The Rocket Went So Fast, I Couldn't Hear the Blast!

My current fave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Garage Hangover got to it first. So sue me! I'm into even sharin'.

Doubtlessly inspired by the Apollo missions of the late 60's, this disc appeals to my love of both the cold, incalculable majesty that is outer space and the pissed off youth demographic. So irreverent that it could only truly be conceived by that rubics cube of non-linear thought - the teenage mind, 'Moon is one Heavenly-ass body.

Note: 'Moon', if you're listenin', you better give this kid his baby back before he breaks a Cuban-heel off in your crater-havin' ass

Straight outta Carolina (Does it really matter which one) circa 69' (or 70' if your a bettin' man), this is about as frantic as it gets.

Moon, Send My Baby - The Challengers

One man's trash is another man's TRASH!!!

I grabbed this 59' blues side on the strength (for lack of a better word) of the vocals alone. They’re bad, but in a good, down-home sincerity, kinda way. I initially figured it for general cheap studio ineptitude until reading the snippet below, which gave me a new-found fondness for an already awesome offering.

See Bobo Jenkins & the Big Star story:

"He {Bobo Jenkins} called his studio and record label, Big Star Records. The first group he recorded was the Walton Brothers, featuring ten year old, Clarence Walton on the song, The Cat” and on side 2, “Midnight” (BS002). He then recorded their father, harmonica player, ‘Little Daddy’ James Walton, who came to Detroit in 1945. Backed by his sons, the record was called “Come On Tell Me What You Got” and the flip side called “Shady Grove” (BS-001)".

So there you have it folks. It's a family affair of underage pickers and their mush-mouthed little bro. Sensational!

Note: A shiny new wooden nickel to whomever can tell me what the fuck this kid is sayin'!

The Cat - Clarence Walton & the Walton Brothers

Midnight - The Walton Brothers

Bold and Bracing, Lusty Tasting?!?!

Yup, its the Vandals

Nope, not those Vandals

Not these Vandals either

What we got here is a Grade-A wax advert, brought to you by the fine people @ Macy's and the 7-Up beverage company (Patent pending). 'Wet & Wild' is a refreshing romp though the gossamer hedgerows of the celebrated Lemon-Lime tonic, replete w/ some heavy Vox Continental action (1966 Natch!). I love how the lyrics are blatantly sexual - "Sooo Wet!"

'Mustang Georgie', likewise, is a steamin' 'Mersey Pie' of bubblegum, Muscle Cars and repressed anger - "My Mustang didn't cost me half as much as you!!!". Man alive, these Vandals are pissed! And while none of these tunes illicit even a remote response with regard to me buying either a Mustang, or a 7-Up, I am totally game for buyin' more kitchy pop-advertising records.

Wafflehouse...here I come!!!

Wet & Wild - Vandals

Mustang Georgie - Vandals

As Thick as Pea Soup...

The only info I could turn up on the enclosed platter was my own reference several posts back as to having bought it (That, and a bunch o' shit about Lee Andrews & the Hearts)...so I gonna go out on a limb and say that their ain't much of a story to bookend ole 'Foggy' here. Shame, seeing as how this non-descript disc has some of the craziest guitar work I have had the pleasure of diggin. Seriously though, this guy is so far out that he seemingly leaves the band (and meter) on a different plain!!! So take a cue from your friendly neighborhood axe-handler, and get lost in the fog...

Foggy - Harold Andrews & the Exciters

Sin...Ain't it a Shame.

If I might address my adoration of Gospel 78's for a moment...

The wonderful thing about gospel music is that the purveyors were more often than not just as guilty as the sermonized when it came to worldly matters. It is that same lapse in reason that allows me to present to you, w/ no small amount of irony, Rev. A. Johnson's 1952 oratory on divine disapproval - God Don't Like It.

Note: Don't worry, you don't have to believe in the God of Abraham to enjoy , you just have to believe that ole' A. J. believes - Faith by proxy

Surely Great Aunt Mahala would have balked at the notion "quit that drinkin' moonshine", but such is the duality of sin and sacrament that the classification of Guitar Evangelist became the general term for Bluesmen trying to balance their "Wine. Women & Laughter w/ some sobering "Sermons & Soda Water the day after".


Having dropped the proverbial "Bottleneck Bomb" on several non-secular (there's that word again) tunes from his own 'Angel' record label, native Floridian Anderson Johnson took a back seat to Mr. Henry stone w/ regard to a kinder gentler Gospel endeavor:

"Henry Stone began playing the trumpet in his teens, inspired by jazz great Louis Armstrong. Later at a military camp in New Jersey, he played in bands. After being discharged in 1946, he began selling records out of the back of his car in Los Angeles. Later he became a 78 rpm record salesman for the Bihari Brothers' Modern Records, traveling across the U.S. selling to jukebox owners. In 1952, he established his own recording studio, Crystal Recording Company, and started a blues label, Rockin', and a gospel music label, Glory, in Florida. A big hit on Glory was Rev. A. Johnson's God Don't Like It"

I would love to be able to tell you more about ole' A.J., but the past is just not that kind to a man of the seer-sucker cloth. Seeing as how 78's can be a fool's errand these days, check out the complete Anderson Johnson on the '1950's Gospel Classics' comp from Document Records.

Now that I have the 'spirit', maybe I can finally get around to finishing Mrs. JJB's Gospel Comp.

God Don't Like It - Reverend A. Johnson

If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again - Rev. A. Johnson

The "Now" Sound of the Salvation Army!?!?

Grabbed this outa the Xian junk-box @ a local Waxiteria in Somerville. I honestly didn't have high hopes for it - as religious recordings tend to be painfully quaint no matter what horrors their salacious covers might suggest - but this LP was tracked in Asbury Park in 67', so I figure 'What the Hell'. True to form, most of the LP blows, and not in an empyrean trumpet kinda way. There is, however, on conspicuous holdout...


I don't know which is cooler, the fact that 'Sinkin' is a non-secular cover from 1912', or that a bunch of righteous pimple-pusses manage to desecrate said song right from the opening chord.

Way to go Bennies! Ya gone and made the baby Jesus cry!

Sinkin' - The Real Soul

A Tale Of A Strange Phenomena.

Goth Music, or Death Rock? It is a question that has plagued people for millennia. Ok, so I might be exaggerating a bit. Might not seem much of a difference, yet if you were to ask the average ghoul in full makeup on line @ a Quick-Check, them's could be fightin' words, or, more likely than not, illicit a muttering of curses to bookend their passive-aggressive deference.


Having seen the cultural devastation that is 'Emo' cutting itself discreetly into the fore-arms of the cultural lexicon, I find myself longing for spookier days in Bowery, when people didn't take themselves (and their haircuts) too seriously and post-modern vampirism was hitherto unknown. I am talking, of course, about a liberal dose of self deprecating humor - I am talking about 45 Grave.

"Formed from the remains of The Consumers by Rob Ritter / Graves of The Bags, Don Bolles of The Germs, Paul Cutler and Dinah Cancer (one of the best stage names ever), the most-underrated 45 Grave began as Vox Pop in the '70s, playing at the infamous and legendary L.A. punk institution the Masque. Driven by a gleeful twisted fascination with B-movies and gore-nography, Vox Pop eventually decomposed into 45 Grave, perhaps the very first gothic band. Though it would be near impossible to pinpoint the exact scope of their [bad] influence, suffice to say that 45 Grave far predate both the much-hyped Bat Cave movement in the UK and the formation of Christian Death and that Nikki Sixx even admitted in print that Motley Crue stole 45 Grave's easily-recognizable goathead-pentagram logo! But unlike those artists, who took themselves far too seriously, 45 Grave always had their tongues firmly planted in their gaunt, deathly-white cheeks : for them it was just good dirty fun."

What can I say? Any band that covers 'Riboflavin Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Poly-Unsaturated Blood' by Don Hinson is a fiend, er, friend o' mine. Enjoy some cuts off their lesser known posthumous sophomore album 'Autopsy'. Ole' Uncle Red is gonna throw a 'Y' incision your way. Catch a New-Wave to a shallow grave!

Anti Em - 45 Grave

Take 9 - 45 Grave

My Type - 45 Grave