Monday, October 02, 2006

Music: Keepin' it under wraps with The Mummies.

Formed in '88 for the purpose of playing loud, trashy, grade-A garage rock, The Mummies delivered their retro-rock meets noise-assault tunes with the help of an instantly recognizable shtick: they played in full-body suits that made them look like they were wrapped from head-to-toe in bandages. Check out this clip of The Mummies in action below.



Sadly, the boys in bandages threw in the towel back in '92. They've come out of retirement twice before, but the best way to check out the band is on their handful of albums. Mercifully, for the new fan, The Mummies, who played on vintage instruments and recorded only on vinyl when they were a group, have gotten over their legendary loathing of digital technology. You can now get their last album Never Been Caught and their singles collection Death by Unga Bunga!! on CD.

Special Mummified Bonus: here's a clip of the The Mummies rocking away on Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How interesting! How great!
Does this keyboardist attempt windmilling with his synthesizer as well? Sheesh!

Have you heard of the Tijuana Bibles? They're from Toronto and perform wearing wrestling masks.

http://tijuanabibles.com/

One of the founding members, no longer with the band, i believe, has also directed a low-budget movie:
Zombie Beach Party. Well, that's
what it's called on IMDb, but i have the DVD when it was called Enter... Zombie King! And actually, that's the artwork they use for the IMDb listing, curious.

Unfortunately, I have yet to listen to any of their music or see them perform in person.
But I think they're cool for getting so into their gimmick.
They may or may not still have tijuana bibles comics for each member of the band that you can see on their website. They were very authentic looking when i checked them out, crudely drawn, funny, and pornographic.
Yeah, I don't know if it's still possible to see Stacey Case's super 8 wrestler films: ARRIBA! THE PARKDALE WRESTLER. I guess the band originally formed simply to record music for the soundtrack to the movie. But when they were criticized for not having actually performed live (thus, they weren't an "actual band"), they did take to performing.

I also took a look at another Mummies performance on YouTube; You Have to Fight to Live on the Planet of the Apes.

We live in a great and wonderful world.

CRwM said...

How I lived this long without knowing about the TBs is a mystery. Thanks for the great tip.