Juvie: the debut album!

Woo! On the heels of the great Travis Ramin assembling a treasure-laden Bandcamp page late last year, we have more exciting news from Travisland! His latest band, Juvie, has just released its first full-length album! It's called You Ain't Gonna Rock And Roll No More, and it's out on Italy's Surfin' Ki Records. Ramin (Tina and the Total Babes, The Fevers, The Short Fuses, Nikki Corvette and The Stingrays) has been a shining star of the garage and power pop scenes for two decades. And Juvie is up there with the very best of his bands. This Minneapolis outfit takes its primary inspiration from '70s music that sounded like '50s music (think Dave Edmunds, Gary Glitter, Sha Na Na). I've always had a soft spot for that "'50s in the '70s" genre of rock n' roll, and Juvie totally does it justice on this cookin' slab of wax. Stylistically, the album hops back and forth between bubblegum glam ("53rd & 4th"), power pop ("Love Crunch"), and good old rock n' roll ("Something Ain't Right"). And the songwriting is so spot-on that any of these tracks could pass for a cover of some forgotten golden oldie. Dave Edmunds himself would be proud to call "Hot Lisa" his own. "Tomahawk" and "Greaser's Fraud" just might launch a worldwide revival of the rock n' roll instrumental. "Little Diane" sounds like a track Shadow Morton might have cut with Dion or Del Shannon. "Go Wild, Go Really Wild" comes off like a number that got cut from the Grease soundtrack for being a little too dangerous.   

Seriously: how can you not love a band that comes up with a song called "You're Gonna Look Like A Monkey When You Get Old"?! The key to succeeding with this kind of music is to tap into the spirit of the '70s rock n' roll revival without crossing over into the dreaded novelty band category. That's no easy feat, but Juvie nails it. Of course the band is setting out to have great fun, but these songs are just too damn good to be dismissed as cruise ship nostalgia. Juvie, I'd say, fits perfectly on a label roster that includes the likes of Radio Days and Baby Shakes. The band's debut album is by no means an attempt to bring back rock n' roll. Rather it's an assertion that it never went away in the first place! Somewhere Bowzer is flexing his arm in admiration.

Note: order the album here! Surfin' Ki, hilariously, prices its Bandcamp downloads at over $1,000 each!



-L.R. 

https://surfinkirecords.bandcamp.com/album/you-aint-gonna-rock-and-roll-no-more
http://surfinkirecords.bigcartel.com/product/juvie-lp-preorder
https://www.facebook.com/Juvie-431066283764201
https://www.facebook.com/surfinkirecords
https://travisraminproducer.bandcamp.com/