Jamming in the rock room today is the 1987 record Pigus Drunkus Maximus by Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs. Originally recorded in 1981 and officially released in 1987, the hard to find album is the only vinyl document of the rip snorting punk R&B stalwarts captured in their natural element.

Many in the L.A. scene spent several orgiastic evenings swinging and slamming to the band whose unrestrained grooves and bombastic blues attracted musicians like David Lee Roth and Tom Waits who found inspiration in the band’s hard driving rhythms.

Thoughtfully reissued by Blind Owl Records on January 16th, 2026, this record documents the era when Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs were the focus and favorites of the Los Angeles music scene. Deftly blending hot R&B with a punkabilly attitude, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs made everybody move.

Whereas many reissues revisit recordings once familiar and famed, Pigus Drunkus Maximus was regionally treasured, yet relatively unknown outside the confines of the Los Angeles music scene. The folks who dug the group though, dug them as deep as the band’s kinetic shuffles and wild riffing. The band played the late night music that offered a soundtrack for the after hours glitter of the city’s club scene.

The group on the album is comprised of Top Jimmy (aka James Paul Koncek), guitarists Dig the Pig (Richard Aeilts) and Carlos Guitarlos (Carlos Ayala), bassist Gil T (R. Gilbert Isais), drummer Joey Morales, and saxophonist Steve Berlin who all respectively swing with a reckless abandon through the band’s honky brand of undistilled rock and blues.

This collection reintroduces the group to a new collaborative of rockers who like their music 100 proof. The five peace “big” band cooks through an array of expertly picked and obscured covers like the double time version of Dylan’s “Obviously Five Believers,” and a horny rendition of Otis Rush’s “Homework.”

Any song the band explores becomes their own, like Hendrix’s “Spanish Castle Magic,” which is loaded up with a uniquely soused sensibility. Even the group’s own songs slam, as the recording documents with the Carlos Ayala original “Dance with You Baby,” that sizzles like a greasy griddle and is punctuated with saxophone blasts and unabashed riffs.

Johnny Paycheck’s “11 Months and 29 Days,” drags a metal cup across the bars while grinding its groove to dust. While another thick band original, “Hole in My Pocket,” written by Ayala, rattles a with jangling piano and the perfect amount of bluesy pathos. The group instrumental, “Backroom Blues,” encapsulates the entire era, through its exclamative steel plated shuffle. It’s like E Street grabbed a bottle, packed up and moved to Sunset Boulevard.

The record closes with a serrated reading of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man,” spotlighting the band’s willingness to take any cut no matter how sacred and pound it into their own shape.

Unless you were able to walk through the grinning door of the Whiskey a Go-Go on an unassuming weeknight; these songs poured into the sticky streets of L.A. never to be heard again. Now, robustly exhumed and curated from the empty bottles and red eyes of the past, a well overdue tribute to the steamy nights where music and madness were all that mattered is available to relive.