Hot Rods

What are rockabillys driving? Ever asked you this question?

Of course they are driving hot rods. This are typically American cars with large engines which are modified for linear speed. There are many explanations from where the word Hot rod could come. Some are saying from the term "hot roadster" where they mean a roadster that was modified for speed. Another explanation is about the camshaft(s) which they used to modify or replace and that is sometimes known as a "stick" or "rod". If a camshaft was designed to produce more power they also called it sometimes "hot stick" or "hot rod".



Ok I don't want to bore you with many details about hot rods. I will rather show you some awesome pictures of nice hot rods :-)

Pin Up Girls

 My blog for today is about the beautiful and awesome pin up girls from the 50's. Why from the 50's because the pin up style exist since the 1920 but with the 50's pin ups it was getting really popular and today many Rockabellas connect pin up with rockabilly because in fact the style of the modern Rockabella is part of the pin up models of that time. Mostly you see the make up and the hair from pin ups is the same as by modern Rockabellas.


Usually a pin up model is a glamour model, actress and a fashion model which pose in an erotic posture. Former you saw pin ups from pin up girls in every locker from military men. But pin up is more than standing in an erotic posture somewhere it is art. Among other things the military used pin up for war propaganda to encourage their troops.



Now I wanna show you a short list of the most beautiful pin up girls from yesterday till now. Hope you like it

Betty Grable she was one of the most popular early pin up girls. You could see her pictures in every locker of the military.

Betty Page is the Queen of pin ups. She became famous in the 1950s for her pin up photos and was called an American idol. Her look will be imitated also today. Her jet black hair, blue eyes and her bangs were here trademark.

Marilyn Monroe, who could ever forget this icon. 

Dita von Teese she is the #1 Pin Up in the World! She is amazing and wonderful. She is herself and know what she wants. Dita is an seductive burlesque star, a fashionista and a business women. 

Katy Perry celebrity and modern pin up and Bernie Dexter a beautiful pin up from Oregon.

Slang of the Fifties

 Slang is something what we have in every erea. Also nowadays we have many slang words. What makes a slang word interesting is that it is only used by young people and it is not mainstream. If it comes to that it is no longer a slang word. Also in the Fifties they had slang words and I want to show you today a selection of these. If you want to have a full dictionary of the slang of these days just click on this page Slang of the Fifties.

Slang	Word
Actor	Show-off
Ankle-biter	A child
Are you writing a book?	You’re asking too many questions
Baby	Cute girl, term of address for either sex
Bad news	Depressing person
Bash	Great party
Bent eight	a V-8 engine (hot-rodders)
Boss	Great
Cat	A hip person (Beats)
Chariot	Car (Beats)
Cloud 9	Really happy
Cook, cookin’	Doing it well
Cool	Indefinable quality that makes something or someone extraordinary
Cut the gas	Be quiet!
Cut out	Leave
Dolly	Cute girl
Eyeball	Look around
Fake out	A bad date
Flat out	Fast as you can
Flick	A movie
Frosted	Angry
Get with it	Understand
Goof	Someone who makes mistakes
Goopy	Messy
Horn	Telephone
Jets	Smarts, brains
Knuckle sandwich	A fist in the face
Make out	A kissing session
No sweat	No problem
Nuggets	Loose change
Pad	Home
Party pooper	No fun at all
Peepers	Glasses
Radioactive	Very popular
Righto	Okay
Tight	Good friends

Hope you like the slang words I have choosen. I really love them. If you have more for me please feel free to comment on my blog.

Rockabilly Tattoos

Today I wanna take my time to tell you something about rockabilly tattoos. You heard right rockabilly's nowadays have tattoos. That is one thing you could hardly imagine in the 50's but today many rockabilly's have tattoos and here we have a bunch of typical tattoos for this lifestyle.
You can remember vintage, old school, retro style or pin up? This tattoo styles are all typical signs for the rockabilly lifestyle. Previously they where typical sailor tattoos but that is over. Nowadays the techniques are more effective and better and so you get really nice and beautiful tattoos.

I wanna list now typical rockabilly themes:
Pin up girls, playing cards, 8-Ball, cherries, skull, panther, hearts, flames, swallows, lucky 13, sailing ship, dice, hot rods, tiki and hula girls, stars, brass knuckles and many more.

Many rockabilly's and rockabella's have also portraits from their idol where the most popular ones are Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Johnny Cash.


Another important thing to know is that people often have tattoos over a whole part of the body for example very popular are sleeves which covers the whole arms, legs or upper part of the body.

One of the most popular tattoos is the swallow it is an old school or new school style of tattoo. Here you can see most of the time the swallows as a couple. That can stand for angel and devil or man and women. Normally they are colored in red, blue or yellow but the sky's the limit so be creative. The meaning of the swallow is love, personal freedom and hope.

Rockabilly Make-Up

So as you now know how to make the perfect hairstyle you should also know how to make the perfect make up. In fact that I am not a make up artist I will not write now how to do it and give you step by step instructions. But I will give you useful links and show you videos where you can see how the perfect make up for a Rockabella should look like.

Typically for a Rockabella is red lipstick and black eyeliner.

For the perfect step by step instructions for your rockabilly make up I can recommend you two books. The first book is an really awesome one which is also recommended by make up artists.

You can find all books which I show you on amazon.com.
Retro Makeup

The second one is called
Style Me Vintage





And last but not least I found some interesting make up tutorials on youtube. Hopefully you find everything helpful and i would appreciate it when you give me some feedback to my blogs :-)

Rockabilly Hairstyles for Him and Her

Rockabilly Hairstyle

Hy my lovely Rockabilly's and Rockabella's today I wanna write about hairstyles. I guess everybody of you is often wondering how to make the hair as a rockabilly chick or boy. I will also post here two or three hair tutorials. If you want to see more hair tutorials or books I found check out my twitter profile https://twitter.com/Rock_A_Mia. Here you will find some useful videos to make your hair. I also know it is pretty hard to make this styles I tried it by myself and it looked awful but I guess with some practice you all can do that. So well let us start with my blog about rockabilly hairstyle hope you like it!


Rockabilly Hairstyles for Men

The hairstyle for Rockabilly's is also called Greaser-Look That is really simple a men need only a pompadour and sideburns. To get the perfect pompadour a men needs wax, pomade, styling gel or hairspray. And that is all what a men for has to do for the perfect rockabilly styling. Easy or not? Men can here vary in length of the pompadour and sideburns. Also you can see often very creative sideburns. Also you can vary with your hair on the sides - they can be razed out or only back gelled. A variety of the pompadour is the so called flattop. In that case the men has a shaved back of the head. At the next picture you can see some famous pompadour styles.

Rockabilly Hairstyles for Women

Women can be more creative what not means that men can't be creative. I truly guess that you can see a lot of creative pompadour on the streets.But still women can more vary with their hairstyles. First the most popular color for the hair of a rockabella is black but as a rockabella you can also wear crazy hair colors like red, blue or green. Their style is influenced by hairstyles from the 50's, 60's and the style of the pin up girls. The simplest thing for a girls is also making a pompadour with their bangs and tie their hair to a queue or simply stick them backwards. You could also only make the pompadour and let the hair open. Another variety is to wear the hair open only with straight bangs. The third variety is to wear the hair with big curls and here a women can vary a lot in how she stick the curls or if she only wears it open.

And at the end a women can use really much accessories for their hair. She could use bandanas, big flowers, hair clasps with leo, dotts or chequers, ribbons, skulls or dices. First you will need a lot of patience to get the style you want but in the end it will look awesome so be patient and you will look pretty good.

Some of you maybe don't like to watch clips for them I also found some helpful books which may help you.

Vintage Hairstyling
Rock 'n' hair
Style me Vintage

Last but not least, as you can see I have an twitter account and I will post from time to time some videos about hair tutorials so that you can see what exists. Hope you liked my blog and leave a comment :-)
 

Rockabilly Clothes

You wonder what Rockabilly's wearing? It is much more simpler than what Rockabella's are wearing. Men only wear skinny jeans with a big belt buckle with Rockabilly symbols on it like aces, dice, cars, swallows, etc. The for a men consists of a shirt, t-shirt or muscle shirt with appropriate motives on it like oldschool tattoos, swallows, etc. And least but not least don't forget the leather jacket. But most important for a rockabilly men is his hair by the way he has to have this pompadour like Elvis.

Shoes for rockabilly men are also not that special. They wear modest shoes with a little thicker sole without special ornaments. Also men can wear two color bowling shoes. The only colorful way for shoes are the stuff shoes with different colorful prints of e.g. skulls, dice or something like that.

As we can now see women have more freedom in her choice of clothes ;-)

Clothes for the perfect Rockabella

Typical clothes for a Rockabella are dresses and skirts which are inspired of the 50's. Important is to wear a Petticoat so that the skirt or dress is flared and the whole outfit should be form-fitting. 
On every Rockabella outfit you find typical details like polka dots, cherries, etc. Other typical characteristics of a Rockabella dress is that the skirts also going under the chest and the Rockabella then wears a checkered or dotted blouse.  
If a Rockabella wears pants then mostly these pants are going over the hips what is really form-fitting and the top is mostly a simple shirt with a typical Rockabilly motive. And don't forget the shirt should be putted into the pants.

Rockabellas have a wide range of accessories where they can choose from. Starting with belt buckles, flowers for the hair, colorful earrings and ending with necklaces and many more stuff. Here too the typical Rockabilly motives like cherries, birds, dots, etc. Also a typical accessories for a Rockabella is a Bandana which you tie into your hair. You get this in all imaginable colors and with different motives.




Last but not least we have to discuss the perfect shoes for a perfect Rockabella. This is not really difficult the most important things a Rockabella has to think about it is the shoes must be colorful, with typical motives like cherries, polka dots, ribbons, checkered, dies, etc. and they should be with high heels. As a Rockabella you can wear everything from Pumps to boots with shoe straps or ribbons. Mostly you have shoelace, buckles or other closures on the shoes. Pumps fits best to typical 50's clothing's.

But as a Rockabella you can also wear Peep Toes which have an open toecap or high heel sandals and if you think you can't walk a whole day in high heels you can also wear Ballerinas or the typical two colored bowling shoes.

So Rockabellas all I can say now enjoy your freedom of wearing clothes and be creative with your outfits. Next time I will talk about the perfect outfit for a typical Rockabilly guy.

Rockabilly around the world!

Today I wanna show you different styles of Rockabilly around the world and I wanna give you examples of Rockabilly music of different countries. It is interesting to see Rockabilly's from all over the world because everybody is different and unique.

Asia

This couple looks really sweet and kind of normal rockabilly. As you will now see Asians style themselves a little bit more extremely than the Americans. You can also see how the Japanese people are dressed up for a rockabilly show.

Europe

Europeans are similar to Americans. And in this spot I wanna show you a famous rockabilly band from Germany. They are called the Baseballs and they cover modern songs from today and switch them into a Rockabilly style song.

I was lucky enough to see these guys live on stage at Nova Rock. Nova Rock is the biggest rock concert in Austria and this guys were able to get the baddest metal guys singing Angel from Robbie Williams with them.

USA

USA is the birthplace of rockabilly and here you can find really this spirit and the feeling of rockabilly. One of the most famous rockabilly interpret was Elvis Presley the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

Australia

In the Australia I've read is the situation a little bit difficult because no one things that Australians have a good rockabilly scene but that isn't true. As I read in this blog they had about 1500 visitors at a rockabilly show and I also heard one important song from the rockabilly time is from Australia the song is called Shake Baby Shake from Johnny O'Keefe. So now you all know also in Australia you can find rockabilly.

Africa

Now I come to my last section of my world tour. And I really have to say I can't imagine that Africa has a rockabilly scene. Also they have a rockabilly scene. I read in a blog also from an interesting rockabilly band from South Africa and I don't want that you miss them. So have a look for them on the last YouTube video for today.

All in all we can say rockabilly lives around the world. Even if the styles differs a little bit but the feeling is in every country the same. So stay rockabilly and enjoy your live :-)

Rockabilly concert with Reverend Horton Heat at Spicolis

This was an exciting day for me i like work like this. My first rockabilly concert in the US and I can blog about it. Thanks to my professor that he told me that their is one so I didn't missed it.

The concert was on September 18th 2012 at Spicolis Grill in Waterloo. Admission fee was about 15 bucks and you got a yellow band and if you were earlier at Spicolis than we you also got a blue ticket. We (me and Tara) arrived at Spicolis at 9 pm. The doors open at 7 pm so we missed the first two bands. It starts with My Life for Change goes on with Whiskey & Woe and we were right there when The Goddamn Gallows starts to make their tests for the show.

The first exciting impression for me were the cars right in front of Spicolis Grill. There was a row full of Hotrods and old cars. I have to say I love old american cars.

Inside at Spicolis Grill were a lot of people but noch much in the typical rockabilly style as I know that. It was also surprising for me to see two girls with pink hair because here at the UNI most of the people have natural haircolors I guess I saw only one with a freaky haircolor at UNI.

We stand right in front of the stage so that I can make good pictures and videos. But it was pretty hard to get good pictures and videos with my camera because I don't have a professional one but I tried my best.

The Goddamn Gallows were pretty awesome. They have a style which sounds for me like a combination of pirate music and rockabilly and also they looked like that. I really liked it and the other people in front of the stage too. It was a good atmosphere, everybody was dancing and the band made jokes during their show and had also a really good interaction with the audience. During two songs two or three members of the band jumped down to the audience and played there. It was really exciting. They really take themselfs not seriously and that made them really sympathic.

All in all it was for me a little bit short but I guess they had a specific timeframe so they weren't able to play longer. But they used the time they had really good. The show was really powerful.

After this band we had a break and I was looking for some merchandising stuff. There was a small section where you could get some stuff. I grabed two stickers for my laptop from Reverend Horton Heat. After that we talked a little bit about the band who played.

Then the show from Reverend Horton Heat started and the audience was even bigger then before. The people really freaked out during the show. They were dancing and screaming all the time, it was a really exciting show and I enjoyed it much. What I really liked was that they played radio like back in the 50's during short breaks. The band itself was really professional and powerful I would describe their style as a mixture of rockabilly and country.

They have this year their 25 anniversary and another important information was that the drummer Scott is back. He was their drummer before for 11 years and then he was gone but after the new drummer quit he went back to the band and I have to say he is a really good drummer. On Youtube I have a drum solo which you have to watch ;-).

Tara was so nice and gave me a gift it was the playlist of Reverend Horton Heat and so I can also provide you with the playlist of Reverend Horton Heat. Additional they also performed five coversongs what according to vocalist Jim Heat not their normal approach is because they aren't a coverband. They also played four encore songs and the whole show lasted till 0:20 am.

• Psychobilly Freakout
• 400 Bucks
• Baddest of the Bad
• It's Martini Time
• Jimbo song
• The Party in Your Head
• Galaxy 500
• Indigo Friends
• Run Rudolph, Run
• Death Metal Guys
• Requests
• Devil's Chasing' Me
• Big Red Rocket of Love

I hope you enjoyed my first blog about a rockabilly show. I would appreciate it if you write some comments positive as negative so that I can improve myself. And if you don't know the bands really good i provide you with their links and I also made some pictures and videos which I wanted to share with you. Along this lines stay rockabilly :-)

Reverend Horton Heat
The Goddamn Gallows
Pictures
Videos

Rockabilly History

You wonder what Rockabilly is? Then you are totally right here. I will give you an short overview about the history about Rockabilly what it is and where it comes from.

All begans in the early 1950s when we had music styles like hillbilly, rythms and blues, boogie-woogie, western swing and rock and roll. The term rockabilly is a combination of two words. On one side rock from rock and roll and other the other side hillbilly. Also the other styles which I mentioned above influenced rockabilly.

Carl Perkins

The formally founder of rockabilly was Carl Perkins. He started the hype around rockabilly and all this gone out from Memphis the birthplace of Rockabilly. His first song was "Blue Suede Shoes" - most of you will know this song from Elvis Presley.

The most important influencer in rockabilly where Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. This three guys made rockabilly popular national in 1956.

Rockabilly Girls

Rockabilly was for the teenagers a kind of rebellion, sexuality and freedom. It was an expression of disdain for the workaday world of parents and authority figures. It was different to the normal social norms and therefore they loved it.


Some subcultures of rockabilly where:

• Gothabilly
• Punkabilly
• Psychobilly

If you want to have a more detailed description about the history with all its records and more different bands then I found some interesting links which can help you with that.
http://www.acesandeighths.com/rockabilly.html
http://www.memphisrocknsoul.sitewrench.com/memphismusichistoryrockabilly

Rockabilly Lifestyle - Structure of my blog

I am writing about Social Media Marketing as it pertains to Rockabilly Lifestyle.

My brand is a mixture of professional and personal brand. I want to write about the whole lifestyle which contains:

• Culture
• Hairstyle
• Clothing
• Music
• Celebrities
• Shops
• Tattoos
• History
• Pin-Ups
• Make-Up
• Cars
• ... 

This part of the Rockabilly Lifestyle will I provide to you every week. In every week I have another focus.
On Twitter I will post links to interesting shops, hair tutorials, and so on or I will provide you an link to my blog.
In the blog itself I write then about the focus of the week to give you an better understanding about the Rockabilly Lifestyle.