Category: Saturday Matinee

Saturday Matinee – Old Buckers, Roy Buchanan, Pete Anderson & The Swamp Shakers

Buckin’ and beer. Buck dancing is related to clogging, flat footing, step dancing, and this film from the 1950s refers to it as skiffle. You already know about beer.

Roy Buchanan, aka “The World’s Greatest Unknown Guitarist,” from a PBS documentary 1971. Buchanan was most famously associated with a 1953 Fender Telecaster nicknamed ‘Nancy’. In 1988 he was arrested for public intoxication and was found hanged from his own shirt in the Fairfax County Virginia Jail. He was 48.

Pete Anderson was “the very first true rocker in the entire former Soviet Union” and formed The Swamp Shakers in Riga, Latvia, in 2009. Anderson passed away in 2016, but The Swamp Shakers continue performing as a trio.

Getting kinda late, so I’ll wrap this up and send it off to the internest. Have a great weekend, we’ll have more fun tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – A NY Mom, The Paladins, The Fabulous Thunderbirds & The Stray Cats

If you have children or grandchildren in public school, or know someone who does, watch this before YouTube takes it down.

Now for the fun stuff.

The Paladins were/are an underrated but great 3-man flat head six rockabilly band. I saw them decades ago opening for The Fabulous Thunderbirds at the original Golden Bear.

That’s the original T-Bird lineup from 1980
Jimmie Vaughan (guitar)
Kim Wilson (harmonica)
Fran Christina (drums)
Keith Ferguson (bass)
covering Slim Harpo‘s Baby Scratch My Back.

Brian Setzer & The Stray Cats did Eddie Cochran righteously in 1981. (Wanna feel old? Look at Brian Setzer now.)

That’s gonna do it for now. Have a great weekend, see you back here tomorrow and we’ll, um, you know. Do stuff.

Saturday Matinee – Romdraculas Firenze w/ Jun-Hyuk Choi, Rodrigo y Gabriela, The Eels & Messer Chups

In 2016, Korean tourist Jun-Hyuk Choi asked to borrow the bass and sat in with some buskers in Florence, Italy. The trio is Romdraculas Firenze.

Influenced by a number of genres including nuevo flamenco, rock, and heavy metal, Rodrigo y Gabriela eventually got tired of the Mexican rock scene. In 1999, despite not speaking English, they moved to Dublin, Ireland and were a hit. They’ve done much more since. More about them here.]

Aw yeah! The Eels vid is an odd one, kinda fits my attitude. The song was released in Japan in 2001, U.S. in 2002, on the album of the same name. The video volume is a bit low, so if you turn it up, turn it back down so you don’t blow your spickers.

Messer Chups doesn’t appear in my “suggested for you” Utoobage, but I know where to find them: St. Petersburg, Russia. They’re listed under vampire space zombie surf rock. Oleg Gitaracula – Guitar; Zombierella – Bass; Rockin Eugene – Drums

“While Messer Chups’ mostly instrumental sound is hard to neatly categorize, it’s safe to say that it would be embraced by fans of rockabilly, horror punk, vintage surf records, Italian slasher films, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Pulp Fiction, lounge music, the theremin, The Cramps, and the theme song from The Munsters.”

Hey, Utoob. Just because I click on a random video out of curiosity doesn’t mean that I like garbage like this, so you can remove it from the “suggested for you” list. I’d really appreciate it, because I’m only interested in finding the really good stuff.

Three day weekend for some of you out there, but we’ll hold down the fart until you return. See you then.

Saturday Matinee – Refrigerator Rockets, Billy Gibbons, R. L. Burnside & The Obscuritones

“…and packs an impressive top speed of 100mph.” Good God.
[Found here.]

Billy Gibbons covers R. L. Burnside. From the YouTube comments:
“Just hit play on this one and my 6 year old son immediately yelled from across the room ‘is that was ZZ TOP?!'”

R. L. Burnside was born in Lafayette County, Mississippi, learned from Mississippi Fred McDowell who lived in the next county over. Burnside and his family, tired of the life of sharecroppers, moved to Chicago in the early 50s. Subsequently his father, two uncles and two brother were murdered there. In 1959 he returned to Mississippi, was convicted for murder himself, and served time at the Parchman Penitentiary.

“I didn’t mean to kill nobody. I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head and two times in the chest. Him dying was between him and the Lord.”

The Obscuritones self describe as “Close harmony and rockin rhythm. Like the Andrews Sisters singin with the Stray Cats after a night out with the Cramps.” Okay, almost, but not bad for this sextet from the UK, and their album got a decent review.

Have a great weekend and we’ll do something tomorrow for sure.

Saturday Matinee – June Foray & Bill Scott, Cliff Richard & The Shadows, Devil In A Woodpile & Green Day

“True fun, not fake fun.”
June Foray and Bill Scott were my heroes, two of the most recognizable and ubiquitous voices of my childhood. They also did the morning traffic reports as Rocky and Bullwinkle in Boston. At 02:01, Rocky and Bullwinkle introduced a Kiss song on WBCN.

Cliff Richard & The Shadows had some stiff competition – check out the Billboard Hits for 1960. Sir Richard holds the record as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its active decades (1950s–2000s). The Shadows were Richard’s backup band (1958-1968), and they reunited in 2020 to play their 1960 hit Apache.

Bron-Y-Aur Stomp is a Led Zeppelin cover, named after Bron-Yr-Aur, a house in Gwynedd, Wales, and based on Waggoner’s Lad, a song by Bert Jansch that appeared on his album Nobody’s Fault But Mine. Go figure. I almost forgot – Devil In A Woodpile is awesome.

Possibly the greatest Ramones cover that’s not a Ramones cover. Green Day had some great stage moves, too. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t fit in with the other vids, but it clicks with me somehow.

Good God. It’s 2:30am. I’m outta here, see you in a few.

Saturday Matinee – Textron ARV, Malford Milligan, The Brothers Osborne w/ Darius Rucker & A Thousand Horses, and Thee Sinseers

That’s some serious Black Mirror stuff.

The Malford Milligan Band with Jeff Plankenhorn (I think) circa 2011. Can’t verify the the others.

“We had so much fun backstage during our last jam video that Darius Rucker decided he didn’t want to be left out…so we made another!” Whole buncha peeps in that one: The Brothers Osborne, Darius Rucker and A Thousand Horses. BTW, that’s a Doc Watson song.

Joey Quinones & Thee Sinseers‘ chicano R&B gets me every time. Reminds me of so many things long ago and far away. Hard to find the band lineup, but that’s Adriana Flores (of The Altons) on vocals.

Guess that’s good enough for now. Have a great weekend, do something nice for your mom, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Russian Cyberfarm, KMAC2021, The Marcus King Band & Playing For Change

They say that Russia is a technically backward country, there are no roads, robotics do not develop, rockets do not fly, and mail goes too long. It’s bullshit.

[h/t Feral Irishman]

KMAC2021 has been around a while, does some great short videos and has close to a million fans on the Utoobage. He does some serious stuff, too.

Marcus King started learning guitar at age three or four, played professionally since he was 11. He’s a fourth-generation musician; his grandfather was a country guitarist, and his father, Marvin King, continues to perform live.

Musicians from around the globe, assembled by Playing For Change, covered the NOLA staple Iko Iko in style. It features Dr. John (in one of his last recordings), the Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, New Orleans’ favorites Ivan Neville, Donald Harrison and George Porter, Jr.

Yep. There’s some stuff alright. Have a great weekend and try not to annoy too many people on social media. See you tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Cajun Country Revival, The Black Keys & When Rivers Meet

Cajun Country Revival in the Bunny Glade at Pickathon 2012. No idea what “the Bunny Glade” is, but it appears to be somewhere near Portland, Oregon.

The Black Keys are still around, still doing what they’re best at. This is an unusual take on the blues standard Crawlin’ King Snake (first recorded by Big Joe Williams in 1941, but it goes back decades earlier).

When Rivers Meet is a blues/roots rock 4-member “duo” from London. Good tough stuff, they got the edge. Looks like a good band to keep an ear out for.

Gotta wrap it up early but we’ll see you tomorrow for no good reason at all.

Saturday Matinee – Cutting Sand, Kelbe Schrank, Feng E & MGMT

8 minutes of slicing colored sand [via].

Kelbe Schrank‘s Dancing Manhole Cover Song is not related to the .gif in here but it is. Besides vocals and guitar, Schrank has a good hand at watercolors, too.

Feng E‘s father threatened that he’d never play LEGOs with the 5 year old again unless he learned to play ukelele. Cruel dad IMO, but the kid is amazing.

I’d heard MGMT before, but I didn’t know their name. I kind of like the sound of this one (The Monkees meet The Amboy Dukes) and the vid is quirky. Their song Time To Pretend is one of my favorites, but I get a bit choked up when I hear it.

Have a great weekend or not; it’s your choice, and we’ll be back tomorrow with a pile of stuff for you to sort through.

Saturday Matinee – Unknown Hinson, Little Feat & Alan Mirikitani

Those piqued my interest, so I dug further. Because I had to.

you gave the dog my supper
you had sex with my brother
you’ve done some ugly things
for such
such a pretty girl

The Utoobage algorithm said I should check out Stuart Daniel Baker, aka Unknown Hinson, so I did. Don’t dismiss him. He’s got some serious guitar chops, and Ugly Things is the finest love ballad I’ve heard in hours. (Not only that, but the grandson of Hank Williams (Hank III) has an image of Unknown Hinson tattooed on his forearm.)

Little Feat was never easy to categorize, but this one’s kinda swampabilly with some big band thrown in.

Alan Mirikitani (1955-2015) was a classic bluesman from L.A., and fronted the band BB Chung King & The Screaming Buddaheads. Used to hear them on the radio, never got to see them live. He was in the recording studio when he died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

I think that’ll do for now. Have a great weekend, do where you wanna go, go where you wanna do. You know the drill, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.