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Long Tall Texans

Cellmates (the)

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cellmates on parole

The Cellmates – On Parole

the Cellmates

Rage Records Rage LP 103 [1990]
Road To Riches – Nobody’s Guy – Blue Moon Baby – The Hustler – The Contract – Riot In Cell Block No. 9 – Lady Seduction – Eyes That Didn’t Care – Russian Roulette – On Parole – Getta’ Kick – Tallulah

The Cellmates formed in Leicester in early 1989 with Steve Orbell on vocals, Nick Withfield on drums, Kev Downes on guitar, and Mark “Moff” Moffat (previously in Go-Katz) on slap bass. They quickly started to write their own material and recorded a two-track demo. After playing some support gigs, notably for the Long Tall Texans, they caught the attention of Rage records, and they recorded their sole long-play under the direction of Roger Tebbutt (Long Tall Texans, Happy Drivers) in 1990. The Cellmates played bouncy neo-rockabilly, with special care to melodies and arrangements. To sum it up, this is not just Rockabilly played at a fast pace. The guitar is excellent and innovative; the slap bass works very well with the drums, and Orbell is a more than competent singer. Some songs show some Psychobilly influences creeping in, like The Contract, Lady Seduction, or Russian Roulette. Most tunes are originals except for three covers: Dave Diddle Day’s Blue Moon Baby, The Recalls’ Nobody’s Guy, which sounds a bit like It’s All Over Now, and Riot In Cell Block no9, which alternates bluesy parts with fast neo-rockabilly on the chorus. On Parole is a hidden treasure that deserves to be rediscovered today. The Cellmates were an excellent band. Sadly, though they began working on a second album, the label folded and the band split in 1992. Five songs remain unreleased to this day. If you like the early Long Tall Texans, Restless and the Nitros, On Parole is the album you need to complete your collection.

Fred “Virgil” Turgis

Rage Records

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rage records

12“ LP’s

Picture discs

CD EP

  • Frenzy – Eastern Sun – FRENC001 [1993]

CD’s

  • Frenzy – This Is The Fire – RAGE CD 101 [1989]
  • Frenzy – The Very Best Of – RAGE CD 107 [1990]
  • The Long Tall Texans – Singing To The Moon – RAGE CD 108 [1991]
  • Long Tall Texans – In Without Knocking – RAGE CD 109 [1991]
  • The Psycho Bunnies – Vampire Mistress – Rage CD 110 [1993]
  • Frenzy – (It’s A) Mad, Mad World – RAGE CD 111 [1993]
  • Various – The Rage Team – Punkompilation – RAGE CD 112 [1993]

Long Tall Texans

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Long Tall Texans - Ballroom Blitz
Long Tall Texans – Ballroom Blitz

Long Tall Texans – Ballroom Blitz

Crazy Love
Indians – Right First Time – Ballroom Blitz [Metal Mix] – Texas Beat – Non Stop Loving – 900 Miles – Rockin’ Crazy – One More Time – Shot Dead – Ballroom Blitz [Alternate Take] – Get Up and Go

Ballroom Blitz is a rarities album featuring rare and unissued stuff from the Long Tall Texans’ early years.
The first four tracks date from 1986 and were scheduled to be released on Northwood but the label folded before the ep materialized. The song were later re-recorded on albums with the
exception, correct me if I’m wrong, of Ballroom Blitz that only appeared on their live album.
The remaining tracks were recorded in 1985 with the band’s first line-up featuring Bill Clifford on drums instead of Theo. It’s very interesting to compare with the later studio version and hear a band in mutation. It’s still classic rockabilly/neo-rockabilly but here and there appear elements of what would become their trademark sound.

Long Tall Texans - Sodbusters
Long Tall Texans – Sodbusters

Long Tall Texans – Sodbusters

Razor Records – RAZ 23 [1987]
Poison – My Babe – Get Up & Go – Rockin’ Crazy – Texas Boogie – Long Tall Texans – Paradise – My Idea Of heaven – Mad About You – Wreckin’ Me – Dance Of the Head Hunters – Endless Sleep

Formed in the mid 80’s, the Long Tall Texans released “Sodbusters” their debut album in 1987. The core of this album is mainly made of modern rockabilly with fast slap bass that became the trademark of the band (Poison, Rockin’ Crazy, Long Tall Texans). Some other songs border on psychobilly like Paradise and Get Up and Go. There’s also a strong blues influence with Little Walter’s My Babe that receives a superb rockin’ blues treatment or the jump blues influenced “Wreckin’ Me” that sounds a bit like Red Hot’n’Blue. There’s even a touch of ska mixed with a blues harp (My Idea Of Heaven) and an interesting mix of Glam rock with Rockabilly (Rock’n’Roll Party/Endless Sleep). Two instrumentals round up the album and prove that these cats are serious musicians.

Long Tall Texans – Saturnalia

Razor Records RAZ 37 [1989]
Anagram CDM PSYCHO 75 [2008]
Get Back, Wetback – Crossing Swords – Don’t I Know It – Fill It Up Tight – Low Down Mean Old Son Of A Gun – Cairo – Shiver Street – Bloody – Mercy – No Tomorrow – Get Back, Wetback (Alamo Mix)* – Get Your Teeth Out Of My Jugular* – Something’s Cooking* – Get Back,Wetback (Live)*
* CD Bonus tracks

Initially released in 1989, Saturnalia saw a little departure from the band’s usual rockin’ sound. With this album, they started to experiment with new sounds and spend more time in the studio.
“Bloody” counts among the highlights of the album. It’s a cover of the Golinsky Brothers, a Brighton combo like the Texans sounds a bit like the Housemartins and could easily have been a hit beyond the limited borders of the rockin’ scene. The same goes for “Get Back Wet Back,” one of the band’s most famous songs. For good reasons, it has written ‘brilliant’ all over it. The cd reissue includes two more versions, a different mix that doesn’t bring anything new and a live take. Another cover, “Cairo,” mixes fast slappin’ bass with mellow ska bits in it.
The cd reissue comes with bonus tracks taken from the b-side of the Get Back Wet Back single and an interesting booklet written by Simon Nott featuring memories (so to speak) from the three band members.

Long Tall Texans - Five beans In The Wheel
Long Tall Texans – Five beans In The Wheel

Long Tall Texans – Five Beans in the Wheel

Razor
Saints And Sinners – Don’t I Know It – You Gotta Lose – Get So Excited – Bloody – Off My Mind – Breakaway – Low Down Mean Old Son Of A Gun – Get Back, Wetback – Heatwave – Indians – Rock’n Roll Pt. 2 – Your Own Way – Right First Time – Long Tall Texan – Everybody’s Rockin – We Say Yeah – Ballroom Blitz – Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

This is probably one the best live recording to come from a Psychobilly band. As the majority of the other live recordings were issued on the poor «Live and Rockin’» serie on the Link label, it’s not that hard. But this one is REALLY good.
Do you know many records while listening to them you can see the smile of the musicians? But being a fun band doesn’t mean they’re not serious with their music. They’re a tight band playing their songs at a frantic pace (Mark Carew is one hell of a slap bass player). The band revisits its back catalog playing classic after classic (Get Back Wet Back, Saints and Sinners, Indians… they’re all here) and a judicious selection of covers (from the glam of Gary Glitter’s Rock’nRoll Part 2 and Sweet’s Ballroom Bitz to Earl Hooker’s You Got To Loose, Jackie Deshannon’s Breakaway and of course The Clash’s Should I Stay...) completes the set (19 songs!). A good starting point to discover this excellent band and must have for the fans.

Long Tall Texans - Singin' To The Moon
Long Tall Texans – Singin’ To The Moon

Long Tall Texans – Singin’ to the Moon

Rage Records 108 / Crazy Love 64242 {1991}
Singing To The Moon ~ Axe To Grind ~ Rock Bottom Blues ~ Suicide At The Seaside ~ Klub Foot Shuffle ~ Smiling Eyes ~ Winding Me Up ~ Alcohol ~ Indian Reservation ~ Nine Days Wonder ~ Reactor ~ Senses Six and Seven ~ Witch Hunting ~ Alabama Song ~ Singing To The Moon.

Originally released in 1991, Singing To The Moon is the band’s last album with Mark Denman (though he’ll keep on writing songs for them). It’s in the wake of Saturnalia and covers a wide range of styles and demonstrated that the Texans weren’t that easy to pigeonhole. Thus, next to classic sounding Long Tall Texans numbers like Axe To The Grind, Senses Six and Seven or Witch Hunting, you find on this platter a ska number not that far from the Clash (Singing To The Moon), a jazzy instrumental with a Shakin’ Pyramids feel (Klub Foot Shuffle), a pop tune (Smilin’ Eye), a rockabilly with a bluesy slide guitar (Nine Days Wonder), heavy rockers (Alcohol and Rock Bottom Line that sounds a bit like Guana Batz on Electra Glide In Blue) and Reactor evokes the Escalators.
The cover range from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil to Peter and the Test Tube Babies with John Loudermilk in between. Fine.

Long Tall Texans - Aces & Eights
Long Tall Texans – Aces & Eights

Long Tall Texans – Aces and Eights

CDMPSYCHO16 [1994]
Notice Me ~ Nothing Left But The Bones ~ Sister ~ And I Wish ~ Lip Service ~ Everyday ~ Bloody ~ Don’t Go Back To Rockville ~ Border Radio ~ Tomorrow Today ~ Innocent Look ~ Piece Of Your Love.

If Singing To the Moon announced a new direction for the band, Aces and Eights came as a big surprise and let’s say it a huge deception. There were many reasons for that. First Mark Denman had left the band, though he kept on writing stuff for the band and figured among the guest musicians. The addition of  a sax player to the line-up, omnipresent all along the album, didn’t bring anything to the songs (and to make things worse the player is not Lee Allen if you see what I mean). The songs themselves are far from the usual Texans standards and mostly sound like average pop songs. If you add a clean and cold production you’ll understand that the result is a more than dispensable album.

Fred “Virgil” Turgis

Midniters (the)

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Midniters - Easy MoneyThe Midniters – Easy Money

 

Razor [1988] – Planet X [2018]
Easy Money – Little Devil – Dead Man`s Curve – Sin City – Better Of You – When The Walls Come Tumbling Down – Another Nail In My Heart – Swords Of A Thousand Men
Easy Money (Demo) – Nightshift (Demo) – Walls Come Tumbling Down (Demo) – Gun Law (Demo) – Dead Man’s Curve (Live) – Little Devil (Live) – Walls Come Tumbling Down (Live) – Swords of 1000 Men (Live) – Easy Money (Live)

The Midniters formed in the mid 80’s. After appearing on Fury’s compilation album they released their debut album in 1988 for Razor with Steve Jeffery on vocals and guitar, Nick Wade on drums and Mark Beard on double bass. This album is now reissued on cd with extra bonus tracks.
Being friends and labelmates with the Long Tall Texans, it would be all too easy to compare both bands. And though they sure share some similiraties in term of sound, the Midniters have enough personnality in their songwriting or vocally speaking to avoid this comparison.
With only 8 songs, Easy Money (the original album) is a relatively short affair which is always a good thing for a debut album. Not only you won’t find any filler but it allowed the band to spend more time on each song. And with the help of producer Roger Tebutt (Long Tall Texans, Happy Drivers, but he also worked with the Meteors on Sewertime Blues) they tried different things in term of sound and texture and used the studio as a creative tool. This is not your usual “Live-in-the-studio-with-a-pack-of-beer”
As I said the songwriting is pretty solid, oscillating between neo-Rockabilly and Psychobilly. Fans of heavy double-bass will also appreciate this album too and since it’s been remixed I believe it helps too (since I only owned the original on cassette I can’t remember if that fat bass sound was already in the original mix.)
Six of the songs are originals and the covers are Jan and Dean’s Dead Man Curve and Tenpole Tudor’s swords of 1000 Men.
Tracks 9 to 12 are demos including two songs that didn’t make it to the album but they possibly are from another era of the band since a sax can be heard on Nightshift.
Five excellent live tracks rounds up the package.
All in all a very good and well deserved reissue.

Midniters Terror IncognitoThe Midniters – Terror Incognito

Planet X [2017]
Got Too Hurry – Personal Jesus – Dead Man’s Hand – Pistolero – In the Shadows – Motorbike Mike – House of Stone – Terror Incognito – Drive By – Face in the Dark – All Out Attack – Butchers Basement

Here’s a new Midniters album, nearly 30 years after Easy Money. But if you expect a trip down memory ane, let me tell you you’re plain wrong. ”Terror Incognito” is here to tell you that we’re in 2018, not 1988 !
The Neo-rockabilly bordering to Psychobilly of their first effort evolved into a modern form of Rockabilly with a harder and a fuller sound. In the same time they added elements of New-wave. This mix of influences, some songs could be defined as Adam Ant meets the Stray Cats makes them sound at place like the recent Quakes album. Some songs are much harder and more psychobilly that are not that far from the early Nekromantix.
All songs but two are originals written by Steve Jeffery, the cover being Depeche Mode’s Personnal Jesus in a very personnal rendition and a Spaghetti western influenced instrumental composed by Steve Stevens (guitar player for Billy Idol.)
It’s good to see a band that dosn’t try to run after its youth and return to create and propose something new.

Fred “Virgil” Turgis

V/A – Psycho Tendencies

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Psycho Tendencies - Raucous
Psycho Tendencies – Raucous
Raucous
The Griswalds – Nighthawk / Spellbound – Last Breath / Full Moon Freaks – Surfboard Song / Frantic Flintstones – Hot Head Baby / Termites – Let Me In / Grovelhog – Times Gotta Change / Long Tall Texans – 900 Miles / Full Moon Freaks – Swamp Rockin’ Baby / Go-Katz – Real Gone Demented Hillbilly Kat / Sugarpuff Demons – Weedin’ / Griswalds – Psycho Tendencies / Termites – I Can’t Wait / Shakin’ Bones – Deviltown USA / Frantic Flintstones – Alley Cat King / Go-Katz – Nightmare / Griswalds – Robbie Robot / Sgt Fury – Cold Cold Sunday / Radium Cats – Haunted By Your Love / Cosmic Voodoo – Old Man In The Woods / Frantic Flintstones – Let’s Go Somewhere

This compilation is a good snapshot of the Psychobilly scene in the second half of the 80’s. The original vinyl was the first long player released on Raucous, a label that has made a long way since. It covers a variety of styles and proves if needed that this music isn’t that easy to pigeonhole. It ranges from the up-tempo skiffle/rockabilly of the Long Tall Texans to the punkish sound of the Grovelhogs. In between you find excellent bands like the Frantic Flintstones, the Go-Katz (with an excellent psycho-hillbilly number), the Griswalds (Robbie Robot sounds like a psychobilly version of Devo!) and Spellbound. Less essential are Full Moon Freaks, Shakin’ Bones and Cosmic Voodoo.

Fred “Virgil” Turgis