Fujiyama Mama

Ah, the slide guitar; the mellow sound is enough to melt me in my seat. Don’t know exactly why, maybe because the sound is prominent in surf music and that reminds me of a beach. Anyway. It’s a hard instrument to play; the slippery sound I love so much can easily descend into twang and “slide” off key unless in the hands of a skillful player, and skillful is exactly what I got yesterday at the Road Rocket Rumble, the band was Pearls Mahone and the One Eyed Jacks. http://www.myspace.com/pearlsmahone

All the bands were good, don’t get me wrong; to perform rockabilly nowadays you have to love it, because you are not going to make your living playing it. But Pearls and her band stood out, both for their musicality and their stage presence. Picture a busty redhead in a skin tight dress with huge white pearls wrapped around her neck; her posse of “boys” rather like the silent Darlings on Andy Griffith. Pearl belts out rockabilly like she was born in the backwoods; my favorite was Wanda Jackson’s Fujiyama Mama, woooHOO. Combine Pearl’s lusty delivery with the cutest giggle I’ve heard in a long time, and you get a lead singer that’s hard to ignore. And her band. Wow. All very good, especially the base player and the slide guitarist. Pearl’s funny too: loved the story about escaping Friday’s downpour with a Pabst carton over her head, and pleading to the crowd to buy her Margaritas because she drank ‘em like water. The boys, she added, preferred Blue Ribbon. Funny.

Overall, we had a blast at the Rocket Rumble; we danced and danced, and when we weren’t hopping and bopping until our feet hurt we listened to the music and watched the crowd. Rockabilly culture is an amazing mixture of young and old, male and female. (It is not diverse in other ways, unfortunately.) You’ve got your car geeks, your music aficionados, folks who like to dress up like Bettie Page and the male 50’s greaser equivalent, and people like Gary and me who are not part of the underground so to speak, but we love love LOVE the music and of course, love to dance to it.

Dancing isn’t first and foremost within the rockabilly culture, although people DO dance and dance well, aka, rockabilly swing, which Gary and I have been learning. We saw some stunning examples and I could have watched them all night. Mostly young people doing it because much of the music was lightening fast.

And herein lies something that perhaps the community should think about. As I was reading up on the Rocket Rumble, I saw some posts out of Chicago bemoaning the fact that rockabilly isn't as appreciated like it used to be. I understand; the bands we saw were fantastic, but there wasn’t a huge crowd. And I wish there were more places to hear the music around Indianapolis.

But what comes to mind considering this problem is Terry Lee and the Rockaboogie band. I think they fit into the Rockabilly genre, but the culture that follows Terry is a bit different. You do see Bettie Pages and 50’s guys, but you also see a lot more older people, AND many more folks dancing. The reason for that is Terry plays a more varied selection speed-wise; he might do a blistering Jerry Lee Louis tune, but then puts the brakes on with some slower country numbers. All rockabilly/country/hillbilly, but it gives everyone the opportunity to dance, not just young kids.

If you’re a psychobilly band fine, you do fast. If you advertise yourself as that, people know it. But if you do like Pearl and advertise hillbilly or rockabilly, then my one bit of advice would be to add more slower numbers. People want to dance. I can tell by the way they bounce in their seats, and because older people make a beeline for the floor when you DO play a reduced beat number. Your band is fantastic. I don’t think you can improve musically. Your stage presence is blistering hot. But maybe you could widen your audience participation just a little. And that goes for the other bands too.

Bang bangedy bang bang.