Twin Guns, Wyldlife, The Sweet Things, Pink Slip Daddy

The blank city has gone dark. The cold, killer moonlight casts severe shadows on our souls, and the sound of chaos, madness and melancholy is set to tribal beats and relentless agitation. The expressive, hard to define style of this music helps us get inside this world of instability, fear, and/or alienation. Dark alleys, stifling hot apartments, smoky clubs, roadside dives, and rainy highways prevail. The characters of these stories are often obsessed, desperate, paranoid or trapped. The ensuing struggle between good and evil, and the psychological or spiritual torment is what grips us and drives the story.

Twin Guns have been providing listeners with an «engaging journey into the heart of garage-punk darkness» for the past five years. Described as a reverberating sonic tornado that sucks up and spits out elements of ‘60s punk, biker instrumentals, spaghetti-westerns, surf-rock and psychedelia, Twin Guns creates a blend of dark, reverberated rock and roll that has landed them gigs with The Detroit Cobras, Kid Congo Powers, The Chrome Cranks and the legendary Dick Dale, as well as contemporary torch-carriers Acid Baby Jesus and Spindrift.

Together they create surf-rock meets Morricone to make Garage Noir.

The band have just finished recording new LP «The Last Picture Show», co-produced by Matt Verta-Ray (Heavy Trash, Speedball Baby) and mastered by Grammy-award-winning producer and engineer Michael Tudor.


Straight out of New York City, WYLDLIFE’s bright and brash Rock & Roll attitude updates ’70s punk, glam and garage rock for the modern age. After two self-released records, the band now steps up swinging for the fences on their Wicked Cool Records debut, "Out On Your Block".

“A lot of bands start to move in a different direction when the third album comes around. Maybe these songs sound a little bit ‘bigger,’ but I think if there's anything that WYLDLIFE does correctly, it's that we're not looking to change, really, for anybody. These are 10 new songs that we think will continue with the ethos of the band: try to have a good time for as long as you can in this life, because you only get to go around once.” – Dave Feldman, lead singer of WYLDLIFE


You can almost smell the cigarette smoke and the Jack Daniels spilled on the wood floors when you play this record! NYC's Sweet Things unleash a form of Rock'n'Roll that I haven't heard done this well for a really long time. Boozy Blues mixed with Outlaw Country and cut with a healthy dose of some seriously sleazy Glam Rock and you've got yourself a bonafide Rock n Roll hurricane. Sweet Things reminds me a lot of late 80's bands like Dog D'Amour, London Quireboys and Faster Pussycat who all took cues from The Stones and Johnny Thunders. Magnificent record, I have quite the soft spot for music like this. My only complaint: only two songs- J Castro


"By the time I started paying attention to rock-and-roll," says Camden County native Ben Vaughn, who was born in 1955, "Elvis was in the Army, and the British Invasion hadn't happened yet."

What had happened, however, was the American Bandstand teen-idol era of rock-and-roll, the period when South Philadelphia heartthrobs such as Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, and Chubby Checker topped the pop charts and were adored by screaming fans, if not scribbling critics.

And, oh yeah, one more: Fabiano Anthony Forte, otherwise known as Fabian, who had hits with "Turn Me Loose," "Hound Dog Man," and "Mighty Cold (To a Warm Warm Heart)." Vaughn's cousin Judy "had pictures of him all over her room," Vaughn recalls, talking from his home in California's Mojave Desert. "Fabian was all she would listen to."

The South Philadelphia singer who was discovered by idol-maker Bob Marcucci when he was 14 in 1957 is the inspiration for Viva Fabian & More! A Tribute to the Fab One & Philly Rock 'N Roll (Many Moods), the new six-song EP by Pink Slip Daddy.

Pink Slip Daddy were a staple in Philadelphia clubs after forming in 1989 but split up in 1995, when Vaughn moved to Los Angeles to make a name for himself scoring TV shows such as That '70s Show and Third Rock From the Sun. The band reformed in 2012.

Vaughn and Cancer - real name Mike Henderson - are both longtime Fabian fanboys.

In his liner notes, Cancer tells of a trip to Memphis in 1978 on a quest to find authentic rockabilly heroes. Instead, he met a Memphis female punk band called the Klitz, who open for Pink Slip Daddy on Saturday - who were Fabian enthusiasts.

For Cancer, this encounter with "the fabricated Fab One" led to a realization: "Behind the facade lurked some damn good '50s rock-and-roll, featuring solid musicianship, sassy songs, and the requisite surly snarls of the singer, who, despite being oft-maligned, was actually a surprisingly muscular vocalist who . . . paved some of the way for the exploitation pop rock that would dominate future generations, from the Monkees to Johnny Rotten to Justin Bieber to, dare I say, Mick Cancer."

When it came time for Pink Slip Daddy to record, the band was searching for a concept. "Mick and I looked at each other and said: 'Oh, my God: Fabian! It's time,' " Vaughn said.

"I was like, 'What, Fabian? Really?' " says Delran, a guitarist, bandleader, and DJ who hosts her own satellite radio show on Little Steven's Underground Garage from 8 a.m. to noon Sundays. "I knew him from all those movies, but he was way before my time."

Delran, who grew up in Princeton as Lisa Cortes and who has never lived in either Palmyra or Delran, was the longtime leader of the Friggs, the first of what she calls her "trash pop" bands, which have also included the Booty Olympics. She lives in Brooklyn and has bands on each coast - Palmyra Delran & Bubble Gun on the West and Palmyra Delran & the Doppel Gang on the East. Several of her tunes have been declared the weekly "coolest song in the world" on the Underground Garage. "Baby Should Have Known Better" took that title for the entirety of 2008.

For Pink Slip Daddy, she had to get behind the drum kit again, which she hadn't done in almost 20 years. "Ben and Mick take the lead, and me and Barb [real name Noelle Hoover] are like the chick rhythm section," she says. "It's one of the most fun bands I've ever been in. We cover for each other. It's almost like a comedy troupe that plays music instead."

Viva Fabian! was recorded last year in Sewell, N.J. Four stripped-down Fabian tunes - "Turn Me Loose," "Mighty Cold," "Wild Party," and "Gotta Tell Somebody" - are joined by a rip through the Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" and "For Lovers Only," an extemporaneous Mick Cancer tribute to Jerry "The Geator" Blavat, the Philadelphia radio fixture whose WXPN-FM (88.5) show follows the syndicated The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn, which airs at 5 p.m. Saturdays. - Dan DeLuca/The Inquirer