Ace and the Ragers

Light This Sucker Up (Pin-Up Records)

By Kevin Gibson

Anytime you have band members named "Ace" or "Junior," it's a fair bet the band is either rockabilly or punk. Or both. In the case of Ace and the Ragers, it's rockabilly with a punk ferocity.

Now, we have to bear one thing in mind here: rockabilly, usually, is not good listening music. It's dance music, it's cruising around in your '49 Mercury music, perhaps even workout music, but to sit and listen to it for its own sake ... well, you're better of with Pink Floyd or the Beatles.

That said, I played this album while driving around in my car (I don't have a '49 Merc, but it'll have to do), and I found that it is indeed pretty good driving-around music. I'm a terrible dancer, and I haven't seen my barbells in years, so for those categories you'll have to find out for find out for yourselves.

I will say this about Ace and the Ragers: the band doesn't try anything experimental with its music; this is as straight-ahead as rockabilly gets, and what that means is that this is a dish best served live. But the Ragers hail from Boston, so unless you have a lot of frequent-flyer miles to waste, that's probably out too.

Also, Ace and his boys write songs about girls, beer, girls, dancing, girls and slumber parties (with girls), so they aren't exactly solving the world's problems (which goes back to the listening for its own sake point). Also, the band added 55 bonus tracks to the original 14 so that when you turn on your CD player, the number 69 pops up.

This kind of obsession is probably a trait more akin to punk than rockabilly.