Rockabilly Classifieds

Rockabilly HQ.com is proud to announce the launch of Rockabilly Classifieds.

Simply go to the website www.rockabillyhq.com and click on Classifieds.

You can post ads for cars, music, clothing, dating and any other stuff and it’s all FREE!!!

The Faraway Boys New CD Reviewed

Happy Thursday everyone.

Last week I was lucky enough to interview SoCal’s Psychobilly kings, The Rocketz shortly before their gig at The Fire Escape in Citrus Heights. Just before the gig I met up with Ralphie, The Faraway Boys’ Bass-Slapper who was standing in for The Rocketz’ Tony Marcias, who has since moved on.

Ralphie handed me a copy of their debut CD, “Pirate Ship Set Sail”

The Faraway Boys are probably best known for their music being used in a Sailor Jerry Run commercial.

To give you an idea of what the Faraway Boys are all bout, here’s a video clip of them in action:

First thing that strikes you when you open the package up is the actual CD itself. I’ve been buying CDs for many years and vinyl records for many, many years before that.  I have never, until I unwrapped the Faraway Boys’ CD seen a hybrid of both. It’s the Toyota Prius of CDs. It’s black and has little grooves and a really cool retro “record label” on the top side, just like a real record. Kudos have to go to their designer for the original and innovative design.

The CD opens up quite innocuously with a nice instrumental track called “Por Vida.” It starts out with some very latin-flavored bass chords, then rips into a high-octane rockabilly guitar.

The Next track: “Skin & Bones” is your first introduction to Scotty’s vocals. From the first line you’re reminded of Roy Orbison’s Sun years, but with more than a hint of Rev Horton Heat. The highlight of the track is Ralphie’s slapping, which is superb throught.

“Cowboy Moon” is a nice straight Rockabilly track with a Scotty’s vocals being beautifully complimented by female harmonies. The only thing that mares it slightly for me was the accordion solo, which makes it feel  a little bit country, bordering on Zydeco. However, credit to the band for experimenting and not making every track sound the same.

“Fear The One” is back to some full throttle Rockabilly with a driving bass line and excellent, short guitar solo from Scotty.

“Doing Time in Hell” has a great crescendoing intro with Slap bass, then drums, then guitar riff building to a great little intro that itself builds into the crashing chorus. Along with plaintive vocals of the verses make a nice contrast for a track that is possibly the weakest song on the CD, but is still and very cool Rockabilly song.

“Sailor Jerry Rum” has another great crescendoing intro that builds to a driving rhythm. There is something very reminiscent of Link Ray’s guitar work on it and just great lyrics. The accordion isn’t as overstated on this track and simply blends into the background at the very beginning. Possibly my highlight of the CD with a wonderful slap bass solo about 3 and a half minutes into the track. The final chorus is great to sing along to.

The next rack “Situations Change” really underlines the diversity of The Runawaboys’ reprtoire. It’s a moody, ambient track with a reggea-esque lead-in. The rockabilly soon kicks in and normal service is resumed.

“Vampire” has no pretensions of being anything else. Right from the get-go it kicks into high gear and just keeps going.  The band’s Stray Cat influences show through heavily on this track. Up to this track Bucky had done just what drummers are meant to do, sit in the back and keep the beat, but in this track he’s brought to the fore and does a great job of keeping this one going and making it interesting.

“Misfortune One” has a much heavier guitar than other tracks, with the possible exception of “Sailor Jerry Rum.”  Scotty’s vocals shine through too varying between his lilting, melodic style with some raucous, gravelly stuff that gives this track a nice balance.

They close the album with a song called “Make it to Bed” which when I first heard the drum intro, I thought was Hank Mizell’s Jungle Rock. I’m sure this is a total coincidence, right guys? It’s a nice way to finish off a very well-rounded debut.

Overall, I think they guys did a great job and I’m pretty sure it’ll be the first of many releases to come.

If you want to catch the guys live check them out in Mesa, Arizona on May 25th, where, once again, they’ll be playing alongside The Rocketz.

You can also check out their website http://www.myspace.com/farawayboys

Keep rockin’

Al E. Cat

www.RockabillyHQ.com

Great News – Interviews recorded

Happy Monday everyone!

VERY Exciting news to report today. I have already got 2 of my scheduled interviews recorded. On Sunday I was fortunate enough to speak to Rockabilly pioneer, Dale Brooks. It was a really good interview and Dale was good enough to share many insights into his career, including his tragic accident and his wonderful career as a recording artist, broadcaster and author. He has a new CD due to be released very soon and has another in the pipeline. For further information contact me at Alex@RockabillyHQ.com

This morning I got to speak to rock n roll legend, Joe Bennett of The Sparkletones. He talk about his early career, including the making of “Black Slacks” and how he and his band met Elvis Presley while performing in Las Vegas. Joe is a wonderful performer and a very nice man too.  He shared that he is currently working on a new album which he hopes to have released for Christmas and will soon be touring again. If you would like to book Joe, you can contact me at Alex@RockabillyHQ.com

This evening is a HUGE day for me, as I get to talk with Rock n Roll legend Charlie Gracie. I will be posting details of that interview tomorrow.

The Website is still under design and we’re shooting for a launch in mid-May. Audios of the interviews will be available as Podcasts on our website soon. We will also be providing a transcript of the interviews as part of our newsletter and as a download on the website.

Stay tuned!!

Al E. Cat

RockabillyHQ.com

More Questions Than Answers

Well, what a week!!

This week was meant to be the week when it all started coming together for the new website RockabillyHQ.com, but I have been dogged by problems:

First my laptop decided it had had enough and stopped working altogether. Fortunately, I have some very techie friends and they managed to salvage my hard drive so that the newly edited book “The Encyclopedia of Rock n Roll” was able to be saved.

I now have the headache of setting everything back up as it was before in order to work everything again.

This has set my schedule back a bit. I was hoping to have the book completed and in PDF format ready to sell in our eBay store this weekend. This is now looking unlikely. By the way, if you’d like ot purchase a copy, you can contact me at Alex@RockabillyHQ.com and I’ll email you a copy when it’s ready.

I also stopped off at Radio Shack to purchase the interface I need to record the telephone interviews that I had lined up this week. Sadly they didn’t have one, so I’ve been trying various different ways of doing it, but none seem to work very well. If you’ve got any good ideas of how to do this, please contact me at the above email address.

On the up side, I have been in touch with Rockabilly legend Dale Brooks over the past couple of weeks. He’s doing great and is a pleasure to chat with. He’s recording a new CD, which he’s very excited about. As soon as I get the technical difficulties ironed out, we’ll get rolling on recording the interviews.

This week we’re planning to get the website and logo designed. If you are a web designer or graphic artist, feel free to contact me and maybe we can work together!

Thanks for your continued reading and stay tuned for more news!

Alex

Ripping Vinyl Records

Hello everyone,

You may not know it, but as well as being a HUGE rockabilly fan I also buy and sell vinyl records.

The main thing I hear when I go out on record buying expeditions is “I wish that L.P. was available on CD” or “I used to listen to that record all the time, but I gave up my record player for an IPod.”

My lovely wife recently purchased me a fantastic machine that not only plays the old classic records (78s, LPs and 45s) but also can record them simultaneously to CD. It is then a simple task to rip those CDs to MP3s if you want to play them on your IPod or load a huge munch of them onto an MP3 CD.

If you’d like to learn more about how to do this please contact me at Alex @RockabillyHQ.com

More about the website launch soon!!!

New interviews being set up

Hello again. I am very excited to announce that I have received messages from some of Rockabilly’s greatest stars saying that they fully support our forthcoming website.

Some have provided material for it, including photos, music and interviews. The interviews will be available as Podcasts and the transcripts will be available on our Newsletter.

Some of the names that have contacted us are: Glen Glenn, Charlie Gracie and Joe Bennette.

At the moment the site is in the design stage and we anticipate a release in early summer 2008.

If you have nay comments or queries, please contact me a Alex@RockabillyHQ.com

Coming Soon!

Hello! My name is Alex East. I am the proud author of the Rockabilly Encyclopedia and owner of the up-coming website RockabillyHQ.com On our new website we plan to bring our readers the most up-to-date news from the Rockabilly and Psychobilly communities. By subscribing to our newsletter, you will receive a weekly news letter, crammed with gig information, artist bios, forthcoming CD releases and all manner of interesting stuff! You will also have the opportunity to purchase concert tickets, CD’s and merchandise as well as be able to download MP3s of your favorite artists. I am currently in the process of lining up interviews with some of Rockabilly’s biggest stars. This is hugely exciting to me as I am getting to talk with some of my heroes. The audio of these interviews will be available as a Podcast and the transcripts will be included in the newsletter. At this point in time we are in the design stage and hope to have a functioning website up and running by the end of the month. Until then I will continue to post on this blog to keep you up to date. For further information please feel free to contact me at Alex@RockabillyHQ.com Keep rockin’ Alex