
Sunny Daze & the Weathermen – Wax Lips
I wasn’t there when someone played the first rock show in a barn or the very first time kids stole money from their parents to buy a rock record. But I presume that rock fanatics weren’t the kind of people who got up early in the morning, dressed in their nicest white shirts and drove up to a respectable school or workplace. I doubt they’d be let in.
I’d like to imagine these people as thrillseekers and folks who didn’t worry much about what their peers thought. I’d also like to imagine that kind of rough and tumble sound of rock n’ roll as the kind of thrill you’d get from B-movies featuring violence and car races, from pulp novels and comic books, or from the kinds of things you could get when investing on an exotic trip to Central America.
If you can get anything out of rock n’ roll, get a real kick, like licking a battery. You’ll have to close your radio for that. Thankfully, Sunny Daze & the Weathermen’s “Wax Lips” sounds just demented and energized enough to get the job done. Besides, what they’re doing yet is not illegal. That ain’t a guarantee, though. If they figure out what we’ve been using these songs for, they’ll ban them and tie us to a radio speaker.
Robert Ascroft – Devil Opens The Door (feat. Kid Congo Powers)
Working with magical potions isn’t for everyone. Not everyone is cut out to live out in the desert, contemplating the kinds of things that made preachers, prophets, and philosophers go mad. And, certainly, it’s not every Jack and Harry who can tip their hat and say hello to the Devil when they meet him on an empty street.
Don’t forget these things the next time you find yourself in India or Peru pursued by would-be gurus. The shamans and magicians didn’t go to no schools. They acted upon a vocation or some curse they couldn’t shake off. And the rock musicians who can summon up visions just as extraordinary and frightening all do the same. There aren’t many of them left. Celebrate your shamans and rockers while you can.
“Devil Opens the Door,” the Robert Ascroft track prominently featuring the vocals of mythical King Congo Powers, works with an energy few of us can understand and even fewer could handle. King Congo Powers has been adjacent or involved in ritualistic evil rock for a very long time. That’s why he is the man for the job. Like a jungle spell, a desert incantation, or the kind of rock show that you only get in if you’re on a very special list, “Devil Opens the Door” hits at the heart of all things humans want against their better judgment.