I like rockabilly. I liked The Stray Cats. I liked The Cramps. I even have a couple Meteors albums. Rockabilly’s good. However, the Rockabilly culture? This, this is not my kind of culture. I mean it’s fucking 2010. Greasy hair, short poodle skirts, ponytails and old Chevy’s and so on, yeah that’s all cool stuff. But it’s dress up. It just is.
You know who wasn’t playing dress up? Hasil Adkins. Hasil was born a greasy mentally ill rocker in the year of our Lord 1937 in the hills of West Virginia. He died in 2005 from complications of being run the fuck over by at all-terrain vehicle in the front yard of his home in the same hills of West Virginia. And from his entrance to his leisure vehicle induced exit Hasil Adkins was the very mother fuckin’ measure of a rocker, you hear?
Get anything by Hasil, anything, but the album I am talking about at present chronicles his earliest efforts. “Peanut Butter Rock And Roll” was pieced together by Norton Records from tapes Hasil made himself in his shack and sent off to various labels in hopes of a contract. None was forthcoming. The quality is shitty. Like Appalachian shack shitty. But it rocks something fucking ferocious. Hasil played guitar, slammed the drums and sang on each and every greasy track, the same way he would for the next near half-century. Adkins’ subject matter for all those decades of rocking ran from women, to junk food to dancing back to junk food. He was hyperactive, manic depressive, a mechanical savant and the greatest American hero.
So children, let us leave the dress up for Halloween and get down and Do The Slop.
Popularity: 6% [?]
