Orion - Country

Jimmy Ellis was an obscure rockabilly singer who was blessed and cursed with a singing voice eerily similar to that of Elvis Presley.  After Presley's death he assumed the identity of Orion, mysterious masked country singer, who bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain supposedly dead singer, wink wink nudge nudge.  As gimmicks go, it a weird one - for one thing, Ellis really does sound almost indistinguishable from Presley, and the production closely matches the slick proficiency of Elvis's seventies output.  But on the other side, Ellis received a slice of the wildness that was Presley's later years - not to mention legions of crazed fans' misplaced obsession.  He soon abandoned the persona altogether and took to touring and recording under his own name, unsuccessfully, before retiring to open a convenience store in Alabama, where he was tragically gunned down in a botched robbery.  It's a weird music business story for the ages, sad and ludicrous and, not surprisingly, the source of some good goddamn country music.

Crazy Arms

Jack Starr - Born Petrified

Not to be confused with the guy from Virgin Steele, this Jack Starr is a Texas-bred rockabilly outsider and monster-movie director, famed for his dark, twisted music and larger-than-life persona.   A marvel of ingenuity, this album reflects the duct-taped mentality one would assume prevailed upon his seemingly lost filmography as well: glaringly home-made, using an old bathtub as an echo chamber, varying wildly in quality and length, at once charming and unsettling.  Given a dusty ambiance by the tinny, distant sound and Starr's nasally wail, the songs float among a sea of hiss and ectoplasm, sounding a good thirty years older than their sixties vintage. 

It's the little seat-of-the-pants details that really give the record depth - for example, "Done Away With the Mean Old Blues" contains a middle passage that sounds like Starr playing piano with one hand and slapping his leg in counter-rhythm with the other.  Occasionally the recording descend into frenzied gibberish worthy of Men's Recovery Project at their most obtuse.  Other moments offer pure, fragile beauty and joy.  And then there's the songs about vampires and shit, those are good too.

Constellation of a Fool

Banged Up: American Jailhouse Songs

This fairly self-explanatory collection of blues, hillbilly, and early rock music spans thirty years and includes such household names as Johnny Cash, Bessie Smith, Jimmie Rogers, and Swamp hero Bukka White, alongside a wide spectrum of lesser-knowns. Of note are Smith's absolutely brutal "Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair" and the barnstorming "Riot in Cell Block 9," alongside Leroy Carr's hilarious "Christmas in Jail, Ain't That a Shame." Not much else to say, so reach for the sky, punk.

Paul Cary - Ghost of a Man

Hm, I believe this is a free album so despite its recent vintage I shan't feel too bad about sharing it. Paul Cary, former frontman of punk band The Horrors (the good one, not the shitty British band), recorded this cobwebby, creaking album onto tape in the middle of a big echoey room, raw and honest. Blending blues, rockabilly, Tom Waits-ish clanking, lo-fi garage rock, and haunting country sounds into one dark, pungent stew, Ghost of a Man has been on constant rotation here in the Swamp lately. The mix of misanthropy and humor on these songs is perhaps their finest feature. Best line: “If it wasn’t for the devil, the Bible would be so boring.” Order vinyl and get a free download here or get it from Uncle Abdul here.

Roger Miller - Golden Hits

Howdy goddamn do! Hopefully all of my wonderful little Swamplings easily grasp one of the over-arching themes we deal with here in the Swamp: everything you've ever been told is a lie, unless there's a country song about it. Roger Miller was an ambitious young hillbilly who swiped a guitar from a traveling country singer and tried to figure out how to play it, correctly assuming that it was his only ticket out of his little doomed bullshit town.

Sure enough, he got caught and, rather going to jail, chose to join the army, where he simultaneously discovered speed and honed his defense against adversity by perfecting his hilarious but complex brand of country music. After many years of struggle he became Johnny Cash's speed dealer and was thusly capulted into stardom, eventually resulting in the erosion of his sharper, amphetamine-induced edges and then his famous soundtrack for Disney's Robin Hood. One would think that he would've peacefully died when his head exploded while driving a tiger around in his big-ass Cadillac, but he lived long enough to pay for the fifteen packs of cigarettes he smoked every day for fifty years.

Not to belabor the point, but I don't normally traffic in "Greatest Hits" albums in the Swamp. However, every single song on here is awesome and the individual albums tend to be full of filler and covers. Just listen to this, and keep your eye out next time you go out looking for something to help you forget the shame.
Atta Boy Girl

Johnny Thunders & Patti Paladin - Copy Cats

This overheated, bluesy album of duets from former New York Doll Johnny Thunders and the singer of the punk band Snatch (yeah, I've never heard of them either) seems to fit the hazy, bug speckled atmosphere in here right now. We have covers of Screaming Jay Hawkins, The Seeds, Elvis, The Shagri-Las, and many more. While this was produced right in the thickest, darkest part of the eighties, they're nary a gated snare, fake hand-clap, or cheesy synth on this album - instead we have gritty horns, lush strings, and ambiance for miles. Thunders is in fine voice, tackling these oldies like the anti-Buster Poindexter, and keeping up with the lovely Ms. Paladin seems to be propelling him every step of the way. One foot in the boroughs, one foot in the swamp.
She wants to mambo.

Let's Get Drunk Again

Juiced

Juju Claudius

Well, all those predictions turned to turnips at midnight, didn't they? As usual.

I'll be honest with you, little one, Billy Childish is one of my heroes, way up there with Swamp Dogg, Otis Redding, and Wendy O. Williams. It's easy to be cynical about somebody that's not only a prolific songwriter and musician, who's appeared on more than a hundred LP's and countless 7 inch records, but who also rounds out his resume as a compulsive painter, poet, novelist, vegetable farmer, mustache connoisseur, haberdashery critic and snappy dresser, but all snarkiness and boredom dissolves in the face of the man's humble, mad vision.

I'm far too drunk and simple-minded to summarize his lifetime of work in a few unruly sentences, but: Spoiled blowhard Damien Hirst debuts his £50 million diamond-encrusted skull, "For the Love of God." Upon learning of the 16 year old street artist "Cartrain" who's used the image of said skull in some cut-and-paste street art, Hirst sues and wins a measly £200 from the poor kid. Billy Childish immediately steps up to the plate and paints a numerous series of "paintings" on wood that just say "Damien Hirst" in big ugly block letters, not only paying the young artist's fine but also managing to slightly re-align British copyright law in favor of the kids.

Frankly, I could go on and on, but let's at least take a moment to listen to this album, yeah? It's a bit quieter than his usual work with such gnarly bands as Thee Headcoats, Thee Mighty Caesars, and the Buff Medways. It relies on a handful of well-chosen covers of Hank Williams, Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed, and the old reliable Public Domain. It's some punk blues country righteousness distinguished by taste and dignity.
Bring Me Water

John Prine - Sweet Revenge

I won't lie to you: 2011 has been a huge pain in the ass so far, leaving me precious little time to tend to the Swamp. I missed a day again yesterday due to various giant piles of bullshit, but I have arrived and I come bearing poisonous fruits. This is the stingingly sharp-tongued third LP from wildly underrated country asshole John Prine, who in a perfect world would be a household name. Then again, in a perfect world, he probably wouldn't exist. This album doesn't quite have the subversive, stoned snarl of his first album or the drunken hilarity of the second, but it compensates for this with buckets of bitter cynical humor and lots and lots of amphetamines, seemingly.
Please don't bury me.

Attack of the One Man Bands

What we have here is just what it says on the box: two cds of one man bands (non black metal variety), almost sixty songs, for the low low price of your soul. Most of these characters are of the Hasil Adkins school of slightly inept hillbilly rock n' roll, although many of them are surely not real hillbillies. Ah, who cares though, looking at the list of names is like perusing a roster of low-rent villains: Al Foul, Toothless George, Chuck Violence, Guitar Fucker, Uncle Butcher, etc. Not a huge amount of variety here, as it's a pretty narrow sub-genre, but like your solitary bedroom black metal grinches it's more about passion and emotion than writing songs or learning to play.
Music for the Asses.

Death Dealers

Speaking of morbid, here's something so twisted that it might make you a bad person just for listening to it, let alone posting it on your blog thing. This is a compilation of country and punk music about serial killers, interspersed with interviews with actual serial killers. Unfortunately (or perhaps not), this version isn't entirely complete: interviews with John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Albert DeSalvo were scrambled in the great hard drive crash of 2010, and unsurprisingly I can't find this anywhere else on the internet. All of the songs are present, however, from Red River Dave's laid back "California Hippie Murders" to The Bugs' disgustingly sincere twin odes to DeSalvo's Boston Strangler incarnation. I really can't condone this, but it's a fascinating document. Make of it what you will.
Do you think I'm psycho, Mama?

Roky Erickson - The Holiday Inn Tapes

The Holiday Inn Tapes is a semi-bootleg released in 1987 by the Roky Fan Club containing an intimate acoustic set recorded on a hand held cassette recorder. Those looking for Roky's famous brand of paranormal rock n' soul will have to look elsewhere, as these are quiet introspective numbers interspersed with some traditional folk numbers. A number of the original compositions have remianed unavailable on any legitimate release (although some appeared in vastly different form on this year's comeback album), making this one essential for the deep Roky heads, but it's looseness and amiability are infectious. Still, it's heavily weird and even on the public domain numbers Roky tends to rattle off surreal lyrics off the top of his head, adding a nice psychedelic undercurrent.
I Look at the Moon

Horseback - Invisible Mountain

This is the first release by North Carolina's one man ambient project Horseback to contain additional musicians and (I believe) to be released on vinyl. Breaking from his traditional guitar drone style to embrace a fuller, nastier sound, Jenks Miller herein explores unfamiliar territory with startling results. Having as much in common with Neil Young's stranger experiments such as the polarizing Dead Man soundtrack as it does with the popular ambient black metal sound, Invisible Mountain is available free as well as for purchase numerous places, but why not get it from the trusty ol' Swamp?
Here

Blood Cult - We Who Walk Behind The Rows

Greetings, loathesome Swamp scum! Hillbilly black metal/southern rock yokels Blood Cult ought to make your night a little more evil! I'm aware that this sounds like a strange combination, and I'll admit that their album from this year, "We Are the Cult of the Plains," is stronger than this 2005 full length, but this is truly some strange fruit ripe for fermenting. The perfect soundtrack to a raging bonfire, a bottle of rotgut, and possibly shooting yourself in the foot with a shotgun.
Pow!

Atomic Platters - Cold War Music From the Golden Age

A wonderfully disturbing compilation of jazz, country, blues, pop, etc., celebrating that great orver-arching metaphor of the twentieth century, the mushroom cloud. These songs in turn celebrate, satire, decry, and learn to love the bomb. Other sub-categories include the Cold War itself, UFOs, the Red Menace, the Space Race, the Korean and Vietnam wars, espionage, and preparedness for the looming apocalypse. Delightful celebrity public service announcements punctuate the proceedings as well, from Groucho Marx to Boris Karloff. Big musical names such as Doris Day, Wanda Jackson, Hank Williams, The Commodores, Tom Lehrer, and Bo Diddley crop up alongside many other acts. Still frighteningly topical, this box set radiates nostalgia and dread in equal parts.
Boom!