In June 1956, faced with teenagers’ growing interest in the nascent rock’n’roll scene, city officials in the Californian city of Santa Cruz decided to ban rock’n’roll from all public gatherings. Typical of the time, the city’s claim to public morality was a flimsy fig leaf trying to cover up the underlying racism.
60 years later, and you wonder what those crusty old reactionary types would make of the evolution of rock’n’roll into a popular art form. Worse still, what would they make of Melbourne musician Danny Walsh and his eponymous country-tinged rock’n’roll band? Not much, you’d guess – and, just like that ill-fated decision to ban rock’n’roll in public, they’d be horribly wrong. Misguided conclusions aside, there’s only good things to hear with Danny Walsh Banned’s new album The Dirt and The Sky.
Opening track Rubber Bells is all meat and three veg southern rock and wholesome post-Faces goodness. Couple that with the viscous blue denim swagger of Bad Gravity, and you know you’re on the right track. Talei Wolfgramm lends her amazing soul pipes to the Delta-infused Change Don’t Come Lightly, and you’re off on a Muscle Shoals trip that you never want to leave. Hindsight Glasses is a rip-roaring ride down the highway of reflection, with barely a care in the world; the bluesy Bad Souvenir is delicious, salacious and infectious; skip on to Weed Killer and you’re in a ragtime band ravaged by the spirit of The Band’s Richard Manuel and Levon Helm.
Quiet Kid on a Noisy Block could be the allegorical narrative for the kids who needed rock’n’roll to express themselves in a world dominated by angry white men obsessed with the sound of their own reactionary voice. Those Clouds is quiet and poignant, and the Stonesy Drunk for Days lays bare the alcoholic evil with which rock’n’roll has been happy to associate itself.
Sinner Man offers up some blue-eyed soul that’d bring a tear to Scott Morgan’s eye; round it all off with a slick-as-fuck cover of Elvis’ Little Sister, and shit’s pretty damn good. Can you imagine how bad the world would’ve been if rock’n’roll had been banned? Pretty fucking bad.
BY PATRICK EMERY
