This disc, a surprisingly cohesive blend of austere punk and gutbucket blues, takes me back to the days when I was first discovering what the Memphis underground was all about. Assembled in the late ’80s, Swamp Surfing features a pair of great tracks by a bunch of art-school hooligans called the Odd Jobs, some less than representative cuts from the storied bad-girl band, the Hellcats, and some inspired weirdness from Tav Falco’s nearly iconic Panther Burns. The best tracks are laid down by the She Wolf herself, Miss Jesse Mae Hemphill. It’s hill-country blues at its so-most-sexiest. - from Memphis Magazine Reviewer: Leshaun Fossett (Memphis, TN)
"Swamp Surfing in Memphis" is a collection of some hard to find local Memphis rock music from the original 1986 release of this comp, mostly a lot of garage rock. Since the LP comprises of four different bands, the sound of this collection offers much variety.Jessie Mae Hemphill (She Wolf) onstage addressing a Beale Street audience during a 1980s Memphis music festival. Photo: Lisa McGaughran (The Hellcats)
traxfromwax:
1. Get Off The Road - The Hellcats 2. Wall Of Death - The Hellcats 3. Tram? - Panther Burns 4. Agaitator Blues - Panther Burns 5. Middle Class - Paradoxical Babel 6. Johnny - Paradoxical Babel 7. Man Overseas - Odd Jobs 8. Girl From Frayser - Odd Jobs 9. I'm So Glad You Don't Know What's On My Mind - She Wolf 10. Going Back Home - She Wolf
The German Buffalo Bop label has been reissuing rare and obscure rockabilly and rock 'n' roll since the 70s - starting with LPs and switching over to CDs in the early 90s. Buffalo Bop CDs usually have 30 tracks of rockabilly and rock 'n' roll from the 50s and early 60s - often very rare sides. Many of the issues have a subject or stylistic theme (juvenile delinquents, hot rods, trains, women singers, instrumentals, etc.). The tracks are mostly mastered from 45s and the sound quality is generally excellent - particularly on the later issues. Each CD comes with a booklet with a cover painting evocative of the music within and artist photos and label shots inside. With so many reissues available there are inevitably some duplications with other reissues but nevertheless there is a ton of great music available on these CDs not available elsewhere. (Roots & Rhythm)
...“It took maybe ten minutes for the motorhome to become a massive inferno with a few explosions to boot. In hindsight there was probably enough time to get a few items out, but no one knew when the gas tank or propane tank would blow, so we just watched it go. I actually walked off down the highway verge in a kind of trance, then lay in some grass, while miles and miles of people in cars backed up behind the motorhome, yelling from their car windows, asking if I was okay. I remember lying there looking up at the blue sky, feeling like I was floating and really buzzing out on being alive, then some firefighter heads with big gas mask things on popped into my view and snapped me out of it. I guess I had gone into a state of shock. We lost everything, except what we had in our pockets. Within the first six months of being back in New Zealand from that tour, I called the fire department quite a lot about fires that weren’t really fires. So yeah, the motorhome fire was traumatic.”
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