Imagine you have just been listening to some of the best rare groove, 50’s western swing, classic dub, fill in the cool-old-music blank, records courtesy of one of the best curated 45 vinyl DJ sets you could imagine, and then out of nowhere, Kool Aid Man style, explodes a dapper man and a trio of domino obfuscated ladies on drums, bass and piano. Oh, and they are playing the straightest, hardest rockabilly you could hope for. Like, the DJ set just manifested itself somehow. That’s what happened at Crystal Palace after Baby Soul’s wonderful DJ set on Saturday night.

Stompin` Riffraffs are a staple in the Tokyo rockabilly scene, and have been for a long time. Their shows are always high energy and engaging, but the audience at Crystal Palace was so primed for it that they were prepared to eat the proverbial pomade and shades out of the band’s hands. To say that the performance was a rousing success would be a criminal understatement.

Their set was a high octane version of the rockabilly that everyone loves. Not at all psycho, but toeing the line. The frenetic energy the genre naturally has combined with the passion they brought to the performance ended up packing the Crystal Palace to its gills.

Deep down, rockabilly may be a strangely unifying genre (I mean, who really hates rockabilly?), but seldom had it flexed its powers as much as it did during this Saturday night performance. Folks from every festival background joined in, bopping together like they were all born sporting a D.A.

And what better place to showcase the band than the shrine to music which is the Crystal Palace and their DJs, those curators who make a life’s crusade out of finding, protecting and disseminating music that may tragically end up being lost or forgotten. And Stomping Riffraffs are a band that fight to keep a nearly ancient genre as alive and vibrant as it deserves to be. Oh, and they also kind of elicited one of the few proper mosh pits of the festival.

Good music is eternal. Stompin’ Riffraffs is living proof of this.