Alex Valenzi and the 
Hideaway Cats
Cruisin' Around
(El Toro Records)

Keep this news out of squares' ears, but there's a rock'n'roll party at the edge of town, tonight. There'll be jitterbuggin' cats and kittens sprawled all over the place, sent into orbit over twangs, rollicking 88s, crazy sax, and a hiccupy voice-man whose cool credentials bounce off walls and kick dispute clean out the door.

Recommended: "Long Tall Green-Eyed Baby," "Cruisin' Around," "Bop Bop Boogie," "Fine Looking Woman," "Rockin' Boogie Boy," "Too Many Teardrops," ''Bad Boy" (Billy Zoom cover), "Later," "Let Yourself Go"

Video: "Long Tall Green-Eyed Baby"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azuFMys6h7Q&index=8&list=PL7oYGigMccwk1Z_PgX5niHdkBKOWoOvg_


http://renatarcandid3.wixsite.com/alexvalenzi

https://www.facebook.com/TheHideawayCats/

https://www.eltororecords.com/El-Toro-Records/New-Talent/ALEX-VALENZI-CRUISIN-AROUND::459.html?MODsid=djv4p7uf6uiap0ndvhghqffvu7

William Elliott Whitmore
Kilonova (Bloodshot Records)

With languid pastoral strings and a disarmingly understated drawl, William ambles down a clay back road of Americana covers that should be taught in every classroom. But then, when all are lulled, he unbinds Beefheart's "Bat Chain Puller," by light years the disc's most adventurous and slow-motion arresting entry.

Recommended: "Bat Chain Puller," "One Glass At a Time," "Busted," "Fear of Trains," "Ain't No Sunshine," "Hot, Blue, and Righteous," "Five Feet High and Rising"

Video: "Fear Of Trains"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6uKVHnQT9o


http://www.williamelliottwhitmore.com/

https://www.facebook.com/williamelliottwhitmore/


https://www.bloodshotrecords.com/album/kilonova

https://williamelliottwhitmore.bandcamp.com/album/kilonova

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D9NJ3DF/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp

While clearing recent blog-post records, I accidentally deleted those reviews from the blog, itself. (Only old ones are left.) I'll be starting all over. New reviews, soon.

From Marc Bristol's Blue Suede News review:

"My favorite chapters in this book are the ones on Bettie Page and the one on the author's late brother Rick, a guitarist and all-around roots musician in their native Iowa and surrounding region nearly all of his life

"...One thing crystal clear is that DC Larson is one of us: he has a passion for the music that we love, and doesn't have tunnel vision about it -- he loves a wide variety of America Roots Music, and the culture that surrounds it. He's written about a spectrum of artists from Elvis, Paul Burlison, and Ray Campi to Dale Watson and Wayne Hancock, and rockabillies like Robert Gordon, Chris Spedding, Hillbilly Casino, Nick Curran, and Jinx Jones.

"His final essay, 'Rock'n'Roll Will Stand,' is something on which we can all agree, but his own perspective and research fleshes out the idea with some interesting anti-Rock'n'Roll quotes you may or may not have encountered before."

HARD COPY ORDERING INFO: http://retroriffbooks.blogspot.com/

EBOOK ORDERING INFO: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07236DTWG

BLUE SUEDE NEWS REVIEW, EXCERPTED

"My favorite chapters in this book are the ones on Bettie Page and the one on the author's late brother Rick, a guitarist and all-around roots musician in their native Iowa and surrounding region nearly all of his life

"...One thing crystal clear is that DC Larson is one of us: he has a passion for the music that we love, and doesn't have tunnel vision about it -- he loves a wide variety of America Roots Music, and the culture that surrounds it. He's written about a spectrum of artists from Elvis, Paul Burlison, and Ray Campi to Dale Watson and Wayne Hancock, and rockabillies like Robert Gordon, Chris Spedding, Hillbilly Casino, Nick Curran, and Jinx Jones.

"His final essay, 'Rock'n'Roll Will Stand,' is something on which we can all agree, but his own perspective and research fleshes out the idea with some interesting anti-Rock'n'Roll quotes you may or may not have encountered before."
- Marc Bristol / Blue Suede News, issue 112 (summer 2017)

IOWA CENTER FOR THE BOOK author bio

Comments from the author about writing:  I have self-published three novels in my retro-styled and G-rated Eddie Atomic space adventure series: 2009's Shake, Rattle & Rocket!, 2012's Ghost Saucers In the Sky!, and 2016's Stratosphere Boogieman. All feature "two-fisted scientist" Eddie Atomic, genius glamour-girl robot Kioko, youthful, plucky pilot Spunky, and wise veteran advisor Commander Augustus McGuffin.

I wrote a regular Pin Up America column, "In the Spotlight," for about two years. For some six years before that, I was the CD Review Editor for Rockabilly Magazine.

My freelance music articles and reviews have appeared in Goldmine, No Depression, Blue Suede News, Rock & Rap Confidential, and others. 

National/international political essay credits include Daily Caller, Counterpunch, American Thinker, Dissident Voice, the Huffington Post, and USA Today. 

I've also written numerous newspaper opinion pieces on political topics, with credits including the Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier, Marshalltown Times-Republican, Iowa City Press Citizen, and Cedar Falls Times.

Too, I served as Iowa Coordinator for Ralph Nader's 2004 independent campaign, a position that included writing duties. I also served as the Iowa Green Party Media Coordinator from 2000 - 2004. 

And in 2016, I wrote several Iowa newspaper think-pieces promoting the Donald Trump campaign.

Book Types: Fiction

Audience Types: All Ages

Genre: Science Fiction, Humor

Are you willing to do programs for schools, libraries, or other groups? No

Mailing Address: 

322 E. Louise Street,  Waterloo, Iowa 50703

E-mail Address:   larson.dc@yahoo.com

Author's Web site: http://www.facebook.com/dclarson/ and http://www.retroriffbooks.blogspot.com/

County:  Black Hawk

Books By This Author

• Shake, Rattle & Rocket! Self-published, 2009.

• Ghost Saucers In the Sky! Self-published 2012.
• Stratosphere Boogieman 2016

Hillary vs Elvis 2016
Does Clinton believe Presley to have been a "deplorable?"

Singer Mary J. Blige's musical successes were commercial and era-bound in nature; she neither turned new creative soil nor was particularly interesting in her revisiting of cliches.

She did, though, slur her artistic superior. In 1997, Blige lied bold-facedly about the late Elvis Presley, deriding him without foundation as "racist."

The otherwise irrelevant Blige is a minor player in current political news. She is making quite the loud spectacle of herself on behalf of Hillary Clinton. 

In a simply tilted video interview spot soon to run online, Blige sings questions to Clinton. The candidate wears a pained, 'why in the hell did I agree to this?' expression, the same one she sported during her recent Between Two Ferns appearance. 

My guess is that some millennial vote-hunting campaign functionary was later disciplined roundly.

But Hillary's opportunistic embrace of Elvis-hater Blige neatly illustrates a larger reality about her campaign, as well as of an evolving foul and nonsensical cultural trend. In this addled movement, everything established, successful, reasonable, and traditional is to be reviled and plowed under. 

There is no distinction recognized between positives and negatives. By virtue of vintage, all are equally opprobrious. 

To have enjoyed previous cultural cache, goes the fury-brained half-thinking, is to be (pick one or more) racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. And, hence, the despised enemy to be strangled by the marching, sign-hefting forces of goodness.

In this undisciplined era of anarchic tumult, Hillary Clinton has made manifest her sympathy: Out with the old, and in with the new. Elvis would be counted as an 'irredeemable deplorable,' by her rancid arithmetic. 

(Never mind that they don't get much older than she; not unlike celebrity backers Cher and Madonna, Hillary seeks to reinvent herself for the incoming generation of ticket buyers.)

Given her amoral calculating, it is logical -- albeit still thoroughly despicable -- that Clinton cast her lot with rampaging, violent, and destructive street thugs over law officers representing decent and orderly American society. 

At this point, a stipulation cries out to be acknowledged. No candidate can reasonably be assumed to share every belief of their backers. 

A major misjudgement was made by news media commentators challenging Donald Trump to publicly distance himself from stray unsavory supporters. Such outsiders had without invitation sought greater visibility by attaching themselves to his more popular and spotlighted effort.

It was unreasonable to demand that Trump acknowledge them as legitimately worth attention. But as we've seen in this election season, reasonableness is most clearly not a mainstream media ambition.

There is a considerable difference, though, between that and the Hillary/Blige case: The Democratic candidate chose her association with the Elvis-smearing singer of long-since-gone renown.

Hillary does not necessarily share Blige's deceitful, noxious prejudice. But by uncritically availing herself of the faded pop luminary's aid and comfort -- and, in a very real larger sense, with the bedraggled, anarchic assassins of all-that-came-before -- she certainly is positing this metaphorical choice:

You can stand with either Elvis Presley or Hillary Clinton. Can't be both.


end