The Spook Lights - Nudie Watusi

(Live From the Planet Sleazetop)

Raise your hand if you like The Cramps. Hey, who doesn’t! Some, I will argue, like The Cramps more than others. Stay with me here… I conjecture any band who include “billy” as a suffix and “psych” as a prefix in a self-written description of their sound like The Cramps a whole lot (probably more than you or I) and basically see them as a reigning influence on their sound. Please, correct me if I’m wrong.

Now, I will continue to argue, some bands do this better than others. When it falls, it falls hard. When it is done right, even a recording can capture the live energy as represented by The Cramps….hell, by the nature of punk rock, garage rock, surf rock, of rock in general…still with me? Basically I’m saying that good bands make good music. Sometimes it sounds a little bit like The Cramps, and I mean that in a good way. We up to speed? Excellent. Enter The Spook Lights…wheeling out of Lawrence, Kansas (in a convertible with a leopard print interior, I’d imagine) with the devil behind them.

The Spook Lights are psychobilly, falling prey to that rule I mentioned in the first paragraph (see “psych” and “billy” in their description) though they do a deft parry and swerve away from actually uttering the word. Hey, whatever floats your boat. Regardless, as you can hear for yourself (aren’t I kind), lead singer Scary Manilow channels his best Lux Interior, albeit maybe a half-octave up. Manilow squeals and stutters like a burned out car, and it’s dirtywonderful.

The grungy, but classically styled riff is solid and simplistic, raw but still steady. It is Manilow who is allowed to experiment, as noted before, and while the instruments (Curvacia VaVoom on guitar, Jet Boy also on guitar, and The Meld on drums) maintain their noisy presence, they seem to be the machina to his near-overwhelming Deus. Though there is some excellent surf guitar in the breakdown, you have to really pay attention to it, as it’s so easy to focus on the hypnotic vocals.

The lyrics aren’t bad either (if you can make them out, Manilow doesn’t exactly enunciate sometimes). Diving into the first verse is like a bite of a sundae after not having one for a while…a spoonful of delicious nostalgia.

“Now everybody knows/ the peppermint twist/ and you can do the alligator/ and it goes like this/ you’ve been mashing those potatoes/ since the day you were born….”

Harkening back to old dance crazes, it’s what you expected, and what you wanted. It’s also all one long pick-up line…that is, if the “nudie watusi” Manilow finally invites us all to do is what I think it is. (I think so.)

We’re all going to “get on the dance floor while” The Spook Lights “sing this song.” Perhaps we will also “shimmy like a long-tailed cat” (did I catch that right?) or “shake a leg shake a leg” or “do the nudie watusi all night long.”

All I know is we should “put our best foot forward.” The Spook Lights did, though I think it’s a cramped up zombie foot. You understand.

[If you’re in the Lawrence, Kansas area, the Spook Lights play regularly. They’ve got a Halloween show coming up that seems pretty boss…plus they’re doing something the night before the Scion festival. And if you’re in Kansas, you’d better be going to that goddamn Scion festival.

I’m not speaking to you if you’re not.]