Hot Wax: The Reverend’s Summer Singles Playlist (2025)

Summer has finally opened its eyes and shaken off its long hibernation here in WNY, which means that those of us who reside on this frozen tundra are seeing the end of a long, cold, and wet spring season and staggering into the three-month inferno that is summertime ‘round these parts. The pile of 7” singles teetering in a haphazard pile in the Reverend’s office is threatening an unfortunate workplace disaster, so I thought that I’d pluck a few of the more worthy slabs ‘o wax from the stack and let you know about them with this year’s “Summer Singles Playlist.” Listen at your own peril…

The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown – “Trill Seekers” b/w “Bananas” (Getdown Entertainment)
This one actually came out back in 2023, but it’s been given repeated spins on the trusty ol’ turntable since Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown bandleader John Heintz sent me a copy late last year. Side A’s “Trill Seekers” is a funky amalgam of Funkadelic and Sly & the Family Stone with the former’s wigged-out guitar strokes (courtesy of Timo Somers) and the latter’s undeniable rhythmic sense (provided by bassist Remco Hendriks and drummer Wesley Ritenour, along with wah bassist Cody W. Wright). It’s a pulse-quickening instrumental foot-shuffler with a bit of horn honk and an undeniable groove. 

Flip this gorgeous purple flapjack over and spin the “B” as in “Bananas” and you’ll find a similarly funky jam tho’ with more of a jazzy feel as a backdrop, the performance led by Keith Anderson’s frenetic saxplay and Bobby Sparks II’s nimble keyboards. Throw in Hendriks’ monster bass line, Jack Iron’s rock-solid timekeeping, and some delightfully skronky guitar via Tim Stewart’s out-of-control id and you have another liver-quivering, deep pocketed performance. The 7-incher is packaged in a thick quality fold-out sleeve adorned with gorgeous gonzo artwork by Jim Mazza and Jeff Wood.   BUY OR DIE!   

The Low Spirits – “You Lied” b/w “Never Said I Need You” (Outro Records)
The Low Spirits are a contemporary garage-rock outfit hailing from Rochester NY, but they sound like the Seeds cruising down Hollywood Boulevard on their way to Bido Lito’s. This latest 7” slab kicks off with “You Lied,” a punky high-octane treatise on love and betrayal fueled by Ryan Moore’s unrepentant keyboard-bashing, guitarist Michael Maier’s fuzztone string-pulling and snotty lead vox, and a heavy-as-uranium rhythm section comprised of bassist Richie Dejohn and drummer Zachary Koch. All of the guys contribute backing vocals, which add even more momentum to an already exhilarating performance. 

B-side “Never Said I Need You” rocks just as recklessly, but with a more somber vibe provided by Moore’s excellently-moody keys and moodier vocals, punctuated by shards of atmospheric guitar and well-timed backing harmonies. If you’re a fan of the Nuggets/Back From the Grave-inspired rock ‘n’ roll then you’ll dig the hell outta the Low Spirits!   BUY OR DIE!

Nervous Eaters – “Man’s Got A Right” b/w “No More Idols” (Penniman Records, Spain)
Boston’s Nervous Eaters are, in my estimation, one of the sorely overlooked punk rock outfits of the 1980s, a “one and done” major label flash ‘n’ the pan that subsequently went indie, releasing a handful of rockin’ elpees before calling it quits. Eaters guiding light Steve Cataldo reformed the band in 2018 and has since provided fans with two wonderful new albums on Little Steven’s Wicked Cool Records label. This recently-released import single dives into the time machine to offer up two previously unreleased vintage tunes. Side A’s “Man’s Got A Right” is a slaphappy slice of early ‘80s punk with a power-pop heartbeat, Cataldo’s low-slung vocals pumped up by the band’s gang harmonies and Jonathan Paley’s delightfully-tortured fretwork. 

Bassist Rob Skeen and drummer Jeff Wilkinson are a strong rhythm section, never more apparent than on the B’s madcap “No More Idols,” which one-ups the Ramones with a machinegun arrangement that features chainsaw guitar and more manic beats per minute than any slackjawed EDM wank-off. Both tunes provide unbridled energy, guaranteed to kick yer pacemaker into overdrive. Dave Anderson (of the Rochester NY band Calidoscopio) does an impressive job resurrecting what seem to be unreleased demos, bringing them back to life in the studio, Frankenstein-style.   BUY OR DIE!

The Shitkicker Rebellion – “White Light, White Heat” b/w “99th Floor” (Penniman Records, Spain)
The Shitkicker Rebellion is singer Greg “Stackhouse” Prevost and some of his friends from ‘round the Rochester NY area (sensing a theme here, are we?). Prevost, of course, has released four fine blues-rock albums over the past few years, each guaranteed to tickle your eardrums and pound your medulla oblongata into submission. Prevost gets his NYC groove on with this groovy new black pancake and a turbocharged cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light, White Heat” that comes into the DMZ hot with snarling vox resembling a cross between Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. The backing band offers tilted harmonies, and the song’s git solo is razor sharp, devastatingly recorded in the red for major mondo distortion. It’s a spine-yanking cover of a legendary tune that many have tried, but few have mastered; kudos to Prevost for blitzing an otherwise overplayed cover with unrelenting energy and attitude.

The poop-punting B-side (sorry, couldn’t resist…) is an equally inspired cover of the Moving Sidewalks’ 1967 treasure “99th Floor.” As the former frontman of beloved garage-rockers the Chesterfield Kings, Prevost can growl these Nuggets-styled gems out in his sleep; he’s no slacker, though, so he imbues the performance with a crackling, uncompromised punkish ferocity that is calmed only slightly by the mournful wail of his harmonica in the background while guitarist Ryan Moore (The Low Spirits) doesn’t so much as mimic Billy Gibbons’ guitar noise as re-writes its DNA. Guitarist Paul Morabito delivers a subtle-but-strong instrumental backdrop while the rhythm section of bassist Rick Cona (Chesterfield Kings) and drummer Zachary Koch (The Low Spirits) provide a cold steel consistency to the song’s runaway locomotion.   BUY OR DIE!

Book Review: Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk's Rolling Stones Gear (2014)

Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk spent better than three decades together in the legendary “psychedelic blues” outfit the Chesterfield Kings. During this time, the band recorded almost a dozen albums and spent several thousand nights on the road, but their best performance to date may be the creation of Rolling Stones Gear. A massive, oversized, thick 672-page, profusely-illustrated hardback book, Rolling Stones Gear is pricey ($60 list, $45 retail online) but essential for any Stones fan or music gearhead, delivering more than its cover price in history and information.

Aside from their hands-on experience playing in one of the most underrated American rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 1980s and ‘90s, these two writers are eminently qualified to pen Rolling Stones Gear. A few years ago, Babiuk published Beatles Gear, a similarly massive tome that offered insight into “All the Fab Four’s Gear From Stage to Studio,” the book becoming a surprise best-seller. Babiuk is also a world-renowned authority on vintage guitars and the owner of Andy Babiuk’s Fab Gear, a boutique guitar store located near Rochester, New York.

Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk’s Rolling Stones Gear

Greg Prevost, of course, should need no introduction – we reviewed his Universal Vagrant album a couple years ago. Aside from Prevost’s lengthy stint at the front of the Chesterfield Kings, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist is a well-respected music journalist, with material published in dozens of magazines and music fanzines worldwide, including Shindig! (U.K.) and Ugly Things. Prevost is considered an authority on 1960s and ‘70s era rock and blues music, and is well-known as a rabid Rolling Stones fan.

Together, Prevost and Babiuk have put together a truly beautiful book, Rolling Stones Gear offering more than just a mere overview of the band’s instruments through the years. The book provides a lengthy and insightful history of the Stones’ half-century of making rock ‘n’ roll, from in-depth writing on the band’s formation in 1962 and background on all the Stones’ individual members to early musical influences and supporters like Alexis Korner, arguably the founding father of the British blues-rock scene.

As mentioned above, Rolling Stones Gear includes hundreds of B&W and color photos – many rare, many previously unpublished – of various instruments, album and magazine covers, band performance shots, and other flotsam and jetsam from one of the most notorious careers in rock music. With detailed documentation of the gear used by the band on every song they recorded (including demo recordings and out-takes), as well as their frequent high-profile (and lucrative tours), Rolling Stones Gear outlines the storied history of the band with enthusiasm and energy.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Featuring brilliant printing and reproduction of its lush photos, Rolling Stones Gear is simply gorgeous, a look befitting the love and labor that went into the creation of the prose that accompanies the intriguing and often informative graphics. Rolling Stones Gear is a hall of fame worthy collection, a fine document of the classic band’s story that would appeal to both the casual fan and any aficionado of vintage musical instruments. As for the hardcore Stones fan, it goes without saying...they’re going to want this book! (Backbeat Books, released January 1, 2014)

Review originally published in slightly different form by About.com Blues

Buy the book from Amazon.com: Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk’s Rolling Stones Gear

CD Review: Greg 'Stackhouse' Prevost's Universal Vagrant (2016)

Greg ‘Stackhouse’ Prevost is, perhaps, best-known as the former frontman of garage-rock legends the Chesterfield Kings. Over the course of 30 years and better than a dozen albums, Prevost and his band of merry pranksters forged a reputation with worldwide reach, and new fans continue to discover and embrace the CKs to this day, almost seven years since the band’s demise. Prevost is also well-known as a record collector and respected as an author and music historian; you can find his writing on blues and rock ‘n’ roll in niche music zines like Ugly Things and Shindig!

When the Kings broke up in 2009, Prevost returned to his blues roots, which wasn’t as big a move as many of his peers have made. Prevost has true blues bona fides; he became enamored of the music at age ten after seeing the legendary Son House perform in his hometown of Rochester, New York. Even a casual spin of many of the Chesterfield Kings’ albums reveal the band’s blues underpinnings. So it was no surprise when Prevost tacked ‘Stackhouse’ to his name and released 2013’s excellent, critically-acclaimed Mississippi Murderer album on Mean Disposition Records, an indie label located in Barcelona, Spain. Three years later, Prevost has issued his follow-up for the label, the equally engaging and entertaining Universal Vagrant.

Greg ‘Stackhouse’ Prevost’s Universal Vagrant

Universal Vagrant opens with a raucous take on Allen Shaw’s country-blues classic “Moanin’ The Blues” (not to be confused with the Hank Williams song of the same name). Whereas Shaw’s original is a morose, acoustic, meek blues dirge, Prevost amps up both the wattage and the attitude, his Jagger-styled vocal drawl accompanied by reckless Keith Richards-inspired rattletrap guitar. In the background, a lonely harmonica groans, but it’s the rhythm section’s fluid, roots ‘n’ blues groove (courtesy of bassist Alex Patrick and drummer Zachary Koch) that provides the soapbox atop which Prevost’s wailing vocals stand.

Universal Vagrant doesn’t drop the ball after the rowdy opening track, nosirree; Prevost’s original “Gin-Soaked Time Warp” is as equally bodacious as the album-opener, with plenty of slash ‘n’ burn git licks, brain-bashing percussion, a ramshackle musical arrangement, and boozy, bluesy lyrics that sound like they’ve traveled through a time warp themselves from the dawn of the 1970s. Keenan Bartlett’s keyboard flourishes are eerie like a Louisiana swamp at midnight, but it’s Prevost’s clamorous fretwork that drives the song like a runaway freight-train beneath his mesmerizing, red-eyed vocals.

Shot of Rock & Roll

There aren’t a lot of cover songs to be found on Universal Vagrant, but the few you’ll hear are inspired takes on heady, albeit obscure tunes. Prevost had to dig deep into his rock ‘n’ roll songbook for Arthur Lee’s post-Love track “Signed D.C.” while his choice of the great Muddy Waters’ “Mean Red Spider” reaches back to the blues legend’s Mississippi Delta roots. The former takes the underrated Lee’s song into unfamiliar territory, Prevost’s vibrating guitar churn reminiscent of Hilton Valentine’s familiar riff on “House of the Rising Sun,” but Prevost’s stunning harp work and deliberate vocal pattern puts Eric Burdon's efforts to shame with its dour, depressed vibe. The latter performance takes Waters’ raw Delta blues original and substitutes snarling vocals and a wiry recurring riff in delivery of the song’s metaphorical heartbreak lyrics.

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Codine” is provided a brilliantly tortured revision, a screaming guitar lick punctuating Prevost’s anguished vocals, his reading of the anti-drug ballad closer in spirit to Quicksilver Messenger Service’s blues-rock version than the folkie original (or even Gram Parson’s rootsy version). Prevost’s original songs are every bit as ‘fab’ as his inspired choice in covers, tho’. For instance, the stomping, stammering “Evil On My Mind” lays the smackdown on your candy ass with menacing guitar licks, gritty vocals, explosive drumbeats, and a smothering rhythmic arrangement guaranteed to provide nightmares. The song slithers to conclusion with an intricate, serpentine ‘outro’ that is deceptively beguiling and brilliantly creative.

The throwback vibe of Prevost’s “Shot of Rock & Roll” benefits from a raunchy, Chuck Berry styled flurry of opening notes before settling restlessly (and recklessly) into a rockabilly-tinged groove that has more in common with shitkickers of yore like Hasil Adkins or Charlie Feathers than it does with the homogenized, whitebread artists cranked out by the major labels in the early ‘60s. As the rhythm section choogles along, Prevost spits out his rapidfire vox alongside a torrent of rebellious guitar licks. Likewise, Prevost’s “Shitkicker Blues” is an Exile-era Stones-influenced amalgam of Southern blues, soul, and greasy rock ‘n’ roll with fatback rhythms and searing fretwork that revels in its joyous cacophony.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Greg ‘Stackhouse’ Prevost’s Universal Vagrant is a solid sophomore effort and a worthy follow-up to the artist’s acclaimed solo debut. Prevost’s vocals are an inspired mix of Mick Jagger, David Johansen (New York Dolls), and Sky Saxon (The Seeds), but it’s his fretwork that shines the brightest on Universal Vagrant. Underrated as a skilled fret-bender, Prevost’s bluesy guitar playing shimmies and shakes throughout these performances like an elemental force of nature. His songwriting is expressive and imaginative, at once both contemporary and rustic in its traditionalism, and his backing band is aces.

Whereas Mississippi Murderer was informed by its Delta blues obsessions, Universal Vagrant brings Prevost’s Texas blues influences to the forefront. One can easily hear Johnny Winter’s twangy slide-guitar or Lightnin’ Hopkins’ intricate finger-picking in the album’s grooves. An entertaining, imaginative album, the artistic voice of Universal Vagrant is a logical evolution from Prevost’s previous band, and unlike any other blues/blues-rock album you’ll hear this year. Grade: A+ (Mean Disposition Records, released November 25, 2016)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Greg 'Stackhouse' Prevost's Universal Vagrant

New Music Monthly: November & December 2016 Releases

November is upon us and with it a dearth of new album releases at the end of the year. This month we're giving you, our readers, a 'two-fer' with both November and December release dates; there will be no column next month. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some great music coming our way, including a fine new album by the legendary Glenn Hughes, an outstanding tribute album for one of our favorite rock 'n' roll singers, Frankie Miller, a bunch of stuff from the Zappa archive, and cool new blues-rock discs by Greg 'Stackhouse' Prevost and the Rolling Stones...dig it!

NOVEMBER 4 
Glenn Hughes - Resonate CD/DVD   BUY!
Jim James - Eternally Even    BUY!
Lambchop - FLOTUS (For Love Often Turns Us Still)   BUY!
The Pink Fairies - Naked Radio   BUY!
Public Image Limited - Metal Box   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Chicago '78   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Little Dots   BUY!
Frank Zappa - Meat Light: The Uncle Meat Project/Object   BUY!

NOVEMBER 11 
The Band - The Last Waltz (40th Anniversary Edition) BUY!
Frankie Miller - Frankie Miller's Double Take  BUY!
Pink Floyd - Cre/ation: The Early Years, 1957-1962  BUY!

NOVEMBER 18 
Rory Block - Keepin' Outta Trouble: A Tribute to Bukka White   BUY!
Jethro Tull - Stand Up (The Elevated Edition)  BUY!
Metallica - Hardwired...To Self-Destruct  BUY!
R.E.M. - Out of Time (25th Anniversary Edition)   BUY!
Mike Zito - Make Blues Not War    BUY!

NOVEMBER 25 
Greg Prevost - Universal Vagrant   BUY!

DECEMBER 2 
The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome    BUY!

Album of the Month: Greg Prevost's Universal Vagrant is the singer, songwriter, and guitarist's second solo album after years of fronting garage-rock legends the Chesterfield Kings. The follow-up to 2013's acclaimed Mississippi Murderer LP, Universal Vagrant is another white-hot slab of ramshackle blues-rock that will rattle the teeth right out of your mouth. Whereas many otherwise earnest blues-rockers depend on covers of the classics with which to frame their fretwork, Prevost penned six of ten songs here, and they're barely distinguishable from his inspired covers of tunes by Muddy Waters, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and others.