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Originally Posted by Pookie
I never liked psychobilly. It was the rockabilly equivalent of ska punk.
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Yes, I agree. While I was a teenage Cramps fan (I'm now a wrong side of 30s Cramps fan) I was often annoyed at the way in which they were often being associated with that scene. I could never stand bands like King Kurt, or The Meteors - who always struck me as being rather lumpen and graceless. I remember going to Klub Foot at the Clarendon and feeling totally antipathetical towards their silly quiffs and surf shorts. The only band vaguely associated with the Psychobilly scene that I had any real time for were The Stingrays. Later on I tried to get into The Reverend Horton Heat, but gave up almost immediately in response to his/their beery machismo. At that time I was far more interested in bands associated with the Camden label, as well as the wealth of semi official compilations - such as the Las Vegas Grind series (which didn't exactly specialise in Rockabilly, of course, but had more in common with my long-standing Cramps obsession than much else that was being released at the time).
It's a real shame that shops such as Rock On in Camden are no more. I fondly remember many a Sunday afternoon spent pawing over exotically titled LPs that seemed to have been beamed down from another universe, let alone era. Good times.
More recent attempts to emulate Rockabilly are invariably lacklustre - as the utterly woeful Heavy Trash demonstrate. Personally, I think only The Cramps and Pussy Galore have done anything remotely interesting with the genre (and The Cramps increasingly less so, the further they've drifted into the realms of pure parody.)
I'll definitely pick up that Ace book (in fact I just ordered it off of Amazon). And while i'm certainly no fan of Mark Lamaar in general, I'll be sure to catch his radio show once it returns.