny Law & The Wandering Stars, to Camden Sports Club in Sydney on Friday 9 October and Thornbury Bowling Club in Melbourne on Sunday 11 October."

Fans both seasoned and newly arrived can content themselves that future days will indeed shine.

"After more than 25 years with the Pistol Packin’ Daddies, I’m still excited about recording, travelling and putting new shows together," Johnny rightly boasts.

"I’ve never been interested in chasing whatever happens to be fashionable. I want to make music that feels real, respects where it came from, and still sounds like Johnny Law!"

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"Standing Tall" (Bandcamp)

Videos: live (29:50 2026)

Sunday, September 13, 2026

Various Artists

Three Stars Tribute: A Tribute to Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, & the Big Bopper double LP

(Gold Label)

The reasons this tribute compendium hand jives in the winner's circle are three in number. 1) Blue-ribbon classics were selected for reinvention. 2) To a man, singers essaying admittedly formidable feats (the task of following kings' examples would cause most to shrink away), do so with remarkable talents of their own. 3) Backing, provided by Jason Guiterrez and the JG 3, all but leaps from speakers with dual-pipe Bel-Air energies.

ROCK'N'ROLL IS HERE TO STAY!

(Gatefold double LP comes with 20-page booklet, including recording session snapshots.)

Recommended: "La Bamba" (Sal Rodriguez), "Oh Boy!" (John Mueller), "White Lightnin'" (Sha Na Na)," "Stay Beside Me" (Frankie Avalon), "Paddi-Wack Song" (Jason Guiterrez), "Rave On" (John Mueller), "We Belong Together" (Ernie Reyes, Jason Guiterrez), "That's My Little Suzie" (Jimmy Angel), "Dooby Dooby Wah" ('Sting' Ray Anthony), "Fast Freight" (Kid Ramos, Jason Guiterrez), "Hi Tone" (Chris Montez)," "Big Baby Blues" (Kid Ramos), "Chantilly Lace" (Sha Na Na), "Everyday" (Marshall Crenshaw), "Hurry Up" ('Sting' Ray Anthony), "Ooh! My Head" (Johnny Ramos), "Malagueña" (Jason Guiterrez), "The Spirit Continues" (Jason Guiterrez), "Not Fade Away" (Marshall Crenshaw), "Maybe Baby" (Eddie Clendening), "Boney Maronie" (Jimmy Angel), " "Three Stars" (Pat Boone)

Videos: "Stay Beside Me" "Paddi Wack Song" "Fast Freight" "Hurry Up" "Three Stars"

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Prahúa 13

30 almas y un dia (30 Souls and a Day) EP

(Self-issued)

Before us are unveiled compositions unpretentious and wonderfully of the common man. Vocals adopt no showy airs. Properly absent are studio affectations that so often detract from relatability. In their place is austerity that conveys human sensibilities and perspectives, as only it can. They prove adept at ruggedness. But elsewhere, strings are well plucked, ivories touched off in dignified fashion, and percussion administered with solicitude.

Recommended: "Canción del adiós," "La memoria de los peces," "Olvidado" "Sombras"

Videos: "La memoria de los peces" "Sombras"

The Phantom A.D. - Torment or Treats (and Torment)

In a months-long spree only just begun, the Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour will storm its maliciously lunatic way across Norman Rockwell's placid states. (Have a care, square ones: Attending these sinister soirees may well bring premature persishment to the unhip.)

Included on the invasion itinerary are Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the rocker-from-beyond's own California.

For the monsterman, every night is All Hallow's Eve. It's like 1993 movie Groundhog Day, but if it had been scripted by Curt Siodmak.

A chill gust chases off twisted and spindly tree branches' remaining withered leaves; witching-hour streets are barren, save for ghosts busying themselves with grotesque diversions; a pale blood-moon shines unforgiving glare on the innocent orb mortal men call Earth...

And The Phantom A.D. couldn't be happier -- in the cruelest of manners. As a composer, he cleverly interlaces forbidden poetry and charging Rock'n'Roll birthed in some netherworldly jukebox. His frenzied guitar summons forth a remorselessly-lashed, phantasmagoric creature stitched from fret-stranglers who preceded, and who knew how best to contrive raucous infectiousness.

To all that, he ladles on idiosyncratic maneuverings that ring precisely right.

And in his guttural intonations, one hears the testimony of a man who not only sat through innumerable drive-in scare-flicks, but probably dove into the screen to gleefully abet the deviance.

As this writer puts quill to parchment, crazed acolytes in slated environs will soon revel in the straight-from-the-fridge madness he unleashes at perilous volumes. Finger-popping bizzaritude can be reliably predicted to ravish ears, whether they dig it or not.

His crusade of the freakish has sordid history. A part-time substitute teacher, Harley Isaac Rother intuits his destiny is to tear apart temporal distance from eerie dimensions uncharted, through Rock'n'Roll that respects no reasonable stricture.

Albums documenting his dire mission include 2015's The Unspeakable Horror of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms and The Terrifying Return of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms. Later assuming his rightful title, The Phantom A.D., he issued The Phantom A.D. Plays Ghoulish Rock'n'Roll and this year's Revenge of the Phantom. (All were released by Rock N Rhythm Records.)

As ever, in that latest wax, The Phantom A.D.'s cobwebbed, latex-monster hood features darkness as a 24/7 proposition. Splenetic chords race like risen-from-beneath, demolition terrors, hip to the ways of lost avenues Rock'n'Roll. Swirling his cape while surfing atop a saucer, The Phantom A.D. growls enunciations that bespeak horrors good men know not.

Martin Milner scrambles for exit, though Mickey "Bip Bop Boom" Hawks and Shadowman Link stick around where the action is.

In 2025, he greeted creature cognoscenti, shared his swinging hideousness, and mongered merch at the Famous Monsters of Filmland convention in Pennsylvania. That costumed spectacle befit a man whose prodigious lurkings amidst midnight spook-show haunts feature catchy songs suited variously to mausoleum exhumations, TV cathode rays, and beach party bingo.

In a Facebook post at the time, the caped archfiend said: "This is such an honor to be included, given the incredible legacy of Famous Monsters. In the pre-internet world, Famous Monsters Of Filmland was THE place to learn about horror movies. Its legacy is unmatched."

Those souls thronging to The Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour 2026 appearances may snap cell-phone photos, but should not be flabbergasted when they later find that his image has not been preserved.

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Videos: live in San Francisco (2025, 10:50) "Chainsaw Rock" "I Go Where the Party Takes Me" "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" "MK Ultra Rock" "Even Sasquatch Wants to Rock"

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Stan's Guest List

(Still Unbeatable Records)

Manchester safety-pin vets summon renewed belligerence. Every man jack pounces, as is required by chord-and-riff, fists-forward attacks whose brick-wall jubilance and flashy treble swipes tend at times to recall David Jo and the Babylon boys.

Recommended: "Breakdown!," "I Don't Know," "Media Control," "On Fire," "All for Nothing," "Fast, Loud, Dirty Rock'n'Roll"

Videos: "Breakdown!" "Media Control" "On Fire" "Fast, Loud, Dirty Rock'n'Roll"

Rock'n'Roll is as American as apple pie

When some contemporary Rockabillies talk politics; they sound like Wavy Gravy in Haight Ashbury during the Psychedelic Mistake of the 1960s.

Pretenders in today's scene comb their hair like Elvis, but vote like Jerry Garcia. They play populist American music while despising the patriotic ethos in the genre's marrow.

They've mastered the mechanics, but don't for a moment dig what it's all about. It can sound similar to the music we love, but without sincerity...it's far less than 100%

Rock'n'Roll historians recall that, when 15, Gene Vincent lied about his age to join the U.S. Navy during the Korean conflict. Like Vincent, Elvis served this country.

So did many of their contemporaries. They were proud to be from the greatest country on Earth. Determined to defend her.

Gene named his landmark band, the Bluecaps, after Ike Eisenhower's favored golfing brim. Can you feature a present-day Rockabilly band adopting a moniker inspired by anything President Trump wears?

Of course you can't. Anti-Americanism thrives as lustily among some current roots bands as it did when Country Joe McDonald burned his thumb on a roach backstage at Woodstock.

Early Rock'n'Roll, before grasping executives with skyscraper offices domesticated and commodified it, was a swinging manifestation of real American values. Even if they didn't vocalize it, pioneers and fans understood the prevalent culture had drifted a far piece from our nation's foundational ideals.

Like individual liberty, even when free expression discomfits others. Like tearing down bonds of stifling orthodoxy. Like going one's own way. And digging equality, with the understanding that there's just one race -- the human one.

From its inception in 'unrespectable' mileaus, Rock'n'Roll was a joyous, shattering, unapologetic 'fuck you' to a repressive status quo. Its progenitors were proud Americans. The form they forged was of the common American man. They neither indulged pernicious foreign fancies nor flirted with unpatriotic sloganeering.

Rockabilly is a rebel music -- or, at least, once was. There is nothing remotely counter-culture about catering to social pressures and 'progressive' dictates.

Healthy rebellion challenges unfairness and suffocation. It differs profoundly from kneejerk contrarianism. Opposing absolutely everything is puerile.

To play honest Rock'n'Roll is to affirm pride in our country's character, opportunities, and paramount world status.

Those who play Rockabilly without believing in it are like someone speaking a foreign language. Anyone doing so, anyone who would quarrel with the reality that Rock'n'Roll is defiantly American (as it's classically defined), should retire the Bigsby Gretches and pegged pants. You ain't foolin' nobody who digs the real deal.

Sunday, April 26, 2026

King Records: Rockin' before Sunrise

Syd Nathan

"I want to tell you all about Deacon Jones / He got so high, they had to take him home. Here's the truth about Elder Brown / He stole all the chicken and ran to town, cryin, Amen, there's good rockin' at midnight!"

- "Rockin' At Midnight" Roy Brown

It is by no way blasphemous to assert that there was indeed rockin' to be dug, before truck-driving Memphis teenager Elvis Presley found magic on Union Avenue.

The rockabilly sound struck that day by Elvis, Scotty Moore, Bill Black - and, overseeing the conception, Sam Phillips - was a kissing cousin to the nascent Rock'n'Roll played by Chuck Berry and Bill Haley. But Rockabilly was also of pronouncedly Hillbilly Country and rhythmic Blues character.

Rockabilly's more rural-bent influences like Hank Williams and Western Swing luminary Bob Wills are frequently pointed up. But too often neglected in genre overviews is the significant contribution of Rhythm and Blues, generally, and of Cincinnati's King Records, specifically.

The online History of Rock notes that when Memphis-area stations played Wynonie Harris's late '40s version of Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight," a young Elvis Presley would "sit on his bed and listen to the radio, transfixed."

Among the first songs Elvis recorded once signed to Sun was a cover of the Brown classic that had so captivated him. And Johnny Burnette and the Rock'n'Roll Trio may have delivered "Train Kept A-Rollin'" to a wide audience, but they were reinterpreting bandleader Tiny Bradshaw's King Records original.

The swagger and beat-down rhythms that would later assume popularity as Rock'n'Roll features first percolated in the Rhythm and Blues juke joints that dotted the postwar South. And inklings of the music-to-be were also heard in horn-saturated Northern scenes. In 1952, for example, Philadelphia's Haley covered Jimmy Preston's 1949 R&B "Rock The Joint."

True believers have steadily known Rock'n'Roll to encompass celebratory attitudes and sensual frankness. It isn't defined solely by tempo and volume level. While it is true that, in the music's earliest days, its mixing of formative elements was unrefined and even tentative, the sound drove listeners into delirium. Society itself would soon be shaken.

The hard-driving style, whose appeal owed largely to its organic genesis and experiential familiarity, had at first no proper name. At least, not the one by which it would later be known. "Race music" was a derisive, sometime sobriquet. The late guitarist Paul Burlison, a witness to the conception, called it simply, "good-time music."

So, it had some evolving, stylistic cross-pollinating, and self-definition to accomplish before assuming its eventual title. But the explosive, world-changing potential was in nightly evidence. Dancers knew it. So did Syd Nathan.

Nathan had tried his hand at operating radio and photo-finishing concerns without success. He founded King Records in 1943. King was in its early days a Hillbilly label, and would later be known as a Rockabilly one.

Charlie Feathers, Mac Curtis, Bob and Lucille, and Joe Penney all waxed enduring songs there. (The Federal and Deluxe imprints were associated with King. And Queen Records had preceded it.)

But between the Hillbilly and Rockabilly recording periods, King specialized in Rhythm and Blues. The label committed to tape icons like Roy Brown, Bullmoose Jackson, Wynonie Harris, and Billy Ward and the Dominoes. That these artists have as valid a Rock'n'Roll parental claim as do any others is beyond disputing. One need only listen to their output to know that bloodline's true course.

Beginning in 1947, Nathan's label produced a host of jumpin' sides whose influence endures. The sound was typified by harmonious, crack musicianship. Much of it can be understood to blend the African beat-centered tradition with the European melody-emphasizing one. That was the precise geo-musical union that Rock'n'Roll enshrined, adding uniquely American accents.

Many key players had come up mastering their grooves on the juke joint circuit. Years of midnight sessions had schooled them in the bawdy ways of rockin'. They knew what audiences dug. What charged their souls and hustled their shoes. And that sweaty, hardscrabble road training instilled King wax with vibrant, startling being.

This was the good stuff. People's music. Lowdown and gritty, real-life styling that swung and jumped to everybody's satisfaction, and articulated common culture. It paid no mind to the sterile popular music standards of the day. It didn't need to. It was innately of different class and social background.

Rock'n'Roll would soon integrate this rural, working class, black and white tone still further into the cultural main.

True rockin' could not be grasped as an exclusively temporal phenomenon. As testified of before riotous dance floor crowds, it brought wondrous benefits of a spiritual type. Rockin' cast to the ground artificial inhibitions and elevated to a plane of delight, adherents' embrace of earthy humanity.

Now as then, the joyously converted don't merely listen to Rock'n'Roll, they revel in both it and the certitude that its every downbeat brings respite from the staid and unsatisfying.

Rock'n'Roll's calls to sexuality, combined with enough Hosannas to inebriated bacchanalia to lead astray even the most saintly, provide a magnetically salacious theme upon which to base a specialized CD reissue series. And, as exactly such happy ribaldry was documented in abundance at King, the label's 5-disc, retrospective "Risque Blues" collection offers much cause for wanton abandon.

"I got a little girl, she just loves to ride.

I got a little baby, she just loves to ride.

When I see that woman, I got to run and hide!"

- Orville 'Fats' Noel, "Ride Daddy Ride"

"When you're young and you're on the go,

your ding-a-ling don't ever get sore.

But when you're old, and you've lost your sting,

you don't need that doggone thing."

- Daniel Bartholomew, "My Ding-A-Ling"

Spectacular here in leering R&B glory is a universal message with timeless relevance. An insistent demand for nocturnal interaction. A defiant assertion of virility. Bullmoose Jackson's "Big 10-Inch Record," The Swallows' "It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion," and the chest-thumping braggadocio of Billy Ward and the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man" speak unashamedly of hot-bloodedness.

The instrumental line-ups were sparse, but that was appropriate. Strip-club saxes honked and blared their suggestiveness. Treble guitars splashed vivid hues and urged animation. Rumbling bass key piano negotiations commanded at the center, steeling the whole with senses of definition and direction.

Tempos included swinging finger-poppin' and slowly seductive. Advancing some songs' party atmospheres were infectious

handclaps.

"I want a bow-legged woman!" swore Bullmoose Jackson in the song of that title. From Dorothy Ellis came "Drill Daddy Drill." Not to be neglected is Wynonie Harris' "Keep On Churnin' (Til the Butter Comes)." Little Esther intimated passion with the smoldering "Turn the Lamp Down Low."

As dynamic as these records were, it's crucial to underscore that none were slick or over-produced. Rough edges etched deeply their common world character and credibility. Besides, flawless renderings weren't the goal. Besides, good songs are their own validation.

Just as halcyon Sun tracks have been lovingly preserved, so, too, have King ones. In 1972, Chuck Berry scored chart placement by covering the classic "My Ding-A-Ling." A few years later, Aerosmith redid "Big 10-Inch Record." The Stray Cats exhumed Wynonie Harris' "Wasn't That Good" for their second LP.

Two other Harris numbers, "Bloodshot Eyes" and "Lovin' Machine," were revisited in the 1980s by Roy Loney and Jimmy and the Mustangs. "It Ain't the Meat" has long been a bar band staple. And Robert Plant's Honeydrippers saw chart action with their 1990s take on Roy Brown's "Rockin' At Midnight."

A truth to be gathered from King and Syd Nathan is that rockin' should never be merely clean and wholesome fun for the whole family. Without an at least implied sense of edgy danger, a beguiling air of predatory sexuality, Rock'n'Roll isn't authentic and doesn't much matter.

King Records mattered back in the day. And it still does. Average folks living nondescript lives can produce from their frustrations and aspirations a legend for all times.

"Well the old folks do it, young folks, too.

The old folks teach the young ones what to do."

- Wynonie Harris, "Shake That Thing"

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Howlin' Ramblers

Home of the Blues (Revisited)

(Sleazy Records)

The club door busted wide. In strutted Rock'n'Roll, bold and lookin' for all-night fun. (Which would entail dolls, brawls, and suds aplenty.)

Group-penned romps built from gut-bucket jukin' (including the titular number, "Stay the Fuck Home," and "Send Me Some Lovin'"), atop which sail harmonica serenades of the finest kind, clasp brotherhood hands with 1956 Big Walter Price classic "Pack Fair and Square" (covered by J. Geils on their 1972 Full House.) Sleazy's new reissue of the Howlin' ones' self-issued 2016 maiden disc can be captured only as limited-edition vinyl. Remixed and remastered, it now features two bonus cuts.

Hours later, when lights went up and the grizzled barkeep shouted "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!," Rock'n'Roll was still knockin' 'em back...

Recommended: "Home of the Blues," "I'm Ready if You're Willing," "Stay the Fuck Home," "Number Nine," "Pack Fair and Square," "Send Me Some Lovin'," "Takin' Care of My Home"

Videos: "Home of the Blues" "Stay the Fuck Home" "Pack Fair and Square" "Send Me Some Lovin'"

Sunday, April 5, 2026

The Star Mountain Dreamers

Rawboned humanity thrashes in roots pugnacity; studio tech contrivances scramble down the road, lest they be stomped flat.

Video: "Trail Burnin'"

Wild Records/shop

Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Little Til and the Gangbusters

In a Peculiar Way

(Rocketman Records)

Attilio Malambri, aka "Little Til," responded to a recent Facebook user's lament that seemingly few 20-somethings presently populate the sideburn sect. 25 year-old Little Til - now pursuing novel adventures in Parisian climes - threw in his own perspective. He noted that at festival performances with band The Gangbusters, he's observed numerous under-30s deploying crazy feet. (Still, Attilio did concede musicians of draft age seldom embrace cool cat soundings.)

Below is consideration of Little Til and the Gangbusters' 2024 release, In a Peculiar Way:

It was with sharp discernment that Italy's Attilio Malambri selected which standards to revisit. Featured songs are cream, and these reinterpretations crackle as if the material were newly minted. In ballads, Little Til's urbanity enjoys bolstering by grand harmonies. And when stormers roll out, he pounds daylights out of ivories and exhorts insistently in fevered manner. At every turn, the formidable Gangbusters tear it up without looking back. Rocking is their business, as the Treniers once declared, and the band's virtues cannot be extolled too loudly.

Recommended: "Fools Fall In Love," "Money (That's What I Want)," "Lonely Weekends," "Lovin' Up a Storm," "Rockin' My Life Away"

Video: "Lonely Weekends"

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Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Pwdin Reis

"Winwn Coch" single

(Recordiau Reis)

Bid howdy to Cymric vivacity that knows well the streets of the twang side of town. No self-respecting Rock'n'Roll Seeburg would be caught without such wax on offer. It's tunes like this that remind life's a big ball of exuberance - one promising too dadgum many kicks to cold shoulder.

Video

Sunday, November 23, 2025

The Blasters

American Music

(Liberation Hall)

Among qualities shared between California's Blasters and inspirations like Rudy Toombs, Big Joe Turner, and Sonny Burgess is timelessness; matters so enriching never really fade. So widely and profusely ladled has been praise for the roots-rocking machine instigated by Alvin brothers Phil and Dave, that no laudatory adjectives have been neglected.

American Music was first marketed in 1980 by Rollin' Rock's shrewd impressario Ronny Weiser. (Hightone and Floating World reissues ensued.) The Alvins were joined by a rugged bass/drums unit membered by John Bazz and Bill Bateman. (Later personnel were piano man Gene Taylor, and saxophonists Lee Allen and Steve Berlin.)

The four wrought some of the New Wave moment's most true-blooded roots exertions. Within the richness of American Music howled common-folk declarations birthed in jukes, honky tonks, mountain regions, neon-lighted cities, and pastoral climes whose residents' hardscrabble realities were disclosed by the callouses on their hands.

Song crafter Dave Alvin once observed that, "paradoxically," the more personal a narrative be, the more universal its resonance. His five-star architectures rose upon territories where regular folks' musicalizing and perspectives lamented travails and made merry in ways peculiar to them.

The yet-thriving Blasters iteration boasts originals Phil, John, and Bill. Now lending six-string masteries is Keith Wyatt, whose deft demolitions have over years graced stagefronts, studios, and even esteemed instructional environs.

Recommended: "American Music," "Real Rock Drive," "I Don't Want To," "Marie Marie," "Flat Top Joint," "Never No More Blues," "Buzz Buzz Buzz"

Videos: "Real Rock Drive" "Flat Top Joint" "Buzz Buzz Buzz"

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Sunday, October 19, 2025

Back in the Day, 1978

Whirlwind

Blowing Up a Storm

(Chiswick)

In years just prior to Psychobilly's acension as a wicked gleam in P. Paul's eye, English pomps and spikes slammed shoulders at gigs wrought by Whirlwind. On this, the combo's vinyl coming-out, traditions ring much more loudly than does modernity, but colorful crispness makes dashing declarations.

The last band's circa '77 members - Nigel Dixon, Mick Lewis, Phil Hardy, and Chris Emo - grabbed attention with jittercat rave-ups calculated to engender palladium pandemonium. The four sporadically pulled up short to render balladeering conducive to belly-rubs with baby dolls.

Follow-up Midnight Blue (see prior Juke Box Jury review) winningly dug far into like turf. Whirlwind's imprint echoed in bands who later hefted the roots banner, true, but slapping Blowing Up a Storm and Midnight Blue onto turntables produces singular kicks.

Recommended: "Boppin' High School Baby," "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It," "My Advice," "A Thousand Stars," "One More Chance," "Don't Be Crazy," "Rocking Daddy," "Slow Down," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Together Forever," "Who's That Knocking," "Tore Apart"

Videos: "Boppin' High School Baby / Don't Be Crazy" (1980 TV), "Who's That Knocking," Bonus clip: "I Thought it Over" (1978 live, non-LP number from Saturday Banana program. Recorded off TV by bassist Chris Emo's father)

Facebook (guitarist Mick Lewis)

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Back in the Day, 2017

Phantom Pomps

The Higher the Hair, the Closer to God

(Self-issued)

These players covered Hasil Adkins and Lorrie Collins (and did so with snarling reverence), yoking them with self-penned, chromed-jukebox rave-ups that swung elbows without regard for ambient welfare. Erstwhile Blazing Haley and Graveside Rockers drummer Chris Story (here, on guitar/lead vocals) found frantic co-conspirators in Kelli and Fuse. Having got the sock, they leaned hard into fracture. Whispered allegations that they were restricted to dives whose walls were padded was never confirmed.

"Bevare!," sputtered Prof. Gustav Klemperer, of the venerated Heidelberg Institute. "In all mine years contemplating abnormality, I haf nevah encountered such lunatic celebration! Innocent souls vill be lured from sanity by seductive Rock'n'Roll!"

Recommended: "Runaway Truck Ramp," "Psychobilly Attack," "I Forgot My Meds," "No More Hot Dogs." "Is You Is?"

Videos: "Psychobilly Attack" (live) "No More Hot Dogs" "Runaway Truck Ramp"

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Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Levi Dexter and the Ripchords, feat. Danny B Harvey

The Complete Studio Recordings digital album

(Daniel Bryan Harvey)

The early 1980s were electric: Golden-piped Robert Gordon, Danny Dean, and Colin Winski strutted at the fore of a stateside revival of raw Rock'n'Roll. Numerous European precincts seethed in like mode.

Levi had recently left anglo-American neo-Rockabilly dervishes the Rockats (a glad-rags gang the fancy-footwork Roots Man had founded, and to whose thoroughly solid cat-stylings Danny would later add his eminently gone fret ravagings). Shoulder-to-shoulder, and crackingly assisted by young fire-hurlers easily equal to the frenetic mission, Levi and Danny instilled crisp swagger into the wonderfully rakish bop creature first raised up in nights of white-walls, rickety tables, and gravel back-road games of Chicken.

This compilation first saw issuance in 2015. Two versions of the recordings are today available: a 15-track release, and one comprising 19 cuts.

Recommended: "I Get So Excited," "Other Side of Midnight," "Victim of Kool," "Let's Roll," "Jitterbop Baby," "That's It, That's All," "B-I-Bickey-B-Bo-Bo-Go," "Reckless Rebel" (demo), "I'm Gone," "Catfight," "21 Days"

Videos: "Other Side of Midnight" "Victim of Kool" "That's It, That's All" "I'm Gone"

Levi:

Danny B: