Music Spectrum

This place sucks! It’s not about the music. That’s all I could think about as I arrived at Oneida Bingo and Casino Lounge to see Lee Rocker play on the first night of a three night stay. The Casino Lounge is located on the main floor with all of the lights flashing, bells ringing, and slot-slanted eyes wearily wandering from spinning wheel to coin cup to cigarette stub. The stage is separated from the crowd by a moat bar. Each seat at the bar has an in-bar slot machine, so the good seats for watching the show were at first all occupied by gamblers with their beer chasers lined up. The rest of the bar seating areas are then separated by an aisleway behind the bar stools. Add in the fact that there are three large pillars making obstructed view seating the norm, and Oneida Casino definitely sucks for music.

However, things improved when two gamblers went to seek their fortunes elsewhere, leaving open barstools for my friend and me. Once Lee Rocker started slapping his upright bass, the negatives of the surroundings were swept away by the rockabilly that eventually meant most of the Lounge crowd was there for the music. The tour bus couple who had been sitting there with their cheap food were soon nowhere to be seen. The in-bar slots got to take a break, because most people were simply tapping their hands to the music and not to make the video screen numbers spin. It’s a testimony to Lee Rocker and the band that they pulled together a potentially uninterested crowd, the music drawing in those who wanted to rock out on the band’s rhythms.

The set kicked off with the title track of the previous album, Bulletproof, the flames on that rockabilly sound immediately beginning to flare. This was followed by “Race Track Blues” from the new album, Racin’ the Devil, which featured a fingered solo from Buzz Campbell.

With two songs to lay the groundwork, showing that there’s plenty more to come, Rocker launched into the next tune by saying, “This song’s been very good to me.” A bass heavy, guitar vamp styled “Rock This Town” got the crowd even more rocking, caught some people’s attention (“Oh, Rocker was in the Stray Cats”), but it also got the oldie-but-goodie out of the way to make room for us to see what else this cat’s been up to.

I often got the feeling that the sound was taking me back to some gym in the 50’s like its Back to the Future, but you can really experience it. As Rocker said after the show in an interview, he’s not trying to just treat rockabilly like “a museum piece, because they tore it up in the 50’s.” He’s OK with the rockabilly pigeon hole, because “it’s what I came from.” However, he aims to change it up which shows on the diversity of Racin’ the Devil.

“She’s Gone,” a love song to Rocker’s cherry red 1959 Ford Skyline, is like the rockabilly inspiration for a Smithereens song with Dale’s guitar solo painting the flames on the side of the car. “Blue Suede Night,” co-written with Carl Perkins, has the strut of “Stray Cat Strut” with Jimmy Sage’s drums jamming it up with a rumble.

Speaking of “Stray Cat Strut,” the band’s version showed how that song was always more about Rocker’s bass line than other Stray Cat hits. Throughout the night, besides Rocker’s lead vocal, you could hear how the bass leads so much of the sound—as it should with the band being built around Rocker’s King double bass. Plus, even when Rocker spins that bass, picks it up to play it like a guitar, or stand on it while still playing, that flashy flair never trumps his tremendous pluck-slap style.

The rockabilly where he came from on “Rock This Town” was followed by the country talkin’ blues of “Runnin’ from the Hounds.” While Brophy Dale does a slide guitar thing, the vocal sound is reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s talking style and the country talking blues on Hayes Carll. The song hitting the Americana charts recently, “Lost on the Highway,” is a country-influenced rock ballad with some hints of John Hiatt.

The night closed with “That’s Alright Mama,” the band kicking out the song like the Elvis I want to remember, and then blending right into the Jimmy Reed/Smokey and the Bandit song, “Eastbound and Down.” As the song says, “I’m loaded up and truckin’,” and that night with Lee Rocker and the boys, I was loaded up on rockabilly, trucking to the rhythm that we all could use.

Thank you to Lee Rocker and band and Alligator Records for the review copy and help with this article.

A Monthly Check-in on Sounds Coming From Music Spectrum Supporter, Astralwerks

I suppose grudgingly I’d admit it was fortunate that my mom didn’t dress me in black leather, torn jeans, safety pin piercings, and a Mohawk when I was three as the Sex Pistols began to break open what would be the Punk scene. However, that also means that by the time I knew enough about what was going on Sid and Nancy were dead, Johnny Rotten was looking for PiL, and London Calling had been mellowed a bit for “Rock the Casbah.” Punk was becoming something else, the New Wave which seemed less connected to the past musically than what Punk had meant originally.

So now as a child born to late for the Punk explosion, let alone seeing how rock ‘n’ roll was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off in 1976, now it’s time for Elgin Avenue Breakdown Revisited, a reissue of the 101ers album along with extra rare tracks, alternate takes, and live cuts. The 101ers were Joe Strummer’s band before he left to help form the Clash. In Strummer’s voice, guitar, writing, eclecticism, and passion, you can hear every bit of what would lead to “Clampdown,” “Train in vain,” and “London Burning.”

Elgin Avenue is therefore a history lesson, because the 101ers are not punk. They are a rockers rockabilly band, the mid-70’s chapter of the oft-repeated rockabilly groove-bounce. It started way back with the old bluesmen who didn’t just play their acoustic guitars quietly into the night. Then came Sun Records and Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Watch Walk the Line, and you can see all of punk rock’s predecessors jump, jive, and boogie in their edgy performances. Then came the Beatles who found their sound in the old rockabilly covers they banged out at the beginning. Finally, Strummer and the 101ers write their own rockabilly chapter with music which feels as if it could explode anytime.

“Keys to Your Heart” is pitch perfect 50’s rock beat with enough of Strummer’s muddy snarl vocal to be something too dangerous for the Leave It to Beaver era. Two version of “Keys” are included with version 2 being a faster re-recording for the BBC and stronger for its tighter feel. As the first tune Strummer ever wrote, it shows that Strummer was extremely gifted from the git-go.

“Letsgetabitarockin” has the speed of punk, the slur of words over the frantic sock hop beat. “Rabies (From the Dogs of Love)” has a fat guitar plunking out a pop rock progression seen just a couple of years later on the Cars’ debut album. Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” is one of many Berry covers the 101ers played live, and here they smash through the song like duck-speedwalking. Included also is Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” the band’s traditional set closer showing both how raw Them (Morrison’s band) was and how Strummer’s band was taking all of that R&B-influenced energy and just breaking on through to the other side.

Thank you to the Astralwerks for the review copy.