The BellRays
Let It Blast

There was a time when mutant monsters, offspring of the nuclear bomb, wagged their tails to the beat of the most terrifying rock'n'soul ever heard on this earth, like Godzilla tackling a blues even more charged up than one mud-bath treated by Dr. Winter could ever spew out.

Then Roland Emmerich came along, and even the giant lizards went the way of plastic, and nowadays you'll most likely find Godzilla in some five-star nightclub, throwing his hands up to the call of David Guetta.

Those were different times, indeed.

It was a period when from Riverside, California, came fierceness like that of Tony Fate, Bob Vennum, and Ray Chin.

And then there was her, Lisa.

And woe betide you if you subtly mocked Lisa Lisetta, much less her blue eyes, otherwise Lisa would have started off like the crazy trucker in "Duel," but she certainly wouldn't have been fooled in the same way.

Lisa Kekaula was a force of nature, not just on stage.

Together with those three, she set up the BellRays in the early Nineties, quite a bit of groundwork, and in 1998 came "Let It Blast."

Essentially, Tony wrote almost all the pieces, firing up Riverside and its surroundings with scathing riffs unheard for a while; Bob and Ray busted their guts to keep the beat, and Bob, while he was at it, even found time to write something.

Then there was Lisa, who was the voice and soul of the BellRays.

A phenomenal voice, capable of caressing you with a whisper just before overwhelming you with a roar.

A soul as dark as you wanted.

Then, that magma that resonated in "Let It Blast" was dubbed rock'n'soul by some; however, Lisa and company hit the mark better when, a few months later, they continued the noise in the split "Punk Rock and Soul" just as in "Grand Fury."

The dance began with "Future Now," taking less than ten seconds to floor the nihilism of those young punks who roamed the streets of London, plotting the great rock'n'roll swindle twenty years earlier.

After about forty minutes, it closed with "Get On Thru."

In between, there was a lot of punk in the style of "Kill the Messenger" and "Testify," just as much soul in the attitude of "Changing Colours," "Cold Man Night," and "Blue Cirque."

Flipping the cover, you read that this was the punk soul revolution.

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Today Lisa and the BellRays are still around, they've just made a new album titled "Punk Funk Rock Soul Vol. 2" but it's no longer the time when Godzilla was moshing and headbanging to a blues as infectious as few others.

These are respectable times, but the punk soul revolution was something entirely different.