No Summertime Blues

 

May was a quiet month here at Satanic Hillbilly as the real world kept me busy but that will change in summer, I promise. For a start here are a few pictures taken in April in Tampere:

Mike Bell & The Belltones

Cherry Casino & The Gamblers

Ruby Ann

Fin-A-Billy Part 8: Tex and the Dixie Rebels

In the late 70s/early 80s countless numbers of young Teddyboy bands were playing Crazy Cavan inspired Rockabilly in Finland. At that time Rockabilly was KING in this country and Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers got gold records. Tex and the Dixie Rebels was one of these bands. Mikko Takala (who later would play in the Tom Cat Rebels) on vocals and guitar, bass-player Pasi Valtonen and drummer Hannu Virtakallio were Tex and Dixie Rebels and in 1980 the three young men released their one and only record, their "Rockabilly Rebellion" LP on Heliander Productions.

I have never seen an original copy of the album but thanks to other collectors who are willing to share their vinyl-nuggets I was at least able to get it as download. And so can you, it is available here. Teddyboy Rock'n'Roll hardly gets rarer than this!

A Rockin' Good Read...Or Not? Part 7

Sometimes you buy a book because you've read a review about it and got curious, sometimes you buy a book because someone recommended it to you and sometimes you buy a book simply because the title sounds promising. Option 3 was the reason for me to buy William Jones's book 'Rockabilly Underground London 1980s'.

Progress isn't always a good thing as we know. One negative side-effect of the internet and computerization of people's life's in general is the fact that today everyone can publish a book(via print on demand for example). Which means a lot of rubbish is produced. Often these books have no decent concept, show lack of research, have an eye hurting layout and picture quality that shouldn't be legal any more in the 21st century.

'Rockabilly Underground' starts promising. The cover looks decent with pictures of young Rockabillies, some 45s and event flyers. But as soon as you open the book the disappointment begins. The layout is terrible, the table of contents is not recognizable as being one, the quality of many pictures is awful(you would think that someone publishing a book would make the effort to get good quality scans(or prints) of pictures), there's no concept and the book doesn't hold what the title promises.

Sure, there are some decent parts. The book starts with author Jones talking about how he got into Rock'n'Roll, how he became a young Teddyboy, hung around with other Teds, how he went from Ted to Cat. That makes a good read. But then he loses it. He doesn't talk about Rockabilly in London in the 80s, he writes about Rockabilly DJs and clubs in the 80s and includes lists of people's fave songs. He publishes interviews he made with Ray Campi and Mac Curtis. Interesting yes, but London Rockabilly underground? He has a chapter about a trip to Finland in the 80s. Again, London Rockabilly underground? He mentions chicks he dated. London Rockabilly underground? The two really interesting bits of information the book has to offer are when Mouse(Red Hot'n'Blue) talks briefly about Rockin' Squats in London(more on that would have been interesting) and when Rob Glazebrook tells how Rochee and the Sarnos started. As Jones talked to Mouse, Glazebrook, Paul Roman, Roy from Nervous, Dell from Fury and the Polecats he had had the chance to really write a book about Rockabilly in London in the 80s, but he blew it.