Romantic Beach, Los Elásticos (2003)
Banda instrumental de México, amante de la lucha libre y de la de Música Surf. Los cuatro luchadores y una Go-go Dancer tienen una página web por ahí.
Olav & The Blues Cruise is a blues band from Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands. Fronted by Olav Boereboom on guitar and vocals, they’ve been active on the Dutch circuit for years playing original songs and covers, and released their first album in 2022.
“Beatin’ them strings like they owe him money.” Sturgill Simpson’s Sunday Valley played some outlawbillygrass chicken pickin’ cowpunk in a barn somewhere in Nashville (2011). Simpson has multiple Grammy Awards and nominations, is an actor, and occasionally performs as his alter-ego Johnny Blue Skies.
Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers is a hellbilly punk band from Murray, Kentucky, fronted by banjo picker and harp wrangler J.D. Wilkes. Wilkes has a solo career as well, that includes music, visual art and illustration; he’s also a novelist, amateur filmmaker, and is a genuine Kentucky Colonel.
Lotsa news this week, some good, some bad, some too absurd to worry about, and tomorrow is Porch Time. I’ll have everything in order by whenever, so show up at the usual time and you can see for yourselves.
Memorial Day is a time of remembrance, reflection, and reunion with friends and families. For your festivities, here are some unrelated tunes, chosen at random and ordered by year of release.
[Previous Memorial Day posts are archived here.]
[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of the recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only.]
Tear Drops, Soul Brothers Inc. (1967 Salem Records) 1960s northern soul group from Christiansburg, Virginia, with vocals by brothers Earl and Marshal Carter. A copy of this rare 45rpm can fetch as much as $5k. (Not to be confused with Soul Brothers Inc. from Houston, Texas, or S.B.I. / Soul Brothers Inc. Records.)
BoDeans formed in 1986 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and they’re still at it. Described as “one of the most successful, and best known, bands to come out of the Milwaukee area,” BoDeans is included in a permanent installation on artists from the Midwest at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Video was recorded at the Stoughton Opera House, Stoughton WI in 2024.
Formed in Bristol circa 2013, The Terraplanes Blues Band were shortlisted as one of the top 20 blues bands in the UK by the UK Blues Federation, and awarded the prestigious Emerging Blues Act of the Year at the 2023 UK Blues Awards.
1984 jazzy blues jam by Tom Principato and Danny Gatton (1945-1994).
From YouTube comments: “This song is Tom’s Samba, not How’s Your Sister. Sister was performed on the same studio taping, but is more of a Bill Doggett blues shuffle. Danny originally recorded Sister as a member of the Soul Mates band around 1966 when they worked on a Potomac cruise ship. The 45 is extremely rare.”
Lotta news a-poppin’ this week, with fires and chemical spills, Ebola outbreaks, UFO files and Memorial Day sales. Good time for a three-day weekend, and we’ll discuss it all at porchtime tomorrow. See you there.
Moon Baby, Bo Diddley (1961) The amount of time to compose and record this song must have taken almost an hour. It was the last track on Side 1 of Bo Diddley is a Lover (reissue, ca. 1961). It also appears on retro compilations (like this one).
Belgian guitarist (and occasional one-woman band) Ghalia Volt grew up listening to her grandparents’ traditional Spanish music and flamenco songs, then moved onto punk, garage rock, psychobilly and roots rock. She began performing as a street busker in Europe and is now anchored in New Orleans.
“This is the sort of band that gets booked by unwary festival promoters as an early evening support only to discover they’ve stolen the show by 8 pm.”
Since their beginnings as a Copenhagen bar band, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado have been dubbed Denmark’s premier roots rockers. The septet has performed in Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, the US and Asia for the past twenty years.
Soledad Brothers were an American garage rock trio from Maumee, Ohio. Taking strong influence from blues rock and punk, the band produced four albums and were active from 1998 to 2006. They took their name from a trio of convicted members of the Black Panther Party, incarcerated at Soledad Prison in the early 1970s.
Panic walks amok: This week’s news feeds shifted to stories of dignitaries chowing down in China, a possible super El Niño, un-salmandering the gerrymandering, snorkeling near the USS Arizona, and the Rat Turd Virus. All in all it made for a slight respite, and Porch Time is scheduled for porchtime o’clock. See you then and there.
Pressure Drop, The Clash (1979) “Now when it drops on your dirty little head (oh yeah)
Where you gonna go?” In 1979, premier UK punk group The Clash covered The Maytals’ 1969 hit.
Monster Mike Welch Band: Mike Welch / guitar & vocals; Alex Schultz / guitar; Lorenzo Farrell / keyboard; Derrick “D’Mar” Martin / drums & faces. Welch has been performing and recording for over 30 years. The bluesman from Boston was only 13 when Dan Akroyd gave him the nickname.
Texas roots rocker Joe Ely kicked the Austin progressive country music industry loose in the 1970s. Besides his own solo work, he performed with many other headliners, including Bruce Springsteen, Uncle Tupelo, Los Super Seven, The Chieftains, James McMurtry, The Clash, Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Guy Clark. After suffering from Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease, Ely passed away at the age of 78 in December 2025 [obit].
Colin James‘ 1988 self-titled debut was the fastest-selling album in Canadian history. It won him his first of seven Juno Awards and an opening spot on tour with Keith Richards. So far he’s got seven Gold-certified albums in Canada, including four Platinum albums and two Double Platinum albums.
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Canadian singer and songwriter Amanda Marshall was 16 in 1988 when she met blind guitarist Jeff Healy; he was so impressed with her vocals he took her with him on tour. In 1993, Marshall’s self-titled debut album was released in 1995 went on to become one of only eighteen albums in Canadian history to achieve Diamond status, and achieved Gold or Platinum status in fifteen countries.
Enough to keep yer bones a-rockin’ and yer earballs a-poppin’ – at least until Porch Time. Tomorrow. On the porch. Be there or be L7.
[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of these recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only. Images found scattered around the internets.]
Tacky Raccoons 