Matchstick Johnny
"Let Me Tell You About My Baby" 
"Jungle Blues," "The Twist"
3-track 45
(Reeltone)

Matchstick Johnny's hysterical fits and writhings owe to possession by contemporary, underground one-man-band spirits. He's of the Bill Bloodshot/Gene Crazed/Hasil Adkins freneticism school. And at turns, his howling and glottal punctuations recall unleashed episodes of Charlie Feathers and Dexter Romweber.

Tom Von Hollywood contributes bold slap bass. Only 200 copies of this single were manufactured.

Early 20th Century Southern medicine show troubadour Harmonica Frank Floyd is sometimes cited by chroniclers of the American-manifestation of the one-man-band phenomenon. He did bring average people's folk songs to 1930s regional radio and, later, the Sun and Chess labels. 

But it can be traced to European old countries, where royal court musicians dressed in fanciful, colorful costumes, and played three-hole flutes with one hand while beating a drum with the other. 

Had any of them carried on in the outrageous Matchstick Johnny manner over which we today enthuse, the court sorcerer-doctor and his leeches might have been summoned.

Recommended: "Let Me Tell You About My Baby," "Jungle Blues," "The Twist"

Video: "Let Me Tell You About My Baby" (Teaser)
            Live in Fort Lauderdale, 2018

https://www.matchstickjohnny.com/

https://www.facebook.com/matchstickjohnny/

https://matchstickjohnny.bandcamp.com/

Ronnie Crutcher
Crutchero
(self)

.

Hillbilly Casino's oxygen-swiping soloist perpetrates crunch-chording and a light-speed flurry of incisive guitar notes. Classic rock 'n' roll and blues figurations stomp in affiliation with allusive ethnic flourishes. Flabbergasting, to degrees seldom heard.

Recommended: "Crutchero," "I Go Smoking," "Two For Flinching," "You Don't Say," "Battle Possums," "Native Stepson," "I Got This," "It's All Good."

(Of the 14 tracks contained on Crutchero, only those above were available for preview.)

Videos: "Crutchero"
             "I Go Smoking"
             "Two For Flinching"


https://www.facebook.com/ronnie.crutcher.1


http://www.junglerecords.fi/crutcher-ronnie-crutchero.html

Lucky Lance and the Star Devils
s/t
(self)

Chief among this confidently aggressive quartet's attributes is unfeigned affinity with the common-man music they so deftly dispatch. That's a fancy way of saying they feel what they play.


Recommended: "I Wanna Jump," "Get Gone," "Rose Marie," "Some Kind of Cool," "Ramblin' Daddy," "Monsters (Knockin' At My Door)," "Masticatin' Mama," "Please Baby Please."

Video: "I Wanna Jump" (Bopflix Session)


Band website

Band Facebook page

Mike Teardrop Trio
Till the Dawn
(Enviken Records)

The rustic-folk element integral to true-blue rockabilly informs every jumped-up melody and sprightly rhythm presented on this important wax.

Recommended: "Just a Country Boy," "Sad and Blue," "Good For Nothin'," "That Extra Mile," "Twenty One," "Down To the Corner," "I'm Gonna Live Some Before I Die"

Videos: "Just a Country Boy"
             "Good For Nothin'"
             "Down To the Corner" (live)


https://www.facebook.com/Miketeardroptrio/

https://envikenrecords.com/news/news_enrec180/



https://www.amazon.com/Till-Dawn-Mike-Teardrop-Trio/dp/B07SXSYHYN

https://airplaydirect.com/music/tillthedawn/

https://open.spotify.com/album/6Wqf6Yhqyzspo2lGNqbq8x

The Meteors
The Mental Instrumentals II:
When Guitars Attack
(Mutant Rock)

These tracks hail from various Meteors configurations, as well as P. Paul's solo endeavors. Gnashed psychobilly, Party Beach meditations, and Mexican melodies are all fed into a uniquely sinister device.

An army of ink-barrels have, over decades, been expended portraying his choreographed grotesqueries. And to be sure, his onstage criminally lunatic persona and bug-eyed, howling-mad antics are of striking rank.

But beneath the gleefully morbid exterior, we find a consummate professional. P. Paul richly merits respect for his compositional and six-string abilities. 

His knack for crafting multi-faceted arrangements that span frenetic dash and ominous quietude, while making much of whatever instrumentation is appropriate, sits him in high company, indeed. 

Meanwhile, he tears from his guitar calamitous storms, headlong rocketing, and cannily reined understatements. Studied, complex voicings rival the brutish mayhem. There's ample space for both in P. Paul's presentation, and each exacts its peculiar purpose.

Recommended: "When Guitars Attack," "The Cutter Cuts (While the Widow Weeps)," "Mule Boy and His Unformed Face," "The Multiple Deaths of Pichina," "Do the Blood Feast Twist," "Giancando Con La Mano Sinistra Di Dio," "Blood Beat," "Nightmare In Elche (Alicante Breakdown)," "Halloween Scream," "Surfing Home On a Dead Girl," "Let's Go Play At the Myers House," "L'odio Cavalca De Solo," "Bad Universe," "The Loneliness Of a Long Distance Killer."

Videos: "When Guitars Attack"
"The Cutter Cuts While the Widow Weeps"
"Giancando Con La Mano Sinistra Di Dio"
"Surfing Home On a Dead Girl"


https://www.facebook.com/themeteorsofficial/

http://www.mutantrockrecords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pg/MutantRockRecords/posts/

Doyley and the Twanglords
Twang Solo
Return ofthe Twangi
(Diablo Records)

.

Philip Doyle excels at novel instrumental craft; one is as likely to thrill to a mischievous surfers-beach air or leathery Link Wray reference as zoom aloft along uncharted spaceways, battling all manner of sinister and comically odd creatures. These discs surely are alone in combining Hang Ten exhortations with affectionate tips to Gene Roddenberry, Irwin Allen, and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.

Many laud Doyley's hyper-torrential psycho toil with the Guitar Slingers and Demented Are Go. But any who've thusfar missed his equally astounding sci fi-surf expressions have now the happy opportunity for rectification.

Recommended (Twang Solo): "Zorch + 14," "Twangzilla," "Graviton"," "Hava Nagaila," "The Day of the Triffids," "The Trip," "Johnny Dangerously," "Surf Bitch," "Revenge of the Morlocks," "Django II Bastardo."

Recommended (Return of the Twangi): "Prime Directive," "Joe 90," "Lost In Space," "Botz," "Cybermen," "Kicks Back," "Collision Earth," "Grinder," "Whiskey Charles n Snatch," "Mariachi," "Missing Link," "One More Bite," "Space and Twang."

Videos (Twang Solo): "Zorch + 4"
                                    "Twangzilla"
                                    "Graviton"


Video (Return of the Twangi): Full album stream, from Diablo 


Philip Doyle (Doyley) Facebook

Diablo Facebook


Twang Solo (Bandcamp)

Return of the Twangi (Bandcamp)

The Gun Club
Danse Kalinda Boom 
Vinyl reissue
(Chaputa Records)

Reissue of 1984 live recordings.

Those intent on digging the singular punk-blues of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Kid Congo, and Patricia Morrison (with an unknown drummer, possibly Terry Graham) will disregard unflattering audio, and gambol in a fractious mileau through which slid the driven and tormented spirit of Robert Johnson; urban seethe and its distant voodoo kinfolk hunted illicit elation on dissolute boulevards; and schizzing guitars smacked together in madly confluent battle.

Recommended: "Stranger In Our Town," "Gila Monster, New Mexico / Preaching Blues," "Goodbye Johnny," "Sleeping In Blood City," "Give Up the Sun."

Video: "Stranger In Our Town" (non-LP version)


https://www.chaputa.com/store/gun-club-danse-kalinda-boom-lp/?v=7516fd43adaa

(L-R: Pierce, Morrison, Graham, Powers)