The Hicksville Bombers – What Kinda Fool
Raucous Records – Rauc 022 [1995]
What Kinda Fool / Bopper and Shakers – Get Outta My House
The Hicksville Bombers are Dave Brown on vocals and guitar, Pete “Geordie” O’Brien on double bass and vocals, and Bryn Jones on drums and vocals. The trio formed in Lincoln, England, in 1992. They recorded this EP with Chris Cummings (Riverside Trio) at his Riverside Studios.
What Kinda Fool is a superb blues-bopper that maintains the tension throughout the song. It benefits from an excellent guitar work from Brown, mixing bopping blues with Rockabilly influences. Bopper and Shakers is a menacing Blues tune akin to On The Road Again. The boys keep it simple with powerful and effective riffs and pounding – almost tribal – drums. Get Outta My House is more on the hillbilly side of things, with the slap bass to the fore and boom-chicka-boom guitar ala Luther Perkins.
Fred “Virgil” Turgis